Thank you, E!
As best as I can encapsulate the idea with my puny, nonscientifically-or-theologically trained mind, it works something like this: All humans – and possibly/probably all living things – are physically and intellectually/mentally/consciously connected by an invisible “life force” (probably electromagnetic in nature) that gives us a common touchpoints of psychological experience, and which allows us to “feel” the feelings of others and sense changes in the life force of others in ways that in past times have been mistakenly been described – in our pathetic human efforts to describe the indescribable – as “religion,” as “ESP,” as “intuition” and other manifestations of metaphysical weirdness.
I came up with this theory as a college sophomore, sitting in my bedroom on a Saturday afternoon listening to The Who on my stereo. As my mind wandered here to there, I suddenly felt a sharp, gripping pain in my chest. It lingered for about a half hour, and was intense enough to cause some worry for my immediate survival, but not enough to distract me from The Who. About a half hour later, the phone rang – it was the floor nurse at a major hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., where my father lived, telling me that he had just had a major heart attack and was in dire condition. We were told to fly ASAP to Phoenix, and my pains were soon forgotten.
Later, the experience caused me to wonder – was it mere coincidence that I felt chest pains stronger than I have ever experienced at the exact moment my dad was having a myocardial infarction? What could explain it? At the time, I was studying some science in school and on my own, and was familiar with a couple of scientific laws that could help explain such a phenomenon, and also show how physics might underlie a lot of the spiritual and metaphysical concepts we have developed over centuries as humans.
The first scientific law that seemed to be relatable to this “sympathetic” pain in my chest was the law of gravity. Here we have a force (not really a force, but stick with me) that literally is smeared everywhere in the universe, which touches everything in the universe, and which (more importantly) allows everything in the universe to instantly push or pull on everything else in the universe. It’s a scientific fact: Everything with mass has a gravitational pull that is felt by everything else with mass. When the moon passes over the ocean, its gravitational pull lifts the water toward it by a few inches – we call these tides. When you hop a bit into the air, your gravitational pull is literally pulling the ENTIRE PLANET EARTH toward you just a little teeny bit. Your gravity is felt by everything, everywhere – even the farthest star in the universe “knows you’re there.”
It’s like we are walking in a matrix – a force field – a sticky plasma — of gravity that embraces everything, senses everything, allows everything to impact everything. What if similar forces are in effect for life and living creatures, and we just haven’t “discovered” them yet?
It just seemed to make the most sense from a scientific basis, and explain so many things that we have found to be inexplicable. Since nature has provided a force that can be pervasive enough to literally connect everything in the universe to everything else, it didn’t seem outlandish to me that some other related force could serve to connect living things. When my dad had his heart attack, that pain caused “ripples” in his own life energy, and because life energy is connected (in my theory), I felt those ripples as they spread through the “life force field” like a wave, a wave that was most directly connected to me because my life force was a product of his life force.
The second scientific concept that seems plausibly wrapped into this whole “life force” phenomenon is energy. Weird thing about energy is that it cannot be created, or destroyed. The energy you feel in the morning, the energy you “run out of” during the day, had to first come from somewhere else, and it will go somewhere else after you throw your exhausted body into bed. Energy inhabits different forms, rides a sequential series of hosts, going from the sun to the sea to a plant to our bellies to our laughter to our dreams and then back out into the world, to be ceaselessly reused, remaining forever alive. So it seemed clear to me that the since life is essentially harnessed energy, the energy that is/was our “life” will never go away, and will simply move on to other forms. We take our last breath, and the energy of our soul simply re-enters the “life force field,” joining all the passed-away others who have added their energy to this overall force field (“Hi, Dad!”), and becoming a jumble of unseen once-living energy, full of former lives – something that that religion has come to call “Heaven.” When a new life is created, some of the energy from this field – possibly including some of the energy that used to be you – pops out of the unseen force field and again inhabits some body – a physical occurrence that humans have come to call “reincarnation.”
And, when many millions of humans sense (as I did) this seemingly spiritual connectedness, this churning matrix of birth and death and everlasting life, they have over the centuries come up with words like “God” and constructs like religion to explain it all. Look at how many stories in religion echo one another – not because of a shared God, or even God-driven teachings, but because of a shared sense of how life energy connects us all. We are God, all of us.
The life force/sustained energy theory can (if you squint a little) also be useful in explaining such mysteries as séances (since energy cannot be destroyed, my Dad is “still out there” somewhere), and could also be what’s at work when we “get a feeling that something’s wrong” with a loved one, or “believe this house is haunted,” or “feel like Mom is still with me” though she died last year, the nature of “the soul,” etc. etc. I suspect the force is especially strong between related people, but my thinking is hazy on why this would be – possible because your energy flowed out of the same original sources as their energy (same ancestors), their “wavelengths” are similar or something.
God, I’m crazy.
No way, dude.
