Hemoglobin is a miracle of construction

Hemoglobin sits inside a red blood cell, constituting 96 percent of the cells’ dry weight; its function is to pick up oxygen and transport it through the bloodstream to every cell in the body. Blood gains its red color from the iron in hemoglobin, which turns reddish when it rusts (and for the same reason). When the oxygen atoms reach their destination and are released. The red color fades, which is why blood in your veins is bluish. Venous blood is on the return journey to the lungs, where it will start the process of oxygen transport all over again. The ability of hemoglobin to carry oxygen is seventy times greater than if the oxygen were simply dissolved in the blood. 

As a molecule, hemoglobin is a miracle of construction. The hemoglobin molecule is built from 10,000 atoms, creating a vast space that exist so that exactly four iron atoms can pick up four oxygen atoms for transport.

The task that faced inorganic matter billions of years ago on planet Earth was as follows:

- Oxygen had to be set free into the atmosphere without getting gobbled up by greedy atoms and molecules around it.

- At the same time, some of the oxygen had to be gobbled up to form complex organic chemicals.

- Those organic chemicals had to be structured into proteins, of which hemoglobin is one of the most complex.

- Hemoglobin had to be arranged internally so that it encased four iron atoms, which are absent from hundreds of other proteins, including those that resemble hemoglobin in their working parts.

- The iron atoms couldn’t be inertly encased, like locking diamonds up in a safety deposit box. The iron had to be charged (as a positive ion) so that it could pick up oxygen atoms. But it wasn’t permitted to steal any of the oxygen already being used to build proteins.

Finally, the machinery necessary for constructing all of the above organic chemicals had to remember how to do it the next time and the next and the next, while other nanomachines sitting nearby in the cell had to remember hundreds of different chemical processes without interfering with the machine that makes hemoglobin. Meanwhile, time matters. The nucleus of the cell, DNA has to remember—and put into motion with precise time—the whole enterprise.

Deepak Chopra and Menas C. Kafatos, You are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters (Harmony Books, 2017), 218-221.

Our experiences of the soul

In each state of consciousness the soul looks different. In the physical world the soul is centered around emotions and idealism. It connotes warmth of heart, love, devotion to God. We look to our souls to remind ourselves that we have a divine spark inside, and yet we don’t base our lives on it. The soul flickers in and out.

 

In the subtle world the soul is spirit, denoting holiness, closeness to God, and freedom from the burdens of physical existence. The soul no longer offers mere comfort; it is the bliss that pain was disguising. The soul is constant now; its guidance can be clearly followed without confusion. The primary feeling is magnetic: one is being drawn inexorably toward the divine.

 

In the domain of pure consciousness, merging is complete. One sees that self and soul are one. Since there is no here and there, the soul has no location. It exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time. One no longer seeks the soul’s goodness, holiness, or purity. It simply is. 

 

The divine plan is life itself. It includes all creatures in their proper place. The proper place for humans is, first, in eternity and second, here on earth. Death, like the pause between two breaths, is how you cross from one home to the other.

 

Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 126-127, 157). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

Afterlife is a "special kind of tomorrow"

Near-death experiences tell us that the stage of “crossing over”—the temporary realm preceding the full experience of the afterlife—still feels personal. People report seeing their deceased friends and relations, for example. The dying person continues to see the room in which his body lies, and memories and associations keep tying him back to physical existence. The possibility of taking a creative leap has yet to be realized. As long as you continue to feel like the person you were, you can’t experience the unknown.

 

When you are in a physical body your perspective makes physicality real. When you are dreaming at night, the dream state is real. When you are “crossing over,” both waking and dreaming are unreal, and the field of consciousness is real. What causes this change of reality? Vedanta holds that consciousness is convinced by its own creations. Therefore, nothing we can see, hear, and touch, whether in waking, dreaming, or beyond both, is ultimately real. They represent shifting perspectives.

 

To be completely free means waking up from all dreamlike states and reclaiming who you are: the maker of reality. One cannot say that all dying people will achieve this kind of absolute freedom. They may glimpse it only for a fleeting second; they may sense the possibility of breaking away from one dream and yet be seduced into the next one that comes to mind.

 

Consciousness is tied by thousands of threads to old memories, habits, preferences, and relationships. Whenever someone really presses the issue of what happens after we die, my response comes in the form of a question: “Who are you?” You have to know where you are right now, in order to know where you will be tomorrow, and the afterlife is just a special kind of tomorrow.

 Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 84, 87, 98). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

Heaven is an experience in consciousness

When Jesus tells his disciples that they should be in the world but not of it, his teaching seems unlivable. My physical body anchors me here every moment. But the soul manages to be in this world while remaining firmly outside time and space. Jesus is giving us a clue about the kingdom of heaven within.

 

Many times, Jesus sounds like a rishi in the tradition of Vedanta. Certainly, that’s true about being in the world but not of it. In simple terms, he is telling his closest followers followers to stop thinking of themselves as physical creatures. Jesus becomes more explicit if we look outside the four Gospels to the fragmentary Gospel of Thomas, which was written very early, perhaps within a century after the Crucifixion, but was later excluded from the official canon.

 

Jesus said: “If those who lead you say to you: See, the kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of the sky will go before you; if they say to you: It is in the sea, then the fish will go before you. But the kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father.” This passage shows how profound the roots of religion are, and how compatible the great traditions of wisdom would be if dogma didn’t stand in the way. What Jesus says here supports the view that heaven is everywhere, but it goes further by saying that heaven is an inward experience—an experience in consciousness. 

 

Jesus sees the soul everywhere and thus he can see that the essence of people lies outside time and space. Like the rishis, Jesus was comfortable living with eternity. Why, then, aren’t we? Eternity can’t be grasped by the mind in our ordinary waking state. Our waking state is dominated by time while eternity is not. There must be a link. Vedanta says that there is a continuum, in fact. Every quality in yourself is actually a soul quality.

Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 63-64). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

Heaven is an inward experience and our home

The notion of heaven keeps things human, and that’s one reason it has survived so long. The image of returning home after we die, resting from our labors, and receiving our just reward offers powerful reassurance. (It’s difficult not to come to tears listening to the old gospel hymn with its gentle, rocking refrain: “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, Come home…Come home.”) 

In an age of doubt, however, the shakiest assumptions about heaven are the two it can’t do without:

1. We go somewhere when we die.

2. The place we go to is the same heaven or hell for everyone.

In Christ’s conception heaven is present: It’s an inward experience that can be felt by the righteous. Heaven is also future: It’s returning home to be with God that the righteous await on Judgment Day. Heaven is personal: It is to be found “within you.” At the same time, heaven is universal: It is an eternal abode beyond birth and death, a place outside Creation.

This teaching was revolutionary because Jesus built a bridge to the soul, exhorting every person to find his (or her) way across.

What you choose today will ripple throughout a thousand tomorrows.

 

Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 55, 57, 61). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

Crossing Over – How the Afterlife Dawns

1. The physical body stops functioning. The dying person may not be aware of this but eventually knows that it has occurred. 

 

2. The physical world vanishes. This can happen by degrees; there can be a sense of floating upward or of looking down on familiar places as they recede.

 

3. The dying person feels lighter, suddenly freed of limitation. 

 

4. The mind and sometimes the senses continue to operate. Gradually, however, what is perceived becomes nonphysical. 

 

5. A presence grows that is felt to be divine. This presence can be clothed in a light or in the body of angels or gods. It can communicate to the dying person.

 

6. Personality and memory begin to fade, but the sense of “I” remains.

 

7. This “I” has an overwhelming sense of moving on to another phase of existence.

 

This sevenfold awakening isn’t the same as going to heaven. Researchers often call this the “inter-life” phase, a transition between the mental state of being alive and the mental state of realizing that one has passed on.

 

Westerners argue over whether the afterlife could be as real as the physical world; Easterners declare that both are mental projections. Westerners limit the human life cycle to a short span between birth and death; Easterners see an eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

 

Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 40-41). Harmony/Rodale, 2006. Kindle Edition.

Death fulfills our purpose on earth

I believe that death accomplishes the following miraculous things:

It replaces time with timelessness.

It stretches the boundaries of space to infinity.

It reveals the source of life.

It brings a new way of knowing that lies beyond the reach of the five senses.

It reveals the underlying intelligence that organizes and sustains creation (for the moment we won’t use the word ‘God,’ for in many cultures a single creator is not part of dying or the afterlife).

In other words, death is a fulfillment of our purpose here on earth. Every culture offers a deep faith that this is true, but ours demands a higher standard of proof.

At the deepest level vibrations cease. The universe flatlines like a dead brain. Yet the appearance of death is illusory, for the frontier where all activity ends marks the beginning of a new region, known as virtual reality, where matter and energy exist as pure potential. The basis for virtual reality is complex, but in simplest terms, a nonphysical region must exist to give birth to the physical universe.

If eternity is with us now, underlying all physical existence, it must underlie you and me. The illusion of time tells us that you and I are shooting in a straight line from birth to death, when in fact we are inside a frothy bubble let loose by eternity.

 

Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (pp. 25-28). Harmony/Rodale, 2006. Kindle Edition.