So I was watching the first episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman. He starts off with a near death experience from a man who is almost drowned at Sea. The man held his breath while he was underwater for as long as he could and then he resigned himself to the inevitable and breathed in the salt water. He was for all intents and purposes dead, and experienced a variation of the standard Near Death Experience (or NDE) being drawn into a bright multi colored light and feeling a sense of well-being then he hadn't really felt before. One unique detail about his particular near death experience was intriguing to me, and another fairly standard detail got me thinking.
The unique detail was that he felt a connection, a relationship to that light that was more intense than any relationship he had ever had in life. In other words, he had felt more a part of the universe and more connected to it in death, than he ever had while living. Can it be, then, that living itself creates a sense of separation and distance from the universe, and alienation that does not exist in the more "normal" condition of not living? That in the afterlife, the connection between us and the universe is more readily apparent? That while living we are part of "the other", and in the after life part of the whole?
Meanwhile, the more standard detail led me to a tenuous grasp of understanding that the experience of "the otherness" of living, it's feeling of disconnect from the universe at large, is some how necessary to the advancement of the universe as a whole.
Let me explain, the other detail, was that at the very last moment, This being of pure light and understanding told him that "it was not HIS TIME, and that he HAD A UNIQUE PURPOSE" the Universe needed him to fulfill.
This, is pretty standard NDE stuff. It seems like almost everyone who comes back from the brink of death relates something similar. My question is, is why would the universe convey this sentiment to us, in this ultimate moment of existential crisis, after giving us a glimpse, a taste, of the beautiful cosmic inclusiveness the after-life seems to offer?
I mean, it appears that this man just gets a tiny sample of cosmic bliss and its accompanying sense of spiritual wholeness, and then that rug is summarily yanked out from under him, and he is told he must go back into the realm of the living to fulfill some undefined purpose or perform some unexplained task that is somehow essential to either the future of the Universe or this individual's soul or both. In any case, the exact mission is unclear but this man is not given a choice, HE MUST GO BACK! THE UNIVERSE HAS SPOKEN, and it apparently brooks no argument in this matter, or allows any dissent.
The conclusion must be reached from this that this person's "cosmic purpose" trumps all other considerations here. That the Universe knows at any given random moment whether a person's individual destiny has, or has not, been realized. Which implies that the Universe knows the future, and the intricate part every single living thing plays in it.
Let's take a second to digest the implications of all this. In these near death experiences the Universe's intention are generally conveyed by an entity of pure energy or light, though sometimes these things are expressed by forms familiar to us like the spirits of dead family or friends. But they are always presented with a certitude that a return to living must happen, or has to happen for everything to be right with the universe. That we all have a role to play in making sure this happens come hell or high water or life and death.That the future of the cosmos actually depends on it happening, and we are not allowed to leave this realm until we have fulfilled are mysterious "purpose".
Never mind that the man Morgan Freeman was talking to never revealed whether he had ever discerned what his purpose was in his subsequent years of living, or that such a thing is ever truly made discernible to anyone. Truth is a person's purpose could be any number of things, from the people or things we influence in an endless myriad of ways, to the lessons we learn from others or stuff we discover about ourselves. It could be this, it could be that, and we might get a sense of what it is, or even think we know what it is, but even then WE COULD BE WRONG.
So we go on a living, careening from event to event, blissfully unaware of whether we are fulfilling our purpose or not, until the Universe decides we have done it, and "our time" is up, and our seemingly absolutely essential contributions to the Universe has happened. The obvious implication being that if we all don't achieve our fundamental purpose, the whole Universe may collapse like a House of Cards.
This whole thing belies a highly structured deeply integrated Universe that is completely counter-intuitive to the random, chaotic, Universe we seem to find ourselves in. A Universe where every domino must fall just so for it to proceed correctly, versus the real Universe where the dominos fall out of bag and clatter to the floor randomly, in a cacophony of chaos and disorder.
So I am left with certain inevitable conclusions. That living matter is somehow a tool for organizing or ordering the Universe at large by a cosmic force that doesn't fit into our our generally accepted notions of what God is. A force of disembodied light and pure energy that sometimes uses the facsimiles of beings heretofore familiar to us to make its messages more palpable to us. But to those who are open to it, drops that pretense and appears nakedly as itself and seems to embody all the qualities of a Supreme Being or Supreme Force we could ask for, Infinite kindness, understanding, and acceptance, and Unconditional love despite our many flaws and bad decisions. Interestingly, this force of pure energy never seems to claim that it is God, or anything resembling a God that human beings have ever come up with. This force doesn't seem to care if your good or bad, or have done wonderful or even despicable things. What instead seems important to it, is whether or not not you have fulfilled your unique purpose or contributed what only you, in the unique combinations of the assets you possess, could manifest, or bring into being in the realm of the living.
I can only take from this that Near Death Experiences are entirely consistent with the over-arching theme of REVELATIONS AND SPECULATIONS, that the Universe, against all odds and reasonable understanding, is truly ALL ABOUT YOU AND CONVERSELY ALL ABOUT US AS A WHOLE, AND THE FUTURE OF OUR SMALL INDIVIDUAL UNIVERSES AND THE UNIVERSE AT LARGE IS PRETTY MUCH DEPENDANT ON US, EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, AND ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME.
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