DO I believe in reincarnation as Hindus and Buddhists do? As a lifelong Catholic, I have been indoctrinated not to believe it. But now, I’m open to it. Viewed from another perspective I believe that all of us get “reincarnated” somehow. Although maybe not as commonly and as traditionally perceived.
This thought struck me as I was watching a bad science-fiction movie on cable television where the lead character (supposedly an alien from another galaxy) says to the young mother whose son is apparently dead: “Your son did not die. He will come back to life. Nature wastes nothing.”
I was about to laugh at what I thought was atrocious dialogue, but then, I stopped when it dawned on me: Yes, that’s true! You don’t really die in a way; you just get reconstituted into something or someone else.
Science tells us the cells that make up our bodies come from the universe. In the final scene of the sci-fi film Gattaca, Ethan Hawke’s character Jerome says that every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. In his book entitled Cosmos, Carl Sagan explains at length how the matter we are made of comes from stars.
Your body contains trillions of atoms, of many different elements. There are atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, but your body also contains many atoms of calcium, nickel, potassium, iron, even gold! In all, there are 92 different types of atoms, most of which can be found in the molecules that make up the tissues of our body.
Since we know that when the universe formed, the only elements around were hydrogen and helium. Where did all these other types of atoms come from?
The answer is quite startling. All the atoms in your body, other than helium and hydrogen, were manufactured in the center of a supernova—a star that once existed, but destroyed itself in a gigantic explosion and spewed the heavy elements they created into the space around them.
In fact, science tells us that all of the heavier elements that went into forming the Earth, the ground, the biosphere came from this interstellar gas cloud. And so did all the elements in your body!
Right now, some of the elements such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium or whatever that hold up our bodies may have even come from outer space—another planet or a star that has exploded. So yes, we are made of dead stars.
But some elements don’t have to come from a dead star. Some of the atoms may have come from another body that has died, decayed and disintegrated. In fact, so science tells us, throughout our life, our bodies are constantly changing, in the sense that the cells of our organs—heart, brain, intestines, liver, lungs, etc.—age, decay, and disintegrate and are replaced by new cells, new atoms, new elements derived from something or someone else.
Think of this: The atoms of people who came before you could now be part of you and, therefore, in you. So the guy who proclaimed we are all part of the universe has a point, after all.
This is probably what led the poet Jane Hirshfield declare in her poem “My Proteins,” thus:
Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
Are not my own person.
They are other beings inside me.
Nothing is lost. You die and your atoms become part of some living thing or human being in the future. After our bodies decompose, the atoms exist as nutrients in the ground. Eventually, a plant will soak up these nutrients, and the atoms become part of the plant. Then, another animal may eat the plant, and the atoms become part of the animal. Then that animal dies, and the process starts over again. This is called the “cycle of life.”
I read somewhere that this return to the system is so dramatic that every person alive has a substantial number of atoms in them that once belonged to Shakespeare or Rizal or Confucius.
In a sense, you come back to life.
Having said that, my Catholic upbringing has taught me to believe in a soul that is indestructible, that does not die, decay or disintegrate. But whatever, the indestructibility of the soul is just a bonus for me. Just the thought that my atoms now will later on be used to compose another life is assuring enough for me.
In death, let yourself be a part of what is called the great cycle of life and “reincarnated” as another form of life. Thus, you become—do I dare say it—immortal!