In a heartbeat

Twice in my life I have felt fully released from my body. The first time occurred following a blood donation. About to leave the mobile medical vehicle, cookie in hand, I suddenly was overcome with a powerful sense of impending doom. Some time later, I awoke wrapped in ice, lying on an examination table, with my feet held high about the level of my chest. In addition to a set of horrible physical sensations, I felt a bit disappointed; the minutes between syncope and recovery of consciousness were filled with a suspended state of being, a weightless experience of uplift, like a balloon lighter than air drawn toward a welcoming sun.

The second time was uniquely different. Asleep, I had an encounter with a van full of people traveling, I learned, to the afterlife. During a moment of panic, I was touched in the center of my forehead by a disfigured yet gentle matriarch, a woman with gnarled joints, cloudy eyes, and an ageless expression. Immediately upon her touch, a flood of tranquility washed over and through me. I knew I was dreaming; yet I knew I was awake. I knew I was alive; I also knew I would never be completely dead.

Both experiences left me with an unshakable realization and faith: there is more to being than our bodies. And there is more to life than our human lives.

Yesterday, my wife and I discussed what we would do if we were presented with a choice: our individual death or the death of someone we loved. Maybe it is a function of our ages or maybe it is something more basic to human existence. Regardless, without hesitation, we each understood that we would willingly, gladly, even rejoicedly offer our physical lives so that someone dear to us might remain in theirs.

In a heartbeat, I said.

During an average lifetime, a human heart beats over 2.5 billion times. For someone who lives 100 years, the heart beats about the same number of years that earth and life are known to exist – over 4 billion. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a centenarian’s accumulated heart count somehow matches human measurements of earthly time and biological existence. There are so many things that seem accidental, occurrences which are similar yet not demonstrably associated. We have to be careful not to attribute causality to temporal correlation lest we draw conclusions that are borne from myth rather than math or science. History is replete with such mistakes. Co-occurrence does not mean connection. Still, doesn’t the similarity strike you as interesting? Does it encourage you, even for a moment, to smile?

In a heartbeat, my wife agreed.

From whence springs the impulse to sacrifice ourselves in order to save another? A choice, the offer of one’s own life for another might be explained by certain theories of species survival. I can see that; during a situation of limited survival resources, people above a certain age might voluntarily prioritize the lives of those younger or more fit than themselves in order that the whole continue, instead of some of the parts. The split second recognition that one’s own life would or should be laid down for another, however, feels more than some type of species perpetuation instinct ingrained in human DNA. Something greater is required for such an immediate decision, something bolder than the biological. There is something behind that such a drive called love.

“Our own life,” Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote, “is the instrument with which we experiment with truth.” Basho noted: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” From the Bible: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” And, finally, from Jesus Christ: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Today is Easter, a celebration across many cultures of renewal and a commemoration among people of Judea-Christian heritage of salvation and resurrection. Whatever you believe about the religious Christ, you probably acknowledge that the historical version practiced what he preached: he died so that others might be saved. Do you believe that his man rose from the dead? Do you believe that anyone or any being is capable of such a miracle? I used to get lost in the rational maze of intellectual solutions to these questions. Then I felt myself suspended free of my own body, at first when I should have been conscious and then when I should have been asleep. I also experienced, as a physician, the departure of spirits from human bodies at the time of physical death. I have heard, inaudibly, the voices of deceased ancestors and loved ones through the mystery of earthy synchronicity and immaterial messaging. Informed by these graces, I have no doubt that some part of me – of us – precedes and persists beyond our human form. And I am immensely grateful for the teachings and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of Thich Nhat Hanh, of Basho, of Ghandi, of Buddha, of Mohammed, of all the earthly embodiments of a Godforce in our world that is peace, that is harmony, that is love.

I hope that I may live a human lifespan that is at least average in years while being rich beyond decades in love. But if given the choice between experiencing the wealth of love through the offering of some physical years versus extending my life when an expression of truth might enable others to extend theirs, well, I hope that the universe and its God know my preference. While I have every intention of joyfully experiencing as many heartbeats as I am given, the belief, nay the awareness, that there is more you in me, more then in this, more growth in giving than I might ever know in one individual lifetime; that purpose is embodied by the experience of loving release; that a Godforce is alive in me through my embrace of your wellbeing – all these fill me with an ineffable sense of wonder, gratitude, and peace.

The rhythm of our individual bodies and organs can be counted. The flow of spirit freed from the confines of form is immeasurable. Both live inside the moment of a single beat of the human heart.