Life - Death

John Hefferlin, DD.

To all thinking people there comes a time of deep questioning, when they ask themselves. “What is life?” and ‘What is death?” Before these questions can be answered satisfactorily, however, the most basic question of all arises: “What is God?” To this, no man can possibly give a complete answer.

We have progressed so far beyond the old anthropomorphic concept of a god with human attributes and characteristics, that many people who formerly considered themselves to be atheists or agnostics are now accepting the more modem and scientific approach to God as Infinite Mind, infinite Intelligence. Infinite Energy and Substance. Infinite Wisdom and Love. The magnitude of God is so tremendous as to be beyond the scope c f man’s imagination’ God is so vast, so enormous. Everything which exists or ever did exist or ever will exist is within Go,. from the most inconceivably tiny particle to the outermost galaxies within the infinity of space. I cannot possibly tell you what God is, but if you will allow me, I can share with you what God means to me

Try, if you will, to imagine the most beautiful and perfect tiny baby you’ve ever seen— only a few days before birth, still in the womb. Imagine that you can communicate with this little one and you ask the question: ‘What is your world like?” Listen carefully and you hear: ‘My world is a wonderful world. Here I am snug, cozy, and warm. I’m surrounded with love and my every need is provided for, even before the need exists I hope I can stay here forever.”

Now you ask another question: “Where is your mother? What does she look like?” You can almost imagine the little facial expression changing to one of quandary. Listen again and you hear: “My mother? I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is a mother? Do I have one?” You smile to yourself as you realize this little one cannot possibly know anything about her mother until long after she’s born and she learns of the parent-child relationship. And yet, she will never be any closer to her mother than she Is right now, since she lives, moves, and has her being within her own mother.

This is very much like my concept of God. We live, move and have our being in God; yet we know very little more about God man does the unborn baby know about its own mother.

Then, although living in a world of comparative darkness, where the horizon is limited to the smooth moist walls and surfaces of the womb, the unborn baby is suddenly filled with but one extremely urgent and miraculous desire: to reach out for broader horizons. Thus, the time for birth arrives and the child is born.

Where does the baby go when it’s born? It doesn’t go anywhere, since it is already here. And yet a whole new universe has come into being, where the horizon is ever- expanding. What is birth? Beyond the biological and physical experience of being ejected from the womb, birth is actually the transition of consciousness as the baby passes from its seemingly one-dimensional world in the womb, out into this world of three dimensions.

Following birth, this little one grows through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and finally reaches maturity, taking its place in the world of adults. Then, eventually, death occurs; it may be the result of accident, illness, or old age, but death does come.

It is now that we face two of the most significant questions in our entire existence.

“What is life?” Life is the manifestation of the vital forces of God, individualized in man as an individual entity, because God is All-in-All. We live, move and have our being in God. That which we are is some part of God, individualized in us as us. We live, therefore, that God may be more adequately and abundantly expressed.

“What is death?” Death is the passing beyond this three-dimensional world into other worlds of varying dimensions—into an ever-expanding Universe with ever-broadening horizons. We die, but we live! Life, as we know it in this three-dimensional world, will continue just so long as the body retains sufficient channels through which the vital energy of God can flow. When enough of these channels cease to function, the body dies. It is like discarding old clothes. In I Corinthians 15:40, the Bible says: “There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”

What happens when the individual passes through death? Where does one go? Just as the unborn baby must pass through the process of birth so that Life shall continue, the individual passes through death for exactly the same reason, to experience greater life! Where do we go when we die? We don’t go anywhere since we’re already there. Like the process of birth, when the baby passes from its “one-dimensional” world within the womb and moves out into this world of three dimensions, death is the passing from this three-dimensional world into that world of many more dimensions. Our consciousness continues to expand in direct relation to the ever-expanding Universe, with its ever- broadening horizons, as it unfolds before us.

Just as the unborn baby cannot possibly perceive that its world is part of and within the three-dimensional world, we apparently cannot and do not perceive that our world is part of, and also within, other worlds of innumerable dimensions beyond this one.