This explains the notion that we continually share atoms with every living thing on earth and also contain atoms from every person who ever lived on earth.  It also reinforces the idea that our bodies as something permanent is illusion.

Excerpted from a conference in Massachusetts, 1992, The Higher Self, Deepak Chopra, MD

“In every second of your existence, you are renewing your body more easily, more effortlessly and more spontaneously than you can even change your clothes.  In fact, the physical bodies that you’re using to sit on these chairs are not the ones you walked in with a little while ago.  One can take a number of life processes to see how literally true that is.

Even with one breath that you inhale, you take in 10 to the power of 22 atoms from the physical universe, it’s an astronomical amount of raw material that comes into your body, and ultimately ends up as your heart cells and brain cells and kidney cells and neurons and DNA and so forth.  Each breath that you exhale — you breath out 10 to the power of 22 atoms — you’re literally breathing out bits and pieces of your heart, kidney and brain tissue, and technically speaking we’re all intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time.  The great American poet Walt Whitman said, “Every atom belonging to you, as well belongs to me.”  And this is not a metaphor of poetry, it’s fact of physiology.

The fact is that every atom belonging to you really does belong to me.  You can do mathematical calculations based on radioactive isotope studies and show without a shadow of doubt that right now in this moment in your physical body you have a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, or Buddha, or Leonardo De Vinci, or Michael Angelo, or Ghenges Khan, or Mahat Magandi, or Saddam Hussien, or Edie Ameen, or anyone else you care to think about.  In just the last three weeks a quadrillion atoms have gone through your body that have gone through the body of every other living species on our planet.  You could think of a tree in Africa, a squirrel in Siberia, a peasant in China, and you have raw material in this moment in your physical body that was circulating in that body just about three weeks ago.

In less than one year you replace almost your entire body — 98% of all atoms in your body have gone.  You make a new liver every six weeks, a new stomach lining every five days, a new skin once a month, a new skeleton — it seems so hard and solid — but it is renewed every three months.  Even the brain cells that you think with have carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen — they weren’t there one year ago.  And the DNA which holds memories of millions of years of evolutionary time — the actual raw material comes and goes every six weeks like migratory birds.  And if you want to be a bit of a stickler about this, and account for the last atom in every little bit of collagen and cartilage, then in less than two years you replace your entire body down to the last atom.

So if you think you are your physical body, you certainly have a bit of a problem — about which body are you talking?…the body I had last year is dead and gone — it came from the dust, it’s back into the dust, it’s recycled earth, water and air.  My body from 1991 (since I spoke here the last time) is dead!  And since I haven’t died, I think it’s quite obvious that we don’t need to look further for scientific proof that life exists after death.”

Questions to Clarify our Personal Christian Faith

Determining Truth

A.  Wesley described 4 approaches.   Do you use these in any particular order?  Do you have a hierarchy of importance?  Do you emphasize or largely ignore one or more?

1. Scripture (Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha, others sacred scriptures or inspired writings?)
2. Tradition
3. Doctrine
4. Experience

B.  This side of Oneness/Unity, where duality of good/evil still exists, is Absolute Truth available or are we forever stuck debating truths from a point of view relative to our life experiences, cultural context, genetic disposition and personality predilections?

Nature of God

A.  Is God One, Whole, Indivisible or Limited?

1. In Space:
   • Is God here yet not there (e.g. In Heaven, not Hell)?
   • Present in our hearts or outside knocking on the door?
   • With us in times of trouble or off somewhere while we are being tested?
   • In humanity yet not in lower forms of life or stars or rocks?
   • In the “least of these” or only in the “saved” or “reconciled?”
   • Unattainable or unavoidable?
2. In Time:

• See ya now or see ya later?
• In a Kingdom “at hand” or in the future?
• Evolving into a kinder, gentler God over time?
• Currently separated into pieces of Devil, Allah, Yahweh, etc. – one day whole again.
• Still communicating with us via written, inspired word or using other means after Biblical Canon was set?

B.  Is God Love?

1. Unconditional or conditioned based on need for judgment, evil, our behavior, sin, God’s Holiness?
2. Applied to all or just to selected few with varying criteria?
3. Personal and intimate or cosmic and nameless?

Nature of Creation

A.  God said “It was good” and then “Oops. What a mess!”?  Now in fight with Satan?

B.  Creation from God IS perfect.  We usually only perceive glimpses of this reality.

C.  Can our free will really counter GOD’s WILL?  Is God’s Will a flow or process into which all things are swept?  We remain free to choose where we place our attention  & what beliefs shape our perceptions and with what we identify (false idols).

Nature of Sin

A.  Broadest definition of sin is “separation from God.”

1. We ARE separated from God:  Caused by whom?   Our quest for independence and/or God’s unwillingness to forgive?  God’s role in the re-union?  Our role in the come-union?
2. We have NEVER been separated from God:  Why does it seem so at times?

B.  Suffering and Evil

1. Source?  Actual reality, created by God as test (Job) or amusement or character building?  Transient, illusory, appearance due to attachment and identity with our bodies as separate from God?
2. If real, how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God allow situation without appearing to be unable, clueless and uncaring?  Many agnostics and atheists come from this dilemma.

Nature of Humanity

A.  Children of God?

1. Essential nature is holy, perfect and sinless.
2. Forever in God’s presence.
3. Nothing to forgive.
4. Co-creators with God.

B.  Fallen sinners seeking redemption – apart from God?

1. Essential nature is flawed since Eden.
2. Forever seeking God’s presence – ultimately in Heaven.
3. Repeated sins to forgive.

Nature of Redemption

A.  If we are sinless, holy children of of an unconditionally loving God, we have always been reconciled with God.

B.  If we are sinful, unholy and apart from God, we need to be “redeemed” from that condition or from Satan who holds us captive – so we can be reconciled to God.

1. For God so loved the world…that He didn’t need to sacrifice His only son?  He stayed the hand of Abraham when sacrificing his son…?
2. Christ’s death and resurrection atoned for our sins and allowed for the resumption of a condition of at-one-ment with God?
3. Was the ransom paid once and for all?   Or are we still in sin and separate from God?
4. Did this personal act of sacrificial love depend for its significance and power on each of us to believe?  So nothing real had occurred until the number of believers began to grow?
5. Has this cosmic act and lamb slain “before the foundation of the world” been an event radiating through space/time at the speed of light since the universe began?  Hitting earth 2000 years ago and moving omni-directionally outward.
6. If we are truly forgiven and washed clean by the blood, why do we continue to wallow in the cycle of sin, guilt, confession and forgiveness?  If we truly believed, would we not “get over it” and treat our missteps as mistakes to be corrected – rather than another serious barrier to our relationship and presence with God?

C.  Does seeing Christ in each of our neighbors, in the present, without their history enable us to love them as sinless children of God and experience our own healing?