EPILOGUE
Infinite Love: The Ultimate Gift from G.O.D.?
A few years ago, a woman whose husband had been brutally murdered came to see me at my office. Her husband had been an internationally recognized professor of music at the University of Arizona. He was returning from an organ concert at night when he stopped to help a man. It was raining. The man killed the professor for money to purchase drugs. The woman, Stardust Johnson, had come to me because my colleagues and I were conducting systematic research on the question of survival of consciousness after death. She, like her late husband, was a deeply religious person and attended church regularly. Though she desperately wanted to believe in the possibility of survival of consciousness after death, her anger at God was preventing her.
She said, “It’s bad enough that God could allow my husband to be taken from me for such a horrible reason”—for money to buy drugs. Stardust believed that God gives us a degree of free will—the opportunity or chance to make up our own minds and behave accordingly—and we too often pay a price for this liberty when people abuse their freedom. Her belief is consistent with the science we have presented in this book.
However, her subsequent words shook me to my core and I will never forget them. She said, “However, if God has not only allowed my husband’s love to be taken from me, but he has allowed his love to be taken from me forever, such a God is too cruel to be imagined.” I experienced her emotional and spiritual pain as if it were a sword in my soul.
When she said these words, I wondered to myself, What kind of a God would allow the light from distant stars to continue in the vacuum of space forever, but not allow our photons—our energy and information, our love and thoughts—to continue forever as well?
I responded to Stardust by asking her a question: “What would you say if I told you that well-accepted scientific theory supports the idea that our energy and information—and hence our love and thoughts—continue forever like the light from distant stars, and that it is possible to document this scientifically?” Stardust responded by saying, “It would give me a reason to hope and to live.”
Is G.O.D. as envisioned by evidence-based faith “too cruel to be imagined”? Or have we simply not yet been able to fully envision the kind of loving G.O.D. process that actually exists?
SKEPTICISM, LOVE, AND KNOWING SOMETHING FOR SURE
Can the well-trained skeptic who is, so to speak, addicted to agnostic thinking (not meaning “believing it is impossible to know God” in the narrow religious sense, but meaning “questioning or wondering” in the broadest philosophical sense), know anything for sure?
Even when I describe things that happen 100 percent of the time—such as when I witness objects dropping to the floor or sand paintings scrambling in a pot—I describe these things as happening “virtually” beyond any doubt. I always include a little bit of doubt—keeping an open and discerning mind—for both logical and philosophical reasons. However, there is one thing that I know with absolute certainty.
It is fundamental to who I am.
When people ask me, “What do you know for sure?” I answer, “The only thing I know for sure is that I love. I love people, animals, plants, places, books, music, art, sports, technology, stars, discoveries, and even ideas. My experience of love is beyond any doubt. Everything else I witness or experience I would describe as a hypothesis!”
Erich Fromm wrote that “love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
When I experience love—especially deep love—it fills me completely. There is no doubt that I am having this experience. However, there is something absolutely foundational about love for me that to the best of my knowledge I have never heard described before.
And it relates to the question “Who is Gary Schwartz?” And by extension, who are you?
WHO IS GARY SCHWARTZ—IS HE WHAT HE HAS MANIFESTED, OR IS HE HIS YET UNMANIFESTED POTENTIAL?
Is Gary Schwartz a male who grew up on Long Island, played professional guitar in high school and college, became a Harvard Ph.D. in psychophysiology, conducted internationally acclaimed health psychology research at Harvard and Yale, directed an NIH-funded Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science at the University of Arizona, writes science-based medicine and spirituality books for the general public, and has unbridled passion for the desert, Native American Art, ancient history, mysteries, bulldogs, and recently cats? Is this Gary Schwartz?
Or is Gary Schwartz the person that Gary could be? Am I my potential, the person I can be? And are you the potential of who you can be?
The fact is, you or I could have grown up in Kansas, and developed a Midwestern twang to our speech, or in Alabama. We could have grown up in France or China, speaking the language of the country. Though I began my undergraduate training as an electrical engineer, was premed and considered at least three majors—philosophy, psychology, and chemistry—I could have chosen any number of subjects to major in.
From this objective vantage point, I do not define myself in terms of my thoughts, philosophy, or history. I define myself in terms of not only who I am at the moment, but what my potential is. I see you the same way too.
My personal potential is of course limited—for example, it does not include my becoming a professional basketball player (I am physically too small) or a visual artist (I am red-green color-blind)—but that is not the point here. The point is that I define myself by my potential. I do not define myself simply in terms of what I have learned or achieved.
At times I have imagined what it might be like if my thoughts, philosophy, or history were taken away. What I experience when I do this thought experiment is that my essence—my potential—is still me. In other words, I can imagine losing aspects of my thoughts, philosophy, or history, and still feel like me. However, when I imagine what it might be like if my capacity to love were taken away, I experience myself disappearing in the process. If my capacity to love is taken away, my experience of Gary as I know him ceases to exist.
I have discussed this phenomenon with many people. They typically report having a similar experience of losing their essence when they imagine what it would be like if they completely lost their capacity to love. The capacity to love, and what to love, may define you, too, in a deep and foundational way.
THE REMARKABLE LOVING BRAIN
Humans are clearly hardwired for love. In fact, it can be argued that we come into the world as little global neurological love machines. As infants we find almost everything interesting—most things are curiosities to be tasted and examined. Depending upon our parents and upbringing, we will learn to either expand or contract our capacity to love.
Love can be stifled, suppressed, even imprisoned in anger and fear. Love can also be nurtured, encouraged, and fostered at every level. I was blessed to grow up in a home where exploration, love, and questioning were nurtured. My parents did not have money, but they had curiosity and an irrepressible passion for life. I was the fortunate recipient of that love of life, and I continue to feel it to this day.
I tell my students: “I love scorpions, sharks, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions; I just can’t live with them. They are dangerous for me, so I keep my distance. But that does not mean that I can’t appreciate their attributes, and marvel at their very existence.” Loving many things does not necessarily mean that one lacks discernment or priorities. Also, one can love the capacity of animals or people to defend themselves and their loved ones, and hate how this capacity is sometimes abused by humans in the name of love.
It is said that God loves all creatures, great and small, be they on this planet or other planets in the universe. It is said that God has love and compassion for saints and sinners alike. It is said that God forgives our mistakes, and gives us the opportunity to try again and evolve into a being of love and light. Influential religious role models, both ancient and contemporary—from Moses and Jesus through Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama—share one outstanding attribute. They have an overriding compassion and overabundance of love. They can discriminate right from wrong, yet also forgive those who have not learned the discrimination or mastered the ability to put the lessons into action.
Of all the known creatures on the planet earth, not only does the human mind stand out in terms of its ability for creativity and design, the human heart stands out in terms of its ability for love and compassion.
Just as our minds have the potential to explore all things, our hearts have the potential to love all things. The parallel here is nothing short of breathtaking. The evidence is overwhelming that our ability to love matches our ability to think. There are “heart geniuses” as there are “mind geniuses” (termed emotional and mental intelligence, respectively). The “Genius Within” is both a feeling genius and thinking genius.
But just as the individual mind must be developed to enable its potential to create to be actualized, the individual heart must be developed to enable its potential to love to be actualized. We must develop both our minds and our hearts. It behooves us to entertain seriously the possibility that the “Guiding-Organizing-Designing” process (mind) is also a “Generous-Opportunity-Developing” process (heart).
What I am proposing is that built into the very fabric of the universe is the capacity for infinite love and compassion as well as infinite intelligence and creativity. “What’s love got to do with it?” My answer is: “Everything.”
My working hypothesis, based upon available evidence in contemporary physics, is that the kind of God that would create the capacity for both visible and invisible photons never to lose their individuality in the “emptiness of space” is a God whose mind and heart should never be underestimated. Quite the contrary, I suggest that we seriously entertain the hypothesis that our ability to love, smile, and laugh is as vast as the universe itself and is as vast as the mind that can conceive it. Moreover, our love appears to be as permanent and expansive as the light from distant stars. Does that make you smile?
The question becomes, how far can we humans go in developing our capacity for love and compassion? It could be as great as our potential for creativity and understanding. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate gift? I say we already have it.
GANDHI
Become the change you desire.
FROM THE FILM BRUCE ALMIGHTY, WRITTEN BY STEVE KOREN ET AL.
Be the miracle.