James F. Siller

The Near and Far Sides of Death: a Cosmic Pilgrimage James F. Siller

For those committed to the beliefs of Christianity - perhaps more so for those of the Catholic faith - the conception of Jesus is deemed an immaculate, non-sexual event. He was conceived within the womb of Mary through the Holy Spirit, whereupon Mary's spouse and Jesus' earthly father, Joseph, was faced with the issue of accepting his wife's fidelity in the entire matter. This loosely describes the divine conception of Jesus as derived from words found in The New Testament of The Bible, while it is hoped that hackles of certain readers will not be raised through words appearing in "The Near and Far Sides of Death" (NFSD) where similar claims are made. Namely, along with Jesus' divine conception, we have been conceived in much the same manner, although under entirely different circumstances.

In a very distant past, well before there were galaxies "far, far away" and prior to the bestowal of mortality on any cosmic being, the initial birth of everyone who has ever existed took place. This momentous occasion occurred about 14-billion years ago when we collectively emerged arm-in-arm with the entire universe, or more fittingly, the emergence was an energy-upon-energy arrangement. Such is the manner in which our lives actually began, although parties interested in researching the event will be hard pressed to find any form of intelligence or mortality within the enormous burst of radiant energy that signaled our arrival. In truth, the entire referenced era, plus several subsequent brief periods are non-reviewable.

Following a colossal upheaval at "time-zero" of which we were a part - dubbed the Big Bang - our incipient mortality lay in a dormant, yet highly charged state that featured billions of years of cosmic development, or cosmic gestation as it were. This hard-sell proposal forms a major theme of the story, and though it appears well beyond the pale of rational belief, it becomes wholly credible after reviewing facts and di