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Even biologically, we can see this. When I was born, a conception had occurred some nine months prior. Through a myriad, infinite, possible options, over the vastness of time, my parents engaged in love-making. One change in cause and condition could have altered this, so my being born as me would not have been. I was unplanned, so came without any intent; biological processes had other plans, so to speak. I have joked to persons that I would not be, had my parents decided to watch "The Johnny Carson Show" that night. Yet, seriously, have you ever contemplated the question of what, what if that one sharing had not happened, or if that one particular sperm, of 40 to 150 million, had not been first into that one particular egg in that fallopian tube, set aside to itself to await a sperm to merge within it within some 24 hours ~ and all this, and more, without any conscious action on the part of either person? After that approximately 24 hours had passed, you and I would not be here, not as we are now, if a sperm had not found its way to the ovum. And, even more, a chromosome, either X or Y, determines whether Brian is Brian or Brian is Briana. Amazing! And, even more the miraculous pilgrimage from fetus to baby inside the womb of mother, where one gets its first experience of intimacy, of communion, as a member of the human species.
And, this asking, "What if I were not?" How does that which is consider what if it were not? Somewhat like when younger, and I would contemplative, "What was before God?" That question would, so to speak, blow my mind. I would be left in an odd freedom of not-knowing, but okay with that spaciousness. And, then, even the thought of "God" arises from a myriad causes and conditions, even as "The Johnny Carson Show" does, Brian does, you do. We are, yes, all that close. So close, without you, all subsequent causes and conditions would have shifted in space and time, as they did with you.
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These befuddling contemplations are benevolent attacks on our arrogance. When posing them, we often begin at the wrong point, but a point that can lead us, later, aright. That is, since we are Communion, arising from Communion, the human arrogance 'attacked' by these unknowns is the illusion of being separate, so that somehow, I as an individual can even ask the question. This shows us, Reality is a Koan, intending to throw us out of the delusion from which we inquire in the first place into another spaciousness where the answer is, and no answer is to be found.
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