Later in the research, Grant and I decided to take another journey. This was a side trip from our initial pre-conception-to-birth itinerary. We would begin again at the point when the Chosen One among the eggs was about to be released from the ovary. However, this time we would move not forward but backward in time. Our goal was to investigate what occurs before the proteins, genetic material, and other components come together to create the wondrous complexity of a human egg.

The journey backward in time was fascinating but uneventful. I observed how self-aware I the egg was before being released from the ovary, then I (adult observer) watched myself (egg) go into a state of dormancy as we moved backward together along the timeline. Once again I felt like the audience at a play where I was also the performer.

As the egg became dormant and lost its sense of individuality, I no longer felt personally identified with it. Moving earlier in time, I came to the point when that egg was coming into being in the body of a female fetus (my mother) within the womb of her mother, some twenty-seven years before I was conceived. The component physical parts of the egg disassembled as I watched, like a movie in reverse, until there was nothing left that I could identify as the egg. Yet there was still an “I” observing, and this pure awareness continued to move backward.

Then, a surprise, as I transitioned from physical being into nonbeing. I passed from the realm of physical existence into another realm. This place was unlike anywhere I had been in previous meditative journeys.

I was surrounded by a luminous velvety blackness with no boundaries. I had no body, none of the density or heaviness of physical existence, only intelligent awareness. I could move, expand, and observe in all directions at once. Though I was unaware of any other features or beings, I sensed that this space was not empty.

I could not perceive boundaries in any direction, and as far as I could extend my awareness on this first visit, I was alone. In later visits I met entities there who were like the space itself: large, diffuse, gentle, and loving of all physical reality.

I became aware of a wavelike movement from my “left,” which oddly felt like east. I felt the sensation of floating in a warm ocean, being lifted and lowered by long swells on an otherwise unruffled surface. I stayed in that place for a time, trying to reach far enough to detect the origin of the swells. I was unable to do so.

In my next journey to this realm, I discovered the nature of those waves. They are pulses of energy full of unmanifested potential. When that potential condenses, when the wave function collapses (to use an image from quantum mechanics), it results in the physical reality that we experience every day. It is those waves that energize the assembly of atoms, molecules, amino acids, and other more complex matter into biological life. The quality of their energy is creative intention.

After making these discoveries, we turned our attention back to the time after conception. Both Grant and I were fascinated by what we had found, but we did not explore this realm further at that time. We had discovered that trauma in the mother before the egg is released from the ovary is unlikely to have significant effects on a baby. That was enough for the purposes of our research project.