Opposites touch. And maybe it turns out that "we are matter and energy at the same time." And that "life and death are surely the same thing." And that science and spirituality are obliged to understand each other in this mind-boggling journey at the beginning of the beginning, which was possibly "a point millions of times smaller than the head of a pin."

Ignacio Rabadán España (Madrid, 1972) invites us to consider all this and much more in 'Y si mañana no estoy' (Firefly), the book that emerged from a "spark", when a friend called him to tell him that he had lost his battle against cancer and that he had only a few weeks to live.

"The truth is that from the age of twenty I was aware that life was ephemeral and that it was going to end," admits the computer engineer, in his bold and dazzling debut as a science communicator. "That premonition led me to investigate very diverse disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, spirituality or quantum physics, which help us to somehow find meaning in everything we are and to continue advancing through life, which is what we are for."

"All that does not prevent you from continuing to have a certain fear of death," acknowledges Ignacio Rabadán. "But it is true that understanding things helps you face them in a better way. You are more prepared."

The writing of 'And if tomorrow I am not' served in fact as "preparation" for the death of his own brother, who came to read the first draft of the book in the hospital bed ... "He was a tremendously deep person. Before leaving, at that last moment, he took me by the hand and said: 'Ignacio, tell them to help me go to the place where I am going.'"

One of the most surprising chapters of the book, 'A Step Beyond', is precisely devoted to near-death experiences (NDEs), with obligatory reference to two of his favorite authors, Raymond Moody and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

"In 1975, Moody published 'Life After Life', which has already sold more than 16 million copies," recalls Ignacio. "He was the first medical doctor to talk about near-death experiences. Then came the studies of Kübler-Ross, the Swiss-American psychiatrist, chosen by "Time" as one of the 100 most influential women of the twentieth century. He came to analyze more than 20,000 cases of people who had died clinically but who came back to life. She declared herself an agnostic, but came to the conclusion that death did not exist."

"There are multiple doctors and patients who talk about this openly, it is no longer a taboo as before," emphasizes the author. "One of the most representative is the Dutchman Pin Van Lommel, who wrote a very exhaustive work of NDE experiences and who was the first to relate this phenomenon to quantum physics, in a work that was published in 'The Lancet'".

Despite all the scientific evidence, there is still an age-old resistance to admitting death as a transition or "a passage to another way of life," as Kübler-Ross wrote. "There are very few cultures that have internalized death not as something tragic, but as a transit," warns Ignacio, when trying to explain the tendency to "not speak" (and by extension "not to write") on the subject.

"That's mainly because what we're seeing and feeling is life," concludes the author of "And If I'm Not Tomorrow." "We are clinging to it and therefore prefer not to think about what comes next. To make a connection between life and death we have to be aware of both."

And that's also what the book is about, about "how to continue to grow and aspire to be a better version of ourselves", in a world where depression and anxiety gain ground day by day. In two successive chapters ("Looking for thoughts", "Living with life") Ignacio Rabadán invites us to make an inner journey, to the labyrinth of the mind...

"Our brain continually lives in the past and in the future, because that's where it's comfortable. He likes the past because he already knows it and he likes the future because he can project simulated scenarios (...) 90% of those who think it will happen in the future end up never happening, so the best thing is to focus on the present, in the current moment, and live with intensity."

It should be borne in mind, however, that more than four million years ago "the monkey was able to stand up and walk", and it is also convenient to put that temporal space in the context of the 5,000 million years of the formation of the Earth, the 13,500 million that separate us from the Big Bang and "the certainty of the existence of more than 200,000 million galaxies".

As a good amateur astronomer, Ignacio emphasizes how a recent study estimates that the Milky Way may contain more than 6,000 sun-like stars with planets orbiting around them... And as a backdrop, the prediction of Carl Sagan, who went so far as to say that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth.

"From matter to consciousness"... The exciting journey proposed by Ignacio Rabadán España necessarily goes through "the experiment of the double slit" that in his opinion can serve to appreciate life (and death) in all its breadth ...

"More than a century ago there was controversy about whether light was a wave (and therefore energy) or whether it was a particle (i.e. matter). The scientists did not agree and then came quantum mechanics that demonstrated with this experiment that they are really both things at the same time. That is, everything that exists in the subatomic world is matter and energy simultaneously. So we can conclude that we too are matter and we are energy at the same time."

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