Day 1:
Imagine what impact light may have on human eyes which at best had only previously perceived slight variations in shades of darkness, to be suddenly exposed, activating all the rods and cones as an infant blinks for the very first time to clear the liquid from its eyes and suddenly, in a flash, like turning on a light bulb in a darkened room, is immersed in what may probably seem, although incomprehensibly so to the infant, the brightest light it has ever seen and although the infant´s teary eyed sight is blurry, it almost immediately distinguishes color, erratically, in a tunnel vision view of bright hot light... and that´s only the first of the infant´s senses to be jump started at the big bang of birth.
Day 2:
Now lets imagine what being exposed to unmuffled sounds, unrecognizable at first, might feel like to the newborn infant for whom even the voice of its mother seems strangely unfamiliar in that instant, as if it had awoken amidst deafening, indistinguishable and chaotic waves of compressed air that electronic devices and the buzzing of adults are combinedly inducing.
Day 3:
Imagine what it might feel like after having spent nine months living in the most agreeable hot tub like environment and then suddenly, having the vessel in which you´ve been suspended drain completely without warning, only to be thrust later on into a foreign, dry and cold environment, head first, as you feel every skin cell react to the abrupt change in temperature... as if the very container which housed your consciousness had suddenly transformed into evaporating dry ice.
Day 4 & 5:
Add to that, what the combination of both vomitous and choking reflexes, as the fluid which once filled the infant's lungs is forcefully expelled by the enormous strain of every muscle in its body convulsing and simultaneously tasting and smelling that liquid as it grasps for its first fresh breath of air, smelling for the first time, a most visceral and primal experience perhaps, but it doesn't smell bad, it just smells, and it doesn't taste bad.. notions the infant may not have any conscious sense of other than knowing on some level that it has to survive, that it has to get the fluid out of its lungs as quickly and efficiently as possible, even if that means it pours out of its nose and mouth.
Day 6:
Now, imagine the impact all those stimuli response mechanisms violently exploding into seemingly calculated action have on a being that has no sense of time, for whom, the seconds and minutes that pass between the final push of its mother and being completely naked and exposed to the elements might have on its psyche, in a lapse of time which might seem like hours and day by comparison, given that the infant brain, although not consciously prepared for the experience, is nonetheless ready to receive and encode those billions of electrical signals.
Day 7:
The infant still totally exposed, incapable of considered movement, flails about suspended somehow high above the ground, until for no apparent reason at all, the last physical link to its mother is cut when the umbilical is disconnected. Imagine the effect the instant sense of abandonment, loneliness, individuality, distinctiveness might have on the infant as it experiences its first emotions as an air breathing human mammal, emotions which it can´t make sense of, but can't restrain leaving it no other recourse but to cry out in tears of joy and pain.
Closing words:
Given all that, is it any wonder that we find great comfort in the notion that we, humans are the center of the universe, that we were for an instant not mere witnesses to the beginning of life, but living our personal big bang birth and that our disconnection from the source of that experience both haunts and motivates us to continue to strive for life under the notion that we were created by another/supreme being.
¿Is it really that hard to imagine?
