In a circle of cause and effect a first cause is inconceivable. According to the former, life has had a beginning, according to the latter, it is beginningless. From the scientific standpoint, we are the direct products of the sperm and ovum cells provided by our parents. As such life precedes life. With regard to the origin of the first protoplasm of life, or colloid, scientists plead ignorance.
Parents merely provide an infinitesimally small cell.
As such being precedes being. At the moment of conception it is past kamma that conditions the initial consciousness that vitalizes the fetus. It is this invisible kammic energy, generated from the past birth that produces mental phenomena and the phenomenon of life in an already extant physical phenomenon, to complete the trio that constitutes man. For a being to be born here a being must die somewhere. This enigmatic statement may be better understood by imagining life as a wave and not as a straight line.