From the relationship existing between the soul and the cells it appears that the former cannot live a life independent of the latter. The soul receives its entire individuality, all its qualities, forces, and faculties, through the organism built by the cells, which therefore must exist before the soul can exist as the real unity in the organism. This does not mean that the soul is an empty form void of independent substance. Even before the cells have combined into an organic unit the soul is potentially present in them in the form of the wants that force them to upbuild the organism, and this organism is that of the soul, not that of the cells, of which each possesses its individual organism. [167]
But if the soul is potentially present in the cells it is only through them that it can arise to a higher life. We have already shown in another connection that a direct transposition would be useless and meaningless. Endowed with his present organs adapted to earthly conditions, a man suddenly translated into the glories of a higher world would with seeing eyes yet see nothing, with hearing ears hear nothing and with feeling senses would feel nothing. To comprehend what there exists and happens, man’s own organism must have undergone a corresponding radical transformation. He must have new, more perfect senses, higher spiritual and bodily faculties, differing from his present as far as the objects in this higher world differ from those on earth. This transfigured body can only be organized by the same beings that built it here in time. The soul is inseparably united with these beings and is where they are.
Here in time man commences with a[168] cell and with a cell he must begin in a future life. This first cell with which man enters his next form of existence cannot logically be any other than the first dying cell-individual. As no atom, so no elementary unit of the living spiritual body is annihilated. Viewed from our present existence death cannot mean anything to the departed cell-generations but the cessation of life and activity in the world responsive to our senses. In reality they rise to a higher evolution under different conditions and this evolution must be identical with the upbuilding of the glorified body man shall possess in a future life.
This form of death and resurrection, natural because it is founded on the idea and nature of the organism, is common to all living beings and must so be, as they are all built according to the same general plan and therefore essentially subject to the same evolutionary processes. The birth and death of the lower individuals in whole generations[169] is known to be a universal phenomenon in every organism and we will now endeavor shortly to explain this process.
If the soul enters as a real part in every individual cell, it does not belong differently to the first generation than to the last or to the whole series of intermediary generations. But here in time man lives only in the generation existing at the present moment. The generations that in the past successively formed the spiritual substance of his body have already gone out of time and those that are coming have not yet made their entrance. Man’s entity is thus split or distributed upon a series of successively existing moments, each of which contains only a certain limited part of the organism, and the latter has therefore in reality a far broader extent than is seen at present.
But time confines and restricts man not only in this, but in all respects. To take another example, we know that man possesses a multitude of different[170] faculties and talents. But in time he cannot utiliz............