As a child, I imagined God as a sea full of fingers, a finger in everybody's pie, and an eye on every finger. While each fingertip touched one of us, the back of the finger was a Jacob's ladder reaching up to heaven. Little did I realize that this childish image was a graphic expression of a deep abstract instinct.
In my teens, I had begun writing a new Testament -- all questions, no answers. In spite of a conviction that the correct answers were beyond our reach, I eventually began to play with possible propositions. A persistent question was what a soul might look like. I had already learned through ESP experiences that thought was a substance that could be transmitted. I figured an emission of thought trailing in the wake of a body pursuing life on a revolving planet should spin out in a corkscrew shape so I twisted my Jacob's ladder into a corkscrew and made that the soul. When DNA was discovered in the '50s, I was surprised to find myself ready with a spiraling ladder-like soul to carry the spiraling DNA coding back and forth from wherever souls come and go.
By now we all know every cell in any part of the body contains a chromosomal DNA that carries the complete code for the entire host. If the DNA system works for our physical world, an unseen governing system might very well run on a somewhat similar process.
That supposition validates the ancient revelation that we are made in the Image of God. Since that notion was improvised thousands of years before knowledge, the assumption that physical man was made in the image of God is excusable. What is now apparent is that, while the Ultimate Potential may flow all through life, it's the SOUL, not man, that is made in the image of God.
Mind you, DNA coding is just that. The code directs the system to the program for cloning what it has to do in a particular location, but it doesn't DO it. To make a genetic change, a new instruction has to be inserted in the code. We can order a change of color in the eyes, but we can't make EYES THAT SEE in a test tube. So far, Nature is holding onto that secret.
We didn't invent DNA. We don't really invent anything. We discover potentials in nature and figure out how to use them. We can make a camera that duplicates seeing, but our mechanical eye has no life. As Nature's original always has some sort of life, we can assume that every soul must be a living consciousness of some sort, carrying access to every detail of the complete programming in Creation.
I can't believe anyone is waiting for me to clue them in on this obvious probability of Nature, but every day I listen to a problem that would never come up if everyone understood this. If, as I suspect, the soul carries the immortal spark of life, everything living, a single bacteria, a virus, a blade of grass, may have a soul.
If every soul is a coded replica of God, where do all the differences come in? A good question at this point would be whether all souls are complete derivatives of the entire code for Creation, or, are they predetermined as to species. Going by our own DNA, they would only differ if there is more than one Host.
Is there more than one God? At the top, there probably is one immortal entity in Whom all intelligence is stored throughout whatever interruptions Eternity and Infinity may be subject to. But in such a complex system, there would have to be a lot of delegating. Let's say that a soul that takes off in its own creative direction may become the Lord of the species it creates. The creative soul may come back periodically -- the Messiah concept --checking out how the species is getting along -- bringing new options, etc. This could explain how certain strains of bacteria, for instance, suddenly learn how to get the best of stuff like penicillin. The bacteria Messiah looks into the data in the memory bank while he's "dead" and brings back a solution.
Using us as an example of how it might work -- where a fingernail cell carries the coding for the complete host, there's something in the mortal system that directs what each code should do differently here or there. We've only started looking at DNA in the last 50 years or so. We know very little, but considering the awesome range of evolutionary change, we doubt the soul is limited in its options. Perhaps the consciousness of each soul is influenced by the memories it retains.
I once expressed the belief that bugs have souls. A listener responded with the view that animals and insects are governed by group souls. That's possible. In an immortal system that needs neither birth nor death, the form of reproduction could reverse the procedure of the amoeba. Instead of splitting, a group or a couple of souls might UNITE and become one. Ganging up and working together is a natural urge. Having teamed up for creation of a physical configuration, the souls then may drift apart, each taking over a newly cloned physical specimen.
Under this theory it could even be possible for some sort of life (however unlikely) to evolve on the flaming sun. This theory is buttressed by biologist Geerat J. Vermeij reporting in Science News, July 1, 1995, citing bursts of evolution that have coincided with giant volcanic eruptions throughout earth's history. The upheaval of all sorts of new materials must offer a host of new options for life to latch onto. The complexity of physical formats would then increase as life on a planet evolves,--each new structure adapting itself to the ever changing environment in which it roots.
To the extent that we can believe reports of reincarnation, it would appear that souls tend to return to areas with which they are familiar. Very possibly, the bonding in the physical life carries over. Perhaps souls prefer to go back to those with whom they have been close; to repeat the thing in which they are experienced. Do fish and birds return to their breeding grounds because they know that's where the souls of their predecessors normally hang out waiting for newborn bodies?
Playing with a sophisticated program in an old computer, I realized the processor isn't necessarily able to differentiate on the level where coding for all programs reside. The limitation must be established by the receptive capability prepared in the processor. A soul passing into the physical environment through a worm would only be able to access those programs that can find expression through the worm's facilities. Until a disturbance occurs that shakes up its bag of possible mutations, the worm is only able to utilize programs such as crawling, eating and reproducing.
Along with chemistry, it's all there in the basic programming Love, for instance, may be nothing more than a punch at the button for activating Nature's mechanics for magnetic attraction. A selfish individual may simply be dominated by the program for self preservation. A serial killer may be excessively plugged into the soul's mode in which death is the means of transport back to the other world.
Knowing that an unlimited capacity for detail goes with size either way, we may assume a virus cell might carry the complete program as well as a cell in a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The difference has to lie with the limited capability of the physical processor. "Where went the soul of the dinosaur when dino was no more?" The Dinosaur Messiah could have collected a bunch of flying options from the memory bank, coming back to a surviving sinosauropteryx and branching off to the pterydactl with a whole bagful of possible mutations on wings. Keeping evolution going on a life sustaining planet would take an unlimited number of creative souls with an unlimited range of interests.
Nevertheless, I would like to argue in favor of every soul being, basically, a carrier of the complete coding as is DNA. My reason for this supposition is my conviction that God is a Creator. A Creator's greatest pleasure is creating, and a system allowing for continuous creating would hold the one satisfaction capable of enduring forever. Yes. I'd say there must be many lesser Gods. Wouldn't you?
Does the one God at the top care for every blade of grass? In the resourcefulness of Nature a God could easily be acutely, intimately in touch with each cell in His endless sea of fingers. If, in the other world, everything is stored as thought, God could be, in that world, the equivalent of an Eternal Infinite Brain functioning as one big thought machine. To the extent that everyone is in touch with his soul, we are each tapped into Headquarters.
As a genetic perpetuation of Abraham's outreach to the outermost limits of the universe, I must confess to a prejudicial condescension towards friends who looked for God in Jesus. I realize God had to crown Christ with this forbidden divinity in order to keep the seed of the Covenant from following, but understanding came with the death of my husband in 1993. I have felt no separation. I KNOW he's there. I know it's crazy, but I communicate constantly, and I get what, for me, is unmistakable feedback. In 1997, I won a much needed upgraded computer. It arrived on my 83rd birthday. I KNOW it took the power of God to manage this coincidence, but can you, for a minute, imagine God saying to himself, "Let's see. Today I think I'll get Terry a computer for her birthday?" I KNOW where that computer came from. I looked into the heavens and, blasphemous or not, said "Thanks, Greg!"
Think about it. Doesn't this make sense to you? Just look how nicely it handles all the religious controversy. All we have to do is learn to get in touch with our inner being. Jews can stick with their One God of Eternal Infinity over all; faceless, abstract, in touch with each of us through our souls, but nevertheless, however remote, the only One at the Top. Christians, Moslems, Saint, idol and even mythical God worshipers can continue to approach God through the souls of their Divinities -- Mary, Mohammed, Saint Anthony, Allah, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Vulcan -- or even your mother.
AND -- atheists can continue in the certainty that they are their own Gods.