If it is true that gods, angels and spirit worlds exist, if it is true that souls inhabit bodies, then bodies are merely avatars for this virtual world deemed real. And, it would seem, that the spirit world is the real world from which souls are implanted into avatars of this earthly realm at either conception, some point of meiosis or mitosis, or maybe even at birth. There is no way to establish when such in incarnation of a human soul might begin, so one is left to speculate as to some point along the continuum from conception to birth. Or, perhaps there are half-souls incarnated in sperm cells and ova, and that when a sperm and ovum unite, the genes of the two half-souled bodies mingle, share chromosomes, and a whole soul is conceived in the combined elements of the two bodies become a single new body and the two half-souls becoming a single whole soul.
This presents the question: Are there a bunch of half-souls in the real spirit world, or do souls split to be incarnated into sperm and ova and reunite when each half has found its respective other half. This would mean that a certain sperm was meant to find a specific ovum that had its specific soul-half that was missing in the incarnations into sperm and ova. If whole souls are incarnated within human forms then it would have to occur some time after meiosis and mitosis when the human form is whole, and one might suspect that it would occur after the central nervous system is formed, but such suspicions seem to be left to the imagination in attempts to decipher the process of spirits incarnating human bodies from the real spirit world to this virtual earthly existence.
We are offlanders, or outsiders, to the spirit world, peering in through dreams and maybe through communicative attempts through prayer. In Christian terms, this virtual place for incarnated souls is merely a testing ground of faith, and the faithless are condemned to be isolated from the spirit world in a fiery hell of pain and gnashing of teeth, and all of that. The faithful, deemed so by bowing down to the authoritarian ruler of the spirit-god Yahweh, and to his spirit-son, Jesus, may rise up into the sky, and from there to that spirit world and join with Yahweh and Jesus forever. Or, Yahweh may be Jesus to some who believe in the mystery of the trinity, and then they would simply spend eternity in this spirit world with Yahweh, either as himself or as his son, Jesus, or maybe the forms of Yahweh and Jesus are avatars for the earthly avatars and these too are shed in the spirit world. Who knows?
James Cameron created the wonderful fantasy film, AVATAR, in which a young marine becomes the savior, or messiah, of the Na’vi people of the moon world of Pandora. He “ drives” an avatar fashioned from the DNA of his human brother, now dead, and Na’vi DNA. In the story, Jake Sully, the young marine becomes the avatar through a “linking” process, in which it seems that the whole of his conscious mind is transferred to the avatar and his body sleeps when the link is in process. When the avatar sleeps, he returns to his human body, and this may also happen when some one interrupts the link process. Jake Sully has incentive to remain in his avatar body. Jake is a paraplegic due to a war injury to his spine. His avatar body is tall, agile and strong. Gravity is light on Pandora allowing the Na’vi to perform with amazing physical prowess. Jake also becomes a Na’vi, inside and out, and this changes the entire scenario of the corporate sponsor’s plan for Jake to spy on the Na’vi as one of them in order to move them out of their ancestral home under which a valuable natural fuel in the form of a mineral ore exists in massive quantities. Eventually, by story’s end, Jake becomes a Na’vi without the link-up process, but through the spiritual incarnation of his earthly self into his avatar body, through the spirit-mother or goddess that exists within all things of Pandora.
The film might give Christians a sense of how it may be that a soul of the spirit world would become incarnate in a human form. The other alternative is that the soul of a human may never have existed before the conception between a sperm and ovum, in which case the soul would begin at this time of cell meiosis and mitosis, or some time after, but before the actual birth. How does a Christian know whether a human soul existed before its inhabitancy of its human form, or if the soul began when the human form began? How does one’s perspective of the conception of a human soul affect his or her sense of the spirit world and this one? Which is real and which is virtual? Are both worlds real, and if so, why can’t we access the spirit world in a more tangible way? Are these two dimensions—this earthly realm in this tiny obscure spot, spinning around one of billions and billions of stars within one of billions and billions of galaxies in this universe that we can sense, and then this spirit dimension which we cannot sense at all?
As an atheist, I’m outside of the sphere of faith in such worlds and things. I do have a notion that other dimensions exist about which we know very little. Indeed, it seems that at least eleven dimensions must exist in order for the behavior of subatomic particles to be mathematically calculated to explain the weakness of gravity, according to quantum physics.
The hunt for new dimesions:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2714
M-Theory: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory.
We have very few ideas about these dimensiona and how they may affect us beyond our existence in these three familiar dimensions and into the fourth, in which space and time can bend. So, it seems plausible to disccus the possiblities of what these dimensions may be like and what exists within them. Is one dimension that which is so often referred to as “heaven”?
Food for thought. Eat some.
Questions? Comments?