Nathaniel: I have recently been thinking much upon the question of the spirit in man. Specifically, whether it is that death is CAUSED by the spirit leaving the body, or whether the spirit leaving the body CAUSES death.

Is it the cessation of neural synapses that releases the spirit? Does the body getting run over by a truck prevent the spirit from working, and thereby release it, to return to God who gave it?

Ed: The spirit in the beast returns to the earth at death. Does that mean that the earth has a spirit?

An intriguing question. Obviously the mother Gaia people would have us believe so. On the other hand, “The whole earth groans in travail.” And “I tell you, these stones would cry out, if these kept silent.”

And Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground.

Still, what purpose would giving the earth a spirit serve? Is not a spirit the sense of reason, the guiding ego if you will, that rules the instinct of the carnal mind? What then would the earth do with a spirit, if it had one?

Satan is the God of this world. It is his spirit that guides the ego of the world.

Granted, but yet God offered the job of “God of this world,” that is, being the Guiding Ego, king, if you prefer, of the world, to Adam. So it isn’t something that any man couldn’t physically do.

True. I’ve had many questions about this in the past. What is the difference between the spirit in man and the spirit of a beast?

I would think simply the difference between a 486 and a 2 Gigahertz computer. Or, perhaps better said, the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 98. Just a more advanced version of the same thing.

I don’t know if I agree. The spirit of a beast is different – “One flesh of beasts, one of men…”

But Nebuchadnezzar was given the heart – that is, the spirit – of a beast for 7 years.

That is so.

And during that time, the spirit of a beast – the program that ran the beast, and gave it independent life – ran Nebuchadnezzar’s body. It ran his ego, it told the body how to heal its cuts, it grew his beard…

That is true as well.

And then, at the end of that time, God placed the spirit of a man back into that same body?

Yes

So then it cannot be denied that the spirit of a beast, and the spirit of a man, are interchangeable? That they are capable of doing the same things they do in a beast, in a man? Is that not clearly established by this line of reasoning?

Yes, I think that is established.

So then what separates the cat’s spirit, from ours?

Nebuchadnezzar, speaking of being given the heart of a beast, said “My reason left me.”

So then our ability to reason is what separates us from the cat?

Yes, our ability to make independent decisions based on our circumstances, and our ability to override instinct.

By what thought process are they different? The cat can be trained not to jump on the table, with sufficient effort. Are we not teaching him to make a conscious choice to choose the right choice? Albeit to avoid punishment?

We are teaching him fear, or reward. Not the ability to reason. We are ingraining in his instinct the fear to do evil, for fear of punishment. This fear overrides his natural desires, but cannot be said to be a sense of reason.

But we, on the other hand, can weigh the situation with our mind, while our ego, or spirit, seems to watch on from above and passes the final judgment on whether we obey our instinct or not.

Whereas the cat cannot choose against his instinct. He must obey his nature, and training is simply ingraining upon that nature the fear of punishment or the promise of reward.

So is fear a part of instinct?

That seems to be our conclusion so far, yes.

If it is a part of instinct, can it be inherited?

I don’t buy the concept of racial memory as it is taught.

But the deer naturally fear the lion.

And all animals should fear man, that is a fear God built in at the flood. Built into the instinct. But if you take a young deer at birth, and raise it away from other deer, it will not have that same fear of lions.

True. So fear cannot be inherited. Yet it is instinct. So it must be taught by the parents, or life’s experiences, yet still not be a part of reason.

Yes. What if, we’ve talked about this before, but what if God has a blank spirit, that He gives to everyone.

A spirit that is shaped by genetics of the parents, but otherwise blank?

Yes, basically a pattern that is the result of the combination of the two parent’s spirits, but beyond that, has no character.

Was this spirit created and laid on the shelf before God built Earth? Each unique spirit, made as a combination of its parents, ready for use?

Predestination is another subject, and rather complex. “God knew me before the foundation of the world.” is not something, that in most cases, is likely to be true.

Yes, I’m not sure what the scriptures say on that exactly. “Whom He did predestinate, the same he did foreknow…” But predestinate how long ago? God told Jeremiah from the WOMB I knew you.

Yes, and Jeremiah he certainly knew from the womb – but from before God made earth, had he created the spirit he would put in Jeremiah?

I don’t think so.

For that matter, since we have proved that the spirit in a man, and the spirit in a beast is no different in kind, only in quality, the question follows… if he had all the man-spirits built before he built earth, did he have all the cat-spirits?

Seventy trillion cockroach spirits lying on a shelf in heaven, ready to be used?

Exactly, that doesn’t make sense. God didn’t need to do that.

Agreed. Why would God build a machine that regulates itself, then continually mess with it? Occasionally, perhaps. But not with every cockroach. So then your spirit wasn’t pre-built. It was custom made for you, based on your ancestors. So where does the spirit come from – and when does it enter the body? And where does the beast’s spirit come from?

The beast’s spirit goes to the earth when it dies. Was it made from the earth’s spirit?

No, if there is such a thing, I can’t see the beast’s spirit being made from it. Remember in Genesis 2, God built Adam’s body, the machine, computer if you will, and then God breathed the breath of life into him, and he became a living spirit – nephesh. Then God did the SAME thing, and breathed nephesh, the spirit of life, into the animals.

So the spirits all came from God. So why do the spirits of animals return to the earth?

What is the purpose of this creation, if not the perfection of the spirit in man? Certainly it was not the perfection of the spirit in a cockroach.

Yes. A blank spirit, based on the genetics and the spirits of the parents, given to a being. That spirit is then taught, molded, learns that fire is hot, and when it dies, God has a use for it. He intends, ultimately, to make it one of His children.

And so He grabs the spirit of man when he dies, and puts it in the giant storehouse in the sky. But the beast’s spirit, with the sum of its experiences, God doesn’t have a subsequent use for – so it goes back to the earth.

And what happens to it there? Does it become a part of the earth?

Most likely it is broken back down into whatever the spirit version of quarks and neutrinos are, and returns to become a part of the cosmic sandlot again.

At what point does the spirit enter the body? HWA said it was at conception.

It is obvious that unborn babies have awareness, of a sort. It is also clear the John the Baptist knew Christ before He was born (or before Jesus was more than a month grown in the womb), so He must have had a spirit. But the question that troubles me, is where does that spirit come from? Does God in each, individual, case, give the spirit to each baby?

Why should he have to? Why can’t the spirit be created by the parents, just as the body is? The physical things are a shadow of the spiritual things.

Yes, there must be one theory, one explanation that explains the universe.

So why can’t the spirit just divide? The sum of the spirit of the parents, allowing for changes for diversity, simply create a new spirit.

But the law of thermodynamics requires that you can’t create something new without a loss of energy. Where does the energy for a new spirit come from? Perhaps God supplies that energy? Perhaps there is plenty of spiritual energy available to draw on? The law of thermodynamics applies only to a closed system. But there is no indication that this is closed.

True.

So the spirit is the product of those of the parents, but with diversity – just as Mendelian genetics dictates. For a given characteristic, say, height, there are four possible products. Very tall, very short, and two of normal size. The diversity being proportional to the broadness of the genetic base.

Then the spiritual works exactly like the physical.

That makes more sense than anything I’ve ever heard.

Yes, that answers many questions I’ve had for a long time.

For me as well – but it doesn’t answer the question that started all this – is it the mind that cannot live without the spirit, or the spirit that cannot live without the body? Which causes death?

The body dying causes the spirit to die. It is the head getting run over by the truck that causes the spirit to die.

So what keeps the spirit in the body? What keeps my spirit from drifting off into yours? What anchor is there? There must be one

Yes, there must be something. What keeps a magnet from passing near another one?

A field.

(At this point, E. began musing about a more or less unrelated subject. After a few minutes…)

I believe I have it! I think I have found the answer! The spirit in man IS held in man by a field!

What field? Where does it come from?

It is a well-known fact that the body emits some sort of an electro-magnetic field. I know where that field comes from! Remember the scripture, which has never been explained well… “The life thereof, is in the blood thereof?”

Yes

And the blood is alkaline, full of electrolytes, highly saline, and above all, moving! When you add that up, you have all the necessary ingredients of an electromagnet! Hence, the BLOOD creates an electromagnetic field! Your blood is pumping, moving through your veins 24 hours a day, every day of your life, and your spirit is “trapped,” for lack of a better word, by the field it creates!

What’s more, this explains why the Bible says so many times “and he gave up the ghost (spirit), and died!” Notice the order! First he gives up the spirit – THEN he dies! Or rather, dies as a result of losing the spirit! And remember also what James says “For as the body without the spirit is dead…”

Yes – and it makes a lot of scriptures come together. So the spirit doesn’t leave because the mental synapses run down… they run down because the spirit leaves. And the spirit leaves when the blood flow stops, which stops the electromagnetic field. And so it is the spirit that, for lack of a better word, “energizes” the mental synapses.