The great pathologist Rudolf Virchow (d. 1902), the father of cellular pathology, is reputed to have said: "I have dissected a great many bodies, but I have never found a soul." He meant to say that there is no soul. This famous scientist has been shown to be wrong in a number of scientific statements made in the course of his life, and this is another instance. The view that man is merely a physical body has of course become fashionable today. Most people, New Revelation predicted, won't even know that they have an immortal soul. Polls taken years ago have shown that only half the young people questioned believed in life after death for the soul. 12
Even the highly sophisticated electron microscepe will not be able to show us the soul. As it says in New Revelation: "The soul is wholly ethereal in substance, meaning - if you can grasp this - a great many light atoms or smallest possible particles put together, in the wisdom and through the all-powerful will of God, to make a perfect human form, and the pure spirit is this very will emanating from God, which is the fire of the purest love coming from God." (Gr VII 66, 5)
"The soul is, as it were, matter dissolved again through the power of the spirit; compelled by the power of the spirit, it is changed into the original form that belongs to the spirit and then, united with its spirit (in the next world), makes up, as it were, its body of Iight-ethereal substance, just as the soul out of its will forces, which are purely and most highly spiritual, creates and forms its erstwhile garment out of the solid matter of the flesh when this has become wholly corrupt and dissolved (in the grave)' " (Gr VII 66, 7)
Almost all "souls are directly from this earth; they have previously passed through what is known as the three kingdoms of nature, from the coarse substance of stone through all mineral forms, thence through the whole plant world, and finally, through the whole animal world in water, on the earth and in the air. One should, however, not take this to be the physical body (of the animals, as is the theory of evolutionists), but the element of soul and spirit contained in its shell. The shell also is of soul and spirit in the wider sense, but it is in itself still too mean, ... and nothing of it is likely ever to be useable for genuine soul substance.*" (Gr IV 106, 6-7)
The soul of man, as a highly potentized composition of mineral, plant and animal souls, has no memory going back to preexistence, because the specific elements of the soul in the above three kingdoms did not have a separate, strictly individual intelligence, but one that was borrowed, as it were, from the general life in space, for their kind." "Yet when man will one day be wholly filled with the spirit of all life and all light, he will then also be able to see this scheme of things." (Gr VIII 29, 11-12)
"No one has a soul younger than the whole of visible creation. You are now feeling uncomfortable because I am indeed telling you the truth, that the age of your soul is many more than aeons of aeons of earth years." (Gr IV 246, 4) This statement explains the words "Far indeed my soul has been wandering" in the Book of Joshua.
"In bringing forth a soul wholly alike to Me, My omnipotence must be allowed to do and provide only very little, the god who is evolving, however, everything, out of Me.** From Me he receives merely the material, spiritually and as needed also in nature. And if this were not so, and if it could be other, surely I, as the original and eternal spirit, would not, out of My love, have taken on the burdensome task of assuming the flesh Myself, to guide the souls that have progressed to a certain point and take them further not through My omnipotence, but merely through My love, and gave them a new teaching and the new spirit out of Myself, so that now, in so far as they truly desire this, they can within the shortest span of time become wholly one with Me." (Gr 246, 6)
"Only the soul of man is destined to continue for ever." (Gr VI 107, 10) "The soul has the same configuration and form as its body, but only in a very much more perfect degree. Yet here we are speaking of only one perfect soul." (Gr VII 209, 19) " ... The soul is present in all parts of the body and does not lose any member, even if the body is mutilated."*** (Gr VI 219, 12)
"The soul dwelling in a body is of course to begin with in no great degree purer that its body, because it originates also from the impure original soul of fallen Satan." "In the soul, however, there already dwells the pure spark of the Spirit of God." (Gr II 210, 2-3)
"The soul is placed in the embryo by God after its begetting. But for as long as the nerves of the child are not fully developed and functioning, the soul in self-awareness eagerly works away, making the body suit its own needs; once the nerves are all fully developed, however, and their spirit as it continues to develop becomes properly active, the soul gradually takes its rest and goes to sleep completely. It now has no awareness of self and merely vegetates, with no memory of a former naked natural condition (without the garment of the body). lt is only some months after birth that it gradually comes awake again more and more, and this is easily perceived from the decrease in the desire for sleep; but it needs quite some time until the soul attains to some level of consciousness. When a child masters speech, then a proper consciousness enters into the soul, though with no memory of what has been, for this is something one absolutely could not do within the further development and progress of the soul." (Gr IV 120, 16)
"The body is only given to the soul for its tool for a short time, so that by properly using it the soul may prepare and ensure full capacity for life and independence for ever and ever." (Gr IX 167, 6)
"So that your soul, as a spirit evolving from matter, may become wholly one with the original Spirit of God, which is called 'love', the soul must of its own accord direct its efforts in the first place to withdrawal from matter and its demands, whatever form they may take, and direct all its desires, efforts and activities towards the purely spiritual ..."
"Yet how can a person know that his soul has become one with the true Spirit of God within it? He can discover this very easily. When you feel nothing within you of pride, of unnecessary ambition, of desire for fame and glory, of seIf-Iove, but instead all the more of love for your neighbor and for God, feeling this in a true and living way. . . , then the soul will be wholly at one with the Spirit of God within it." (Gr V 51, 3-4)
* The term substance should not be equated with physical matter in this case. What is meant by "soul substance" is explained as foIlows in EM Ch. 41: "The subtlest of dusts still to be perceptible to the eye in the natural world cannot unite with the soul and the spirit for as long as it still remains physical matter. Better than 'dust' would be 'specific soul atom', such no longer being in form of matter but of substance. The difference between matter and substance, however, is sky-high. To grasp the whole rightly, you need to know this difference exactly. Take a magnet: the visible part of it is matter, but what makes the magnet attract things, that is substance. Substance cannot be seen with the eye of the flesh." (EM 41, 1-2)
** i.e., the human being who by making his own effort, i.e., observing the ordinances of God, shall one day become godlike. "However great its perfection, of course, such a spirit can never attain to God in all eternity, in the most boundless of abundance." (Gr III 3, 3)
*** Man'y people who have had a leg amputated complain of occasional pain in what formerly was a leg or a foot. The medical profession refers to this as phantom pains. In reality it is the soul and not the body that, according to New Revelation, experiences all pain.