Do you ever wonder in what part of the human body the immortal soul spends its time? I mean, it
has to be in there somewhere; everyone says it leaves "the body" when you die. But where is it
exactly? Is a foot important enough to house a soul (Is that where the word came from?)? How
about an ear (a smaller soul, of course)?
I've heard it said that the elusive little devil is everywhere in the body, that it permeates each and
every atom of each and every human being. Sounds nice, but "nice" has little to do with fact.
"Nice" leaves you with questions, like what happens when some of those atoms get lost, in the
amputation of a limb, for example. If the soul impregnates every atom, loosing a leg would mean a
piece of your soul takes off for Heaven (or wherever), there to wait for the rest of you to catch up--
this assumes, of course, that someone does the right thing for the poor leg, gives it a decent burial,
that is. Now it might be a little hard for the average guy to swallow, but part of this idea I like. I
mean, since the soul already has a foothold in that holiest of holy places, it would give the
remainder of you a leg up.
Okay, so maybe it doesn't change anything if an arm or a leg is lost. Maybe the soul makes do with
whatever atoms are left, hopefully without making a fuss about being squeezed into lesser quarters.
But when I carry the loss of body parts a step further, then a step beyond that, I get to really
worrying.
We used to think that as the heart goes, so do we. It stops beating and out pops the soul; end of
question. But that's not true anymore (can truth change?). Today we transplant hearts with ease,
which means that unless we're willing to conceded a mixing of souls as a heart leaves one body
then joins another, we have to accept that the heart is not where the soul spends its day. Indeed,
humans have been kept alive with artificial hearts, and I haven't heard anybody jumping up to say
that these guys are sitting around without souls. Or that they now have mechanical souls and have
to find a mechanical god to pray to.
No, there are too many problems with that. A guy with an artificial heart might live long enough to
get a donor heart then get back on the road to normal life, and if that happens and the soul has
already taken off, he'd be wearing another person's soul. And if it's a tainted one, he'd have to
move Heaven and Earth to get his own soul back (Where does a body go to look for a lost soul?).
Even if he succeeds in getting his own back, what would he do with the soul that came along with
his new heart? That's not the kind of thing you can get rid of in a garage sale, not if it's tainted you
can't.
Okay, maybe we can agree that, like arms and legs, the heart has nothing to do with the soul. But
all we're doing here is narrowing it down; like I said, the little fellow has to be attached in some
way to a human being. Souls are not stored in safe-deposit boxes (unless you're trying to protect
them from the IRS).
Our animal cousins don't suffer from such problems because they don't have souls. That's not their
opinion, of course; we humans have summarily declared this to be true, and with animals unable to
protest, we can safely assume we're correct. We could have a problem, though, with the trend
toward cloning pigs for the purpose of providing humans with spare body parts. It seems pigs are
similar enough to humans to do that, even if it doesn't do much for our egos-can you imagine
sharing your soul with an oinker? The rest of the soul might take exception to having to associate
with a known pig.
Me, I think these are serious points that have to be resolved before we go ahead with pig
transplants!
Anyway, getting back to where the soul resides, the kidneys are no better a bet than the limbs or the
heart. Same with the lungs and the liver. They've all been transplanted and thus suffer the same
kind of problem. (I would point out the body part lost by that Babbitt fellow, but since he got it
back, it doesn't count. Anyway, I can't believe the soul is in there.)
I hope I'm right that the soul is not distributed among our various body parts. Can you imagine the
mess we'd have if a chunk of soul left us with each loss only to attempt a soul reunion in Heaven?
And how much it would add to the mess if new pieces of soul came along with replacement body
parts? Talk about holy wars! You'd have lungs breaking hearts, kidneys pounding livers, limbs at
arms with each other. And what of the poor guy who needed all this stuff (what a pathetic soul he
would be)? God would be kept up nights sorting him out!
Besides, what kind of fair would it be if the host got to grab not only the donor's organs but the
piece of soul that went along with it? It's a fair bet that giving up a chunk of your soul is not part of
any donor agreement.
I think we're really narrowing this thing down.
Maybe the soul is tiny and thus able to hang out anywhere it wishes. And maybe it doesn't much
care whether pieces of its human host are lost. Heck, maybe it's as tiny as a single atom; maybe
that's why nobody has ever seen it. Now that is exciting! I mean, now that we have microscopes
that can see below the level of an atom, we might finally catch a glimpse of the little fellow.
I don't know if I like the idea of bearing my soul. Suppose it's a miniature me, complete with warts,
expanding gut, thinning hair and arm muscles whose best use nowadays is signaling drinks from
bartenders? Suppose it's something frightening like a Vampire or a Baptist? Suppose it's wearing a
dress (since sex will probably not appear on the things-to-do list in Heaven, does it matter whether
the soul is a boy or a girl?)
I hope I'm wrong about sex not being on the things-to-do list in Heaven.
Will it even look like a human being; will it have the same amount of arms and legs, teeth and
eyes? (I hope it's not something really scary; I'd be afraid to be alone with it.) Will it try to mimic
me; if I lose a limb, will it lose one too?
Thinking about the size of the soul, I have to wonder at what point in the transplantation process we
have to concede that what is left of a person is too meager to contain a soul, that what remains no
longer fits a reasonable definition of a human being. Suppose the worst; suppose a guy has a bad
accident and loses both arms, both legs, his one and only Babbitt, both kidneys, one lung, his spleen
and his heart (replacing the latter with a mechanical one). Is there enough left of this guy to say he
still has a soul?
He still has his brain, you say, and that means he's hanging in there. Good point, but what if
someday we learn to transplant that as well, I mean, an entire brain (it's only a matter of time before
medical science figures that one out)? Will that be the last straw? For our accident victim,
assuming he's on life support awaiting a new brain, can we at long last say that there is nothing left
in there to support a soul, that it must have moved on to healthier pastures? (If it went on to
Heaven, will it be called back if this guy gets a donor brain?)
I've got to admit, the brain is a good candidate for repository of the soul. I mean, someone goes
brain dead and even if he's hooked up to life-sustaining machinery, he's lying in an empty shell
with no possibility of conscious thought. And if a new brain is later found for this guy, it will not
be he who wakes up in his body, it will be somebody else, a squatter, claiming everything he finds
there for himself, including the soul. (Who's going to stop him; the host doesn't have the brains he
was born with?)
Even so, I think it's better if the soul is in the brain. Less messy, I mean. Think of it; if the soul
does not stick with the brain, then the donated brain is going to know that his soul has gone on to
Heaven (or Hell) without him. (Of course, if the soul is not around to be further tainted, he can sin
big time.)
Wherever the donor brain winds up, it's going to think of itself as the same guy it always was. It's
going to think that its costume might have changed but its consciousness has not. It will remember
its old life like an immigrant remembers the old country. It will have the same thoughts it had
before, and it will want to continue the same pattern of life it had before: the same loves, the same
hates, the same good and the same evil. And if this is the case, what sense does it make to leave its
soul behind? It should bring it along to take the blame.
Even here there's a problem: What if a rotten donor brain takes over a nice person and screws up
his chances of going to Heaven? Or just the opposite, a good-guy donor takes over an already-
condemned body. In either case, you've got to worry about who gets the credit or blame for what
happens from here on, the new brain or the old body.
Complicated, to say the least.
If you go back to the concept that says all of a person has to be dead before his soul takes off, then
a brain transplant results in two souls competing for the same body, one of which has an unfair
advantage: it has a good head on its shoulders while the other has no sense at all.
And what if the donor's sex is opposite to that of the host? (What would a host body jot down
when it had to answer that question on its driver's license?) What is the moral thing to do, obey the
sexual dictates of your mind or of your body?
There are other problems with the all-or-nothing concept too. Like, you have to consider that a
piece of your body might be kept alive, maybe as part of an experiment. A hand, for example,
where electrical charges are hooked up to it in such a way that it keeps going and going and going.
Unlikely, you say, but the way medical technology is progressing, it's only a matter of time before
this and a lot of other weird stuff becomes possible. And once something is possible somebody
somewhere is going to do it.
Besides, it doesn't have to be a body part kept alive forever; it could be DNA made into a clone
(Can you clone a soul?). Then, when the clone is close to dying, you extract DNA from it and
create yet another clone, and so on forever. If this happens then part of the donor's body lives on,
which means the poor soul has to hang around waiting and hoping, eventually becoming a tired old
soul.
What if a donor brain comes from a guy who practices a different religion than the host? What if it
wants to continue these "errant" ways after being transported to its new home? Would we have to
lay down the law, make it clear that this is not part of the deal, that it has to adapt to whatever
religion the host had going before he lost his mind?
Me, I think the answer is no. I think the donor brain has squatter's rights and can kick out the old
brain's soul (although God knows where the poor thing would go).
Yes, it has to be the brain. It's has to be that, wherever the brain goes, the soul goes along for the
ride. And in its new body, it has the right to set up house any way it wants, even if that means
growing Christian hair on what used to be a bald-headed Buddhist monk.
Damn! That raises additional questions, like are we talking about the whole brain or only a part of
it (sort of a return to "the-soul-is-everywhere-in-our-bodies" thing, only in this case everywhere in
the brain). The problem is that, like the body itself, the brain is also capable of separation. A guy
can have a lobotomy, and when that happens we have the same problem we had with lost body
parts, that of a piece of the soul going on to Heaven there to wait for the rest of itself to arrive. And
hoping in the interim that the part left behind does not do something to trigger a recall (if it does,
will the part that was removed get to stay in Heaven while the rest of this guy's brain goes to Hell?)
No; if the soul is in the brain, it must not be in every atom; it must have the capability of jumping
from one brain cell to another, if only to keep ahead of the surgeon's knife.

We have the same kind of problem with the concept of burial, and here there is sanctity involved,
pretty important stuff for believers. If the body is not properly cared for then it doesn't get to go to
Heaven, that's the rule. Maybe it's just that it has trouble resting, I don't know, but the point is the
questions are the same, like what percentage of a body has to be present to call the job of being
buried properly done? Returning to our accident victim, we have an empty shell with no arms, legs
or brain (maybe not even a head, since without a brain a head is not really needed) and no heart,
kidneys, liver, lungs, Babbitt and God knows what else. Assuming none of this stuff is replaced
before he dies, is there enough in the remains to claim a proper burial, conforming to the dictates of
his religion? What about the parts he had removed, shouldn't they be scouted out, gathered up and
dumped in there with him? If you don't do this, will he enter Heaven with missing parts? Will the
other Heavenites laugh at him?
If a donor does go to Heaven after, say, donating a hand, will that hand reappear when he gets
there? Or will he have to float around with a stump until the guy he gave the hand to gets to
Heaven? (What if the other guy goes to Hell; our good Samaritan might not be able to yank the
hand back before it becomes toast?) And what of the guy who received the hand; does it disappear
when he gets to heaven, to be replaced with the one that is long dead and buried?
What if our accident guy receives a bunch of new body parts before he dies? I mean, yanked off a
bunch of other guys and surgically connected to his body? Would this correct the burial
deficiencies, or would we simply be passing the problem down the line, forcing untold others to
replace missing body parts before they in turn die, sort of a musical chairs thing?
What a mess it would be if a guy's transplants came from more than one donor. Think about it: if
each part came from a body that practiced a different religion, requiring a different burial procedure
than that of the host, the burial costs would eat you alive. And it would have to be done too,
because it wouldn't be fair to accept a Babbitt offered in good faith then cause its donor to suffer
eternal damnation of the groin just because you failed to do something that he would have done
were he still in possession of his part-I mean, it was his Babbitt to begin with. For each body part
you received during your life, you'd have to arrange a separate send-off after you die. You'd have
to provide whatever service its previous owner would have wanted, what he thought was needed to
keep him out of celestial trouble. If you don't know who he was, you should at least insist that the
plural is used when words are said over your grave, sort of like the royal "we."
Just food for thought. Soul food, as it were.
The End
Copyright c)2000 Noel Carroll