The substance that makes up all living things is called protoplasm. Protoplasm is a colourless, jellylike mixture of different materials including proteins, water, fats, carbohydrates and certain minerals. Protoplasm is organised into units called cells, (tiny amounts of protoplasm enclosed by a thin membrane). Cells are alive, they breathe take in food, dispose of wastes, grow and reproduce. All plants and animals are made up of cells. The nucleus at the centre of the cell controls the metabolism and reproduction of the cell. The chemical structure of a cell is very complex, with the composition of protoplasm differing from one cell to another, however, the basic structure of all cells is the same. The protoplasm is divided between the nucleus and the surrounding cytoplasm. The nucleus stores memory, controls heredity, regulates growth and reproduction and governs most of the cells activities.
When a cell divides, each of the new cells gets a copy of the master plan. The master plan is stored in the nucleus in an substance called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA molecules are arranged into a double thread held together by cross-pieces and wound like a spring. The tighter the spring, the denser the body. In the foreseeable future man will learn to increase and decrease the tension in the molecules of a substance, thereby tightening and relaxing the spring and adjusting the density of a substance, including the human body. Though altering the density of a substance may sound incredible at this point in man's scientific development, the knowledge of how to do so is not far off.
Each person begins life as a single cell which is formed by the combining of an egg cell (gamete) and a sperm cell. From this small beginning the fertilized cell replicates and the completed human body contains about a hundred million million cells. The original fertilized cell consists of half the somatic (physical/corporeal) information of the female parent and half the somatic information of the male parent, thus the embryo inherits only physical properties from its parents.
DNA stores a vast amount of information. All the experiences and learning of a person's past lives are stored in DNA as innate knowledge, and though this information is not accesible to consciousness, it governs a person's instincts. The instinctive way in which you respond to events depends on accumulation of this "secret" information which is stored in your DNA. A man who has been a beggar in one of his past lives may be more sympathetic to a beggar than a man who has not had the experience. I say "may" because some people are kind to beggars without having experienced the misery of their circumstances. In human beings, all cells, except the sex cells, contain 46 chromosomes, (two sets of 23 chromosomes). If we think of chromosomes as storage space, half the storage space (23 chromosomes) contains the instructions on how to build a body and the other half contains the individual's innate knowledge. Thus, half of the storage space in your chromosomes is used for storing somatic information and the other half is given over to storing information from your past lives.
Sex cells contain only 23 chromosomes, the chromosomes whch store somatic information, however, for a cell to reproduce it must have 46 chromosomes because the embryo needs the full quota of storage space in which to pack both the somatic information inherited from his parents and the accumulated information from his past lives. As soon as an egg and a sperm cell fuse, and the full complement of chromosomes, (all of which contain somatic information at this point of development) are in place, replication begins. The fertilized cell divides into two, then the two cells divide into four, the four cells divide into eight and the continuation of this process results in the trillions of cells that make up a human body.
All the information in the chromosomes of a ferilized sex cell is of the type which determines the physical inheritance of the embryo, only later, when development is well under way, does the innate information enter the chromosomes of the embryo. This innate information is the essence, identity, or soul, of the embryo, and it comes to the developing embryo directly from the body it inhabited in its previous life. In the third month of development the essence enters the embryo. The soul of a "dead" body overrides the information in 23 of the chromosomes in each cell of the developing fetus, and the "dead" person once again awaits his return into the world.