Life can only mean one thing whether in you or in me or in the animals or in birds or fishes or in Allah. The quality or type of living may be different. Life is everywhere. So long as there is a form there would be life in it. When the form totally disintegrates and nothing remains of the form - still life remains. To the question where went the form - the answer can only be that a gross form at its most subtle is nothing other than life. The life that was in the form merges with the life that was outside the form - nay the form at its most subtle merges with life. Not only in animate forms - even in inanimate forms there is life. Quantum physics indicates this. When quantum physics reaches its frontiers - it will declare as the seers of yore had declared: All existence is but life.
Those who were made in the image of God have the true life, the other living things only exists. Therefore find the image of God in you, and you will know what life is.
In the book of Genesis 1:26-27, God laid the foundations of the character and purpose of humanity, for we read: “Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
So according to the above scripture we have the image of God in ourselves, but unfortunately man’s imaginative and artistic skill has fashioned God to resemble himself, male and female. Some of us even elevated animals as the form to worship. Others worship some object like the sun, the moon, the earth, or nature itself. Needless to say that they all are in error, because it is not the object, or creature, or our superficial appearance or gender that bears the image of God, but it is the essence (spirit) of God in us that bears the image of God.
It isn’t difficult to identify the spirit in us that bears the image of God; because He has not been hidden in some dark place, but He is in the most forefront of our lives. If anything it is His over-exposure that makes Him invisible as it were.
For with His essence we are able to think, formulate plans and be creative. To have the power of the Word means to be living souls. Just consider that without this Godly essence we would be like animals, living in the limitations of instinct, and not living from the essence of unlimited freedom and intelligent reason.
So the God given ability to formulate reason with words is what makes us in the image of God, for He created all things by the power of His word, and like Him we also plan and create things out of the reasoning power of our words. The ability to speak intelligent and creative words is truly what makes us living souls; therefore it is the breath of life itself. (Genesis 2:7.)