What is a Soul?

[shadow1982]

This is what I am thinking about today so I thought it might be interesting to see how others would answer these questions.

Do you believe in the existence of a soul?

If so, what is it? Where does it come from? Do animals and plants have a soul or is it human specific? What happens to it when we die? Is there a finite number of souls or are new ones continuously being created?

I don't know my answers to any of these questions yet so will save my answers for a later day

[B. de Corbin]

In Alchemy, the soul is a very real thing that can easily be worked with.

The soul is the name given to the emotional response one has to things, or one recieves from things, as well as the emotions one feels in general.

Everything you know of has a soul because you attach feelings to everything you encounter - by doing that, you give it a soul.

(this is simplified, but it's the basic idea)

When you die, your soul goes wherever things go when they stop existing in the material world. I don't know where that is - maybe nowhere.

Souls are created constantly (because you constantly "feel" things), and, as far as I know, they are not recycled.

[thalassa]

I believe that a soul is a more highly evolved (in terms of consciousness) spirit which is found in all living things. Its the non-physical part of the Divine, which is given to all life, and which returns to its source at our deaths. I think that soul is found in other species--whales and dolphins, other great apes, some trees, etc.

[Amelia-Mary]

I believe in the existence of a soul, and I'm a dualist (I believe the soul and body can be separated) But I have no idea about my answers to any of the other questions yet :3

[Clive]

I believe that souls are the manifestation of the Divine that each of us shares. We come from them, so we are part of them, and they are part of us. That includes animals, plants and other natural bodies including rocks and minerals. I believe that all natural bodies have different kinds of souls, however, and that humans are the only ones who reincarnate. All other animals live primarily or completely by instinct - they know what their roles are and what they're supposed to do. Humans, on the other hand, have evolved to a place where we have free will and have lost our instincts - essentially we have no flippin' idea what we're supposed to be doing, so reincarnation is a way for us to figure out what each of our personal "destinies," for lack of a better word, are. When we die our Divine sparks return to their source, and in the case of humans await a new body to be created.

As for whether there is a finite number of souls, I don't know. I would assume not since the population grows everyday.

[Eryx_UK]

The question I have is am I the soul animating this body and communicating through it, or am I the body and my soul is just alone for the ride?

[B. de Corbin]

The question I have is am I the soul animating this body and communicating through it, or am I the body and my soul is just alone for the ride?

The answer is -

Whichever you pick.

[thalassa]

The question I have is am I the soul animating this body and communicating through it, or am I the body and my soul is just alone for the ride?

I think its more of a symbiotic thing...so neither, and both.

[B. de Corbin]

I think its more of a symbiotic thing...so neither, and both.

If "symbiotic" is used to mean "a mutually dependent relationship in which each part provides a real benefit to the other," then yes, I'd also call it symbiotic.

In most people, though, one or the other (and I'd also toss the third member of the holy trinity - spirit, which in Alchemy is different from the soul - into the mix) tends to be dominant. The particular mix of strong & less strong, combined with the way things play out in life (environment) determines personality.

I don't think most people are aware of this, but it is possible to self adjust the mixture and create a different personality - but, in life, people do this all the time (i.e.: you aren't the same person at home with your family as you are when you go on a job interview). So from my particular perspective, it is a matter of choice.




Have you ever noticed how many "religious" practices are designed to beat the body into submission? When I was raised Catholic I was taught to admire as "spiritual heroes" people who destroyed their bodies "for the sake of their soul." Mortification of the flesh, martyrdom, abstinence... Crazy stuff...

This is supposed to be good for you?

[sadodosah]

I believe that a being or object can only be said to have a soul if it is aware enough to question its own motives and actions and either continue along a specified course or change it.

I do not think that being alive instantly equals that one has a soul. To me to have a soul is to be self-aware, self-critical and have a motive higher than basic survival.

In contrast, I think that a spirit is the emotional energy of a being and therefore can exist in animals and can be passed on to objects. A strong spirit is a full of many emotions and when those emotions begin to thread together a personality is formed. When a being can question and adjust its spirit to suit certain situations, I believe that also shows that a soul is present.

I believe that any force which is intangible and immeasurable is by definition also infinite; in-so-much there is no set number of souls.

Reincarnation is possible I think, but I believe that it is based on the strength of a spirit more than the strength of a soul in and of itself. I believe that for a soul to reincarnate it must be bonded with a very strong spirit directed by an outside force or catalyst.

[shadow1982]

It was actually an interest in reincarnation that got me thinking about souls to being with.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I think I believe in the existence of souls but am still trying to work out the details. You have all given me a lot to consider

[Bjorn]

Soul is the pure essence of you that lives inside. It is the invisible entity that drives your actions, that fills your lungs with oxygen, that causes your heart to pump. It is the core of life inside of you that cannot be created or destroyed, but shifted out of your earthly vessel and into the unknown.

[Denarius]

Based on my experiences I'd have to say that there is an energy to all things... rocks, trees, animals, and people.

Places have an energy all their own, so do ideas, objects, and dreams.

Whether this energy is a soul is debatable, it really depends on what you consider a soul to be.

To me, Seattle has a soul. A presense about it that is like nowhere else. But, Pike Place Market has a soul of its own, and so does Safeco Field and the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Space Needle...

My point: Everything has its own essence unique to itself, but all things are connected.

We are, all of us, just aspects of a greater "soul." Whether this soul is GOD, or the EARTH, or the UNIVERSE, or WHATEVER I don't know and I don't much care.

We are as much individuals as we are a collective.

[Danial McCoy]

In my experience a soul is the underlying essence that gives rise to the physical world we know, that seeks to experience from all possible perspectives at once, inside and outside of time. In this way I suppose there is only one soul, and many perspectives (ie. individual consciousness) arising from it. Everything in existence arises out of it and ultimately returns to it. I suppose I use the terms soul and spirit interchangeably as well.

[Denarius]

^I use soul to refer to the essence of a being or object, and spirit to refer to essence that's a being in and of itself.

Like a ghost or something.

[Marek]

To me..

The soul is what exists in the trinity of human form. It has three primary characteristics, inseparable from the other. The first characteristic is the Physical, that which is diminished in age or use. This represents the body. The second characteristic is the Speculative, that which is neither enhanced nor degraded in use. This is your logos or even your flowing consciousness. The third characteristic is the Spiritual, that which is enhanced when shared or used. The Spiritual is the portion of us that is enlightened through life. The "soul" is not something within us that animates us, it is the by-product of our trinity already being active.

Reincarnation I am unsure about. As a druid I believe in the Underworld where the souls of the dead go. If souls can be reincarnated then why honor the ancestors when we can just await their return in our future lives? As a healer I believe that reincarnation is a constant process of our own Spiritual selves as we shed our old patterns to be reborn or enlightened. However as a person who is mostly in-tune with my thoughts and emotions I feel as if I am older than my body. But perhaps I feel like that because I align more easily with the thoughts and philosophies of the classical era.

Just my two cents..

[Gaiano]

The soul, in my eyes, has always been a kind of force that drives all living things. I belief EVERY living organism has a soul that drives live, but I believe a spirit is something different. I like to think, in humans, the spirit is something that is a little more personal than the soul. The spirit is essentially a copy of the physical body and mind that is held together by the soul. Souls always reincarnate, the spirit doesn't. I believe the spirit goes to another plane after death, usually to Summerland or the Otherworld and in some cases they stay here in ours. I believe the Soul passes through Summerland and the Otherworld, essentially dropping spirits off. The Soul returns to our plane, where it reincarnates to another form of life.

[Geckgo]

Just my two bits...

As to whether I believe plants and animals have souls, short answer? yes.
I tend to think that individual atoms also carry little bits of soul with them, but that is another matter.

My philisophical perspective (shortened up obviously):

The brain directs the body, but the brain is just a biomechanical device that sends and recieves signals. It's the ultimate "black box". Nobody knows how it works exactly, but essential information is fed "in" through the senses, and the outputs are muscular music that makes us move, talk, look around, etc etc. In theory there is nothing else necessary to make a human being work, however...

We are aware that these things are going on. We are in fact watching ourselves, and our thinking process. It just seems that there is something "missing" from the above description when we apply it to ourselves. There is something doing the "feeling" while the brain does the thinking. I.E. my brain thinks, but I can hear it and feel it!

So apparently (at least as far as I am concerned, your mileage may vary), we are a body +1. That +1 is the soul.


My religious perspective:

A soul is a collection of spiritual energy/matter/whatever that attaches itself to physical entities, so, any kind of matter, even individual atoms. Living creatures carry around quite a bit of it, sometimes some seeps off and new energy is picked up, so souls are kind of fluid in nature. When we die, the energy goes back into the pool and when new beings come into existence they scoop from the pool.
^--this is my hideously oversimplified version


My scientific perspective:
That spiritual energy I was talking about, is actually the superposition of EM energy. In lay terms, all matter emits em radiation (light, heat, ect) and em radiation is everywhere around us in all forms. The spiritual energy is the patterns formed around a body when the outgoing interacts with the incomming. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a way to measure this. In animals, the interference is much more than in plants because we put out all sorts of frequencies produced by our brains and nervous systems that plants don't have, but every cell does put out an array of frequencies. Atoms only put out light and heat, and occasionally some "radioactive" frequencies (gamma, xray, etc). Basically, the more complicated the EM output, the more interesting the mixing with the incomming signals, and the harder the equations get.

I'm gonna shut up now before I write a book, if anyone is interested in hearing more about my theories, just pm me or something. These are my views, hopefully they provide you with some food for thought and I wish you the best of luck in "hammering out the details" of your beliefs.

-the geckgo

[Avior]

I definitely believe that we have a soul that resides inside our bodies and leaves our bodies upon death. I think the soul is basically what makes us "alive". I believe in reincarnation, after a period of rest in between lives, where the soul will go on to inhabit another body.

I think that all living things have a soul, but that the nature of the souls are different for different creatures - i.e. plants have a different "type" of soul to animals.

[Wednesday]

This is what I am thinking about today so I thought it might be interesting to see how others would answer these questions.

Do you believe in the existence of a soul?

If so, what is it? Where does it come from? Do animals and plants have a soul or is it human specific? What happens to it when we die? Is there a finite number of souls or are new ones continuously being created?

I don't know my answers to any of these questions yet so will save my answers for a later day

To me, the term soul defines a pre-being that's separate and superior to the conscious mind, and that's not a concept I believe in. I think that conception creates an individual person that will grow what we think of as "soul" throughout his or her life time. I think we're whole in both body and thought and that we can utilize these in interesting (shamantic?) ways, but that you're tied to your bones. There isn't a higher ethereal you-soul in my beliefs.

[perzephone]

I've actually got a pretty developed cosmology for the soul. I think the Universe has a vast, unified 'over-soul' - it is the driving force behind the destructive and constructive energies that make and unmake everything from stars to galaxies to planets to us. It is made up of all the unique experiences of life and organic material everywhere. It is Divine and Sacred, and Gods are made of greater proportions of soul-stuff, but the Over-Soul itself is not exactly Deity. It permeates everything, weaving us all together in a common tapestry. It is also infinite because bits of soul-stuff are leaving and returning constantly.

Bits of this over-soul will become separated from the main body (I haven't worked out the hows & whys of that yet), and it will end up inhabiting an individual 'something' and giving it life. As long as that bit of soul-stuff dwells within us, or a rock or tree or amoeba, it is learning and experiencing all it can from that thing it is calling home. When we or an animal or plant reincarnates, it's because that bit of soul-stuff isn't satisfied with one single lifetime of experience, but wants to continue onward. It can, because it is made up of that Divine Over-Soul, while organic bodies become fragmented or die. When that bit of soul-stuff is 'full' of experiences, be it from one life or many, it returns to the Over-Soul, where all its experiences and memories are diffused throughout the Over-Soul. The Over-Soul is continuously curious and life is continually evolving, so it will be a long time before it has experienced everything it can possibly experience.

I think rocks can die. When people dig up rocks from the ground, extract useful elements from it, melt it down... that rock is dead - which is why in my cosmology, most manufactured items, even tools made or used by apes, are 'dead' and have no souls. Just because something is 'dead' doesn't mean that it's unnatural - but I don't believe purely synthetic manufactured things get souls. No matter how evil Teddy Ruxpin is, he's made of dead oils that have been spun into polyester and plastic, and therefore soul-less. I also believe that sometimes, when someone suffers a particularly traumatic event, the soul can and will flee from that body, leaving it biologically alive, but no longer connected to the Over-Soul or the rest of the Universe. I also believe that people or animals can be born without a soul, or may end up with a soul later on in life. Multiple births, where the siblings have that weird bond between them? That's a bit of soul-stuff too big for just one body - which is also how soul-mates are created.

Souls can also fragment & be accidentally (or on purpose through various means & ways) left in various places to subtly interfere with the souls of other people/things. Sometimes bits of the soul end up too permeated by the mentality and personality of the person or thing they inhabit - and when that body dies, the soul becomes attached to the physical world - which is where ghosts come from. 'Psychic echoes' are the personality/mentality of the body which is sort of stuck and didn't move on with the rest of the soul. It just repeats the usually traumatic event that left the echo over & over again, and doesn't break pattern.

[habbalah]

This is what I am thinking about today so I thought it might be interesting to see how others would answer these questions.

Do you believe in the existence of a soul?

If so, what is it? Where does it come from? Do animals and plants have a soul or is it human specific? What happens to it when we die? Is there a finite number of souls or are new ones continuously being created?

I don't know my answers to any of these questions yet so will save my answers for a later day

Yes, I do believe in a soul, but I believe we have a soul and a spirit, and they're two different things.

The spirit is what you're made up of for this lifetime and is unique to each living thing with sentience. It's shaped and changed by your experiences with this lifetime; if your ghost ends up hanging around after death, that's your spirit. It's specific to the now. Does that include plants? Depends on if you think plants can think and feel.

Where does it come from? Where ever you believe all life comes from--God, the Divine, the Universe, where ever.

Your soul, however, is what goes on to be reincarnated. I don't believe that when we come back around, we come back wholesale; that's why there's a difference between the spirit and the soul. If it helps to make sense of my rambling, think of the spirit as your memories and your soul as your life energy. The soul may have some impressions left over from each lifetime--things are affected by where they're stored, after all--but I don't think it would be possible to retrieve every moment from my life before this one.

[anunitu]

If "symbiotic" is used to mean "a mutually dependent relationship in which each part provides a real benefit to the other," then yes, I'd also call it symbiotic.

In most people, though, one or the other (and I'd also toss the third member of the holy trinity - spirit, which in Alchemy is different from the soul - into the mix) tends to be dominant. The particular mix of strong & less strong, combined with the way things play out in life (environment) determines personality.

I don't think most people are aware of this, but it is possible to self adjust the mixture and create a different personality - but, in life, people do this all the time (i.e.: you aren't the same person at home with your family as you are when you go on a job interview). So from my particular perspective, it is a matter of choice.




Have you ever noticed how many "religious" practices are designed to beat the body into submission? When I was raised Catholic I was taught to admire as "spiritual heroes" people who destroyed their bodies "for the sake of their soul." Mortification of the flesh, martyrdom, abstinence... Crazy stuff...

This is supposed to be good for you?

I have never understood this practice. In a California history class I got in trouble when my response to the teachers(Hispanic) lecture about the priests doing self flagellation,was that is just masochism..Teacher was very upset with my take on the matter.