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What is a soul

ricksfolly

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A conditioned belief?

A religious belief?

A mysterious something inside you that lives after you die?

Your memory?

ricksfolly
 
Don't know but this puts a shine on it.

soul%20glow.gif
 
I don't believe in ensoulment.
I believe that many of us, on an emotional and cognitive level, know right from wrong.
In many of us, the knowledge is deeply ingrained; in place long before we can even communicate verbally.

If you want to call this a "soul", you can call it a soul, I suppose.
I personally don't call it a soul, and I don't think it will survive beyond our corporeal deaths.
 
A conditioned belief?

A religious belief?

A mysterious something inside you that lives after you die?

Your memory?

ricksfolly

A soul is an energy based lifeform that uses living tissue as a host.

A soul coordinates living tissue to work together in a complex system, evolve and continue to reincarnate through its ecosystem of consumption and being consumed.
 
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soul is mind, will and emotion
you are a spirit
you live in a body
you have a soul
 
It's the bottom of my shoes.. Oh wait...
 
Aristotle wrote something to the effect that a 'soul' is function of an object in action. So, the 'soul' of a knife would be 'cutting'. Since humans are a 'rational animal' in Aristotelianism, I suppose 'soul' would be described as something to the effect of reasoning. When objects are inert, depending on the degree of their inertness, they have little to no soul.

Adopted into a more existential viewpoint, this might mean 'soul' is performance of the actions which possess meaning to you.
 
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I think it's something we've made up to make us feel better about death.
 
The ancient greeks would study a dead human body (that died of 'natural causes') and did not see anything different from the connections in the dead body (all bones, veins, organs) and a living body - everything was in tact. No bumps or bruises or parts missing. So what was the difference between the dead an living? That's what they call the soul. What happened to the soul, that which makes the dead body live, after death was up to debate. But the existence of the soul was simply obvious. Simply because it exists doesn't necessarily mean that it exists beyond your body.
 
I don't believe in ensoulment.
I believe that many of us, on an emotional and cognitive level, know right from wrong.
In many of us, the knowledge is deeply ingrained; in place long before we can even communicate verbally.

If you want to call this a "soul", you can call it a soul, I suppose.
I personally don't call it a soul, and I don't think it will survive beyond our corporeal deaths.

Yes, but none of this can happen without a functional memory of how things are. That's why it's the center of our being, and often called a soul.

ricksfolly
 
soul is mind, will and emotion
you are a spirit
you live in a body
you have a soul

You forgot to add memory, the most necessary element of all. Without it, none of the things you said would exist.

Thanks for the stimulation... It slowed down my deterioration.

ricksfolly
 
A soul is immortal and survives past the death of an individual host. It has a memory of all the sins and virtues ever acted upon. It is undetectable as it doesn't reside on our plane of existence (matter and force). It resides above the plane of thought.
 
A soul is immortal and survives past the death of an individual host. It has a memory of all the sins and virtues ever acted upon. It is undetectable as it doesn't reside on our plane of existence (matter and force). It resides above the plane of thought.

Interesting...it coincides with the fact that more and more Scientists, Physicists etc now truly believe that there are other planes of existence....a type of parallel Universe right among us....If I remember correctly now the majority of the most brilliant theorists on the Universe believe this.

Could this other plane of existence or parallel Universe be our "Heaven" if our soul passes specifications?
 
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Interesting...it coincides with the fact that more and more Scientists, Physicists etc now truly believe that there are other planes of existence....a type of parallel Universe right among us....If I remember correctly now the majority of the most brilliant theorists on the Universe believe this.

Could this other plane of existence or parallel Universe be our "Heaven" if our soul passes specifications?

Interesting, the first I have heard of parallel Universes that were not Multi-verse type Universes. Do you have references to any papers or articles on this?
 
Interesting, the first I have heard of parallel Universes that were not Multi-verse type Universes. Do you have references to any papers or articles on this?

Not off hand, just caught a glimpse of these new theories gaining popularity from the science channel watching Through the Wormhole where they also speak of how physics cannot explain what put all the energy and matter into the singularity that created our Universe....which is something I have been saying for years but finally heard it from someone else.

They don't equate the other planes of existence with heaven though.....but then again they never look into what truly coordinates living matter to function together and evolve into very complex systems either
 
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Not off hand, just caught a glimpse of these new theories gaining popularity from the science channel watching Through the Wormhole where they also speak of how physics cannot explain what put all the energy and matter into the singularity that created our Universe....which is something I have been saying for years but finally heard it from someone else.

They don't equate the other planes of existence with heaven though.....but then again they never look into what truly coordinates living matter to function together and evolve into very complex systems either

While I would be and am intrigued by ideas of Heaven and that plane of existence, congruent and out of phase with our own, I am most interested in ideas about a dimension of thought and thoughts as "particles/waves" in that dimension and how that dimension interacts with our own through the bridge of our mind-brain.
 
Did you check a dictionary?
 
A soul has a memory of all the sins and virtues ever acted upon. It is undetectable as it doesn't reside on our plane of existence (matter and force). It resides above the plane of thought.

You're right... While I live, the words and images (souls) of all my dead friends and relatives live in my memory. When I die, their words and images will die with me, gone forever.

It's the same with my novels. Hundreds of people I created on paper still live in my memories. I can bring them back to life anytime I'm moved to do it. and they too will die with me... Gone forever.

And since their memories are more alive to me than memories I didn't create, they are also souls, undetectable souls.

ricksfolly
 
You're right... While I live, the words and images (souls) of all my dead friends and relatives live in my memory. When I die, their words and images will die with me, gone forever.

It's the same with my novels. Hundreds of people I created on paper still live in my memories. I can bring them back to life anytime I'm moved to do it. and they too will die with me... Gone forever.

And since their memories are more alive to me than memories I didn't create, they are also souls, undetectable souls.

ricksfolly

I am talking about the memory of your soul, which does live on beyond our death and return on reincarnation. They are impulses or fabrications of the subconscious. Saṅkhāra
 
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