What Of Your Soul?

I am still learning about this stuff . . .

I did not really know where to put this post - I hope the Sandbox is OK.

For a long time I thought that the spirit and soul were the same thing . . . A few years ago I was told that they were not . . .
The explanation I received a few years ago went something like this . . . the body is the soul and the spirit is its driving force . . .

Today I think I received a better description - so here I place my initial interpretation for criticism.

The way I understand it we have a physical body which I learnt many years ago could be bought from a chemical supply shop for very cheap - I think it was less than one hundred dollars. The physical body needs to be animated somehow - a problem that I am led to believe science is still struggling with.

Now I am guessing that the soul has something to do with this physical body being animated . . .
. . . but what I have interpreted is that the soul is the seat of the consciousness.

Is this correct? The soul is the seat of the consciousness.

I am your student.

8-[

Yes, it is the seat of consciousness and houses your long term memories.

WendyDarling

I believe in GOD and I am not sure whether you do or not and I am certain James’ concept of GOD is different to my own.

You are definitely being clear enough - I understand exactly what you mean. You and I differ a little on the subject of the soul. I do agree with the idea of the soul as the seat of the consciousness. I also differ a little with James on the topic of soul but I did find some meaning in his ideas of the spirit and the soul. I also find a great deal of meaning in your ideas of the spirit and the soul.

I am pleased that the three of us agree that the soul and spirit are two different things. I also notice that we all like this essence thingy too - I will be returning to that soon too in the what of you essence? thread.

The three of us agree with the concept of eternal.

I am so glad that something is mathematically provable. Here we are speaking of eternal again and I also detect some essence tucked away in there too.

So much for me to think and pray about.

[-o<

My idea from another thread is this:

If we have reason to believe that we are here now . . .

. . . then why do we not have reason to believe that we have been here before ? . .

. . . and why do we have no reason to believe that we will be here again?

Given the number of possible outcomes using the same stuff contained in our universe now - then it is possible that all of the stars and planets and other bodies could just as easily have taken a different configuration - which means that each time of return could be different also.

I have my reservations on a cyclical time however - eternal return is not necessarily dependent on time either - this may be basing the idea around people but a leap in imagination could make a universe reconfigure without people.

So I am saying eternal reconfiguration - which also allows room for eternal rebirth et cetera.

Just an idea!

:-k

To which James responded with . . .

Thank you James, that sums it up really well what I was thinking. I understand the mathematics is not that hard - I have it internalized at present and I intend on externalizing it. The splitting off of us into exact duplicates is a bit more difficult for me to imagine but I imagine the externalization of the mathematics can shed light on that. Hopefully I am fully interpreting you correctly.

encode_decode

Aren’t we all?! and baffled with it at the same time ~~ all a part of learning.

I think that the sandbox is okay. I think that it could have also gone into religion but maybe from my point of view philosophy even more so.

May I ask who told you differently? But you needn’t respond.

I cannot agree with this but who knows. The soul to me is part of the psyche or is the psyche but its driving force may be in part the spirit along with other influences which incite and animate the spirit which also animate the body.(emotions, moods) But I do not mean at the moment of conception. It’s all part of the mind/body relationship.

I thought that it was even less than that. But remember one thing: Science has not as yet found a way to house the brain and in turn the mind without the body as the receptacle. So the body is important. :evilfun:
The way in which you just described the physical body needing to be animated reminded me of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

This is ALSO the christian or catholic view. At the moment of conception, the soul enters the body, for them.

Hmm…this does make you want to bang your head against the wall, doesn’t it ~~ at least figuratively speaking it does.
Consciousness as awareness, self-awareness, “what is it like to be me” et cetera?
I prefer the word psyche to soul because many believe that the soul lives on but we can’t know this.

[b]Psyche
[sahy-kee]
Spell Syllables
noun

Classical Mythology. a personification of the soul, which in the form of a beautiful girl was loved by Eros.
2.
(lowercase) the human soul, spirit, or mind.
3.
(lowercase) Psychology, Psychoanalysis. the mental or psychological structure of a person, especially as a motive force.
4.
Neoplatonism. the second emanation of the One, regarded as a universal consciousness and as the animating principle of the world.

I suppose one can say that the soul or psyche is the seat of consciousness.
I don’t want to muddy the waters here but perhaps the psyche and human consciousness sit side by side. They are influenced by one another, both positively and negatively.

…“The present work suggests that, rather than hoping for a putative unique marker – the neural correlate of consciousness – a more mature view of conscious processing should consider that it relates to a brain-scale distributed pattern of coherent brain activation,” explained neuroscientist Lionel Naccache, one of the authors of the paper"…
sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 201459.htm

28 Days: The baby’s muscles are developing. Her arm and leg buds are visible, and her first neocortical cells appear. The neocortex is the seat of complex thinking and reasoning, and it is present in no other mammal.

This is a little girl.

hli.org/resources/is-a-baby … gK_HvD_BwE

There we go. As you can see, you may be the teacher here and me the student. :evilfun:

Arcturus Descending

I am not sure if all of us are - there are a number of things that baffle me - yes all a part of learning.

I think the Sandbox is the best place - Religion is too aggressive for me and I am not here to preach to anyone. Why do you say philosophy even more?

Some Christian friends - lets just leave it at that shall we?

I cannot not agree on it either. But that is the beauty of freedom of speech I guess.

Cooooooooooool!

:smiley:

Frankenstein!

I like the seat of the consciousness. Institutionalized religion can believe what it wants as far as I am concerned. I am no part of this world.

Let me tell you a little secret - I directed the question at one person in particular - because that person had the idea I liked the best. Until I received that idea I was banging my head against a brick wall - sometimes I wanted to defenestrate myself.

:laughing:

I would never do either of those things. One of my passions is the consciousness.

I do say it is the seat of consciousness. Don’t worry about the waters - you are free to say whatever you want, I think. My waters will remain clear.

I don’t think so - no one listens to me.

:evilfun:

Arcturus Descending

That is pretty interesting - I have good reason to believe differently.

:smiley:

encode_decode

Perhaps those who are not so baffled are those who do not take the time to question their beliefs.
Of course, I do realize that those who have clear knowledge ~~ facts ~~ are not so baffled insofar as those things go.

The Sandbox is cool if we can keep in mind what a sandbox is for. But even children in sandboxes argue ~ “Hey, that sand is mine. That’s my mud pie. Leave it alone.” And then comes the slinging of the mud and sand.

I agree with you that religion can be too aggressive. Why do YOU think that is so? I have my own reasons.
I think that for me Philosophy can be the best place for a discussion of the soul because anything which we say about it cannot be absolute or written in stone…just like the God concept cannot be.
Just for the record, I do not have to believe in God, at least certainly not the God of most, in order to have a discussion about God. God may be real to people but God is also a concept!

If a discussion starts out on the soul and is based on religious belief, already it becomes biased albeit it is still a discussion about the soul.
Philosophy is about seeking out the truth of things and wisdom.
That can be about the road less travelled, not the one which has not usually been traveled within the mind - beliefs.

With Pleasure.

Oh, how I do enjoy playing in the sandbox with you, encode_decode. :evilfun:
That I think is a very good answer. Keeping an open mind. I don’t know if we could ever get to some sort of conclusion where the soul is concerned. Some of us decide to detach, let go, have faith and just believe what they choose. That’s fine. Some of us withhold judgment remaining highly curious and imagining, pondering, musing. ~ living in negative capability. I love that expression, Keats. Thank you.

It made me laugh.

Do not misunderstand me. That is not my way of thinking. I was simply giving you another viewpoint.

You mean that the body is the soul and the spirit is its driving force . . .?
I kind of think that expressing it in that way removes the soul, let’s say human soul, from being something more ethereal or non corporeal - though not necessarily eternal.
The brain and body are inter-connected ~~ the former resides within the later obviously but I personally still wouldn’t express it that way - that the body is the soul unless you are saying that the soul somehow took up residence in the brain. There are many intangibles within the brain, right?
It does boggle my mind though and it will continue to.

So you are saying that the soul is the seat of consciousness? Well, if we can say psyche I can agree. :laughing: But then again, can we even be sure of that at this time? Have the scientists reached a fair conclusion about it? You would probably know more about that than I would.
Do we know enough about both to even come to that conclusion? I’m hesitant about doing that.
IF the [human] soul does reside somewhere within the brain, then perhaps it may.
There was a time when I intuited that my soul was somewhere outside my body, about a foot or so all around it. LOL
Muddy waters. #-o

As far as muddying waters, I do think that sometimes that could be a good thing. This is not directed at you per se because I do understand and admire your need for clarity but I think that universally speaking, what would appear to be clear waters at times is not so clear at all. We do not like to disturb those waters. But that’s just the way I feel.

I can’t hear you. I can only read you.
Anyway, stop fishing for compliments. :stuck_out_tongue:

We are all the students and all the teachers at different times.
What do you think it is most important to be? :-"

I think that when it comes to the intangibles in life, we all need to be a bit more skeptical and agnostic instead of automatically assuming and presuming that we have all of the answers simply because these answers put us in a comfort zone that is not built with bricks but really just built with wispy feathers…though wispy feathers can be quite beautiful!

Arcturus Descending

I think a few of my circuits have just been fried . . .

What is a sandbox used for? How do you figure that sand is yours?

:evilfun:

There are so many words and interpretations roaming around about all these terms that one is bound to confuse. Unfortunately, western philosophy got it all wrong from the very beginning and still happily continuing with it. It is not the case that the right version is not available. Actually, it is available since even before the beginning of the western philosophy. But, intellectuals do not want to look at the right place.

If you want to look for the right versions, i would suggest you to go through the basic tenants of Buddhism because it is the most popular and acceptable in the west. That would be enough to get at least the basics right. There is one more book available about these issues in the name of YOG VASISTHYA, which was originally written by sage Vasisthya, though its language may be some confusing to some people. The right answers is also available in islamic literature but i am not suggesting it because of present intruded perception. And for some valid circumstantial reasons, christianity did not go into such depths as to give enough clarity.

Or, you can ignore my suggestion altogether considering it a philosophically naivety and also me as a stupid religious person. The choice is very much yours. But, believe me, you would not get any right answers in the whole ambient of the western philosophy.

with love,
sanjay

zinnat

Thank you sanjay. I am still learning about this stuff. I am your student.

Believe me, I am quite confused about all of this. Western philosophy has gotten many things wrong. Science is one way to look at things but it is not the only way - nor do I believe a complete way. As much as I love science, I also detest it for its innate ability to strip me of my spirituality.

I have looked at some Buddhism - a more in depth look should do me the world of good.

I will certainly be taking a look at the book you suggested: YOG VASISTHYA. I understand your thoughts about islamic literature.

So true, in fact I received a distorted version from Christianity.

I think closing ones mind is a philosophically naivety. I am a religious person too, so that makes two of us. First I will take a look at YOG VASISTHYA - this sounds like the most interesting suggestion that you have made.

Our personal efforts can be used to make us better - to fear a fate imposed by a god is to fear something that we do not understand properly.

Peace, gratitude and kind regards,

Aaron.

I do not consider myself competent enough to have a student. Yes, i can provide some help in understanding the basics. I myself is a learner.

Yes, especially after Hume, because it became hugely bias towards one side instead of exploring the truth objectively.

Science is fine in its strict sense, which is the physical verification of philosophical premises. The problem arises only when a scientist tries to philosophize and start predicting, and then also claims that he is doing science. That is the actual problem. Science is not supposed to predict. Yes, it can explore and experiment what actually works on the ground and what not. Assumptions fall under the jurisdiction of philosophy, not science.

My problem with people like Stephan Hawkins is not that they put fantasy theories forth. Everyone has right to do that. The real issue is that they do so in the name of science which gives a whole wrong perception across that all that would become true one day for sure.

It answers the question which you asked in this thread. I think wiki pages would be enough. I am not an expert in Buddhism either. But i am still sure that If you still find any trouble there, perhaps i would be able to provide some help, at least in the basics.

My guess is that you can find this book online free of cost if you try.

I generally avoid suggesting this because of two reasons. Firstly is misrepresentation and secondly because of its limited availability in the English language.

Christianity is less distorted than incomplete. Moses talked about subtle and finer issues but Jews hugely misused him for vested interests. Jesus did not want to commit the same mistake again thus kept Christianity as simple as possible in layman’s terms, which was need of the hour also.

with love,
sanjay

Let’s say for argument’s sake, that the soul (IF there is indeed a soul) IS the seat of consciousness.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that there IS a thing such as reincarnation.

If this so-called soul does house our long-term memories, then it is not doing such a great job since we do not remember our past lives when our respective souls are again put into this thing we call a body.
Any investigation into past lives have never been proven and memories can be created and manipulated. Many of us would like nothing more than to have come from particular previous glorious lives.

He is right but perhaps not aware of the whole of mechanism.

Humans (and all other living beings also) are manifold entity instead of a single one. Put simply, there are two entities living together in this body, one outer and one inner. This inner entity is called by many different names like soul etc. Both of these entities have separate mind and bodies. Both of these minds are connected and influence each other. This is how everyone human’s mind gets his/her initial nature, which is the reflection of the mind of the soul. Then, the soul mind learns during this human lifespan through its human counterpart and carries those developments along with it after the death of human body and mind, which is the very purpose of a human life.

But, there is a catch here. As a thumb rule, there is only one way traffic of influence between the two minds, which is from inner to outer one. Inner mind has complete access to the outer mind but there is no such facility available to the outer mind. It cannot know what is stored in its counterpart. Means, soul mind knows all what human minds now but human mind does not know anything is in soul mind.

The memories of all past lives is stored in soul mind, not human mind. Yes, if human mind can somehow access to its counterpart, it also can know about past lives of soul. That may happen accidentally or by effort also but it is also a herculean task. The purpose of this arrangement is to make soul mind learns through the what human mind experiences during every human life. If human mind also knows about what has been happened in the past lives, it would never able to learn in true sense.

with love,
sanjay

Correct. Interestingly, philosophy takes science into account very often, but science takes philosophy into account very seldom.

encode_decode

I hope that they used extra virgin olive for that. Mmmm yummy.
I would like some steamed Chinese vegetables with that please.

A sandbox is used for “Getting to know you…getting to know all about you…” say the children.

The sand is universal and collective.

I am in complete agreement. I’ve said the same things with different word arrangements, but nobody here believes or understands my meanings in the slightest, well until now…you. It is a Hurculean task and possible, but with help to complete the transition. I never was able to transition without help, but I do not know where the help came from? Have you separated your inner mind from your outer mind?

zinnat

Who is he, zinnat?

I am sorry to say that most of this sounds more like Dissociative Identity Disorder to me than anything else, zinnat.

As for the below…

I have also heard of that explanation – I call it more of an excuse THAN actually not remembering.

But if that even could be true - I do not believe in reincarnation/past lives - though there was a time when I had my musings about it -it might just depend on the INDIVIDUAL him/her -self.

Some of us never learn from our past experiences In This Life. We do not take the time to reflect on them, try to learn from them, from our mistakes and their consequences. We simply are not interested in becoming more, learning to know ourselves. We choose not to examine our lives, our journey, to learn.
We are just plain lazy.

Perhaps that perspective in quotes is simply one gained and adapted from observations made in this Life.

Aside from that, I find no reason why remembering/knowing/understanding our past lives (if we had them) would be a stumbling block for more personal human evolution and growth. We would just have to work on it.

Tell me, how would that keep someone from learning. Give me an example.

Some of our lives are tragic and chaotic, we feel shame, disgrace, guilt but we can still learn from that, transcend that, come to understand that some things just do not have answers.
We may, in fact, come from out of past lives, but to me they are still a part of this one singular life.

The way I look at it, the perspective you used - that others believe - is just a way to sweep under the carpet the fact that we just cannot know many things for the most part – they are just too unexplainable – so we say something like that.

Perhaps Rilke’s words come home to roost here…

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I love these so-profound words of his.
Why do we always have to force the answers to fill in the gaps?

Reincarnation cannot be proven either way. But what might be proven to self is WHY we choose to accept something that there is just no evidence for…though we cannot help ourselves at times. It is a part of our default human natures.
Believing things does not necessarily make them So.

with love,
sanjay
[/quote]

with love,
sanjay