Soul

In many religions and philosophical systems, the word "soul" designates the self-aware inner essence of a living being, seen as the true locus for its sapience and identity. Souls are often described as immortal (though not necesairly eternal) thereby existing following death in an afterlife, albeit opinions vary wildly about what happens to the soul after the death of the body. Many see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it to have a material component, and some have even tried to establish the mass (or weight) of the soul.

Throughout history, the belief in the existence of souls has been a common feature in many of the world's religions and cultures, although some major religions (notably Buddhism) reject the notion of an eternal soul. Modern skeptics often cite phenomena such as brain lesions and Alzheimer's disease as supposed evidence that one's personality is material contrary to the philosophy of an immortal, unified soul.

Another fairly large segment of the population, not necessarily favoring organized religion, simply label themselves as "spiritual" and hold that both humans and all other living creatures have souls. Some further believe the entire universe has a cosmic soul as a spirit or unified consciousness. Such a conception of the soul may link with the idea of an existence before and after the present one, and one could consider such a soul as the spark, or the self, the "I" in existence that feels and lives life.

Other popular uses of the term include:

• Soulmates are people who one believes are destined to be found and become close to in this lifetime.
• Soul is a kind of modern music

Etymology

The modern English word soul derives from the Old English sáwol, sáwel, which itself comes from the Old High German sêula, sêla. The word is thus an adaptation by early missionaries to the Germanic peoples, in particular Ulfila, apostle to the Goths (4th century) of a native Germanic concept, coined as a translation of Greek ψυχή psychē "life, spirit, consciousness".

Definition

The concept of a distinct animating force in human beings that was synomous with one's life-force, and essential identity (often called a "spirit" or "soul"), has been a pervasive human belief across cultures since the dawn of time. Many cultures embraced notions of animism, shamanism, and pantheism, which postulated various ideas of multiple souls/spirits and/or a universal soul/spirits found in nature. Over time, philosophical reflection on the nature of the soul, spirit, and their relationship to material world, became more refined and sophisticated. In particular, the ancient Greek philosophers, for example, eventually distinguished between soul and spirit.

The Greek word ψυχή psychē ("life, spirit, consciousness") is derived from a verb "to cool, to blow" and hence refers to the vital breath, the animating principle in man and animals, as opposed to σῶμα "body". It could refer to a ghost or spirit of the dead in Homer, and to a more philosophical notion of an immortal and immaterial essence left over at death since Pindar. Latin anima figured as a translation of ψυχή since Terence. It occurs juxtaposed to σῶμα}} e.g. in Matthew 10:28:

KJV "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

In the Septuagint, ψυχή translates Hebrew נפש nephesh, meaning "life, vital breath", in English variously translated as "soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion"; e.g. in Genesis 1:20. Paul of Tarsus used ψυχή and πνευμα]] specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש nephesh and רוח ruah (also in LXX, e.g. Genesis 1:2 וְר֣וּחַ[[אֱלֹהִ֔ים = πνευμα θεου = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God").

Thus, the ancient Greeks used the same word for 'alive' as for 'ensouled' suggesting that "aliveness" and the soul were conceptually linked.

Pindar in saying that the soul sleeps whilst the limbs are active, but when man is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals in many a dream "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near".

Erwin Rohde writes that the early pre-Pythagorean belief was that the soul had no life when it departed from the body, and retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body.

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, whilst Plato points up to the heavens showing his belief in the ultimate truth.

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

1. the logos (mind, nous, superego, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, ego, or spiritedness)
3. the pathos (appetitive, id, or carnal)

Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The logos equates to the mind (superego). It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive (ego), that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris — the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The pathos equates to the appetite (id) that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle's view, is an actuality of a living body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first actuality" of a naturally organized body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul. Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; the De Anima (On the Soul) provides a good place to start to gain more understanding of his views.

There is on-going debate about Aristotle's views regarding the immortality of the human soul; however, Aristotle makes it clear towards the end of his De Anima that he does believe that the intellect, which he considers to be a part of the soul, is eternal and separable from the body.

Aristotle also believed that there were four parts, or powers, of the soul: the calculative part, the scientific part on the rational side used for making decisions and the desiderative part and the vegetative part on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs.-

Religious views

Bahá'í beliefs

Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence previous to their life here on earth. The soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world. A human being spends nine months in the womb in preparation for entry into this physical life. During that nine-month period, the fetus acquires the physical tools (e.g., eyes, limbs, and so forth) necessary for existence in this world. Similarly, this physical world is like a womb for entry into the spiritual world. Our time here is thus a period of preparation during which we are to acquire the spiritual and intellectual tools necessary for life in the next world. The crucial difference is that, whereas physical development in the mother's womb is involuntary, spiritual and intellectual development in this world depends strictly on conscious individual effort.

Christian beliefs

Christians believe that when people die their souls will be judged by God, who sees all the wrong and right that they have done during their lives. If they have repented of their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, they will inherit eternal life in Heaven and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. Most Christians believe that if one has not repented of his sins and not accepted Jesus Christ, he will go to Hell, and suffer eternal torment and separation from God. This is the teaching of most evangelical, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, which constitute the majority of Christianity, though there are some Christians that believe the soul will be destroyed in hell, instead of suffering eternally.

Some Christians regard the soul as the immortal essence of a human - the seat or locus of human will, understanding, and personality - and that after death, God either rewards or punishes the soul. Different groups dispute whether this reward/punishment depends upon doing good deeds, or merely upon believing in God and in Jesus.

Other Christians reject the idea of the immortality of the soul, citing the Apostles Creed's reference to the "resurrection of the body" (the Greek word for body is soma, which implies the whole person, not sarx, the term for flesh or corpse). They consider the soul (Greek pnema - air, wind, breath) to be the life force, which ends in death and is restored in the resurrection. Theologian Frederick Buechner sums up this position in his 1973 book Whistling in the Dark: "...we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are given our lives back again by God (i.e., resurrected) just as we were given them by God in the first place."

Augustine, one of the most influential early Christian thinkers, described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body". The apostle Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control. Philosopher Anthony Quinton said the soul is a "series of mental states connected by continuity of character and memory, [and] is the essential constituent of personality. The soul, therefore, is not only logically distinct from any particular human body with which it is associated; it is also what a person is". Richard Swinburne, a Christian philosopher of religion at Oxford University, wrote that "it is a frequent criticism of substance dualism that dualists cannot say what souls are.... Souls are immaterial subjects of mental properties. They have sensations and thoughts, desires and beliefs, and perform intentional actions. Souls are essential parts of human beings..."

The origin of the soul has provided a sometimes vexing question in Christianity; the major theories put forward include creationism, traducianism and pre-existence. According to creationism, each individual soul is created directly by God, either at the moment of conception, or some later time (identical twins arise several cell divisions after conception, but no one would deny that they have whole souls). According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the pre-existence theory the soul exists before the moment of conception.

Roman Catholic beliefs:

• The present Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the soul as "the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God's image: 'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in man."
• The soul is the center of the human will, intellect (or mind), and imagination (or memory), and the source of all free human acts, although good acts are aided by God's grace.
• Every human being receives a soul at the moment of conception, and has rights and dignity equal to persons of further development, including the right to life.
• At the moment of death, the soul goes either to Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell. Purgatory is a place of atonement for sins that one goes through to pay the temporal punishment for post-baptismal sins that have not been atoned for by sufferings during one's earthly life. This is distinct from the atonement for the eternal punishment due to sin which was affected by Christ's suffering and death.
• The Catholic Church teaches the creationist view of the origin of the soul: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God." -Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 382.

Other Christian beliefs:

• Eastern Orthodox views are very similar to Catholic views.
• Protestants generally believe both in the soul's existence but do not generally believe in Purgatory. Protestant views on other issues are more varied.
• A few Christian groups do not believe in the soul, and hold that people cease to exist, both mind and body, at death; they claim however, that God will recreate the minds and bodies of believers in Jesus at some future time, the "end of the world."[3]
• Another minority of Christians believe in the soul, but do not regard it as inherently immortal. This minority also believes the life of Christ brings immortality, but only to believers.^{[citation needed]}

• The soul sleep theory states that the soul goes to "sleep" at the time of death, and stays in this quiescent state until the last judgment.
• The "absent from the body, present with the Lord" theory states that the soul at the point of death, immediately becomes present at the end of time, without experiencing any time passing between.
• Swedenborgianism teaches that each person's soul is created by the Lord at the same time as the physical body is developed, that the soul is the person himself or herself, and that the soul is eternal, and has an eternal spiritual body, that is substantial without being material. After the death of the body, the person becomes immediately conscious in the spiritual world.
• Some minorities believe that a soul is what keeps the spirit alive (thinking and feeling) and when the soul is destroyed on death leaving the spirit dormant.
• Seventh-Day Adventists believe that the main definition of the term "Soul" is a combination of Spirit (breath of life) and body, defying the view that the soul has a consciousness or sentient existence of its own, (see soul sleep). They affirm this through Genesis 2:7 "And (God) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
• Latter-day Saints (Mormons) believe that the soul is the union of a spirit, which was previously created by God, and a body, which is formed by physical conception later.
• Jehovah's Witnesses view the Hebrew word NePHeSH in its literal concrete meaning of breath, making a person who is animated by the spirit of God into a living BREATHER, rather than a body containing an invisible entity such as the majority concept of Soul. Spirit is seen to be anything powerful and invisible symbolized by the Hebrew word RuaCH which has the literal meaning of wind. Thus Soul is used by them to mean a person rather than an invisible core entity associated with a spirit or a force, which leaves the body at or after death. (Gen.2:7; Ezek.18:4, KJV). When a person dies his Soul leaves him meaning that he has stopped breathing and his fate for any future existence rests solely with God who they believe has the power to re-create the whole person and restore their existence. This is in line with their belief that Hell represents the grave and the possibility of eternal death for unbelievers rather than eternal torment. See Strong's Concordance under "soul", with Biblical meaning that animals and people are souls, that souls are not immortal, but die; soul means the person; life as a person, etc.

Some traditional Christians argue that the Bible teaches the survival of a conscious self after death. They interpret this as an intermediate state, before the deceased unite with their Resurrection bodies and restore the psychosomatic unity that existed from conception, and which death disrupts. Amongst others these Christians point out:

• Rachel's death in Genesis 35:18 equates with her soul (Hebrew nephesh) departing. And when Elijah prays in 1 Kings 17:21 for the return of a widow's boy to life, he entreats, "O Lord my God, I pray you, let this child's nephesh come into him again". So death meant that something called nephesh (or "soul") became separated from the body, and life could return when this soul returned.
• Psalm 31:9

"Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief." The soul and body are noted as separate. Psalm 63:1 "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." Here the body and soul are noted as separate again. Micah 6:7 "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Once again, the soul and body are noted separate.

• Jesus told the repentant thief on the cross, "I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Interpretation: that very day, the thief will in a conscious way have fellowship with Christ in Paradise, despite the apparent destruction of his body. According to the apostle Peter, Jesus descended (upon His death) into Hades, which could not hold Him, and led the souls of the righteous dead (including the thief on the cross) which were imprisoned in Paradise (a compartment of Hades, which was reserved for those righteous dead) out of captivity, and "led captivity captive" (thus emptying Paradise, according to the apostle Paul), who also claimed that Jesus was King not only by birth, but "by nature of an indestructible life" (in the letter to the Hebrews, if it was written by Paul). Afterwards, in John's vision of Revelation, Jesus appeared to John and claimed that He had "the keys of Hades".
• Jesus' account of the rich man and Lazarus, who were both still conscious at the same time as the rich man's brothers, who lived on. This scenario preceded Jesus taking the souls of Paradise with Him to heaven, therefore Lazarus remains in Paradise. The rich man stood in another compartment of Sheol where he could see Lazarus, but could never cross over. The patriarch Abraham comforted Lazarus, whereas the rich man remained in torment. Jesus said, "Truly, truly, how difficult it is for a rich man to enter into Heaven," (although Lazarus was not there yet).
• In Matthew 10:28 "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Body and Soul are separate.
• In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 "May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Body and Soul are separate as well.
• In Matthew 22:31b-32 Jesus says, "...have you not read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living." (NRSV), suggesting the patriarchs are still "living" in some form.
• In Luke 20:38 Jesus said, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." To God everyone is alive, therefore confirming an afterlife.
• In Luke 9:27, Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God." Therefore confirming that the apostles did not perish but lived an afterlife.
• In John 8:51 Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." Therefore confirming an afterlife.
• In Ecclesiastes 12:7 it says, "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it."

St. Thomas Aquinas understood the soul as the first principle, or act, of the body. However, his epistemological theory required that, since the intellectual soul is capable of knowing all material things, and since in order to know a material thing there must be no material thing within it, the soul was definitely not corporeal. Therefore, the soul had an operation separate from the body and therefore could subsist without the body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings was subsistent and was not made up of matter and form, it could not be destroyed in any natural process. The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Thomas's elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the Summa Theologica.

Hindu beliefs

In Hinduism, the Sanskrit words most closely corresponding to soul are "Jiva", meaning the individual soul or personality, and "Atman", which can also mean soul or even divinity (Brahman). The Atman is seen as Brahman within us. Hinduism contains many variant beliefs on the origin, purpose, and fate of the soul. For example, advaita (non-dualism) accords the soul union with Brahman, (the absolute), in eventuality or in pre-existing fact. Dvaita (dualism) rejects this, instead identifying the soul as a different and incompatible substance.

The Bhagavad Gita, one of the most significant puranic scriptures, refers to the spiritual body or soul as Purusha (see also Sankhya philosophy). The Purusha is part and parcel of God, is unchanging (is never born and never dies), is indestructible, and, though essentially indivisible, can be described as having three characteristics:(i)Sat (truth or existence),(ii)Chit (consciousness or knowledge), and (iii)Ananda (bliss).

In Surat Shabda Yoga, the soul is considered to be an exact replica and spark of the Divine. The purpose of Surat Shabd Yoga is to realize one’s True Self as soul (Self-Realisation), True Essence (Spirit-Realisation) and True Divinity (God-Realisation) while living in the physical body.

Islamic beliefs

The Qur'an does not explain much about the concept of the soul and instead says:” The Spirit (cometh) by command of my Lord: of knowledge it is only a little that is communicated to you, (O men!)"[4]. So little information is available in that regard from Islam.

According to few verses from Qur'an though the following information can be deduced: In part 15 verse 29, the creation of man involves Allah or an Angel of Allah "breathing" a soul into him. This intangible part of an individual's existence is "pure" at birth and has the potential of growing and achieving nearness to God if the person leads a righteous life. At death the person's soul transitions to an eternal afterlife of bliss, peace and unending spiritual growth (Qur’an 66:8, 39:20). This transition can be pleasant (Heaven) or unpleasant (Hell) depending on the degree to which a person has developed or destroyed his or her soul during life (Qur’an 91:7-10).

Generally, it is believed that all living beings are compromised of two aspects during their existence: The physical (being the body) and the non-physical (being the soul). The non-physical aspect, namely the soul, is one's soul-related activities like his/her feelings and emotions, thoughts, conscious and sub-conscious desires and objectives. While the body and its physical actions serve as a “reflection” of one’s soul, whether it was good or evil, and thus "confirms" the extent of such intentions [5]. For further clarification, another example can be found in the Qur'an where Allah says that Prophet Muhammad’s followers have their noble personalities and characteristics “written” and shown on their faces [6].

Jainist beliefs

According to Jainism, Soul (jiva) exists as a reality, having a separate existence from the body that houses it. Every living being – be it a human or a plant or a bacterium – has a soul and has a capacity to experience pain and pleasure. The soul (Jiva) is differentiated from non-soul or non-living reality (ajiva) that includes matter, time, space, principle of motion and principle of rest.

As realization of the soul and its salvation are the highest objective to be attained, most of the Jaina texts deal with various aspects of the soul i.e. its qualities, attributes, bondage, interaction with other elements, salvation etc. The soul is described as being without taste, colour and cannot be perceived by the five senses. Consciousness is its chief attribute. To know the soul is to be free of any gender and not bound by any dimensions of shape and size. Hence the soul, according to Jainism, is indestructible and permanent from the point of view of substance. It is temporary and ever changing from the point of view of its modes. The soul continuously undergoes modifications as per the karma it attracts and hence reincarnates in the following four states of existence - 1) as a Demi-God in Heaven, or 2) as a tormented soul in Hell, or 3) as a Human being on Continents , or 4) as an Animal, or a Plant, or as a Micro-organism.

The soul is always found to be in bondage (with its karmas) since the beginingless time and hence continuously undergoes the cycle of birth and death in these four states of existence until it attains liberation.

The Jaina beliefs on the soul can be summarized as under :-The souls are classified as – mundane which are non liberated souls and liberated souls who have achieved Godhood by burning their karmas. Mundane souls are further classified on the basis of evolution of senses and faculties that it possesses. E.g., humans are classified as five sense souls and Plants and Microbes are classified as single-sensed souls.Consciousness characterized by Perception and Knowledge is the intrinsic quality of a Soul.In all there are 8.4 million species of life forms in four states of existence in which a soul transmigrates an a continuous cycle until it achieves salvation. A Supreme Being as a creator and operator of this universe does not exist. A soul is the master of its own destiny. It is its own lord. The suffering and liberation of the soul are not dependent on any divine grace. It attains salvation by its own efforts.Every soul has the capacity to achieve Godhood in its human birth. This is achieved by burning the accumulated Karmas by following complete non-violence and non-attachment.Liberation is permanent and irreversible. The liberated soul which is formless and incorporeal in nature experiences infinite knowledge, omniscience, infinite power and infinite bliss after liberation. Even after liberation and attainment of Godhood, the soul does not merge into any entity (as in other philosophies), but maintains its individuality.

Jewish beliefs

Jewish views of the soul begin with the book of Genesis, in which verse 2:7 states, "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." (New JPS)

The Torah offers no systematic definition of a soul but various descriptions of the soul exist in classical rabbinic literature.

Saadia Gaon, in his Emunoth ve-Deoth 6:3, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul. He held that the soul comprises that part of a person's mind that constitutes physical desire, emotion, and thought.

Maimonides, in his The Guide to the Perplexed, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul through the lens of neo-Aristotelian philosophy, and viewed the soul as a person's developed intellect, which has no substance.

Kabbalah (esoteric Jewish mysticism) saw the soul as having three elements: the nephesh, ru'ah, and neshamah. A common way of explaining these three parts follows:

• Nephesh - The part that is alive and signifies that which is vital in man: it feels hunger, hates, loves, loathes, weeps, and most importantly, can die (can depart from the body, but can sometimes come back in again). The nephesh is in all humans and enters the body at birth when the body first takes a breath. Animals also have a nephesh (they breathe), but plants do not. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. (derived from Old Testament Theology, by Gerhard von Rad)

The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but are slowly created over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually:

• Ruach - the middle soul, or spirit. It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. In modern parlance, it equates to psyche or ego-personality.

• Neshamah - the higher soul, Higher Self or super-soul. This distinguishes man from all other life forms. It relates to the intellect, and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. This part of the soul is provided both to Jew and non-Jew alike at birth. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God. In the Zohar, after death Nefesh disintegrates, Ruach is sent to a sort of intermediate zone where it is submitted to purification and enters in "temporary paradise", while Neshamah returns to the source, the world of Platonic ideas, where it enjoys "the kiss of the beloved". Supposedly after resurrection, Ruach and Neshamah, soul and spirit re-unite in a permanently transmuted state of being.

The Raaya Meheimna, a Kabbalistic tractate always published with the Zohar, posits two more parts of the human soul, the chayyah and yehidah. Gershom Scholem wrote that these "were considered to represent the sublimest levels of intuitive cognition, and to be within the grasp of only a few chosen individuals":

• Chayyah - The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself.

• Yehidah - the highest plane of the soul, in which one can achieve as full a union with God as is possible.

Extra soul states

Both Rabbinic and kabbalistic works also posit a few additional, non-permanent states to the soul that people can develop on certain occasions. These extra souls, or extra states of the soul, play no part in any afterlife scheme, but are mentioned for completeness.

• Ruach HaKodesh - a state of the soul that makes prophecy possible. Since the age of classical prophecy passed, no one receives the soul of prophecy any longer.

• Neshamah Yeseira - The supplemental soul that a Jew experiences on Shabbat. It makes possible an enhanced spiritual enjoyment of the day. This exists only while one observes Shabbat; it can be lost and gained depending on one's observance.

• Neshamah Kedosha - Provided to Jews at the age of majority (13 for boys, 12 for girls), and related to the study and fulfillment of the Torah commandments. It exists only when one studies and follows Torah; it can be lost and gained depending on one's study and observance.

Sikh Belief

Sikhism considers SOUL (atma) to be part of Universal Soul, which is GOD (Parmatma). Various hymns are cited from the holy book "Aad Guru Granth Sahib" (AGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God." The same concept is repeated at various pages of the AGGS. For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love." and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."

Daoist View

Most Daoist schools believe that every individual has more than one soul (or the soul can be separated into different parts) and the souls are constantly transforming themselves. Some believe there are at least three souls for every person: one soul coming from one's father, one from one's mother, and one primordial soul. An important part of spiritual practice for some Taoist schools is to harmonize/integrate those three souls.

Some other schools believe there are ten souls for each person: three from heaven, seven from earth.

An Ancient Cross-Cultural Belief

In Egyptian Mythology, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual.

These are the two parts which the ancient Chinese believed constitute every person's soul. The p‘o is the visible personality indissolubly attached to the body, while the hun is its more ethereal complement also interpenetrating the body, but not of necessity always tied to it. The hun in its wanderings may be either visible or invisible; if the former, it appears in the guise of its original body, which actually may be far away lying in a trance-like state tenanted by the p‘o. And not only is the body duplicated under these conditions, but also the garments that clothe it. Should the hun stay away permanently, death results.

Contrary Ideas

Buddhist beliefs

Buddhism teaches that all things are impermanent, in a constant state of flux; all is transient, and no abiding state exists by itself. This applies to humanity, as much as to anything else in the cosmos; thus, there is no unchanging and abiding self. Our sense of "I" or "me" is simply a sense, belonging to the ever-changing entity, that (conventionally speaking) is us, our body, and mind. This expresses in essence the Buddhist principle of anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman).

Buddhist teaching holds that the delusion of a permanent, abiding self is one of the main root causes for human conflict. They add that understanding of anatta (or "not-self or no soul") provides an accurate description of the human condition, and that this understanding allows "us" to go beyond "our" mundane desires. Buddhists can speak in conventional terms of the "self" as a matter of convenience, but only under the conviction that ultimately "we" are changing "entities". In death, the body and mind disintegrate; if the disintegrating mind is still in the grip of delusion, it will cause the continuity of the consciousness to bounce back an arising mind to an awaiting being, that is, a fetus developing the ability to harbor consciousness.

However, there are scholars, such as Shirō Matsumoto, who have noted a curious development in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, stemming from the Cittamatra and Vijnanavada schools in India: although this school of thought denies the permanent personal selfhood, it affirms concepts such as Buddha-nature, Tathagatagarbha, Rigpa, or "original nature". Matsumoto argues that these concepts constitute a non- or trans-personal self, and almost equate in meaning to the Hindu concept of Atman, although they differ in that Buddha-nature does not incarnate.

In some Mahayana Buddhist schools, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, the view is that there are 3 minds: Very-Subtle-Mind, which isn't disintegrated in incarnation-death; Subtle-Mind, which is disintegrated in death, and is "dreaming-mind" or "unconscious-mind"; and Gross-Mind. Gross-Mind doesn't exist when one is sleeping, so it is more impermanent even than Subtle-Mind, which doesn't exist in death. Very-Subtle-Mind, however, does continue, and when it "catches on" or coincides with phenomena again, a new Subtle-Mind emerges, with its own personality/assumptions/habits and that someone/entity experiences the karma on that continuum that is ripening then.

One should note the polarity in Tibetan Buddhism between shes-pa (the principle of consciousness) and rig-pa (pure consciousness equal to Buddha-nature). The concept of a person as a tulku provides even more controversy. A tulku has, due to heroic austerities and esoteric training (or due to innate talent combined with great subtle-mind commitment in the moment of death), achieved the goal of transferring personal "identity" (or nature/commitment) from one rebirth to the next (for instance, Tibetans consider the Dalai Lama a tulku). The mechanics behind this work as follows: although Buddha-nature does not incarnate, the individual self comprises skandhas, or components, that undergo rebirth. For an ordinary person, skandhas cohere in a way that dissolves upon the person's death. So, elements of the transformed personality re-incarnate, but they lose the unity that constitutes personal selfhood for a specific person. In the case of tulkus, however, they supposedly achieve sufficient "crystallization" of skandhas in such a manner that the skandhas do not entirely "disentangle" upon the tulku's death; rather, a directed reincarnation occurs. In this new birth, the tulku possesses a continuity of personal identity/commitment, rooted in the fact that the consciousness or shes-pa (which equates to a type of skandha called vijnana) has not dissolved after death, but has sufficient durability to survive in repeated births. Since, however, subtle-mind emerges in incarnation, and gross-mind emerges in periods of sufficient awareness within some incarnations, there isn't really any contradiction: very-subtle-mind's original nature, that is irreducible mind / clarity whose function is knowing, doesn't have any "body", and the coarser minds that emerge "on" it while it drifts/wanders/dreams aren't continuous. Any continuity of awareness achieved by tulku is simply a greater continuity than is achieved by/in a normal incarnation, as it continues across several, is only a difference of degree.

Non-religious views

Atheists and humanists do not necessarily accept the existence of a soul. In fact, the majority of self-proclaimed atheists do not believe in a soul, more of simply human consciousness.

Research on the concept of the soul

In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson took note that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Wilson suggested that biologists need to investigate how human genes predispose people to believe in a soul.

Daniel Dennett has championed the idea that the human survival strategy depends heavily on adoption of the intentional stance, a behavioral strategy that predicts the actions of others based on the expectation that they have a mind like one's own. Mirror neurons in brain regions such as Broca's area may facilitate this behavioral strategy. The intentional stance, Dennett suggests, has proven so successful that people tend to apply it to all aspects of human experience, thus leading to animism and to other conceptualizations of soul.

A counterargument (from Keith Sutherland, among others) points out that just because the brain has regions that deal with colour and other aspects of vision, one does not argue that the genes produce an area to promote the illusion of a blue sky. By analogy, if there is a 'God sense' just as there is a sense of vision, it seems to argue for the objective existence of an extra-mundane reality.

During the late 19th and first half 20th century, researchers attempted to weigh people who were known to be dying, and record their weight accurately at the time of death. As an example, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, in the early 1900s, sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material and measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have had little if any scientific merit, and although MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's weight. Experiments such as MacDougall's have not been repeated with current precision equipment and research tools, and snopes.com concludes of one researcher that:

"MacDougall's results were flawed because the methodology used to harvest them was suspect, the sample size far too small, and the ability to measure changes in weight imprecise. For this reason, credence should not be given to the idea his experiments proved something, let alone that they measured the weight of the soul as 21 grams. His postulations on this topic are a curiosity, but nothing more."

Researchers, most notably Ian Stevenson and Brian Weiss have studied reports of children talking about past-life experiences. Any evidence that these experiences were in fact real would require a change in scientific understanding of the mind or would support some notions of the soul.

In recent decades, much research has been done in near-death experiences, which are held by many as evidence for the existence of a soul and afterlife.

Science and medicine seek naturalistic accounts of the observable natural world. This stance is known as methodological naturalism. From the perspective of materialism, for the soul to exist it would have to manifest as a form of energy mediated by a force. Only four forces have been experimentally confirmed to exist (strong interaction, weak interaction, electromagnetism and gravitation). The only force which operates relevantly at the human scale is electromagnetism. This force is fully understood and described by Quantum Electrodynamics and Special Relativity. Any additional force acting upon humans or emanating from the mind would have long ago been detected in laboratories as an aberration of the predictable behaviour of electromagnetism - and this has never been detected. Much of scientific study relating to the soul has been involved in investigating the soul as a human belief or as concept that shapes cognition and understanding of the world (see Memetics), rather than as an entity in and of itself.

When modern scientists speak of the soul outside of this cultural and psychological context, it is generally as a poetic synonym for mind. Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis, for example, has the subtitle, "The scientific search for the soul." Crick holds the position that one can learn everything knowable about the human soul by studying the workings of the human brain. Depending on one's belief regarding the relationship between the soul and the mind, then, the findings of neuroscience may be relevant to one's understanding of the soul.

An oft-encountered analogy is that the brain is to the mind as computer hardware is to computer software. The idea of the mind as software has led some scientists to use the word "soul" to emphasize their belief that the human mind has powers beyond or at least qualitatively different from what artificial software can do. Roger Penrose expounds this position in The Emperor's New Mind. He posits that the mind is in fact not like a computer as generally understood, but rather a quantum computer, that can do things impossible on a classical computer, such as decide the halting problem. Some have located the soul in this possible difference between the mind and a classical computer.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Batchelor, Stephen. Buddhism Without Belief Riverhead Trade, 1998. ISBN 978-1573226561
• Bremmer, Jan. "The Early Greek Concept of the Soul" Princeton University Press, 1983. ISBN 978-0691101903
• Cornford, Francis, M. "Greek Religious Thought" Ams Pr Inc, 1979. ISBN 978-0404017347
• McGraw, John J. Brain & Belief: An Exploration of the Human Soul Aegis Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0974764504
• Milbourne, Christopher. Search for the Soul Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, 1979. ISBN 978-0690017601
• Rohde, Erwin. Psyche Routledge, 2000. ISBN 978-0415225632
• Swinburne, Richard. The Evolution of the Soul Oxford University Press, 1997 ISBN 978-0198236986
• Stevenson, Ian. Reincarnation and Biology : A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Praeger Publishers, 1997. ISBN 978-0275952839
• Stevenson, Ian "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged." University Press of Virginia, 1980. ISBN 978-0813908724

External links

• A community website for people to discuss Spiritual topicswww.spiritualnectar.com
• A Glimpse into the Human Soul An insightful article by Vivek Sharma (Editor: The Spiritual)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Ancient Theories of the Soul
• The soul in Judaism at Chabad.org
• The Old Testament Concept of the Soul by Heinrich J. Vogel (Christian)

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