Descartes gave the best answer: the soul is the conscious, thinking, non-physical self. Glad to see a philosophical approach to traditionally religious questions. Great article!
Ah, this is very close to my own answer, more succinct, without the elaboration that I have supplied, except that I am calling it the *sub*conscious, an activity that *underlies* conscious thought.
With the soul you start touching on religion. The big religion in the Classical era was the Eleusinian Mystery religion. We now have a breakthrough. Brian C. Muraresku and Carl A.P. Ruck on YouTube showing what was in the small cup initiates drank from in this rite. One of the biggest unknowns in history. Seek and yea shall find.
The mysteries are fascinating! And there were of course quite a few different belief systems. Of course the ancients weren't all in agreement (the same for us) - but I think you are very right to bring up the Eleusinians!
I think of the "soul" as that sense that makes us respond to the ineffable. I do not limit the existance of "soul" to the human race only. It is that unspoken recognition of understanding, of exaultation. i have observed what I believe are similar reactions in animals, and there is some study of plants reacting to human touch or emotion. We have been so steeped in the ides that humanity is the apex of creation that we impair our own abilities of recognition of those abilities in the rest of creation. we have, though, invented a word to preclude admitting these things: anthromorphism.
Agree...we believe that humanity is somehow supreme in the Universe! Protagoras, the Sophist philosopher said: "Man is the measure of all things." He was wrong.
Well pointed out. We humans have a tendency to be very solipsistic... I think the centuries of thinking the sun literally went around us is a perfect example. Honestly, I think we still think we have a greater impact than we actually do...
This is also true as seen in the book of Genesis. All living things were called in Hebrew a "Nephesh," which translates as soul. Previous to this translation, the ancient Greeks called the soul, a "Hylic." Both Hylic and Nephesh referes to the animalistic nature of both man and animals- the impulsive or subconscious thoughts.
The Soul is the observation of what goes on around me, what I hear is—or might be—happening somewhere else.
And the “quiet eureka moment” that says… “ That’s me. That is what i love, what i hate, that’s what I ( however unconsciously) I feel inside me and take with me….wherever I go and whatever I do.
It is a bit like the architecture of a snowflake.
No two are the same.
Not one of them is better than the other.
Each of them did not chose their unique shape.
Each of them wander through the sky and settle where the wind takes them.
And each will exist for only as long as the Sun allows.
They will then return to the water from which they were born
I don't think I can add anything that you don't already know. But in the most basic and straight forward answer, the soul is just a Greek word for Psyche. I do agree with the argument made. The soul is a slave to its own desires. So the explanation of chemical reactions makes sense to me. Going a little deeper, I think if the soul simular to discussions found about AI. We are wire and programmed a specific way, that we call in the western thought as individuality and will.
Wonderful question! One of the most important questions! What, if anything, is the Soul?
If only I knew… I would proclaim:
SOUL: Me.
SOUL: Me? A spiritual being? An entity being spiritual? A container of Spirit? Am I an individuated radiated ray of Spirit? Am I a projected emanation of Spirit? Am I a Being or when I’m projected do I become a Be-ing? Am I a quantity of Spirit temporarily encased in the physical, subtle, astral, and causal bodies?
SOUL: Am I the perceiver? Am I the thinker? Am I the observer? Am I the knower? Or am I the known? Can I animate life? Can I animate a mind? Can I animate a body? Am I inside? Am I outside? Am I single? Am I whole? Am I creator, preserver, or destroyer? Or am I just perfect :) ?
What is a thing? A thing is a form. Of energy. Vibration. Frequency. Innate Force directs the energy. Innate Intelligence forms the thing. Life is a no-thing. But Life-Force becomes a thing and forms other things.
In answer to your glorious question, the Soul isn’t a thing which makes it difficult to describe in word containers. It’s a no-thing that has the potential for every-thing and to create and experience every-thing or remain in no-thing.
What is a no-thing? A no-thing 'exists' in another vibratory realm or dimension. According to Vedic knowledge, the Soul is ever-existing, I guess, because it exists outside space, time and energy. It is ever-conscious because, I guess, it is a piece of consciousness itself. If is ever-new Joy or Bliss, I guess because it is Spirit. It is a no-thing that is encased in vibrational fields and inSPIRes life in a human being, or a Soul BE-ing human.
Spirit (supreme, unmanifested, absolute Spirit) is ONE manifesting as the Living Trinity (God the Father, Christ Consciousness, Holy Ghost) as THE no-thing that has the potential for every-thing, which is why God is always here, now. Vibrationally as the Holy Ghost. Unless we pretend... To not know who we are or what we are. God's in disguise?
So love yourself as you are... do not hate yourself or criticize yourself - be kind to yourSelf - Self love will become Self-esteem, then Self-awakening will grow into Self-realization. By learning to love, we can knowingly be at-one with ourSelves (God with-in) and ultimately, God. Or I want my money back :). Godspeed >
It is obvious that the idea of Soul has almost been eradicated in our materialistic, scientific era. Early civilizations certainly described and believed in the soul: Ka (Egyptian), Hun (Chinese) and Psyche (Greek). Although the Soul (psyche) was the life and spirit of the body generally understood in Greek society until the end of the Archaic era, it seems that some philosophers saw it (the soul) as the emotional rather than rational, a non rational intuition. This most probably came from contact with shamanism and Pythagorus and Empedocles were two early philosophers who thought that the soul remains after death. Following the ideas of Socrates, Plato firmly believed in the immortality of the soul; however, Aristotle showed more interest in how the soul related to the body. He thought that what humans have in common survives death, not the individual. Then, we see the materialism of the Greek and Roman Stoics where there was really no room for the immortal soul, being more interested in free will and brotherhood. As Epictetus said: “You should not consider your own interests as distinct from those of others." However, Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, was indeed concerned with the soul which he said survived death. Lucretius, a very influential Roman, did not believe in the immortal, eternal soul and thought that personal identity is of no value since nothing of the self remains after death. While we see a rather "worldly" attitude in the first 3 centuries C.E. (aside from Jewish and Christian thought), a most influential thinker was the Greek mystic Plotinus who argued for the indivisibility of the soul which exists in 3 levels (sensory, intellectual and mystical) at any given time. His views of the soul's reconnection with God in the afterlife (as well as his elaboration on Plato's thesis) greatly influenced not only Christian authors, but also Eastern and Western Christianity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The idea of soul being immaterial and immortal remained in the West until the Age of Enlightenment when Rene Descartes discounted the idea that soul could be used to explain life. At the end of the 17th Century, thinker John Locke produced “The Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. From this time on, the Western world would see the mind as a natural system rather than an immaterial substance. The rise of science saw the brain/mind theory take centre stage (the exception being in religion) and ideas of mind and consciousness became popular. Finally, the idea of the unified “self” (personal identity) took a place in philosophic concepts. And although it became important in existentialism and humanism where the “true, inner self” was to be discovered, it also dropped out of popularity in the mid 20th C. becoming a psychological study of one's fragmented identity: self discovery, self confidence, self worth, self actualization etc. Now, notions of “identity” have come to the fore; there can be no unified “self” as in the soul concept of Ancient Greece where psyche was a source of unity.
My personal experiences and studies affirm the concept of Soul is correct–we are spiritual beings having come to this dimension for the progression of the Soul. Wordsworth said it in these beautiful lines:
Thanks. Yes, it is not just preferable, but imperative in my opinion. We have ceased to understand what it means to be human and refuse to see that our "essence" is far more important than our persona. It is detrimental to ourselves and our children not to understand that we are created spiritual beings, not some accident of biological evolution. Unfortunately, we've been on the wrong track for so long, I wonder if we will ever get back to our *true* nature...
IMO, the "soul" is an aspect of the subconscious mind. It is a brain activity, functionally similar to other brain activities like vision or hearing, in that its workings are opaque to the conscious part of our minds. Because of this opacity, its nature is mostly misinterpreted, and attempts are made to give it magical or mystical attributes out of superstitious misunderstanding about its true nature. I have direct, personal experience in communicating with my own subconscious. It gives me information mostly in mental images, often nearly literal pictures, and sometimes as feelings. I get an image of the portal through which this information passes as being a small, dark pool of water of great depth, in a small forest clearing, so deep such that there is no way I can reach into it and touch anything. I can ask it questions, and often do, and at some arbitrarily later time, it will give me an answer, or it will induce me to seek out more information. Sometimes, it will even give me a packeted burst of information containing a complete answer and more, in reply to my question, or even a solution to a problem that I have been pondering. It is *NOT* magic, it is not anything outside of myself, it is not any external intelligence, It is my own mind, even though it does indeed seem like something that is 'other' and not actually me. It has told me explicitly that this is so. The "soul" is an intrinsic part (subconscious) of your own mind, which is a phenomenon caused by the activity of your own brain, and nothing at all outside of this. Period. Individual perceptions of this mental phenomenon will be highly variable, and will depend significantly on individual personality factors.
Voltaire -- a stupendous classicist -- nailed it in *The Philosophical Dictionary* (published in French in 1764). He begins the entry for soul as follows: "This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown principle of known effects that we feel in us. The word soul corresponds to the Latin anima, to the Greek psyche, to the term of which all nations have made use to express what they did not understand any better than we do."
And there's much more semiserious fun/hard truths after that! For example, this: "When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the soul? " The soul is spirit," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no one has any idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is obliged to say what spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. " The soul is matter," says another. But what is matter? We know merely some of its appearances and some of its properties; and not one of these properties, not one of these appearances, seems to have the slightest connection with thought."
I took a walk with Buddha on my mind this morning. Buddha was a very soulful wise man but he told me that there is no soul and that if men would just live without the fear of death the idea of a soul would be superfluous .
Then I had my Yerba Mate tea, the drink that defies aging and is the most popular drink in Argentina, even more so than Melbac which is a happy wine but all too many souls abuse it's happiness and succumb to alcoholism.
So, Anya give your thoughts on the soul twice…first with a clear mind which you obviously have developed( Nietzsche thought that a man’d worth is determined by how much truth he can tolerate (women even more so), and next after having downed a few Malbecs. Happy! Happy! Happy!
This sums it up quite succinctly: "You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."
C. S. Lewis
Love that answer!
I love this answer!
Descartes gave the best answer: the soul is the conscious, thinking, non-physical self. Glad to see a philosophical approach to traditionally religious questions. Great article!
Ah, this is very close to my own answer, more succinct, without the elaboration that I have supplied, except that I am calling it the *sub*conscious, an activity that *underlies* conscious thought.
Precisely!
With the soul you start touching on religion. The big religion in the Classical era was the Eleusinian Mystery religion. We now have a breakthrough. Brian C. Muraresku and Carl A.P. Ruck on YouTube showing what was in the small cup initiates drank from in this rite. One of the biggest unknowns in history. Seek and yea shall find.
The mysteries are fascinating! And there were of course quite a few different belief systems. Of course the ancients weren't all in agreement (the same for us) - but I think you are very right to bring up the Eleusinians!
I think of the "soul" as that sense that makes us respond to the ineffable. I do not limit the existance of "soul" to the human race only. It is that unspoken recognition of understanding, of exaultation. i have observed what I believe are similar reactions in animals, and there is some study of plants reacting to human touch or emotion. We have been so steeped in the ides that humanity is the apex of creation that we impair our own abilities of recognition of those abilities in the rest of creation. we have, though, invented a word to preclude admitting these things: anthromorphism.
Agree...we believe that humanity is somehow supreme in the Universe! Protagoras, the Sophist philosopher said: "Man is the measure of all things." He was wrong.
Well pointed out. We humans have a tendency to be very solipsistic... I think the centuries of thinking the sun literally went around us is a perfect example. Honestly, I think we still think we have a greater impact than we actually do...
This is also true as seen in the book of Genesis. All living things were called in Hebrew a "Nephesh," which translates as soul. Previous to this translation, the ancient Greeks called the soul, a "Hylic." Both Hylic and Nephesh referes to the animalistic nature of both man and animals- the impulsive or subconscious thoughts.
I am a Muppet…..So what do I know about The Soul.
Nothing except what my inner me tells me.
The Soul is the observation of what goes on around me, what I hear is—or might be—happening somewhere else.
And the “quiet eureka moment” that says… “ That’s me. That is what i love, what i hate, that’s what I ( however unconsciously) I feel inside me and take with me….wherever I go and whatever I do.
It is a bit like the architecture of a snowflake.
No two are the same.
Not one of them is better than the other.
Each of them did not chose their unique shape.
Each of them wander through the sky and settle where the wind takes them.
And each will exist for only as long as the Sun allows.
They will then return to the water from which they were born
And the cycle will begin again.
B.
I don't think I can add anything that you don't already know. But in the most basic and straight forward answer, the soul is just a Greek word for Psyche. I do agree with the argument made. The soul is a slave to its own desires. So the explanation of chemical reactions makes sense to me. Going a little deeper, I think if the soul simular to discussions found about AI. We are wire and programmed a specific way, that we call in the western thought as individuality and will.
Wonderful question! One of the most important questions! What, if anything, is the Soul?
If only I knew… I would proclaim:
SOUL: Me.
SOUL: Me? A spiritual being? An entity being spiritual? A container of Spirit? Am I an individuated radiated ray of Spirit? Am I a projected emanation of Spirit? Am I a Being or when I’m projected do I become a Be-ing? Am I a quantity of Spirit temporarily encased in the physical, subtle, astral, and causal bodies?
SOUL: Am I the perceiver? Am I the thinker? Am I the observer? Am I the knower? Or am I the known? Can I animate life? Can I animate a mind? Can I animate a body? Am I inside? Am I outside? Am I single? Am I whole? Am I creator, preserver, or destroyer? Or am I just perfect :) ?
What is a thing? A thing is a form. Of energy. Vibration. Frequency. Innate Force directs the energy. Innate Intelligence forms the thing. Life is a no-thing. But Life-Force becomes a thing and forms other things.
In answer to your glorious question, the Soul isn’t a thing which makes it difficult to describe in word containers. It’s a no-thing that has the potential for every-thing and to create and experience every-thing or remain in no-thing.
What is a no-thing? A no-thing 'exists' in another vibratory realm or dimension. According to Vedic knowledge, the Soul is ever-existing, I guess, because it exists outside space, time and energy. It is ever-conscious because, I guess, it is a piece of consciousness itself. If is ever-new Joy or Bliss, I guess because it is Spirit. It is a no-thing that is encased in vibrational fields and inSPIRes life in a human being, or a Soul BE-ing human.
Spirit (supreme, unmanifested, absolute Spirit) is ONE manifesting as the Living Trinity (God the Father, Christ Consciousness, Holy Ghost) as THE no-thing that has the potential for every-thing, which is why God is always here, now. Vibrationally as the Holy Ghost. Unless we pretend... To not know who we are or what we are. God's in disguise?
So love yourself as you are... do not hate yourself or criticize yourself - be kind to yourSelf - Self love will become Self-esteem, then Self-awakening will grow into Self-realization. By learning to love, we can knowingly be at-one with ourSelves (God with-in) and ultimately, God. Or I want my money back :). Godspeed >
Here's my attempt to describe the soul: If we think of our personality as a drop of water, then the soul is the entire ocean.
Beautifully put
Thank you!
It is obvious that the idea of Soul has almost been eradicated in our materialistic, scientific era. Early civilizations certainly described and believed in the soul: Ka (Egyptian), Hun (Chinese) and Psyche (Greek). Although the Soul (psyche) was the life and spirit of the body generally understood in Greek society until the end of the Archaic era, it seems that some philosophers saw it (the soul) as the emotional rather than rational, a non rational intuition. This most probably came from contact with shamanism and Pythagorus and Empedocles were two early philosophers who thought that the soul remains after death. Following the ideas of Socrates, Plato firmly believed in the immortality of the soul; however, Aristotle showed more interest in how the soul related to the body. He thought that what humans have in common survives death, not the individual. Then, we see the materialism of the Greek and Roman Stoics where there was really no room for the immortal soul, being more interested in free will and brotherhood. As Epictetus said: “You should not consider your own interests as distinct from those of others." However, Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, was indeed concerned with the soul which he said survived death. Lucretius, a very influential Roman, did not believe in the immortal, eternal soul and thought that personal identity is of no value since nothing of the self remains after death. While we see a rather "worldly" attitude in the first 3 centuries C.E. (aside from Jewish and Christian thought), a most influential thinker was the Greek mystic Plotinus who argued for the indivisibility of the soul which exists in 3 levels (sensory, intellectual and mystical) at any given time. His views of the soul's reconnection with God in the afterlife (as well as his elaboration on Plato's thesis) greatly influenced not only Christian authors, but also Eastern and Western Christianity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The idea of soul being immaterial and immortal remained in the West until the Age of Enlightenment when Rene Descartes discounted the idea that soul could be used to explain life. At the end of the 17th Century, thinker John Locke produced “The Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. From this time on, the Western world would see the mind as a natural system rather than an immaterial substance. The rise of science saw the brain/mind theory take centre stage (the exception being in religion) and ideas of mind and consciousness became popular. Finally, the idea of the unified “self” (personal identity) took a place in philosophic concepts. And although it became important in existentialism and humanism where the “true, inner self” was to be discovered, it also dropped out of popularity in the mid 20th C. becoming a psychological study of one's fragmented identity: self discovery, self confidence, self worth, self actualization etc. Now, notions of “identity” have come to the fore; there can be no unified “self” as in the soul concept of Ancient Greece where psyche was a source of unity.
My personal experiences and studies affirm the concept of Soul is correct–we are spiritual beings having come to this dimension for the progression of the Soul. Wordsworth said it in these beautiful lines:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Very well said and well written... so is it time to bring back the Soul then?
Thanks. Yes, it is not just preferable, but imperative in my opinion. We have ceased to understand what it means to be human and refuse to see that our "essence" is far more important than our persona. It is detrimental to ourselves and our children not to understand that we are created spiritual beings, not some accident of biological evolution. Unfortunately, we've been on the wrong track for so long, I wonder if we will ever get back to our *true* nature...
IMO, the "soul" is an aspect of the subconscious mind. It is a brain activity, functionally similar to other brain activities like vision or hearing, in that its workings are opaque to the conscious part of our minds. Because of this opacity, its nature is mostly misinterpreted, and attempts are made to give it magical or mystical attributes out of superstitious misunderstanding about its true nature. I have direct, personal experience in communicating with my own subconscious. It gives me information mostly in mental images, often nearly literal pictures, and sometimes as feelings. I get an image of the portal through which this information passes as being a small, dark pool of water of great depth, in a small forest clearing, so deep such that there is no way I can reach into it and touch anything. I can ask it questions, and often do, and at some arbitrarily later time, it will give me an answer, or it will induce me to seek out more information. Sometimes, it will even give me a packeted burst of information containing a complete answer and more, in reply to my question, or even a solution to a problem that I have been pondering. It is *NOT* magic, it is not anything outside of myself, it is not any external intelligence, It is my own mind, even though it does indeed seem like something that is 'other' and not actually me. It has told me explicitly that this is so. The "soul" is an intrinsic part (subconscious) of your own mind, which is a phenomenon caused by the activity of your own brain, and nothing at all outside of this. Period. Individual perceptions of this mental phenomenon will be highly variable, and will depend significantly on individual personality factors.
Voltaire -- a stupendous classicist -- nailed it in *The Philosophical Dictionary* (published in French in 1764). He begins the entry for soul as follows: "This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown principle of known effects that we feel in us. The word soul corresponds to the Latin anima, to the Greek psyche, to the term of which all nations have made use to express what they did not understand any better than we do."
And there's much more semiserious fun/hard truths after that! For example, this: "When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the soul? " The soul is spirit," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no one has any idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is obliged to say what spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. " The soul is matter," says another. But what is matter? We know merely some of its appearances and some of its properties; and not one of these properties, not one of these appearances, seems to have the slightest connection with thought."
You can read on in English at https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volsoul1.html
I took a walk with Buddha on my mind this morning. Buddha was a very soulful wise man but he told me that there is no soul and that if men would just live without the fear of death the idea of a soul would be superfluous .
Then I had my Yerba Mate tea, the drink that defies aging and is the most popular drink in Argentina, even more so than Melbac which is a happy wine but all too many souls abuse it's happiness and succumb to alcoholism.
So, Anya give your thoughts on the soul twice…first with a clear mind which you obviously have developed( Nietzsche thought that a man’d worth is determined by how much truth he can tolerate (women even more so), and next after having downed a few Malbecs. Happy! Happy! Happy!
I think I’ll have a Malbec!
So
"Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not."
Protagoras, 490 - 420 B.C.E.
Atoms are smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else is composed, and that atoms move about in an infinite void.
Democritus, 460 – 370? B.C.E.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates, 470 - 399 B.C.E.
dennis hanna
Thank you!! Kind words are always appreciated!