Dulce

What counts the most is the spiritual soul. The body form it is only a temporary thing. #keyword: COMMON SENSE @MR.C

Lord Larehip

The soul problem is encapsulated thus:

It is held to be a changeless essence within, your core. You are born, get old, get sick and die only be reborn again. But the soul is the thread that runs through all these existences stringing them together and it never changes. If it did, it wouldn't be your core. It is ultimately who and what you truly are and it is necessarily changeless and immutable.

The problem is, if it is changeless then for whose benefit am I going through all these incarnations? The purpose must be for self-improvement. While I can improve myself right now, I will die some day. So, ultimately, going through incarnations is for the benefit of the soul and so it must change, it must improve or that least the intent is that it must improve (it might even degenerate depending on the causes one makes while incarnate).

Well, then, we are just a body composed of matter. It has no soul and consciousness is just a by-product but ultimately an illusion and when we die, it's the big dirt nap and it's over. But if consciousness is only an illusion--to what or whom? To me? Can't be. "Me" is just an illusion. If I do not think therefore I am then I either am not or I do not think. Since I exist and I do have thoughts, I am not an illusion.

Which is right? It's dualism. And the problem is that we, as human beings, just don't like super-positions. We want answers. We want a yes or a no. However, there is no answer. Do we have a soul? Yes and no. Neither and both. There is no changeless, eternal core. There is no body on automatic pilot that ceases to be when the body dies. Yet there is both but there is neither.

The more we try to unravel it, the more confused it becomes because we expect one all-purpose yes or no answer and there isn't one. Seen that way, the more we try to unravel the mystery only proves there is no answer. It is simply--a mystery.

Mr. Charlie

Haha. Mystery is right.

But I believe everybody's idea of soul is different. For some it's a life sized ghost like figure that ascends to heaven/descends to hell, for some it's an energy that infuses life with consciousness, for some it's a connection to the infinite, the part of us in touch with that which lies outside the senses and the mind, the part of us that is ineffable, and so on and so forth. Is it life sized, is it a few atoms across, smaller than that even? Who knows. The universe is full of mystery and wonder and we are the universe.

GuD

__________________
I spit bullets in my feet
Every time I speak
So I write instead
And still people want me dead
~msc

Paul Smeenus

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Mr. Charlie

Haha. You think we're separate from the universe?

Zer0

To me at least, the 'soul' is the emergent property of our brain and our nervous system. I don't believe it's infinite. When we die our brain dies as well obviously and we can no longer process thoughts and react to the world around us like the way we do right now. However the brain is such a complex organ that it will never be fully understood.

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GuD

Obviously we're a part of the universe. It's all this pseudo-intellectual babble that's got me irritated. Especially the parts equating personality to a soul, that's absolutely ridiculous.

__________________
I spit bullets in my feet
Every time I speak
So I write instead
And still people want me dead
~msc

Taxman

What's wrong with spending our short meaningless useless lifes with talking about speudo-intellectual things as the soul?

Mr. Charlie

I didn't equate personality to the soul, but let's say I did, why should it irritate you?

I've never been on a forum where so many people get annoyed by mere thoughts, by language. I could understand it if I was an influential and powerful person advocating something that had real world consequences, but I'm not. I'm just little old me with my little old thoughts. And you allow it to irritate you. You allow something so trivial to impede on your happiness. Haha. Nuts... You're better off laughing at me, I won't take offense, and at least you won't feel irritated.

I know, right? Thinking outside the box ain't allowed here. We've all gotta be the same, think the same, or else the thought police come along and act all irritated. Diversity is to be stamped out. Haha.