i would like people to post in theories and ideas

i have never directly contemplated what a soul is since it doesn't have a role in my own hypotheses of existance.

But, here goes a quick idea derived from said hypotheses:

the soul is the electrical energy within and constatantly being generated by our bodies. When we die, the core energy is freed from the body (the body is part battery like). That freed energy is then dissipated.

The soul is an imaginary component of human existence, there's no such thing as a 'soul'.

I don't claim to be an omniscient person here,but i believe that the soul is a humans personality,and it allows us to feel things like love,sorrow or regret.When the body dies i like to think that the soul is the immortal side of mankind,and those who died with their soul full of regret or sorrow,come back to right things.I believe the soul is essentially what we see as ghosts.


Adam

In my opinion, my soul is the essence of my entire personality.
It ranges to all of my times of happiness and sadness. It's the spirit in me that continues to hope and dream about my long future where eventually I will earn money again, to love someone again, to walk and dance like I use to. It's the spirit that defies all odds because if I did not, then I am dead.
But I also think the soul lives on as memories and inspiration; so in a way, we never really die. Should I die, and no one remembers me, my soul will live on from the bluebonnet fields and the feild of lilies that I planted. I believe the soul of writers, musicians and others who put themselves out there in the public life also make contribution. I think that even if I was locked in a damp cell beneath the earth, I would still have soul. In my cage I would live my life in fantasy and the dreams would bring happiness to me.

IMO, you are a soul... your body is just a container.

This is what I believe too, though I am not religious. I would say, the soul is that which has consciousness. Some critics of this idea say that the soul must disappear at night when we sleep. Au contraire, mon frere . We are aware in some sense of being asleep; if not, we wouldn't enjoy it so much. We wouldn't seek out sleep if it were annhilation of consciousness. While it is true that sleep is a welcome break from the continuity of day time existence, it is like taking a vacation, doing something different, which we quickly forget as we get up, hopefully refreshed and ready for a new round of the day's existence.

I believe everything has a soul, though not everything has a brain, or a mind. In some mystical states, one can achieve a temporary union with the soul of the wind, or the moon, and feel what it is feeling. The sum total of all souls is divinity, the ALL or ONE. That is what mystics have been telling us for thousands of years, based on their own personal experience. William James discovered that the only religious experience which is common to all cultures, all religions, all times and places, are the mystical experiences.

Materialists and mystics have complete opposite philosophies. The materialist says that only matter exists, and such things as consciousness are just a kind of epiphenomenon of the brain, though no one has ever been able to explain how two such different things as the smooth continuity of experience could arise from the discrete firings of neurons. Mystics say that the only truly real thing is ONE, and everything else is no more than the collective contents of consciousness.

Um, what?
The body is you, not a container.
The brain is apart of the body, your surroundings and external world register into your brain and that is how it builds its preferences.

and your soul can't have some connection with your brain? I don't understand how a mass of atoms and electricity can have a preference for something.

Which is the thing, people make up things to explain what they don't understand.

I think that the "soul" is different for everyone
For me it sybolizes nothing i don;t think "souls" really exist that's my opinion
But for others it can mean their lifeforce their spirit and many other things
In my opinion what you think is a "soul" has a mjor part to do with your religeon.

we don't understand how the everything started, so we came up with the big bang, and the creation theories... among many others...

we don't understand how we got here, so we came up with the evolutionary, and creation theories... among others

everyone does it

I use systems theory to explain the interconnectedness of all life. So am I a materialist or a mystic? Not quite either.

Alright... but what makes us us is determined by certain physical factors in our brain... so how is this electrical energy "us" exactly...?

think of it as a bio-computer. the electrical enery within our brians allows for the storage of information, analysis of perception, interpretation, thinking (advanced instinct), etc.

We are but machines. Complex machines, so complex we really don't understand everything about the functioning.

in the religious sense, the "soul" is to the body what the "gods" are to the universe. A placeholder for where real knowledge is yet to be gained.

Has anyone here ever had a realistic dream of floating above or near their own body? I once had a vision-like thing happen where I seemingly left my body while laying in bed wide awake, and appeared above my house somehow... It was pretty damn fun and cool. It only lasted about a minute or so.

I would imagine that some people might freak out or something when they leave their body, especially someone that may not believe they have a soul.

One thing I can say about my own Spirit is that it was no different from my present self as far as memories go or anything like that. Though I did notice that my thoughts seemed abnormally clear, or free flowing and it actually felt like the area where my head was, was a bit hollow.... lol

Pretty much the whole time I was out of my body I was fully aware that I was out of my body and was most interested in getting back to my body so I could run upstairs to the livingroom of my house where everyone was to tell them...

Here's the original writing of what happened, this happened to me when I was around 17 years old.


I prayed for over 2 hours straight for children in poor countries, the dying, and the suffering. I prayed for all of the people I have met or could remember. Then I laid down with my hands at my side on my bed, with my eyes closed, feeling very good inside. (Prayer for others not only helps those you are praying for, but it also helps the Prayer giver.) I laid there in silence, and in the darkness of my inner vision shined two small bright white lights. I was not scared because of the Prayer. The first thing I thought was wow! This is cool! Those two white lights came closer and closer, then entered my eyes. At that moment I thought the experience was over, until I opened my eyes. Because when I did, it was the greatest and most wonderful thing I could have ever imagined. I was floating about ten feet above the roof of my house! It took a few seconds to realize where I was, and what was happening. My vision was different, almost blurry, yet very clear, it was as though every color was mixed in together, within my eyes. I could hear a trickling waterfall on my right side. I looked down to see my roof, then I looked to my right at the tops of the trees in my backyard. Amongst all other things that are possible in the Astral realm, the only thing I really wanted to do, was tell my Mother and Father, who were upstairs in the living room. The next thing I did was look up at the sky, I could see dark grey clouds, and it was night. Immediately the clouds parted East and West, to reveal a bright blue sky. It was very beautiful, but for some reason, I cared alot more about telling my parents. So I decided to try to wake myself up, I tried to speak but nothing came out. I got a little bit anxious, and tried a few more times. On the third or fourth try I awoke lying on my side making an uhhhhhhhhhhhhh sound. Right away I ran upstairs to tell my family. The entire experience lasted about one minute.

M.J.C.

So I guess my cheap explanation of what a Soul truly is would be that the Soul is the Human being, or makes the human being. The human being doesn't make the Soul... without the body, the Soul still exists forever and ever. With God there is no such thing as death, only Life. The Soul cannot be destroyed as in the concept of energy, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the same is the essence of the human being. Your thoughts, your memories, your self, cannot be destroyed.

For those whose minds have become deformed or made abnormal from the ravages of life, I believe their Souls are healed by God when they die if they are not healed when on Earth. They are made whole again, and their sickness is taken away in Heaven.

I am not about to describe Heaven, simply because it would be impossible, but in Heaven it is written in the Bible that lions eat grass in Heaven. So animals also have their own little consciousness that somehow makes it to Heaven. And there's grass in Heaven???? Pretty strange, but I guess I wouldn't have it any other way..... would you?

If I am to believe all that then I also have to believe that I have come from Heaven to Earth and will one day go back home. Hopefully that wont be for 100 years or so. Seems kinda strange to call a place home that I know nothing about and have no memory of, and am not sure of exactly how to get there....

I've met quite a few people that have had similar experiences as far as leaving their bodies go, and once my own parents had even left their bodies the same night to see eachother in the same place at the same time witnessing what appeared to be a past life of them together.. Pretty weird stuff.

Matt Chin

Its what powers it, not what stores it. If you seperate the electricity goign through your computer from your computer... the electricity is not a computer, doesnt have any of the traits nor info that the computer had. All of that is in the components of the computer, not the electricity.

in a bio-comp electricity does both. your computer is a computer as you describe it so long is the power is on. With a bio-comp the power goes off only once.

Went from souls to computers to....bio-computers(?). Off topic anyway.

Ok, clarify what you mean by bio-comp?

I thought you were just calling us computers that were biological... are you making a referance to computers using DNA?

In your case, the soul is the essence of 'you'.

IMO, the essence of "me" is my brains configuration and my memories and such.

I have no problem with the fact that the physical shapes and holds the'youness' .