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Bendy's Thoughts

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Lifestream idea


Bendy Demon

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I am certainly not the type who accepts the concept of a personified soul; especially not the conventional one that many adhere to.

However I am also somewhat open to an explanation that does not rely on anecdotes, fluffy bunny metaphysics or religion.

At any rate I was pondering this issue and I developed an idea that, for the time being, seems to hold the most likely possibility 

and I used a rather unconventional thread to do so.

 

Now, for starters, has anyone ever played the game "Final Fantasy VII"? I am sure if you had you probably came to a point where you 

arrived at a place called Cosmo Canyon (Don't worry, I actually am going someplace with this) and you meet a scientist named 

"Bugenhaggen" who delivers a lecture called "LifeStream" where the character explains how when physical lives die,

their energy returns to the planet and their energy forms a tiny stream that. 

Over time, meshes with the streams of others to form a swell, they merge, separate, cross paths and so on thus granting life to 

all places on the planet.

 

This concept seemed kind of intriguing and actually seemed to serve as a far better explanation for souls than any I have seen before.

See, when you pick apart the concept of a soul, what you end up dealing with is a type of energy; possibly a frequency of plasma 

or something (hey, I am not a physicist here, you know) in essence all life generates this energy at a particular frequency and strength for the planet it is on at the time.

 

When a life dies, its energy seeps back into the planet and integrates back into the life grid of the planet and gets reconfigured and

strengthened and as it courses through the planet, it is channeled to another life. 

When a "life stream" crosses with others for a time then deviates, it will get stronger over time, becoming more refined and concentrated 

until it can hold its own for longer and can handle the rigors of higher life forms including the more sentient ones.

 

This may explain why we never see the "ghosts" of animals like lizards or insects because their life energy is too weak and unfocused 

to remain outside the lifestream for any given length of time and must return to the stream once their physical host (the body) has expired.

I also think that once a "soul" has become strong enough, it can merge into streams that contain energies that are more concentrated and 

refined. 

Kind of like a period of growing up I suppose. 

However I like to stretch this idea a tad further,this network of energy (I use the term collectively for convenience) is not confined to just the planet we are on but to every object in the universe regardless of whether that object can harbor physical life or not. 

Since these networks course throughout the planet and the cosmos, crossing paths then it is plausible that each stream can pick up a small 

part of the other which then can affect the next being that is born from it.

 

However this also can create some snags, what about memories? 

I am not sure, memories are generated from the brain yet are still electrical in nature so perhaps it is also 

possible that these memories are encoded into the lifestreams of the more sentient and can be assimilated and accesses 

somehow by a compatible sentient being.

 

Now back to Bugenhaggen for a second, the character explains that this lifestream also supports the existence of planets and if 

something was to happen that would greatly diminish or deflect this stream then even the planet itself would no longer 

be capable of holding together.

 

Let us use Earth as an example, life is all over it, in every imaginable area you will find life of some sort and 

if you will excuse the over-used platitude, all life is indeed connected at some level. 

When one species dies out, corrections and adjustment will be made 

but if the imbalance is too great and/or happens too quickly then everything crumbles after a time. 

 

So what would happen if a planet is destroyed somehow? What happens to this "lifestream network"? 

I don't know, the "lifestream network" will repair itself much like how a spider repairs its web. 

It takes time but the network will compensate.

 

If you have read this through then I am grateful because I tend to ramble and my thoughts get derailed so thanks for your patience. 

I plan to possibly add another entry that relates, somewhat, to what I just wrote.

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Bendy Demon

Posted

I want to apologize for the weird format, I wrote this in a word processing program then did the ol' "copy-pasta" and assumed there was word wrap in the blog entry field but apparently not so I tried to do my best to make it look reasonably readable.

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Aquila King

Posted

Quote

If you have read this through then I am grateful because I tend to ramble and my thoughts get derailed so thanks for your patience. 

Your writing is fine. I appreciate you writing this, because I've had similar thoughts as well. ^_^

I wish I could officially quote you in a blog entry, but since I can't, all quotes here are from the above entry.

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Now, for starters, has anyone ever played the game "Final Fantasy VII"? 

I absolutely LOVE Final Fantasy VII.

Well, I say that kinda loosely, because I love the story and characters. I'm not at all a fan of the gameplay. I'm mainly just an otaku. Not much of a gamer. Only got into the Final Fantasy series originally because of a Kingdom Hearts, and even then I only got into that originally because of Disney. Anyway, enough of my rant.

Yes, I'm very familiar with everything you're talking about here. I know my FF7 lore like the back of my hand. :tu:

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This concept seemed kind of intriguing and actually seemed to serve as a far better explanation for souls than any I have seen before.

I thought the very same thing for the longest time. Although my views have changed since then, so I don't much think that way anymore.

As for my personal views on things, I very much do believe in the existence of the soul, however beyond that I don't claim to know much else. I may logically extrapolate on beyond that to conclude that if there is a soul, that there could also very well be some sort of afterlife, disembodied 'spirits', maybe even a sort of 'god' perhaps, etc. However I don't claim to know how any of this would actually work if it was true, nor do I claim any absolutes. I could be totally wrong on all of this I fully acknowledge. But anyway, if you want to know why I take this position, I'd suggest you read some of my own blog posts in my official blog series. (don't worry, I only have 7 entries thus far, a couple of which aren't even spiritually related)

So essentially, while I do find this kind of thought experiment intriguing, I don't think that I nor anyone else truly has a grasp on what a soul actually is, or how it operates. Some may think they know, but in reality they don't. Though regardless, I find no harm in postulating various possibilities.

To give a grossly oversimplified version of what I believe the soul actually is, I'd say it's simply consciousness itself.

The current mainstream scientific understanding of consciousness is that consciousness is merely a byproduct of the material brain. Neuroscientists conclude this by 3 main methods: Correlation, Stimulation, and Oblation. To put it in simple terms, they hook you up to a machine that measures electrical signals in the brain, and then run various tests. First they measure any correlations between a shift in electrical signals and a shift in consciousness. Second, they stimulate certain portions of the brain and measure the specific shifts in consciousness that occur in accordance with that. Last but not least, they remove portions of grey matter (oblation) and measure how consciousness is affected from that. This is the official method by which neuroscientists determine that consciousness is generated by the physical brain.

However there's a problem with this logic here. The problem is that the exact same methods of determining this can be used on a television set (for example) to determine whether or not a television produces the images on the television screen. Yet we all know full well that the television does not produce the images on it. It merely receives signal from an outside source. (you could use a radio for an example too if you want, another common example) If you could literally use the exact same methodology to arrive at the conclusion that a television produces television signal while knowing full well that that isn't at all the case, then perhaps the same thing could be true for consciousness in conjunction with the brain?

So yeah. That's my reasoning (in a nutshell) for as to what exactly the soul is, and how it works (to some minor extent at least).

Now that you know my general thoughts on the soul, I'll get on to my thoughts on the Lifestream concept you mentioned above.

The main crux of the Lifestream argument is founded upon the idea that the soul acts as a sort of 'energy'. You mentioned something similar to a plasma-like substance. The problem with this however, is that this 'energy' would be much more easily detectible scientifically if that were the case, since it would essentially exhibit similar properties to that of regular matter. In FF7, all organisms sort of have their own mini lifestream inside of them, which is the fuel source they use to cast magic. Magic essentially being small manifestations of the physical forces of nature. So to put it simply, the lifestream concept presented in FF7 (while incredibly interesting and badass) is essentially physical/material in it's nature. It would essentially be just as easily measured and utilized as electricity is for us (which of course technically speaking it is utilized just like electricity in the game by the Shinra Co.). I know that you're simply using the lifestream as an example, and that you aren't literally advocating for the existence of what is presented in FF7 lore. However even if it's only an analogy, it's still an analogy founded upon the concept of the soul being 'energy', and is therefore very physically based. And if it's physically based, then it should be easily measurable, and should have a significant impact upon the physical world around us.

Now of course even under my own model for the soul, it could very well act as a sort of 'energy' so to speak. If nothing else, it could be so energetically weak that it barely registers in it's effect on the physical world around us. Who knows? However my point in this is simply that the more we try to apply physical properties to the soul, the more difficult it becomes to explain why in fact such a thing is not more readily visible. It only stands to reason that if something such as the soul does indeed act under very specific physical laws, that it would also be much more readily interactive and scientifically detectible here in the physical world. Yet it isn't.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on the topic presented in your blog post. Overall I have to say, great job writing all this. :tu: You clearly put a lot of thought into it.

Quote

I plan to possibly add another entry that relates, somewhat, to what I just wrote.

I'll be sure to go check it out right away!

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Aquila King

Posted

11 hours ago, Ryu said:

I want to apologize for the weird format, I wrote this in a word processing program then did the ol' "copy-pasta" and assumed there was word wrap in the blog entry field but apparently not so I tried to do my best to make it look reasonably readable.

I honestly kinda prefer that format to the forum's to some extent, so no worries man.

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