Soul, Soul

In some cultures, non-human living things, and sometimes inanimate objects are said to have souls, a belief known as animism.

Thus, in the concept of divine judgment, God is commonly said to have options with regard to the dispensation of souls, ranging from Heaven (i.e. angels) to hell (i.e. demons), with various concepts in between. Typically both Heaven and hell are said to be eternal, or at least far beyond a typical human concept of lifespan and time.

All these aspects and their resulting effects combined, influence how he or she will make decisions on a day to day basis.The Soul of a country is the collective influence of all the people, events, geographic aspects, weather etc.The Soul of a certain genre of music is the collective influence of each instrument, how each musician plays their instrument, singing style etc.A soul can have certain dominating influences which can give it individuality or allow it to be categorized.E.g. A dominating influence in a humans soul could be their physical appearance.A dominating influence in the soul of a country is its president.A dominating influence in the soul of a certain genre of music could be a particular instrument or a method of playing a particular instrument that highlights the genres individuality.

Again, 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 in its entirety as a 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 body: its capacity simply for life itself, apart from the various faculties of the soul, such as sensation, nutrition and so forth, which when exercised constitute its "second" actuality, which we might call its "fulfillment." "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for human activity." The rational activity of the soul's intellective part, along with that of the soul's two other partsits vegetative and animal parts, which it has in common with other animalsthus in Aristotle's view constitute 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.

It is not clear, however, to what degree this soul is individual. For example, Aristotle writes that the soul after death "does not remember," a view compatible with Greek popular belief. It is perhaps worth noting that by Aquinas' interpretation of these remarks, which as always is plausible, lucidly argued and convincing, Aristotle's account of the afterlife is more similar to the Christian than it appears at first glance.

Some of Avicenna's views on the soul included the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.

He told his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by Ren Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness." Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (1996), History of Islamic Philosophy , p. 315, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-13159-6.

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.

Summarizing Hillman's views, author and psychotherapist Thomas Moore associates spirit with "afterlife, cosmic issues, idealistic values and hopes, and universal truths," while placing soul "in the thick of things: in the repressed, in the shadow, in the messes of life, in illness, and in the pain and confusion of love." Hillman believes that religion—especially monotheism and monastic faiths—and humanistic psychology have tended to the spirit, often at the unfortunate expense of soul.

References to the soul's origin include Genesis 2:7 ("And the LORD God formed man [3] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.") and 1 Corinthians 15:45 ("And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam made a quickening spirit.") Christians tend to understand the soul in moral rather than philosophical terms. In this understanding, when people die their souls, which have been formed (or malformed) by the good or evil deeds that the person has done, will be judged by God as being desiring or undesiring of salvation. Though virtually all branches of Christianity –Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, Evangelical or mainline Protestants, – teach that Jesus Christ plays a decisive role in the salvation process, the specifics of that role and the part played by individual persons or ecclesiastical rituals and relationships, is a matter of wide diversity in official church teaching, theological speculation and popular practice. Some Christians also believe that if one has not repented of their sins, they will go to Hell and suffer eternal separation from God. Variations also exist on this theme, e.g., some which hold that the unrighteous soul will be destroyed instead of suffering eternally. Others recognize the righteous not only as those who will equally inherit eternal life in Heaven and enjoy eternal fellowship with God, but include babies and those with cognitive or mental impairments, as well as all the righteous saints who lived before Jesus Christ came.

They consider the soul 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 western Christianity's most influential early Christian thinkers, described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body". Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body ( soma ) , soul ( psyche ), and spirit ( pneuma ), Soul at www.newadvent.org however the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how spirit and soul are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each of us is body and soul. 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, [4] 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 soul 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 preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception.

The Atman is seen as the portion of Brahman. God is described as Supreme soul. Hinduism contains many variant beliefs on the origin, purpose, and fate of the soul. For example, advaita or non-dualistic conception of the soul accords it union with Brahman, the absolute uncreated (roughly, the Godhead), in eventuality or in pre-existing fact. Dvaita or dualistic concepts reject this, instead identifying the soul as part and parcel of supreme soul (God), but it never lose its identity. That is where we as an individual get an identity. According to scriptures, this identity exists eternally; the soul never dies. It only transmigrates from one body to other body.

According to the Bhagavad Gita, all living entities are soul proper. When the soul leaves the body, then it is called death. That means, death is transmigration of soul from one body to another body. Soul transmigrates from one body to another body based on their karmic deeds reactions.

This stage results in a cold sleep state where the soul will rest until the Judgment Day. The person is either rewarded in the next realm of existence by going to heaven if they have followed Allah's commands or punished if they have disobeyed Him (Qur'an 66:8, 39:20, The Holy Qur'an ~ 66. At-Tahrim (Banning) The Holy Qur'an ~ 39. Az-Zumar (The Troops, Throngs) ).

The qualities of jiva are cetana i.e. consciousness and upoyoga i.e. knowledge and perception, which are manifold. The soul manifests in the following form as a deva i.e. demi-god, as a human, as a hellish being or as a plant or animal.

Decay and origin refer respectively to the disappearing of one state and appearing of another state and these are merely the modes of the soul.

Consciousness is its chief attribute. Know the soul to be free of any gender and not bound by any dimensions of shape and size.

Various hymns are cited from the holy book "Sri Guru Granth Sahib" (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God." SGGS, M 1, p 1153.

For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love." SGGS, M 4, p 1325.

The inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The basalt stele is tall and wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois.

Otherkin hold similar beliefs: they see their souls as partially or entirely non-human, and not necessarily of this world.

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.

Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis , for example, has the subtitle, "The scientific search for the soul". Crick held 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.

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 (although quantum computers in actuality cannot do any more than a regular Turing machine, including deciding the halting problem, they can in theory solve problems that would require billions of years for linear algorithims on the fastest computers in the world in as little as one unit of quantum time). Some have located the soul in this possible difference between the mind and a classical computer.

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.

Source: Wikipedia > Soul