Soul

For other uses, see Soul (disambiguation).

A soul, in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions, is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans are souls; some attribute souls to all living things and even to inanimate objects (such as rivers); this belief is commonly called animism. The soul is often believed to exit the body and live on after a person’s death, and some religions posit that God creates souls. The soul has often been deemed integral or essential to consciousness and personality, and soul sometimes functions as a synonym for spirit, mind or self, although the soul is said to function in a distinct enough way from both the spirit and the psyche that the terms should not be treated interchangeably.

Linguistic aspects

Etymology

The Modern English soul derived from Old English sáwol, sáwel (first attested to in the 8th century poem Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50), cognate to other Germanic and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála as well as Lithuanian siela. Further etymology of the Germanic word is uncertain. A common suggestion is a connection with the word sea, and from this evidence alone, it has been speculated that the early Germanic peoples believed that the spirits of deceased rested at the bottom of the sea or similar. A more recent suggestion connects it with a root for "binding", Germanic *sailian (OE sēlian, OHG seilen), related to the notion of being "bound" in death, and the practice of ritually binding or restraining the corpse of the deceased in the grave to prevent his or her return as a ghost.

The word is in any case clearly an adaptation by early missionaries to the Germanic peoples, in particular Ulfilas, apostle to the Goths (4th century) of a native Germanic concept, coined as a translation of Greek ψυχή psychē "life, spirit, consciousness".

The Greek word is derived from a verb "to cool, to blow" and hence refers to the vital breath, the animating principle in humans and other animals, as opposed to σῶμα (soma) meaning "body". It could refer to a ghost or spirit of the dead in Homer, and to a more philosophical notion of an immortal and immaterial essence left over at death since Pindar. Latin anima figured as a translation of ψυχή since Terence. Psychē occurs juxtaposed to σῶμα e.g. in Matthew 10:28:

— καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεννόντων τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι·

φοβεῖσθε δὲ μᾶλλον τὸν δυνάμενον καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα ἀπολέσαι ἐν γεέννῃ.

Vulgate: et nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus animam autem non possunt occidere sed potius eum timete qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam.

Authorized King James Version (KJV) "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

In the Septuagint (LXX), ψυχή translates Hebrew נפש nephesh, meaning "life, vital breath", in English variously translated as "soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion"; e.g. in Genesis 1:20:

— וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יִשְׁרְצ֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם שֶׁ֖רֶץ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה

LXX καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός ἐξαγαγέτω τὰ ὕδατα ἑρπετὰ ψυχῶν ζωσῶν.

Vulgate Creavitque Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem atque motabilem.

KJV "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth."

Paul of Tarsus used ψυχή and πνεῦμα specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש nephesh and רוח ruah (spirit) (also in LXX, e.g. Genesis 1:2 וְר֣וּחַאֱלֹהִ֔ים = πνεῦμα θεοῦ = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God").

Semantics

Although the terms soul and spirit are sometimes used interchangeably, soul may denote a more worldly and less transcendent aspect of a person. According to psychologist James Hillman, soul has an affinity for negative thoughts and images, whereas spirit seeks to rise above the entanglements of life and death. The words soul and psyche can also be treated synonymously, although psyche has more physical connotations, whereas soul is connected more closely to spirituality and religion.

Life and death

Religions which subscribe to non-monotheistic views, in particular Dharmic religions, may have differing concepts, such as reincarnation, nirvana, etc.

Philosophical views

The Ancient Greeks used the same word for 'alive' as for 'ensouled'. So the earliest surviving western philosophical view might suggest that the terms soul and aliveness were synonymous - perhaps not that having life universally presupposed the possession of a soul as in Buddhism, but that full "aliveness" and the soul were conceptually linked.

Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar in saying that the soul sleeps while the limbs are active, but when one is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals in many a dream "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near".

Erwin Rohde writes that the early pre-Pythagorean belief was that the soul had no life when it departed from the body, and retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body.

Socrates and Plato

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

1. the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness, or masculine)
3. the eros (appetitive, or desire, or feminine)

Each of these has a function in a balanced, level and peaceful soul.

Aristotle

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core or "essence" of a living being, but argued against its having a separate existence in its entirety. In Aristotle's view, a living thing's soul is its activity, that is, its "life"; for example, the soul of an eye, he wrote, if it were an independent lifeform itself, would be sight. 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 parts—its vegetative and animal parts, which it has in common with other animals—thus 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.

There is on-going debate about Aristotle's views regarding the immortality of the human soul; Aristotle makes it clear, however, towards the end of his De Anima that he does believe that the intellective part of the soul is eternal and separable from the body. 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, Aristotle's account of the afterlife is more similar to the Christian than it appears at first glance.

Aristotle divided the intellectual faculty into two principal parts, the "deliberative" or "calculative" and the "scientific" or "theoretical." The first of these he then subdivided again, to yield a tripartite division of the intellectual soul as technical, prudential and theoretical. The first of these is art, which has its term in something outside man, the product of his activity. The second, prudence, has its term in activity itself; it is sometimes called the "art" of doing. Its highest expression is politics, to which, in the corpus of Aristotle's works, his treatise on ethics serves as an introduction. Prudence is concerned with what men ought to do, and thus with the future. The third part of the intellective faculty, scientific understanding, is the supreme activity of the faculty and accordingly of man himself, since it is the operation of his intellect that differentiates man from other animals. Theory is concerned with nature, and with what is rather than with what men ought to do. As these are parts of the rational faculty of man, their correct activity also constitutes the "excellences" or "virtues" of the rational part of man, of which there are five: art, prudence and science, corresponding in name to the faculties themselves, as well as "nous," often translated as "understanding" or "intelligence," and "Sophia" or "wisdom". Nous is intuitive knowledge of first principles, which are indemonstrable; Sophia is the combination of such "understanding" and science.

Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis

Following Aristotle, the Persian Muslim philosopher-physician, Avicenna and Arab philosopher Ibn al-Nafis, further elaborated on the Aristotelian understanding of the soul and developed their own theories on the soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and in particular, the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics. 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.

While he was imprisoned, Avicenna wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. 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 René 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."

Avicenna generally supported Aristotle's idea of the soul originating from the heart, whereas Ibn al-Nafis on the other hand rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs". He further criticized Aristotle's idea that every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Ibn al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying 'I'".

Thomas Aquinas

Following Aristotle and Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas understood the soul to be the first principle, or act, of the body. However, his epistemological theory required that, since the intellectual soul is capable of knowing all material things, and since in order to know a material thing there must be no material thing within it, the soul was definitely not corporeal. 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.

Immanuel Kant

In his discussions of rational psychology Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense and that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved, or disproved. "We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be cognized from materiality." It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes transcendental rationalization, but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.

James Hillman

Contemporary psychology is defined as the study of mental processes and behavior. However, the word "psychology" literally means "study of the soul", and psychologist James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, has been credited with "restoring 'soul' to its psychological sense." Although the words soul and spirit are often viewed as synonyms, Hillman argues that they can refer to antagonistic components of a person. 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. This happens, Moore says, because to transcend the "lowly conditions of the soul ... is to lose touch with the soul, and a split-off spirituality, with no influence from the soul, readily falls into extremes of literalism and destructive fanaticism."

Hillman's archetypal psychology is in many ways an attempt to tend to the oft-neglected soul, which Hillman views as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests, and "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern" as well as "a special relation with death." Departing from the Cartesian dualism "between outer tangible reality and inner states of mind," Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides. Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which soul, in Hillman's view, expresses itself.

Philosophy of mind

For a contemporary understanding of the soul/mind and the problem concerning its connection to the brain/body, consider the rejection of Descarte's mind-body dualism by Gilbert Ryle's ghost in the machine argument, the tenuous unassailability of Richard Swinburne's argument for the soul, and the advances made in neuroscience which are steadily uncovering the truth/falsity of the concept of an independent soul/mind. The philosophy of mind and the philosophy of [Ryan Morrissey] also contribute to a contemporary understanding of the mind. The contemporary approach does not so much attack the existence of an independent soul, as to render the concept less relevant. The advances in neuroscience mainly serve to support the mind-brain identity hypothesis, showing the extent of the correlation between mental states and physical brain-states. The notion of soul has less explanatory power in a western world-view which prefers the empirical explanations involving observable and locatable elements of the brain. Even so, there remain considerable objects to simple identity theory. Notably philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers have argued in effect that correlation between physical brain states and mental states is not strong enough to support identity theory. Nagel (1974) argues that no amount of physical data is sufficient to provide the "what it's like" of first-person experience, and Chalmers (1996) argues for an "explanatory gap" between functions of the brain and phenomenal experience. On the whole, brain-mind identity theory does poorly in accounting for mental phenomena of qualia and intentionality. While neuroscience has done much to illuminate the functioning of the brain, much of subjective experience remains mysterious.

Religious views

Bahá'í

The Bahá'í Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God; and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence previous to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world.

Buddhism

Buddhism teaches that all things are in a constant state of flux: all is changing, and no permanent state exists by itself. This applies to human beings as much as to anything else in the cosmos. Thus, a human being has no permanent self. According to this doctrine of anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman) — "no-self" or "no soul" — the words "I" or "me" do not refer to any fixed thing. They are simply convenient terms that allow us to refer to an ever-changing entity.

The anatta doctrine is not a kind of materialism. Buddhism does not deny the existence of "immaterial" entities, and it (at least traditionally) distinguishes bodily states from mental states. Thus, the conventional translation of anatta as "no-soul" can be confusing. If the word "soul" simply refers to an incorporeal component in living things that can continue after death, then Buddhism does not deny the existence of the soul. Instead, Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent entity that remains constant behind the changing corporeal and incorporeal components of a living being. Just as the body changes from moment to moment, so thoughts come and go. And there is no permanent, underlying mind that experiences these thoughts, as in Cartesianism; rather, conscious mental states simply arise and perish with no "thinker" behind them. When the body dies, the incorporeal mental processes continue and are reborn in a new body. Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the being that is reborn is neither entirely different than, nor exactly the same as, the being that died. However, the new being is continuous with the being that died — in the same way that the "you" of this moment is continuous with the "you" of a moment before, despite the fact that you are constantly changing.

Buddhist teaching holds that a notion of a permanent, abiding self is a delusion that is one of the root causes for human conflict on the emotional, social, and political levels. They add that an understanding of anatta provides an accurate description of the human condition, and that this understanding allows us to pacify our mundane desires.

Various schools of Buddhism have differing ideas about what continues after death. The Yogacara school in Mahayana Buddhism said there are Store consciousness continue to exist after death. In some schools, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, the view is that there are three minds: Very-Subtle-Mind, which isn't disintegrated in death; Subtle-Mind, which is disintegrated in death, and is "dreaming-mind" or "unconscious-mind"; and Gross-Mind. Gross-Mind doesn't exist when one is sleeping, so it is more impermanent even than Subtle-Mind, which doesn't exist in death. Very-Subtle-Mind, however, does continue, and when it "catches on" or coincides with phenomena again, a new Subtle-Mind emerges, with its own personality/assumptions/habits and that someone/entity experiences the karma on that continuum that is ripening then.

Plants were said to be non-sentient (無情), but Buddhist monks should avoid cutting or burning trees, because some sentient beings rely on them. Some Mahayana monks said non-sentient beings such as plants and stones have buddha-nature. Some buddhists said about plants or divisible consciousnesses.

Certain modern Buddhists, particularly in Western countries, reject the concept of rebirth or reincarnation as incompatible with the concept of anatta, or at least take an agnostic stance toward the concept. Stephen Batchelor discusses this issue in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. Others point to research done at the University of Virginia as proving that at least some people are reborn.

Judaism

The Hebrew terms נפש nephesh, רוח ruach (literally "wind"), and נשימה neshama (literally "breath") are used to describe the soul or spirit. The soul is believed to be given by God to a person by his/her first breath, as mentioned in Genesis, "And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7). From this statement, the rabbinical interpretation is often that human embryos do not have souls, though abortion is often opposed by the orthodoxy as a form of birth control. Judaism relates the quality of one's soul to a one's performance of mitzvot and reaching higher levels of understanding, and thus closeness to God. A person with such closeness is called a tzadik. Judaism also has a concept of purity of body and soul, which insists on keeping away from "unclean" things. Such practices mentioned in the Torah include the keeping of kashrut and daily bathing (tevilah) in a mikveh. In biblical times, it was believed that "impurity" was something that could be spread by touching, and unclean people were temporarily separated from the group. Though Jewish theology does not agree on the nature an afterlife, the soul is said to "return to God" after death.

Kabbalah and other mystic traditions go into greater detail into the nature of the soul. Kabbalah separates the soul into three elements: the nephesh is related to instinct, the ruach is related to morality, and the neshamah is related to intellect and the awareness of God. Kabbalah furthermore proposed a concept of reincarnation, the gilgul.

Christianity

See also: Soul in the Bible

Soul carried to Heaven by William Bouguereau

The Christian view of the soul is based upon the teaching of both the Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament contains the statements "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7) and "And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7). In the New Testament can be found a statement by Paul the Apostle, "And so it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit." (1 Corinthians 15:45).

The majority of Christians understand the soul as an ontological reality distinct from, yet integrally connected with, the body. Its characteristics are described in moral, spiritual, and philosophical terms. When people die their souls will be judged by God and determined to spend an eternity in heaven or in hell. Though 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 believe that if one has not repented of one's sins and trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, one 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 (Annihilationism). Believers will inherit eternal life in heaven and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. There is also a belief that babies (including the unborn) and those with cognitive or mental impairments who have died will be received into heaven on the basis of God's grace through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Soul at inception of life

Among Christians, there is uncertainty regarding whether human embryos have souls, and at what point between conception and birth the fetus acquires a soul and consciousness. This uncertainty is the general reasoning behind many Christians' belief that abortion should not be legal.

Roman Catholic beliefs

The present Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the soul as "the innermost aspect of humans, that which is of greatest value in them, that by which they are most especially in God's image: 'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in man." All souls living and dead will be Judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth.The souls of those who die unrepentant of serious sins, or in conscious rejection of God, will at judgment day may be forever in a state called Hell. When we die, most religions believe that the soul will be accounted for in some fashion. The Roman Catholic purgatory is a way of giving mankind the symbol of a way that we are all going to be judged by Jesus and therefore have to be waiting for him no matter what the state of existence may be. The Catholic Church teaches the creationist view of the origin of the soul: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."

Orthodox Christian beliefs

Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox views are somewhat similar in essence to Roman Catholic views although different in specifics. Orthodox Christians believe that after death, the soul is judged individually by God, and then sent to either Abraham's Bosom (temporary paradise) or Hades/Hell (temporary torture). At the Last Judgment, God judges all people who have ever lived. Those that know the Spirit of God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, go to Heaven (permanent paradise) whilst the damned experience the Lake of Fire (permanent torture). The Orthodox Church does not teach that Purgatory exists.

Protestant beliefs

Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence. A common belief is that the soul is renewed not at death, but at time of salvation through Christ Jesus, taking into account 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" among other similar passages. The renewed soul or spirit is then received by God at time of death. Therefore, Protestants do not usually believe in the idea of Purgatory.

The "absent from the body, present with the Lord" theory states that the soul at the point of death, immediately becomes present at the end of time, without experiencing any time passing between. Some identify this belief as being the same as soul sleep as it does not account for what happens to the soul during the intervening time, however, it has been pointed out that all groups believe God exists outside of time. Others still would not consider this a validation of the theory. This group would argue that the Apostle Paul was merely saying that he would rather be present with the Lord than living in his earthly body. Some more traditional Protestants hold beliefs similar to Orthodox Christians whilst certain high Anglicans have even been known to hold Roman Catholic beliefs regarding the fate of the soul.

Christadelphian beliefs

Christadelphians believe that we are all created out of the dust of the earth and became living souls once we received the breath of life based on the Genesis 2 account of humanity's creation. They believe that we are mortal and when we die our breath leaves our body, our bodies return to the soil. They believe that we are mortal until the resurrection from the dead when Christ returns to this earth and grants immortality to the faithful. In the meantime, the dead lie in the earth in the sleep of death until Jesus comes.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints beliefs

Latter-day Saints believe that when the body and spirit are connected in mortality, this is the Soul of Man (Mankind). They believe that the soul is the union of a spirit, which was previously created by God, and a body, which is formed by physical conception on earth.

Seventh-day Adventists beliefs

Seventh-day Adventists believe that the main definition of the term "Soul" is a combination of spirit (breath of life) and body, disagreeing with the view that the soul has a consciousness or sentient existence of its own. They affirm this through Genesis 2:7 "And (God) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

When God united His breath, or spirit with man, man became a living soul. A living soul is composed of body and spirit.

(Strong's #05397) hmvn n@shamah nesh-aw-maw'

from 05395; n f; {See TWOT on 1433 @@ '1433a'}

AV-breath 17, blast 3, spirit 2, inspiration 1, souls 1; 24

1) breath, spirit

1a) breath (of God)

1b) breath (of man)

1c) every breathing thing

1d) spirit (of man)

When one dies, their spirit goes back to God who gave it, at which point, one is no longer a living soul.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses take the Hebrew word nephesh, which is commonly translated as "soul", to be a person, an animal, or the life that a person or an animal enjoys. A living person or breathing creature. They believe that the Hebrew word ruach (Greek pneuma), which is commonly translated as "spirit" but literally means "wind", refers to the life force or the power that animates living things. A person is a breathing creature, a body animated by the "spirit of God", not an invisible being contained in a body and able to survive apart from that body after death. Jesus spoke of himself, having life, as having a soul. When he surrendered his life, he surrendered his soul. John 10:15 reads "just as the Father knows me and I know the father, and I surrender my soul in behalf of the sheep." This belief that man's life force is his soul is also in line with the knowledge that Hell or "Hades" represents the common grave and the possibility of eternal annihilation for the wicked rather than eternal torment in hellfire.

Various opinions

Some Christians regard the soul as the immortal essence of a human – the seat or locus of human will, understanding, and personality.

Other Christians reject the idea of the immortality of the soul, citing the Apostles' Creed's reference to the "resurrection of the body" (the Greek word for body is soma σωμα, which implies the whole person, not sarx σαρξ, the term for flesh or corpse). 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), 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, [and] 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 creationist 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.

Eckankar

Eckankar defines Soul as the true self; the inner, most sacred part of each person. Eckists believe that each person is Soul, which is a different perspective than a person having a Soul as if it were a possession. Soul exists before birth and after death of the physical body. What Soul can perceive is beyond the mind and emotions. Eckankar teaches that Soul is a spark of divine life placed in human or other forms by God. Soul has no form, movement, or location in the worlds of time and space. It can know, hear, see, and perceive. Soul is the creative center of its own world . Over time, students of Eckankar can learn to increasingly experience the perspective of Soul through spiritual exercises called contemplations and through other spiritual disciplines. This practice can lead to Self Realization, and ultimately, God Realization. Results cannot come without true effort.

Hinduism

Main articles: Ātman (Hinduism) and Jiva

In Hinduism, the Sanskrit words most closely corresponding to soul are "Jeeva", "Atmaan" and "Purusha", meaning the individual Self. The term "soul" is misleading as it implies an object possessed, whereas Self signifies the subject which perceives all objects. This self is held to be distinct from the various mental faculties such as desires, thinking, understanding, reasoning and self-image (ego), all of which are considered to be part of Prakriti (nature).

All the three major schools of Hindu philosophy agree, on the basis of the Vedic revelation, that the Atman or jivatman (individual Self) is related to Brahman (lit. "the Immensity") or the Supreme Self of the Universe (Paramatman). But they differ in the nature of this relationship. In Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) the Individual Self (jeevaatman) and the Supreme Self (paramaatman) are one and the same. Dvaita or dualistic rejects this concept of identity, instead identifying the Self as separate but similar part of supreme Self (God), but it never lose its individual identity. Visishtadvaita or Qualified Non-dualism takes a middle path and accepts the jivatman as a "mode" [prakara] or attribute of the Brahman.

The jivatman becomes involved in the process of becoming and transmigrating through cycles of birth and death because of ignorance of its own true nature. The spiritual path consists of Self-realization — a process in which one acquires the knowledge of the Self (brahma-jñanam) and through this knowledge applied through meditation and realization one then returns to the Source which is Brahman.

The qualities which are common to both Brahmnan and jivatman are: being (sat), consciousness (chit), and bliss/love (ananda). Liberation or Moksha (final release) is liberation from all limiting adjuncts (upadhis) and the unification with Brahman.

The Mandukya Upanishad verse 7 describes the Atman in the following way:-

"Not inwardly cognitive, not outwardly cognitive, not both-wise cognitive, not a cognition-mass, not cognitive, not non-cognitive, unseen, with which there can be no dealing, ungraspable, having no distinctive mark, non-thinkable, that cannot be designated, the essence of the assurance of which is the state of being one with the Self, the cessation of development, tranquil, benign, without a second (a-dvaita)—[such] they think is the fourth. That is the Self. That should be discerned."

The existence of Atman does not need any proof as it is self-evident. Through a process of Self-enquiry (atma-vichara) one comes to understand its nature. This process is one of negating all objective concepts and to continually ask oneself "who am I?" Am I the body? The senses? The thoughts? etc., once all objectivity has ceased what remains is pure subjective Self — that is Atman.

Since the quality of Atman is primarily consciousness - all sentient and insentient beings are pervaded by Atman — including plants, animals, humans and gods. The difference between them is the contracted or expanded state of that consciousness. For example animals and humans share in common, desire to live, fear of death, desire to procreate and to protect their families and territory and the need for sleep. But animals consciousness is more contracted and has less possibility to expand than does human consciousness.

When the Atman becomes embodied it is called birth, when the Atman leaves a body it is called death. The Atman transmigrates from one body to another body based on karmic [performed deeds] reactions.

Islam

Further information: Nafs

Allah narrated in Quran "And they ask you (O Muhammad SAW) concerning the Ruh (the Spirit); Say: The Ruh (the Spirit): is the AMAR of your Creator. And of knowledge, you (mankind) have been given only a little." (Noble Quran, Surat Al 'Isra', Verse 85).

Further in Quraan the definition of "Amar" is "And the AMAR of your Creator is such that when it intends for something to happen, it says 'Let it be' then it is done".

Combining the two verses; Ruh (soul, spirit) is that creation of Allah, which has the knowledge and authority to use that knowledge.

The definition of that knowledge is also given in Quran, surah 'Al-Baqrah' Chapter 2, verse 31 - 32, when Allah tells angels about the creation of the first soul, Adam. "That I want to appoint a representative on the Earth" (Chapter 2, verse 31)... further Allah says "And we gave him the knowledge of the all the attributes" (Chapter 2, verse 32)

Now this verse explains very clearly about the importance of Soul (Ruh). It has the knowledge of all the attributes that Allah wanted to be revealed; and since we know that a portion of infinity is also an infinity, therefore that knowledge is also boundless. And all this is present in soul, the real human being. Without which the physical body is nothing. Physical body is similar to our clothes; when the soul puts it off, it is useless. Hence, it is the soul which is the real you and me, the physical body is just a clothing.

There is a hadith reported by Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud, in which it is stated that the soul is put in the embryo 40 days after fertilization takes place. This version of hadith is supported by some other hadiths narrated by Muhammad al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj.

After death, a person’s spirit is extracted from the body and enters an intermediate state known as Barzakh, a parallel universe which humans in the mortal world cannot visualize. 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,).

[For such is the state of the disbelievers], when death comes to one of them he says: "My Lord, send me back. That I may do righteousness in the things I neglected." Never, it is but a word he says. And beyond them is a Barzakh until the day when they (all) are raised up." Qur'an 23: 99-100.

The interrogation by the angels takes place with everyone who dies, no matter whether he is buried in the grave or cremated or his dead body is immersed in the river or eaten up by carnivorous birds and animals.

The Ruh is a spiritual body; it possesses the Qalb (Spiritual Heart) consisting of emotions and conscious. The spiritual body resides in blood and heart.

The Islamic prophet Muhammad said: "sleep is the sister of death" and also: "the grave is the first stage of the journey into eternity." During sleep angels take the soul but the connection with the body remains. The example of the dream is quite sufficient to understand the misgiving that, sometimes, a dead body remains lying unburied for three or four days and yet no sound of the questions and answers is heard by anyone. In the dream, too, all sorts of things happen to a man, he talks, eats and drinks but no evidence of it is noticed by those around him.

Jainism

Main articles: Atman (Jainism) and Jiva

Further information: Jain philosophy, Jainism and non-creationism, and Atma Siddhi

In Jainism soul exists too, having a separate existence from the body that houses it. Every living being from a plant or a bacterium to human, has a soul. The soul (Jiva) is differentiated from non-soul or non-living reality (ajiva) that consists of: matter, time, space, medium of motion and medium of rest.

For Jains, Moksa- the realization of the soul and its salvation- are the highest objective to be attained. Most of the Jaina texts deal with various aspects of the soul i.e. its qualities, attributes, bondage and interaction with other elements, and its salvation through the right views, right knowledge and right conduct. Following are the quotes on soul from Pancastikayasara, a 1st century CE Jaina text authored by 'Acarya Kundakunda:

• The qualities of soul and its states of existence are described in Verse 16 - The Jiva (Soul) and other Dravyas (substances) are real. 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.
• The permanency and the modes of soul are described in Verse 18 – Though the soul experiences both birth and death, it is neither really destroyed nor created. 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.
• The cycle of transmigration of the soul until it attains Nirvana or liberation is described in Verse 21 – Thus Jiva with its attributes and modes, roaming in samsara (universe), may lose its particular form and assume a new one. Again this form may be lost and the original acquired.

In another text, Bhavapahuda, gatha 64, Acharya Kundakunda describes soul as thus:

arasamaruvamagandham avvattam cedanagunasamaddam

janamalingaggahanam jivamanidditthasanthanam

This is translated as follows:

The soul is without taste, colour and cannot be perceived by the five senses. Consciousness is its chief attribute. Know the soul to be free of any gender and not bound by any dimensions of shape and size.

Hence the soul according to Jainism is indestructible and permanent from the point of view of substance. It is temporary and ever changing from the point of view of its modes. Māhavīras responses to various questions recorded in Bhagvatisūtra demonstrates a recognition that there are complex and multiple aspects to truth and reality and a mutually exclusive approach cannot be taken to explain such reality:

Gautama : Lord! Is the soul permanent or impermanent?

Mahavira : The soul is permanent as well is impermanent. From the point of view of the substance it is eternal. From the point of view of its modes it undergoes birth, decay and destruction and hence impermanent.

The soul continuously undergoes modifications as per the karma it attracts and hence reincarnates in the following four states of existence -

• as a demi-God in Heaven, or
• as a tormented soul in Hell, or
• as a human being on Continents, or
• as an animal, or a plant, or as a micro-organism.

The soul is always found to be in bondage (with its karmas) since the beginningless time and hence continuously undergoes the cycle of birth and death in these four states of existence until it attains liberation (Moksa).

The Jaina beliefs on the soul can be summarized under:

• The souls are classified as – mundane which are non liberated souls and liberated souls who have achieved Godhood by combination of right views, right knowledge and right conduct.
• Mundane souls are further classified on the basis of evolution of senses and faculties that it possesses. E.g., humans are classified as five sense souls and plants and microbes are classified as single-sensed souls.
• Consciousness characterized by perception and knowledge is the intrinsic qualities of Soul.
• There are quite large number of species of life forms in four states of existence in which a soul transmigrates in a continuous cycle until it achieves salvation.
• A Supreme Being as a creator and operator of this universe does not exist. A soul is the master of its own destiny. It is its own lord. The suffering and liberation of the soul are not dependent on any divine grace. It attains salvation by its own efforts.
• Every soul has the capacity to achieve Godhood in its human birth. This is achieved by removing the accumulated karmas.
• Liberation is permanent and irreversible. The liberated soul which is formless and incorporeal in nature experiences infinite knowledge, omniscience, infinite power and infinite bliss after liberation.
• Even after liberation and attainment of Godhood, the soul does not merge into any entity (as in other philosophies), but maintains its individuality.

Sikhism

Sikhism considers Soul (atma) to be part of God (Waheguru). 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." The same concept is repeated at various pages of the SGGS. For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love." and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."

Taoism

According to Chinese traditions, every person has two types of soul called hun and po (魂 and 魄), which are respectively yang and yin. Taoism believes in ten souls, sanhunqipo (三魂七魄) "three hun and seven po". The pò is linked to the dead body and the grave, whereas the hún is linked to the ancestral tablet. A living being that loses any of them is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness, while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability, lower desire realms or may even be unable to reincarnate. Also, Journeys to the Under-World said there can be hundreds of divisible souls.

Other religious beliefs and views

In theological reference to the soul, the terms "life" and "death" are viewed as emphatically more definitive than the common concepts of "biological life" and "biological death". Because the soul is said to be transcendent of the material existence, and is said to have (potentially) eternal life, the death of the soul is likewise said to be an eternal death. 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.

In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. See the article Egyptian soul for more details.

Kuttamuwa was an 8th century BC royal official from Sam'al who ordered an inscribed stele, that was to be erected upon his death. 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 800-pound (360 kg) basalt stele is 3 ft (0.91 m) tall and 2 ft (0.61 m) wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois.

Some transhumanists believe that it will become possible to perform mind transfer, either from one human body to another, or from a human body to a computer. Operations of this type (along with teleportation), raise philosophical questions related to the concept of the soul.

In Theosophy the soul is the field of our psychological activity (thinking, emotions, memory, desires, will, and so on) as well as of the so-called paranormal or psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, out-of-body experiences, etc.). However, the soul is not the highest, but a middle dimension of human beings. Higher than the soul is the spirit, which is considered to be the real self; the source of everything we call “good”—happiness, wisdom, love, compassion, harmony, peace, etc. While the spirit is eternal and incorruptible, the soul is not. The soul acts as a link between the material body and the spiritual self, and therefore shares some characteristics of both. The soul can be attracted either towards the spiritual or towards the material realm, being thus the “battlefield” of good and evil. It is only when the soul is attracted towards the spiritual and merges with the Self that it becomes eternal and divine.

Some people, who do not necessarily favor organized religion, simply label themselves as "spiritual" and hold that both humans and all other living creatures have souls. Some further believe the entire universe has a cosmic soul as a spirit or unified consciousness. Such a conception of the soul may link with the idea of an existence before and after the present one, and one could consider such a soul as the spark, or the self, the "I" in existence that feels and lives life.

In Surat Shabda Yoga, the soul is considered to be an exact replica and spark of the Divine. 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.

G. I. Gurdjieff taught that nobody is ever born with a soul. Rather, an individual must create a soul during the course of their life. Without a soul, Gurdjieff taught that one will "die like a dog".

Science

Science and medicine seek naturalistic accounts of the observable natural world. This stance is known as methodological naturalism. Much of the scientific study relating to the soul has involved investigating the soul as an object of human belief, or as a concept that shapes cognition and an understanding of the world, rather than as an entity in and of itself.

When modern scientists speak of the soul outside of this cultural and psychological context, they generally treat soul as a poetic synonym for mind. 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.

An oft-encountered analogy is that the brain is to the mind as computer hardware is to computer software. The idea of the mind as software has led some scientists to use the word "soul" to emphasize 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 algorithms on the fastest computers in the world in minutes or seconds). Some have located the soul in this possible difference between the mind and a classical computer.

In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson took note that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Wilson suggested that biologists need to investigate how human genes predispose people to believe in a soul.

Daniel Dennett has championed the idea that the human survival strategy depends heavily on adoption of the intentional stance, a behavioral strategy that predicts the actions of others based on the expectation that they have a mind like one's own (see theory of mind). Mirror neurons in brain regions such as Broca's area may facilitate this behavioral strategy. 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.

See also

• Ekam
• Metaphysical naturalism
• Mind-body problem
• Neural correlates of consciousness

• Philosophical zombie
• Soul dualism
• Vitalism

Additional references

• Batchelor, Stephen. Buddhism Without Belief - aha.
• Chalmers, David. J., 1996, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Cornford, Francis, M., Greek Religious Thought, 1950.
• Nagel, Thomas. (1974). “What is it like to be a bat?” Philosophical Review, 83: 435–450.
• Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1925; reprinted by Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0-415-22563-9.
• Ryle, Gilbert, 1949, The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson.
• Swinburne (1997). The Evolution of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Stevenson (1975). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Volume I: Ten Cases in India. University Press of Virginia
• Stevenson (1974). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia
• Stevenson (1983). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Volume IV: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma. University Press of Virginia
• Stevenson (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Praeger Publishers
• Wilson (1996). The State of Man: Day Star, Wake Up Seminars. 1996.
• Aad Guru Granth Sahib. 1983 (reprint). Publishers: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Amritsar. (M = Mahala, i.e., succession number of Sikh Gurus to the House of Guru Nanak, P = page number of the AGGS.).
• Rosemary Altea, Soul Signs, Rodale, 2004 ISBN 1-57954-948-9

Further reading

• Bremmer, Jan (1983). The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (PDF). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03131-2. Retrieved 2007-08-16.
• Christopher, Milbourne, Search for the Soul , Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, 1979
• McGraw, John J., Brain & Belief: An Exploration of the Human Soul , Aegis Press, 2004
• Sailen Debnath, 'The Meanings of Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Myths', Chapters: The Meaning of Kalpavriksha- As you Think so You Become; The White Lotus and its Meaning; The Meaning of Chitragupta- The God-Witness for Justice; Akashgarbha and Chetanagarbha- The Depth of the Sky and the Ocean of Consciousness; ISBN 978-81-291-1481-5, Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2009.

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Ancient Theories of the Soul
• The soul in Judaism at Chabad.org
• The Old Testament Concept of the Soul by Heinrich J. Vogel (Christian)
• Body, Soul and Spirit Article in the Journal of Biblical Accuracy (Christian)
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Soul" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.