What is the Definition of a Soul?

The problem you have with using science as a comparison...is that....science uses real data and indicators to guide it.

The concept of a soul isn't based on any indicators what so ever.

Apples and oranges friend.... science doesn't make up a conclusion first and then work backwards....not without a heavy indicator.

I completely understand what you mean, but just consider that 11 dimensions are needed for the standard model to work correctly, some of which are built into everything, but we have no way of measuring them. As well as quarks, which can't be directly observed we only have the ability to infer their existence.

The concept of soul doesn't start from no where either....Also remember that science hasn't been able to conclusively disprove its existence, I am not saying turn to Buddhism and give away all of your possessions, but keep in mind that you hang on to this world to whole heartedly, then your transition through the death experience may be a tad frightening.

Its all philosophy but all needs to be seen as a reliable source of description. You are kind of getting hung up on the details, I am interested in the mind of God.

Peace

have any of you smoked DMT? i think thats the closest we can get to knowing what death feels like without actually dieing. because when you die your brain floods with DMT...so the experience would essentially be very similar. I haven't tried it as of yet, because i feel its a substance that truly requires some mental preparation and research, but i definitely plan to.

I'm sorry, but what is to be learned by "trying" to experience death. What is to gained? Just be patient....the real deal will come to you. Sooner than you wish probably.

Death is the real equalizer....the true pattern of chaos and randomness.

No plan...just death.

Just like everything else on this planet ... born with an unknown expiration date. That is what drives religion at it's core....that underlying current of undeniable truth and inevitability, motivates myth, religion, soul.

But sir science tries to say that everything does have an expiration date........ and it is all predictable.

Peace

EDIT: And you as a person who doesn't believe in one kind of spirituality or another, is pretty conservative with your experiences it seems. Not try DMT, what are you CRAZY!!!

death could not possibly come sooner than i wish. believe me...its years too late already.

and i would love to try DMT...and yes...im crazy actually...many of the things people talk about regarding DMT are things i see on a daily basis in dreams anyway. my consciousness likes to float around the universe from time to time. lol

i can understand though why others wouldnt want to try it. it can (from what i've heard, read, etc) be a really intense experience. a lot of people are afraid of death so they dont want to experience it any sooner than necessary.

@ Sarah, the amount you need to smoke is insignificant to the amount released while you dream, and order of magnitude less than when you NDE.

@Jax, maybe taking the drug that makes you experience death will make you realize a truth about reality and cause your life to be much more tolerable with all of this great insight....

Buddhists believe that the soul enters the fetus at 49 days after conception, interestingly DMT is produced in the fetus on the 49th sunrise after conception.
How about the fundamentals of doaism having intrinsic parallels with quantum theory, even explaining certain phenomenon thousands of years before modern science. Including entanglement and wave particle duality.

I agree that religion fouls the good nature of people, and like I said earlier that just because there is some relevance not to go out and join a church-cult, but keep considering with open eyes.

I heard a quote today and I think its symbolic of our role a people; Its about casting bread on the water and seeing what is brought in. Thats all we have to try and do with our experiences, toss some bread out onto our murky waters and explain to others what approaches from beneath the surface and over the horizon.

Peace

So what youre saying is that man was scared of the idea that death was 'the end' and that he would cease to exist in every way after death, so he made up the idea of the soul?

Possible, but could it have been that they discovered the soul some other way? There is billions of people throughout time that have seen ghosts, many that have come into contact with people who are physically dead, many who have actually died for a time that come back and speak of a place, many who have had intense experiences on different substances that speak of another place, many respected people who believe in the soul and the soul realm, many who have thoughts and memories from 'past lives'. After all that its hard to understand what type of person wouldnt at least consider the fact that some part of us lives on after we die.

Mr.KushMan said:

@ Sarah, the amount you need to smoke is insignificant to the amount released while you dream, and order of magnitude less than when you NDE.

@Jax, maybe taking the drug that makes you experience death will make you realize a truth about reality and cause your life to be much more tolerable with all of this great insight....

Buddhists believe that the soul enters the fetus at 49 days after conception, interestingly DMT is produced in the fetus on the 49th sunrise after conception.
How about the fundamentals of doaism having intrinsic parallels with quantum theory, even explaining certain phenomenon thousands of years before modern science. Including entanglement and wave particle duality.

I agree that religion fouls the good nature of people, and like I said earlier that just because there is some relevance not to go out and join a church-cult, but keep considering with open eyes.

I heard a quote today and I think its symbolic of our role a people; Its about casting bread on the water and seeing what is brought in. Thats all we have to try and do with our experiences, toss some bread out onto our murky waters and explain to others what approaches from beneath the surface and over the horizon.

Peace

Click to expand...

so do you think that natural DMT experiences are more powerful or less powerful than smoking it?

So, a few questions for our authorities on souls....

1) What is your evidence for the existence of a "soul" or a consciousness that persists after death?

2) What happens to the soul when you sever the corpus collosum, and under observation you see two distinct personalities operating in the hemispheres of the brain? Personalities that not only differ in their perceptions of the world (visual and linguistic) but also in their reactions and tastes.

3) What happens to the soul when the brain receives severe physical damage which changes the singular personality of the individual, as in the case of Phineas Gage, and others?

4) What happens to the soul when Alzheimers strips the individual of all memory?

5) If personality, memory, and consciousness may be obliterated but the "soul" lives on, what is the function of the soul and what benefit does it provide you in relation to people who have previously died and no longer have any association to you? How then, does the soul have any more intrinsic value than an LED light?

sarah22 said:

death could not possibly come sooner than i wish. believe me...its years too late already.

and i would love to try DMT...and yes...im crazy actually...many of the things people talk about regarding DMT are things i see on a daily basis in dreams anyway. my consciousness likes to float around the universe from time to time. lol

i can understand though why others wouldnt want to try it. it can (from what i've heard, read, etc) be a really intense experience. a lot of people are afraid of death so they dont want to experience it any sooner than necessary.

Click to expand...

Why do you think the bolded? Sometimes I think the same, for a lot of reasons. Im not alive the same way I was when I was a kid through high school. At the same time I know theres a lot of things I still have to experience here. Im not scared of death and being physically dead because I know all will be well after that, but Im still somewhat scared of dying itself.

Ive been wanting to try DMT as well, for years now. Ive read some amazing experiences on it, especially on erowid.

Philly_Buddah said:

Why do you think the bolded? Sometimes I think the same, for a lot of reasons. Im not alive the same way I was when I was a kid through high school. At the same time I know theres a lot of things I still have to experience here. Im not scared of death and being physically dead because I know all will be well after that, but Im still somewhat scared of dying itself.

Ive been wanting to try DMT as well, for years now. Ive read some amazing experiences on it, especially on erowid.

Click to expand...

i'm not afraid of death. not at all. i think im a little excited for it. im not as suicidal as i have been in the past couple years (i have issues lol. i was in outpatient treatment for over a year), but i'd still welcome death with open arms. im not running out to kill myself or anything, but if it happened, i'd be ok. the only thing regarding death that actually scares me is what would happen to my family if i passed. what scares me, is how they would feel, cuz of course i'd never want them to hurt.

i watched a video online once, and it was someones dmt trip, with computer graphics. they took the things they saw and created a video of the trip with computer art...many of the things in that video were things, and places, i'd seen before. not on DMT, just in dreams and visions. so it makes me wonder sometimes, where these places are, if we can all see the same, or similar things. they cant just be in my own personal head, otherwise i'd be the only one who can see them.

Mr.KushMan said:

But sir science tries to say that everything does have an expiration date........ and it is all predictable.

Peace

EDIT: And you as a person who doesn't believe in one kind of spirituality or another, is pretty conservative with your experiences it seems. Not try DMT, what are you CRAZY!!!

Click to expand...

Hardly what I mean at all. Death is random but constant. You may die being born or you may live to 100+ ... there's no way of knowing.

sarah22 said:

death could not possibly come sooner than i wish. believe me...its years too late already.

and i would love to try DMT...and yes...im crazy actually...many of the things people talk about regarding DMT are things i see on a daily basis in dreams anyway. my consciousness likes to float around the universe from time to time. lol

i can understand though why others wouldnt want to try it. it can (from what i've heard, read, etc) be a really intense experience. a lot of people are afraid of death so they dont want to experience it any sooner than necessary.

Click to expand...

That's too bad you have that attitude. You can always remake urself ... at any age. It's never too late, and don't let anyone tell you different.

Philly_Buddah said:

So what youre saying is that man was scared of the idea that death was 'the end' and that he would cease to exist in every way after death, so he made up the idea of the soul?

Possible, but could it have been that they discovered the soul some other way? There is billions of people throughout time that have seen ghosts, many that have come into contact with people who are physically dead, many who have actually died for a time that come back and speak of a place, many who have had intense experiences on different substances that speak of another place, many respected people who believe in the soul and the soul realm, many who have thoughts and memories from 'past lives'. After all that its hard to understand what type of person wouldnt at least consider the fact that some part of us lives on after we die.

Click to expand...

Ur getting there.... Man for survival reasons has been endowed with a sentient mind, capable of contemplating death. It's a blessing to be sure, but as with yin & yang, there is a price to be paid. It is a primordial fear planted deep in our core wiring. There is a certain bliss in not understanding mortality. The burden needs a crutch and man has developed,perhaps necessarily, little tricks to cope with the such knowledge.

We live on a planet which demands death from each other constantly. Most things on the planet end up being eaten alive. We kill millions of animals each year to sustain ourselves. We drip in blood....all of us. Vegetables too....all must die. This is the place we live. We and only we realize this....so we need an out.


The "out" is of our own creation.

edited to clear out this post...i changed my mind. i wasnt comfortable discussing that experience here...

Philly_Buddah said:

So what youre saying is that man was scared of the idea that death was 'the end' and that he would cease to exist in every way after death, so he made up the idea of the soul?

Possible, but could it have been that they discovered the soul some other way? There is billions of people throughout time that have seen ghosts, many that have come into contact with people who are physically dead, many who have actually died for a time that come back and speak of a place, many who have had intense experiences on different substances that speak of another place, many respected people who believe in the soul and the soul realm, many who have thoughts and memories from 'past lives'. After all that its hard to understand what type of person wouldnt at least consider the fact that some part of us lives on after we die.

Click to expand...

I feel the ghost sensationalism is a little to brittle in nature to have any grounds in philosophy even. I reduce that to a neurological function human are hardwired with, it is visual scans where by they try to identify faces. Being such a psychologically demanding experience, strong psychedelics, I could see a synesthesia like effect over the brains function.

morgentaler said:

So, a few questions for our authorities on souls....

1) What is your evidence for the existence of a "soul" or a consciousness that persists after death?

2) What happens to the soul when you sever the corpus collosum, and under observation you see two distinct personalities operating in the hemispheres of the brain? Personalities that not only differ in their perceptions of the world (visual and linguistic) but also in their reactions and tastes.

3) What happens to the soul when the brain receives severe physical damage which changes the singular personality of the individual, as in the case of Phineas Gage, and others?

4) What happens to the soul when Alzheimers strips the individual of all memory?

5) If personality, memory, and consciousness may be obliterated but the "soul" lives on, what is the function of the soul and what benefit does it provide you in relation to people who have previously died and no longer have any association to you? How then, does the soul have any more intrinsic value than an LED light?

Click to expand...

1) There is no direct evidence, just as there is no direct evidence for quarks to exist. But we do know that the conscious observer will effect the experiment, everything in life being an experiment.

2)&3) You are splitting hairs, clearly severing the machine that make consciousness possible will have adverse effects on the acting body......

4) Once again, its very hard to say.

5) The soul could be the subjective part of the collective mind that not only created the universe but is the universe.

Or maybe its the ability to surf through the fourth dimension, picking a path along the many quantum states, you leave people and people leave you and in the end you die alone.

Or maybe as I said earlier in the thread, its like a plane that just needs to reach a certain speed before it can take off and create a buffer between thoughts and memory. And its just the mental scanning in the depths of a conscious psychoactive trip, in hopes of sanctuary from this cold dark world.

As you can see in the few rational versions of possibility there are several possible values of a soul, while at the same time being no more important than the LED, they say energy can't be created or destroyed, it must be like that for a reason.

Be it a freak chance occurrence when the universe finally cooled able to form the electron, photons, quarks and bosons that make up the reality we can understand and detect, or a way to ensure our minds are at play.


The point it who knows.

Peace

The soul is the product of a subjective mind.

CrackerJax said:

Ur getting there.... Man for survival reasons has been endowed with a sentient mind, capable of contemplating death. It's a blessing to be sure, but as with yin & yang, there is a price to be paid. It is a primordial fear planted deep in our core wiring. There is a certain bliss in not understanding mortality. The burden needs a crutch and man has developed,perhaps necessarily, little tricks to cope with the such knowledge.

We live on a planet which demands death from each other constantly. Most things on the planet end up being eaten alive. We kill millions of animals each year to sustain ourselves. We drip in blood....all of us. Vegetables too....all must die. This is the place we live. We and only we realize this....so we need an out.

The "out" is of our own creation.

Click to expand...

What does this have to do with the other things mentioned in my post?

If youve never had any real experiences like that I can somewhat understand why you would be as skeptical as you are, but that doesnt change the fact that billions of people through time have. Many of those times others were there and witnessed and experienced the same thing.

Mr.KushMan said:

I feel the ghost sensationalism is a little to brittle in nature to have any grounds in philosophy even. I reduce that to a neurological function human are hardwired with, it is visual scans where by they try to identify faces. Being such a psychologically demanding experience, strong psychedelics, I could see a synesthesia like effect over the brains function.

Click to expand...

How do you explain when multiple people experience and see the same thing? Theyve caught ghosts on camera, and their voices on audio, numerous times. If not proof of the soul, at the very least this certainly opens up the possibility that we do exist in some way after we die physically, if not proves it.

the same as an easter bunny...

bullshit

dna is your desires... no one teaches you what tastes good, what smells good, who looks hot...

but all that stuff is heriditary, and subject to a slight mutation.

dna, and your brain, is what you are, what you like to do, and who you want to be... including impressing your parents or people around you (all genetic desires that bring success)

if you flip any of your desires to a polar opposite, 9 times out of 10, youd be dead in no time.

If you DONT want to impress chicks, if you DONT like the taste of sugar or fat, if you LIKE to piss everyone off, if you like the taste of dog shit...

rest assured... those dna codes that say GREAT IDEA... would be lost, because you would be dead long before you become sexually mature, and those amazing codes would be lost for good.

And thus the reason we have the wants we do.

And each person is simply a mutation of the quantiative amount that they WANT different things.

So some people want something over another...

and thus people have different priorities, and different desires.

that simple

Personality, soul, spirit, blah blah blah..

its all the same.

Philly_Buddah said:

What does this have to do with the other things mentioned in my post?

If youve never had any real experiences like that I can somewhat understand why you would be as skeptical as you are, but that doesnt change the fact that billions of people through time have. Many of those times others were there and witnessed and experienced the same thing.


How do you explain when multiple people experience and see the same thing? Theyve caught ghosts on camera, and their voices on audio, numerous times. If not proof of the soul, at the very least this certainly opens up the possibility that we do exist in some way after we die physically, if not proves it.

Click to expand...

I think it's more about who wants it more. People see and believe what they need to. There are degrees of belief in superstition. Mine is quite low...perhaps nonexistent. Yours (for any number of reasons) is quite high.

The facts are, there is no scientific data that ghosts are real. The human mind can project all sorts of things, and that is why under careful scientific observation....ghosts fail to appear. It's in the human mind, not in the physical world.