Religion: Define "soul" as used in the Biblical sense

[clydefrand]

I enjoyed last night's thread about religion in politics, etc. I've always wanted to ask the following questions of more than one person at a time. I know you posters come from all over the world. What better way to get a variety of answers? I respect your opinions. These questions are not to offend or to belittle one's beliefs. I am sincerely interested in what you think. To all of you who care to answer... Thanks, Fran

I ask you:
1. What is your definition of the human soul?

2. Where does the soul come from?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. the soul

as I understand it, everything comes from God and goes back to God, because everything is God. An individual soul is like a drop of water from the ocean washed up into the air by a wave. For a while, it is individual, but eventually it goes back into the ocean.

[clydefrand]

5. Thank you. Now another question: What is your understanding

of God? What form is God? Where does God exist?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

21. God

ah, the ultimate question! Sufis' understanding of God is via personal experience. Our goal is to 'die before death' in that we experience That before we cross over, that we may understand this life better while we are still in the body.

And where does God exist? Everywhere. Perhaps God is the subatomic particles that make up everything. Perhaps God is the thought behind the concepts of subatomic particles. Perhaps God is all this and more. But to a Sufi, the easiest place to find God is in one's own heart. God resides in each person's heart. Many don't feel God there because the heart is veiled. There are ways to unveil the heart- one way is via a heart-breaking experience. Another is via spiritual practice, such as zhikar, which means "recitation" or "remembrance". It is a ceremony where sacred phrases are spoken, chanted, or sung, the most common of which is "La illaha il Allah".

What form is God? I'll answer in a story. The Israelites of Moses' time once went up to that prophet and said, "You know God. Please invite Him to dinner." Moses said, "You don't understand God! He can't come to dinner!" That night, on Mt. Sinai, God rebuked Moses, saying "This is how the people understand me at this time. Go back and tell them I will be glad to come to dinner tomorrow night."

The next evening, all the people were busy getting ready for the dinner with God. A poor beggar came among them, asking for bread. "We can't serve you, we are getting ready for dinner with God. You help us, then you can eat." The people got the food ready, but God didn't come. Moses went up the mountain to ask why, and God said "But I did come, in the form of the old man, and your people wouldn't serve me."

One last thing. We think that life consists of creation of concepts of God, which you keep until your spiritual growth makes you shatter your concepts and create new ones.

[sui generis]

7. that's not very appealing to me

I like being an "I" much more than the thought of being a "we" or an "it".

Outside the context of religion and afterlife, I would personally define a "soul" as the unique core persona of an individual - a very complex and dynamic gestalt of our volition and conscience.

[BlueJazz]

2. I'm really not being flippant but the only "Soul" I believe in is .....

James Brown.

[teach1st]

3. I always thought conciousness was soul

And many people are unconscious. If one is alive one has soul. Unless one lives in the suburbs.

Soul is a slice of the big salami.

[clydefrand]

8. Thanks. This sounds closer to my thoughts so far.

Does this mean to you that once we die, there is no soul?

[teach1st]

11. I don't know...

...I'm a spiritual Atheist colored up by some acid excursions and a slight fling with sufism so I could nail this girl. My answers depend on the time of day sometimes. I think we identify with we see as being our own slice of the salami, but it's a false identification.

If I had the answers I'd start a television network and run somebody for president.

[troubleinwinter]

4. "Human Soul"... makes no sense.

Soul is spiritual, not "human". It does not "come from" anywhere, nor does it go anywhere.

[clydefrand]

9. Are humans not spiritual?

If not, who or what is? Where do we get the word spiritual?

[ohio_liberal]

6. My understanding of soul...

...is that it is the spirit within.

[clydefrand]

10. And the spirit is? Ah, yes, the soul.

But this doesn't tell me what it is.

[ohio_liberal]

13. ...

The essence that makes us what and who we are.

[clydefrand]

14. Can you equate that to our personality, our inner self?

Personality, persona may not be what our inner self is.

[ohio_liberal]

16. I would say...

it's more like the activator that gives us personality and our inner self.

[juliagoolia]

17. Personality is in your DNA

Hate to break it to you..

I work with LOADS of adoptees.. total strangers that have never met and share so so so so many personality traits its unreal.

Values you learn from environment.

[clydefrand]

20. So essence as Ohio_Liberal says is really our

DNA making us what we are...our personality. I quite agree with you about personality traits shared by relatives who haven't had much contact.

Let's see now...soul=essence=self-awareness=activator=personality=DNA=spirit=James Brown. :-)

[aneerkoinos]

24. Originally

the word 'persona' meant mask.

[juliagoolia]

12. Gosh don't start big !!

Well, apparently there was always something.

That something probably has some sort of intelligence or mind that causes things to be what they are.. ie, an atom, a molecule. I think there must be some intelligence or there would be no patterns, there would be no consistent recreation of the same thing over and over.

Maybe its all an accident, but its an intelligent conglomertion of accidents then.


So now we have all this Matter/Energy that is intelligent.
How do we know?

Consciousness is "aware" of it.

In this awareness "I am"

"I am" so I can "BE"

"Being" is a verb

There.. ha ha.. an attempt at defining what is not possible to define.

We dont even know what we dont know so we can ask.

[clydefrand]

18. Thanks. I like your answers

Soooooooooooooo, since I've struggled for many, many years with religion, I have decided people who "believe" just do it and don't ask questions. It's just easier to say "I know what God is, what a soul is, etc." And there is no way to really understand these things.

To know the answers we would have to be "God" is the way I look at it. Whatever God is..,

[juliagoolia]

22. OH I believe... I believe there is a God.

What is God? Got me.. real? I think so.
Mind/consciousness/intelligence/creative/expanding and even more adjectives.

My story.

I thought about all the science, and has pretty much decided when it boiled down to it, there had have always been something. What that something was had to be beyond me and my ability to understand it, but I felt there was a personal connection to IT.. what ever IT was.

So, here I was.. young, divorced with a child.
I'd pray.. not in any ritual type of way, but really just yearning to understand and fit into my own life.
I was desperate and scared to death you might say.

When I would get into these deep thoughts of questing so deeply and trying to understand so intensely, I would often her in my minds ear a word. Ishmael.

Well, there is a story in the Bible I am sure you can find it, and its about Sarah and Abraham and Hagar and the babies. Isaac and Ishmael.

This didn't seem to connect for me or lend any meaning to this experience of the mumbo jumbo word message I was hearing/understanding or imagining whatever you want to call it.

It went on for a few years. Then one day I was at a Bar Mitzvah and there was a Rabbi there. I had come to understand by then that names in Hebrew had meanings as well, similar to Indian names. So I asked the Rabbi. What does this mean.. Ishamel.. He says it is a story in the Bible about Abraham..

I said.. No.. what is the literal translation of the word..
He said.

Oh that.. It means. "God Hears" Or "One whom God Hears"

Well, since then. I believe..

I don't understand. Don't know if I ever will, but I do believe I am HEARD by GOD what ever that is.

[aneerkoinos]

25. Question

Has Time allways been? :)

Skip the Einstein (time equals expanding 3D space) as I'm sure you are aware of.

Think about music. It is delivered acoustically in to your year and brain in consecutive order, bound by time, but is that all you perceive? At least I think I hear the music, not the delivery mechanism, and am affected by the harmonic structures or potentiality of music. Some occasions the whole of my attention is submerged by the music, so totally that I forget myself and the flow of time. So I ask, in that timeless submergence, who is listening? ;)

[juliagoolia]

26. Time?

I personally think its a hoax.. LOL

I really think we only count up things that change and call it time.

change is a constant.
Things are always in a state of change

Harmony and music are a movement or change as well. Music is not Music without movement.

big topics huh... answers? we can only stab at them and hope we get near.

[aneerkoinos]

27. timeless movement

Hard to imagine, huh? :D

Yet I can't help trying. Fractals are another example/analogy that I've used. Something infinitely complex is clearly not static, but the "movement" of the potential of simple mathematic generative formula seems to have little if anything to do with time.

[oneighty]

15. Humans are

the only animals with a soul. That is why we can kill and eat all the other animals.

I think.

180

[clydefrand]

19. Including people! People have and probably still do this.

Does that give those people two souls or no soul?

[Auntie Bush]

34. I believe animals have a soul...or at least they "Pass Over "just

like humans. I've had so many experiences... I've proven it to myself. Didn't used to believe that...but now I do.

[aneerkoinos]

23. Psyche

>1. What is your definition of the human soul?


Common, especially Christian, delusion.

The greek word 'psykhe' (sometimes translated by 'soul' which is supposed to be something eternal) means 'mind', both consciouss and unconsciouss and not necessarily limited to individual, 'cognition' or sometimes 'life-force'. Cf. psychology and metempsychosis, which don't presuppose "soul". What is the Germanic etymology for English 'soul', Swedish 'själ' etc., I don't know.


>2. Where does the soul come from?

From the same place as Ego-delusion, it is Ego's wishfull thinking. Ego is dependent construct without independent existance. Ego is consciouss of it's own finity and mortally afraid of it's own end, thus it has created certain belief systems for it's own solace, according to which Ego can go on existing eternally. Sorry, no can do, Ego which is union of physical brain and more subbtle "mindstuff", what ever that is, ends when the physical aspect of life goes into the recycling bin. Simple logic is enough to show that whatever has beginning has also end - they are codependent categories.

However, physical death does not necessarily mean the absolute end of all personal aspects of mind. Buddhist notion of re-incarnation does not presuppose eternal soul (that would be illogical because there can be nothing eternal in the dependent contexts of time), what re-incarnates is karmic chain (or cycle) of causes and effects, like a whirlpool moving in a river, than can create some relative continuity to some personal mind aspects. Of course to Buddhists that whirlpool is more like vicious circle, problem is how to make it stop whirling around and merge with the whole river. Or sumfink.

[Doohickie]

29. Self-delete of smartass comment

Nevermind.

[aneerkoinos]

30. self delete smart ass responce to smart ass comment :)

[Doohickie]

31. Dang, you saw it.

Well, if you want to PM your response to me, I will promise to take it with a grain of salt.

[aneerkoinos]

32. Nah, thanks

It was nasty.

[Doohickie]

36. As if mine wasn't...........

[Doohickie]

28. My answers

1. The soul is "that of God" within each of us.

2. The soul coms from God.

I am a Christian, but I think the first post provides a viable model.

[Doohickie]

37. Hehe.... and I can't spell "comes"!

[aneerkoinos]

38. After all the niceties

How about serious attempt to find out if and where we actually disagree? :)

There is nothing in your statements I find disagreeable, if we define "God" as undefinable omnipresense or sumfink, and do not let the possible disagreement on the meaning of the word 'soul' trouble us. There is something within us, something undefinable, undivided, whether you call it our "true nature", "divine spark" or "soul", that is not separate from the "undefinable omnipresense".

We seem to agree that there is something mental/spiritual that somehow continues after physical death. Where the possible disagreement is the nature of that something, we of Buddhist/Gnostic inclination say that it is not the Ego, feeling of being me, that continues, nor it is something eternal, in the sense that 'enlightment' or 'union with God' frees it from the cycle of birth and death, from condition of time. I know that some of most Christian dogmas are in disagreement with whe above, but I'm more interested about hearing your personal view.

[Pax Argent]

33. I had a vision of moonlight dancing on water

For the briefest moment the water would swell in countless small ripples and in the process borrow some light from the moon. The ripples would smooth out to be replaced with other ripples, and the moonlight alighted on each in turn only to dissipate as the ripples dissipated.

I think we're like that. The moonlight goes on forever as does the water. Only the waves rise and fall with time.

I don't know about existence beyond this form as I have no recollection or direct knowledge of it. I don't know if there is existence beyond this form, as the reports of it are suspicious given the way that man has used myth to quell his fears in the past. If the myths of our people are security blankets to keep us feeling safe in the dark I believe I am done with them.

In regards to soul, I believe that the spirit resides more strongly in some than others, but I believe spirit resides in everything. They say that material is just dense energy. What is the nature of this energy? If this is the case, what is the nature of the marriage of moonlight and the water?

Science can tell us what, but can never truly tell us why.
O8)

[banana republican]

35. Someone on DU once said

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; rather we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

[datasuspect]

39. soul

[datasuspect]

40. godfather of soul

[RedCloud]

41. Why doesn't your god have a name?

Has your deity been evasive on this topic? Name too close to other pagan sources?

Many of you are writing some generic word with a capital letter for your deity hoping that others cannot research a specific name through Google, of course, any records of that being.

Why do fetuses die? Did they have a soul? Does each sperm cell have a soul?
What about fillet de sole? Did it have a soul before some lost soul devoured it?

Where are the reserve souls stored?

When can we see or measure our souls?

Are our souls different in manifestation?

What if my soul is cosmic? Does that make it better?

Can you really sell your soul, I am hard up for cash?