The soul (ritual, soul, evolution, experience, spiritual)

[Bouncing Ball]

Few questions regarding the soul:

Can a soul think even without a brain?
Can a soul speak without a mouth?
can there be anything at the spot where a soul is?

If certain humans can spot a soul, in any way, is it possible to build a machine that can?

BTW, as you notice, these questions are not based upon any belief of the soul, e.g. mine.

[stephenw]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Ball

Few questions regarding the soul:

Can a soul think even without a brain?
Can a soul speak without a mouth?
can there be anything at the spot where a soul is?

If certain humans can spot a soul, in any way, is it possible to build a machine that can?

BTW, as you notice, these questions are not based upon any belief of the soul, e.g. mine.

Hi BB,

Sensory processing happens outside the brain e.g. retinal processing. So in a manner of speaking, yes, souls can think without a brain.
Speaking without a mouth - sure I think there are many examples of that, writing, music etc etc
I'm not sure a soul occupies a spot & I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Could you put it another way?

[Bouncing Ball]

Originally Posted by stephenw

Hi BB,

Sensory processing happens outside the brain e.g. retinal processing. So in a manner of speaking, yes, souls can think without a brain.
Speaking without a mouth - sure I think there are many examples of that, writing, music etc etc
I'm not sure a soul occupies a spot & I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Could you put it another way?

Yeah, even though you did give it a nice answer to explain my thoughts, this was not exactly what I meant..
The sensoring process happens somewhere in the body. The writings need to be written and the music comes out of a mouth somewhere.. You understood exactly what I meant with the spot as you gave a perfectly good answer to that..

What I am trying to find here, if there would be any way, at all, to notice a soul if a soul cannot expres itself.


btw, is a soul good for anything besides free will?

[Troublemane]

Hey BB, these are excellent questions. and speaking as one who was (and is) fiercely resistant to anything not backed up with experiential data, I have spent a long time trying to reconcile my intellectual understanding of spiritual phenomena, with my direct experiences. I still haven't got a perfect answer yet, but I have a few really good ideas, I have adopted, which help me grasp the idea of "soul", and so far they've stood up fairly well, I think, so I will try to give my interpretations of the phenomena of which you are speaking, in your questions:

(1)Can a soul think without a brain?-- souls don't "think" in the conventional way we do. souls are the divine spark which enable us to think at all, so you could say a soul is the source of thought itself. soul is also, in another way, the individual's link to the Universal Mind, so rather than being a thing that can be measured, its really a dimension of selfhood. Forgetting the soul when considering a person would be like building a house with only width and height. It looks pretty from the front, but there's no room to live inside.

(2)can a soul speak without a mouth? ---souls communicate through intent. I believe the soul is the source for all thought/emotions/drives, etc. so you cannot "hear" a soul speaking to you with your "ears", you can only sense its communicating with you through your own soul. The way I have experienced it, is like that rising feeling you get right before an idea strikes you, when it hasnt formed entirely but you can feel it coming on. that subtle feeling right there is what it feels like when a spirit (or soul) is talking to you. you have to still your mind quite a bit to hear it, but it can be done.

(3)can there be anything at the spot where a soul is?--I think you are asking if the soul has extension, can be measured physically, and the answer is no, not really. if it has any physical aspect at all, its as a subtle vibration, which may be (i believe) smaller that the smallest sub-subatomic particle. Its vibrating so fast though that it has an energetic presence in space, and we can feel it--but only though our own souls. maybe souls all operate in the same frequency range, is why? I dont know, thats just a guess.

(4) is it possible to build a machine to spot a soul?---I dont think so, but you never know. Maybe as string theory starts being better understood, and science starts to examine all the subtle stirrings in space around us, and not just focusing on the big, planet-sized things moving around,..maybe? but who knows!

[Runewolf1973]

I like Troublemane's answers. For most people in order to "listen" to what a spirit is saying it is true, we must still the mind. For some such as my fiancee who talks to the dead, she does say she actually hears them with her own ears and sees them with her own eyes. I believe it is because her vibrational energy is a little different than most. She picks up the vibrations others don't and those are translated into sound. Notice how animals can hear sounds that to humans are inaudible? There are many sounds that go on that we do not even hear. What is interesting as well, we have a spirit that resides in our house that my fiancee talks to. Apparently his favorite food when he was alive was baby carrots with butter and this particular spirit mentioned that he can even "taste" food, but he just cannot actually eat it. There are machines that can pick up spirit energy if we tune them properly....our own human bodies. Problem is we put more faith in mechanical devices than we do in our ourselves. For an actual man-made mechanical device to be able to pick up those vibrational frequencies would probably have to be as complexly designed as the human body itself.

[atotalstranger]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Ball

Few questions regarding the soul:

Can a soul think even without a brain?
Can a soul speak without a mouth?
can there be anything at the spot where a soul is?

If certain humans can spot a soul, in any way, is it possible to build a machine that can?

The average human adult brain has around 100 billion neurons and 1000 times as many synaptic connections. Our thoughts and consciousness exist because of the processes which take place within this unimaginably complex structure. If thought could exist apart from a structure such as this, there would have been no evolutionary reason for such a structure to develop over the eons it took to reach its current form.

[Mjolnir]

The soul cannot think without a brain or speak without a mouth because the soul is us. Our brains create the conception of the soul so how can it exist without our brains there to create that conception. As atotalstranger said, the human brain is the product of ages of evolution. This is just like our thought process, it is an extremely complex process that can create advanced ideas like the soul. Our idea of the soul is synonymous with we, as people, and we all have the logos/divine spark within us. As far as a machine goes, a machine does not have logos within it so it cannot ever think of a soul.

Just my own little views.

[Troublemane]

i think thats putting the cart before the horse. soul is what matter is patterned after, so the reason that brains evolved at all is because the soul of man guided it that way. not consciously, but more as to how you might say the first light bulb was invented. through experiment, trial and error...but why did anyone spend all that time trying to make a light bulb in the first place? the idea was there, tantalizingly close. the thought that maybe it could be done. this could be called potential...I think souls reside in the realm of the potential, maybe the vacuum fluctuations are soul.

[ben d]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Ball

Few questions regarding the soul:

Can a soul think even without a brain?
Can a soul speak without a mouth?
can there be anything at the spot where a soul is?

If certain humans can spot a soul, in any way, is it possible to build a machine that can?

BTW, as you notice, these questions are not based upon any belief of the soul, e.g. mine.

Hi Bouncing Ball, it is my understanding that a soul is actually spirit incarnate (though at the same time not discontinuous with universal spirit) and therefore has not the limitations that are applicable to it's mortal expression, i.e. soul does not think, does not speak, and is not displaced by, or displaces anything.

Therefore it is inappropriate to ask the questions of the soul that in fact refer to attributes of a living mortal human body.

Perhaps this question is better pondered,..can a human body be alive without it being animated by some cosmic animating spiritual principle, i.e. can the human brain think without a soul, etc..

[Bouncing Ball]

Originally Posted by ben d

Perhaps this question is better pondered,..can a human body be alive without it being animated by some cosmic animating spiritual principle, i.e. can the human brain think without a soul, etc..

Well, personally I think it's possible to live without a soul. And then if you would ask me how... I don't know. Humanity does not know yet.

Wich is technically exactly the same answer as saying the soul does exist and when asked what the soul is.... "I don't know".

And as good as the same answer as giving tons of different things a soul can be.

And again a better answer (in my opinion) as saying the soul does exist and giving only one explaination of the soul.