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The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience, rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the biological organism. Some religions and philosophies on the other hand believe in the soul having a material component, and some have even tried to establish the weight of the soul. Souls are usually considered to be immortal. Many beliefs hold they exist prior to incarnation.

The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. It also shares as a Proto-Indo-European language root of spirit.

Etymology

Modern English soul continues Old English sáwol, sáwel, first attested in the 8th century (in Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50), cognate to other Germanic terms for the same concept, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála. The 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^[1] 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 Ulfila, 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 "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. It occurs juxtaposed to σῶμα e.g. in Matthew 10:28:

— καὶ μὴ φοβηθεῖσθε 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.

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, 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 (also in LXX, e.g. Genesis 1:2 וְר֣וּחַאֱלֹהִ֔ים = πνεῦμα θεοῦ = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God").

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".^[2]

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.^[3]

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:

the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness)
the eros (appetitive, or desire)

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

The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris – the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

Aristotle

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, 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 as some kind of 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 naturally organized body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity", and the potential for rational activity thus constituted 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; however, Aristotle makes it clear towards the end of his De Anima that he does believe that the intellect, which he considers to be a part of the soul, is eternal and separable from the body.

Aristotle also believed that there were four parts (understood as powers) of the soul. The four sections are the calculative part and the scientific part on the rational side; these are used for making decisions. The desiderative part and the vegetative part on the irrational side, responsible for identifying our needs.

Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis

Following Aristotle, the Muslim philosopher-physicians, Avicenna and 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 [sic]" 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."^[4]

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'".^[5]

Thomas Aquinas

Following Aristotle and Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas understands the soul as 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.

Religious views

Bahá'í beliefs

The Bahá'í Faith affirm 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."^[6] 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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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.^[8]

Buddhist beliefs

Buddha taught that there is no permanent self in the conventional sense (anatta), what most people call self is a delusion or wrong view, not seeing things as they really are, (principally; lacking experiential insight of the five aggregates of clinging).

Buddhism teaches that all things are impermanent, in a constant state of flux; all is transient, and no abiding state exists by itself. This applies to humanity, as much as to anything else in the cosmos; thus, there is no unchanging and abiding self. Our sense of "I" or "me" is simply a sense, belonging to the ever-changing entity, that (conventionally speaking) is us, our body, and mind. This expresses in essence the Buddhist principle of anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman).

Buddhist teaching holds that the delusion of a permanent, abiding self is one of the main root causes for human conflict on the emotional, social and political levels.^[9] They add that understanding of anatta (or "not-self or no soul") provides an accurate description of the human condition, and that this understanding allows "us" to go beyond "our" mundane desires. Buddhists can speak in conventional terms of the "self" as a matter of convenience, but only under the conviction that ultimately "we" are changing "entities". In death, the body and mind disintegrate; if the disintegrating mind is still in the grip of delusion, it will cause the continuity of the consciousness to bounce back an arising mind to an awaiting being, that is, a fetus developing the ability to harbor consciousness. Thus, in some Buddhist sects^{citation needed}, a being that is born is neither entirely different, nor exactly the same, as it was prior to rebirth.

However, Shirō Matsumoto noted a curious development in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, stemming from the Cittamatra and Vijnanavada schools in India: although this school of thought denies the permanent personal selfhood, it affirms concepts such as Buddha-nature, Tathagatagarbha, Rigpa, or "original nature". Matsumoto argues that these concepts constitute a non- or trans-personal self, and almost equate in meaning to the Hindu concept of Atman, although they differ in that Buddha-nature does not incarnate.

In some Mahayana Buddhist schools, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, the view is that there are 3 minds: Very-Subtle-Mind, which isn't disintegrated in incarnation-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.

One should note the polarity in Tibetan Buddhism between shes-pa (the principle of consciousness) and rig-pa (pure consciousness equal to Buddha-nature). The concept of a person as a tulku provides even more controversy. A tulku has, due to heroic austerities and esoteric training (or due to innate talent combined with great subtle-mind commitment in the moment of death), achieved the goal of transferring personal "identity" (or nature/commitment) from one rebirth to the next (for instance, Tibetans consider the Dalai Lama a tulku). The mechanics behind this work as follows: although Buddha-nature does not incarnate, the individual self comprises skandhas, or components, that undergo rebirth. For an ordinary person, skandhas cohere in a way that dissolves upon the person's death. So, elements of the transformed personality re-incarnate, but they lose the unity that constitutes personal selfhood for a specific person. In the case of tulkus, however, they supposedly achieve sufficient "crystallization" of skandhas in such a manner that the skandhas do not entirely "disentangle" upon the tulku's death; rather, a directed reincarnation occurs. In this new birth, the tulku possesses a continuity of personal identity/commitment, rooted in the fact that the consciousness or shes-pa (which equates to a type of skandha called vijnana) has not dissolved after death, but has sufficient durability to survive in repeated births. Since, however, subtle-mind emerges in incarnation, and gross-mind emerges in periods of sufficient awareness within some incarnations, there isn't really any contradiction: very-subtle-mind's original nature, that is irreducible mind / clarity whose function is knowing, doesn't have any "body", and the coarser minds that emerge "on" it while it drifts/wanders/dreams aren't continuous. Any continuity of awareness achieved by tulku is simply a greater continuity than is achieved by/in a normal incarnation, as it continues across several, is only a difference of degree.

Many modern Buddhists, particularly in Western countries, reject the concept of rebirth or reincarnation as incompatible with the concept of anatta, and typically take an agnostic stance toward the concept. Stephen Batchelor discusses this issue in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. However, the question arises: if a self does not exist, who thinks/lives now? Some Buddhist sects hold the view that thought itself thinks: if you remove the thought, there's no thinker (self) to be found. A detailed introduction to this, and to other basic Buddhist teachings, appears in What the Buddha taught by the Buddhist monk Walpola Rahula.

Others see the Buddha's warning that those who believe that a permanent self does not exist are just as gravely mistaken as those who believe that one does, and understand that he taught that both views were erroneous and could not capture the actual truth of the matter, speculations along those lines would only cause suffering rather than its removal. (See: neti neti).

Some say that the self endures after death, some say it perishes. In the Theravada Buddhist view, both are wrong and their error is most grievous. Theravadins believe that if one says the self is perishable, the fruit they strive for will perish too, and at some time there will be no hereafter. Good and evil would be indifferent. This salvation from selfishness is without merit. Theravada Buddhism's stance on many beliefs of soul after Death are explained in the Brahmajala Sutta.

Christian beliefs

A painting of God watching as an angel and a demon fight for a man's soul

From the Wisdom tradition of ancient Israel, we find this statement: "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Nowhere, however, in the Jewish scriptures, is there a notion of the soul existing apart from its embodiment in the individual person. References to the soul's origin include Genesis 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.") and 1 Corinthians 15:45 ("And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit.") Christians tend to understand the soul in moral rather than philosophical terms. In this understanding, when people die their souls, which have been formed (or malformed) by the good or evil deeds that the person has done, will be judged by God as being worthy or unworthy of salvation. Though virtually all branches of Christianity-- evangelical, mainline Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox-- teach that Jesus Christ plays a decisive role in this salvific process, the specifics of that role and the part played by individual persons or ecclesiastical rituals and relationships, is a matter of wide diversity in official church teaching, theological speculation and popular practice. Some Christians also believe that if one has not repented of their sins, they will go to Hell and suffer eternal separation from God. Variations also exist on this theme, e.g., some which hold that the unrighteous soul will be destroyed instead of suffering eternally. Others recognize the not only righteous as those who will equally inherit eternal life in Heaven and enjoy eternal fellowship with God, but include babies and those with cognitive or mental impairments, as well as all the righteous saints who lived before Jesus came.

Various opinions

Some Christians regard the soul as the immortal essence of a human - the seat or locus of human will, understanding, and personality - and that after death, God either rewards or punishes the soul. Different groups dispute whether this reward/punishment depends upon doing good deeds, or merely upon believing in God and in Jesus.

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 the 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),[2] 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 creationism, traducianism and pre-existence. According to creationism, each individual soul is created directly by God, either at the moment of conception or some later time (identical twins arise several cell divisions after conception, but no one would deny that they have whole souls). According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception.

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 humans."^[10]
At the moment of death, the soul goes either to Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell. Purgatory is a place of atonement for sins that one goes through to pay the temporal punishment for post-baptismal sins that have not been atoned for by sufferings during one's earthly life. This is distinct from the atonement for the eternal punishment due to sin which was affected by Christ's suffering and death.
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."^[11]

Hindu beliefs

Main articles: Atman (Hinduism) and Jiva

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

The Bhagavad Gita, one of the most significant puranic scriptures, refers to the spiritual body or soul as Purusha (see also Sankhya philosophy). The Purusha is part and parcel of God, is unchanging (is never born and never dies), is indestructible, and, though essentially indivisible. It is made up of three components:

(i) Sat (truth or existence)

(ii) Chit (consciousness or knowledge)

(iii) Ananda (bliss) It has form "Vigrha".

Presence of soul is perceived by its consciousness. According to Bhagavad Gita, all living entities are soul proper. When soul leaves the body, then it is called death. That means, DEATH is transmigration of soul from one body to another body [Bhagavad Gita]. Soul transmigrates from one body to another body based on their Karmic[performed deeds] reactions.

Islamic beliefs

Further information: Nafs

See also: Sufi psychology

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According to few verses from Qur'an though the following information can be deduced: In part 15 verse 29, the creation of humans involves Allah "breathing" souls into them. This intangible part of an individual's existence is "pure" at birth - according to mystical beliefs which a majorty opinion amongst Muslim - and has the potential of growing and achieving nearness to God if the person leads a righteous life (to be noted: this is a sufi perspective of the soul which is also held by a large majority of Sunni and Shia lay Muslims but which cannot be directly supported by the Quranic texts or Mutawatir Ahadith except with extremely free interpretations and influence of other religions and philosophies)^{citation needed}. At death, the person's soul transitions to an eternal afterlife of bliss, peace and unending spiritual growth until the day of judgement where both the body and soul are reunited for judgement at which point the person is either rewarded by going to heaven if they have followed God's commands or punished if they have disobeyed him (Qur'an 66:8, 39:20).

From the Hadith we understand that Allah assigns an Angel to "breathe" soul into an embryo after 40 days of pregnancy^{citation needed}.

Generally, it is believed that all living beings comprise two aspects during their existence: The physical (being the body) and the non-physical (being the soul). The non-physical aspect, namely the soul, is one's soul-related activities like his/her feelings and emotions, thoughts, conscious and sub-conscious desires and objectives. While the body and its physical actions serve as a "reflection" of one's soul, whether it was good or evil, and thus "confirms" the extent of such intentions^{citation needed}.

Jainism

Further information: Jain philosophy and Jainism and non-creationism

According to Jainism, Soul (Jiva) exists as a reality, 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 first 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?

Māhavīra : 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.^[13]

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 beginingless 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 as 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 an 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.

Jewish beliefs

Jewish views of the soul begin with the book of Genesis, in which verse 2:7 states, "Hashem formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." (New JPS)

The Torah offers no systematic definition of a soul; various descriptions of the soul exist in classical rabbinic literature.

Saadia Gaon, in his Emunoth ve-Deoth 6:3, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul. He held that the soul comprises that part of a person's mind which constitutes physical desire, emotion, and thought.

Maimonides, in his The Guide to the Perplexed, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul through the lens of neo-Aristotelian philosophy, and viewed the soul as a person's developed intellect, which has no substance.

In Kabbalah the soul is understood to have three elements. The Zohar, a classic work of Jewish mysticism, describes the three elements as nephesh, ru'ah, and neshamah. They are differentiated thusly:

Nephesh - The living mortal being; it feels hunger, hates, loves, loathes, weeps, and most importantly, can die (cease to breathe). The nephesh is simply an "air-breather". Animals also are a nephesh (they breathe air), but plants do not. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. (derived from Old Testament Theology, by Gerhard von Rad)

The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but are slowly created over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually:

Ruach - the middle soul, or spirit. It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. In modern parlance, it equates to psyche or ego-personality.

Neshamah - the higher soul, Higher Self or super-soul. This distinguishes man from all other life forms. It relates to the intellect, and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. This part of the soul is provided both to Jew and non-Jew alike at birth. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God. In the Zohar, after death Nefesh disintegrates, Ruach is sent to a sort of intermediate zone where it is submitted to purification and enters in "temporary paradise", while Neshamah returns to the source, the world of Platonic ideas, where it enjoys "the kiss of the beloved". Supposedly after resurrection, Ruach and Neshamah, soul and spirit re-unite in a permanently transmuted state of being.

The Raaya Meheimna, a Kabbalistic tractate always published with the Zohar, posits two more parts of the human soul, the chayyah and yehidah. Gershom Scholem wrote that these "were considered to represent the sublimest levels of intuitive cognition, and to be within the grasp of only a few chosen individuals":

Chayyah - The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself.

Yehidah - the highest plane of the soul, in which one can achieve as full a union with God as is possible.

Extra soul states

Both Rabbinic and kabbalistic works also posit a few additional, non-permanent states to the soul that people can develop on certain occasions. These extra souls, or extra states of the soul, play no part in any afterlife scheme, but are mentioned for completeness.

Ruach HaKodesh - a state of the soul that makes prophecy possible. Since the age of classical prophecy passed, no one receives the soul of prophecy any longer.

Neshamah Yeseira - The supplemental soul that a Jew experiences on Shabbat. It makes possible an enhanced spiritual enjoyment of the day. This exists only while one observes Shabbat; it can be lost and gained depending on one's observance.

Neshamah Kedosha - Provided to Jews at the age of majority (13 for boys, 12 for girls), and related to the study and fulfillment of the Torah commandments. It exists only when one studies and follows Torah; it can be lost and gained depending on one's study and observance.

For more detail on Jewish beliefs about the soul see Jewish eschatology.

Sikh Belief

Sikhism considers SOUL (atma) to be part of Universal Soul, which is GOD (Parmatma). 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."^[14] 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."^[15] and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."^[16]

Taoist View

There is a constant 9.6 billion souls or primordial beings called yuanling according to two books on Taoist beliefs, which would reside in the realms of heaven, earth or hell depending on the state of purity. Souls which are pure, in tune with tao or ways of tao elevate to heaven while the opposite to hell. All people have souls, borne in a state corresponding to their previous incarnate, and will either clense or clutter its purity as they live out their lives. Although unsupported by any academic or scientific research, the practice of Xiuzhen in the prescribed manner is a karthasis process that will rid the body of worldly dirt. Within the human body, Jing Qi Shen correspond to the Three Jewels or the Three Treasures and are reigned by the Three Pure Ones. This is also the Taoist quest for immortality.^[17]

The soul has two manifestations, the po (魄 pò) or yin soul and the hun (魂 hún) or yang soul. The pò is linked to the dead body and the grave, whereas the hún is linked to the ancestral tablet. There could be multiple pò and hún for each person.^[18]

According to two guidance books, the mechanism of Judgment Day is called Souyuan and the world is currently in the third Souyuan. The first reclaimed some 200 million beings as did the second Souyuan, making the population in heaven some 400 million strong.

Other religious beliefs and views

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

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.

Crisscrossing specific religions, the phenomenon of therianthropy and belief in the existence of otherkin also occur. One can perhaps better describe these as phenomena rather than as beliefs, since people of varying religion, ethnicity, or nationality may believe in them. Therianthropy involves the belief that a person or their soul has a spiritual, emotional, or mental connection with an animal. Such a belief may manifest itself in many forms, and many explanations for it often draw on a person's religious beliefs. Otherkin hold similar beliefs: they see their souls as partially or entirely non-human, and not necessarily of this world.

Another fairly large segment of the population, not necessarily favoring 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, you must create a soul during the course of your life. Without a soul, Gurdjieff taught that you will "die like a dog".

Science and the soul

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

The consensus among neuroscientists and biologists is that the mind, or consciousness, is the operation of the brain. They often fuse the terms mind and brain together as "mind/brain".^[19] or bodymind. Science and medicine seek naturalistic accounts of the observable natural world. This stance is known as methodological naturalism [3] Much of the scientific study relating to the soul has been involved in investigating the soul as a human belief or as concept that shapes cognition and understanding of the world (see Memetics), rather than as an entity in and of itself.

When modern scientists speak of the soul outside of this cultural and psychological context, it is generally 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.

A search of the PubMed research literature database shows the following numbers of articles with the indicated term in the title:

brain – 167,244
consciousness – 2,918 (842 or 29% of these articles also include "brain" in the database entry)
soul - 552 (40, 7%, of these articles also include "brain" in the database entry. Many of these articles deal with medical ethics issue such as the implications of religious beliefs on decisions about life support for people in persistent vegetative states)

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 their belief that the human mind has powers beyond or at least qualitatively different from what artificial software can do. Roger Penrose expounds this position in The Emperor's New Mind[4]. 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). Some have located the soul in this possible difference between the mind and a classical computer.

Research on the concept of the soul

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.

Popular Culture

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, souls play a particularly prominent role in the history of the characters Angel and Spike.

In Heroes, the main antagonist Sylar, according to Molly Walker, 'sees into your soul'.

In the Harry Potter series, the main villain of the series, Lord Voldemort, manages to achieve a form of immortality by creating six horcruxes.

In the TV series Supernatural many characters have "sold" their souls as part of deals.

Footnotes

^ Janda, M., Eleusis, das indogermanische Erbe der Mysterien (1998)
^ Francis M. Cornford, Greek Religious Thought, p.64, referring to Pindar, Fragment 131.
^ Erwin Rohde, Psyche, 1928.
^ Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (1996), History of Islamic Philosophy, p. 315, Routledge, ISBN 0415131596.
^ Nahyan A. G. Fancy (2006), "Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection: The Interaction of Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in the Works of Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288)", p. 209-210, Electronic Theses and Dissertations, University of Notre Dame.[1]
^ Bahá'í Reference Library - Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, Pages 158-163
^ Bahá'í Reference Library - Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, Pages 155-158
^ ^a ^b Taherzadeh, Adib (1976). The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 1. Oxford, UK: George Ronald. ISBN 0-85398-270-8.
^ Conze, Edward (2nd Rev Ed, 1993). A Short History of Buddhism. Oneworld, 14. ISBN 1851680667.
^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 363
^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 382
^ Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith. Available online
^ Bhagvatisūtra, (Ladnun: Jain Vishwa Bharti Institute):7/58,59
^ SGGS, M 1, p 1153.
^ SGGS, M 4, p 1325.
^ SGGS, M 1, p 1030.
^ Maspero (1950) Pg 211.
^ Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2008).
^ artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/events/conferences/FutureMindBrain.doc

Additional references

Batchelor, Stephen. Buddhism Without Belief - aha.
Cornford, Francis, M., Greek Religious Thought, 1950.
Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1928.
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.).

External links

Our Real Identity: The Science of the Soul Summary from a lecture at the London School of Economics by H.G. Bhuta Bhavana dasa, a Hindu brahmin
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)
How the Soul Works A Loose Association from which to Explore the Soul and Afterlife
[Unconditional Immortality or Resurrection of The Dead http://robertwr.com/index.html by William Robert West (Exhaustive research on the words soul and spirit)