What is your definition of the soul? Is it a man made concept or does a sould really exist?

What are twin souls?

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I was pondering this lately, I think because without a brain our bodies cannot survive and without a body the brain cannot survive so most probably what we call the 'soul', 'self', 'conciousness' etc is a function of the mind. Even a child's development of conciousness and physical skills are related to their neurological development. It's a matter for debate though and others would have different perspectives. As for twin souls, don't know much about it but probably there are more indications for someone that is right for you now rather than an exact fit with another.

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Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Marie Curie

We like to believe that we have souls. We personify animals so we like to think that they have souls too. By default then, shouldn't all living things have souls? Sounds fair, right? But then you have to give souls to insects, plants, and even single-cell organisms. If that's true, then do we have a singular soul, or are we made up of billions upon billions of them?

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"The Lord can make you tumble, the Lord can make you turn, the Lord can make you overflow...but the Lord can't make you burn." - Randy Newman

As I understand it, Man is dual natured. The physical body and psychology arising from the earth as his animal nature is one aspect. The other nature descended from above and exists in us as a "seed"

When the seed matures it becomes a soul. So where Western Buddhism asserts no soul and modern Christendom asserts the existence of a completely developed soul, for me, we have the seed of the soul that has the potential to mature. It rarely ever does because of the human condition.

Yes, i think that souls exist.

I think that in the same way that we (as individuals) are made up of individual cells, the Global Consciousness (Horus/Christ/Mithra, whatever) is made up of the souls of all the living creatures on the planet.

And yes, i think that every living creature has a soul - it is only it's development which is more or less advanced than other souls.

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The Peaceful Place: http://www.agedhippy.plus.com/

"An object is perceived, or not perceived, according as the mind is, or is not, tinged with the colour of the object. "
Patanjali - Sutra 4:17

According to the "Western Mystery School" of phylosophy All things have souls, individual souls for sentient, self aware beings; Group souls for animal and plant species. Group spirits are what makes all dogs act pretty much like all other dogs, cats like cats, elephants like elephants etc., etc. Cross breeding between species produces, if successful, an animal that is unable to reproduce! Plants, on the other hand, have group spirits that are not far enough advanced on their path to resist crossbreeding and do so easily and readily for the advancement /and evolution of the plant family spirit. A plant in the family that includes roses, however, would not be expected to be bred with the family of a succulent variety, euphorbia for instance.

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Only Love Prevails,
Don

I would opine that what we think of as the "soul" and what we think of as our essential "self" are one and the same. I have no difficulty with the idea of a soul as an expression of that essential ability to be aware of ourselves, to have some measure of oversight into our own thought processes, to be essentially self-aware.

But unlike Nick A., I am not a dualist in any sense of the word. The "soul/self" arises from, is a characteristic of, the physical self. There's no question in my mind that with the death of the physical self, all manifestations of it (the self/soul) also cease to exist.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

IMO
The Soul is the subtlest of all energy in the universe. It is everywhere; in everything. It has no mass or matter and IMO it is that same energy theorized in the String Theory; the Theory of Everything to be the foundation of every manifesting "thing". IMO the Soul permeates every "thing" with its "no thing" nature. We move and have our very being within the Soul. IMO the Soul is the God part of us and all of God is present in every little bit of the Soul.

With every first breath a human being becomes a living (spiritual) fragment of the Soul. The challenge becomes the same for each of us. How much of the Soul can we express? How much of the Soul can we become? With full restoration of the individual soul to its oneness with the Soul; its oneness with God, the individual spirit is free to express God Nature and grow to the Christ Level of Being which IMO, is the God Experience for which man is created.

Does a soul really exist?
The Soul, like Life Itself, only "exists"; becomes a part of life in form on earth, when it manifests in form as every living thing.

IMO, "twin souls" refers to a woman with child. The developing child within the body of the mother is a twin soul and twin spirit of the host mother - until a first breath. With that first independent act the newborn becomes an independent spiritual fragment of the One Spirit and an independent soul fragment of the One Soul.
Gary

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May Love live in you and through you

You know that I do not believe that the soul is a separate immaterial entity that somehow controls the human physical body. Science has shown that brain circuits and groups of circuits ( programmes), and groups of programmes (networks) control our motor functions, sensory perceptions, emotions, thinking and reasoning, analytical inquiry, the innate drive for more knowledge, and the sceptical filter to weed out false assumptions. There is no need for a soul. The soul has no known functions. All motor and cognitive activity, emotions, and perceptions cease completely during deep anaesthesia. Under deep anaesthesia one experiences no awareness of even the passage of time. The time between anaesthesia, a 4 hour surgery, and recovery of consciousness after removing anaesthesia is only a second or moment to the person.

I think the soul is more properly the name we give for the vital functions of the living person. The soul is a metaphorical concept of our very physical brain processes (consciousness, cognition, and affect), motor functions, sensory perception, and the collective supporting organs of the heart and circulatory system, lungs and respiration, metabolism of food energy, detoxification by the liver, and a sewage system of the kidneys and colon. All of this marvellous system is indeed impressive. Primitive man, given his lack of knowledge, rightly assumed some organising principle that coordinates all of this. They couldn't see the forest for the trees. This organising process was assumed to be invisible and called it a spirit or soul. Everything in nature had spirits (rivers, volcanoes, earthquakes, springs, and trees.)

Primitive man experienced dreams in which he travelled to different places and different times often meeting departed ancestors. Then he "seemed" to return to his body on awaking. This reinforced the idea of the soul being a "thing." Head injuries, seizures, hallucinations (mental disease or chemicals), out of body experiences, and near death experiences all led people to believe the soul could exist outside of the body.

Science has now shown all of the soul's former jobs are natural processes of a living material organism with a central nervous system and somatic support systems (heart, lungs, GI tract, kidneys, Liver, sensory organs, and glands) whose job is to tend the brain like worker bees tend the queen. We know that our consciousness, all thinking, all reasoning, all emotions, all intuition, all feeling, all sexual programmes, and life itself are all brain functions. True death is death of the brain. It is the only organ that can never be transplanted because it IS the person of the donor.

Primitive man also observed a deep sigh of air when a human died. This results from the flaccid relaxation of the intercostal muscles and diaphragm. Neolithic man saw this air (Pneuma) as the soul (Pneuma or spirit) leaving the body. Pneuma is not only the term in Greek for breath but also soul, as in Latin "espiritu or spiritus" oddly resembles "expiration" which is the same as exhalation.


If we assume that an ovum obtains a soul at fertilisation, then what happens when at the diploid or quadripoid stage these "embryonic stem cells" become separated. The two "embryonic cells" or "diploids" develop as "identical twins". If Christians believe that humans have a soul, then does the soul also split. So does each identical twin have a separate soul, or each a half-soul, or one with a soul and the other not?

Primitive man was not stupid. Men and women of the Stone Age were being quite intelligent and rational in seeking answers to mysterious physical phenomena. They could not see the cause. The cause must be invisible, which it was to them. And they speculated the concept of an invisible agent, spirit or soul. It was not technically correct but it made sense and explained things for them. Perhaps many people today still believe in the Pneuma, spirit, or soul, because they have not been provided with a sound scientific education to understand modern biological science.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

I believe the soul to be the immaterial mind and I know that at least mine exists.

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"I fully comprehended the power of the human mind at the exact moment I came to the realization that I'm totally insane and have no idea what I'm talking about."