Does the soul exist?

[actualfactual]

This is the topic of the new episode of "Through the Wormhole" with Morgan Freeman. He is discussing NDE's and theories on how consciousness arises. Anyone else watch this?

 

[giver of will]

link please?

 

[actualfactual]

Torrents are easy enough to find but I don't know if it is kosher to post them here. It was on the Science Channel last night. Here is a review..

Morgan Freeman calls his mind-expanding series "Through the Wormhole," but he doesn't recommend you take the title literally.

"Here's the thing about going into a wormhole: Where are you going to come out?" He chuckles. "And if you go in, you can't be worrying about getting back. So I don't know about that."

What Freeman does know is, he likes taking mind trips. He likes asking big questions and seeing where his mental odyssey will take him.

He's at it again for a second season of "Through the Wormhole," which premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. EDT on cable's Science channel. And these questions loom bigger than any single answer.

Episodes will deal with such puzzlers as: Are there more than three dimensions? What do aliens look like? Is there an edge to the universe? Can we live forever?

This week, Freeman starts things off with a bang by inquiring: Is there life after death?

"Is the soul a myth, or one of the fundamental elements of the universe?" he poses on the episode. "Where does consciousness come from? And where does it go when we die?"

"Ultimately, every one of us will discover the truth," Freeman tells his audience consolingly. "But will we ever enter our final hour knowing our fate?"

Freeman seems the perfect guy to lead this kind of quest. An Oscar-winning actor who, by the way, has played God in not one but two films ("Bruce Almighty" and "Evan Almighty"), he has a reassuring, even soulful manner that makes the cosmological feel not quite so overwhelming.

"We're just asking questions," he gently sums up during a recent interview. "You can ask ANY question, can't you?

"I'm not really scientific. I'm just an itinerant actor. I'm just curious. So how do I get to be hosting this science show? I enjoy this stuff! It fascinates me."

For Freeman, who turned 74 on June 1, such questions have fascinated him since high school.

"I wasn't interested in science or math-oriented," he says. "I'm not left-brain at all. But when I was a senior, one of my classes was physics. I was an A student. Not because I knew anything. I just asked questions. The instructor would be talking and I'd raise my hand, and get the discussion going in a new direction."

As a producer as well as narrator-host of "Through the Wormhole," he gets to help pick the questions. For him, they are questions that, however far-reaching, sometimes hit close to home.

On this week's episode, he recalls how he began wondering if there is life after death: "One morning when I was 6 years old, my grandmother didn't wake up — then or ever again. It was my first experience with death."

He also gets to help decide which experts are tapped to take a stab at each big question.

On the premiere, we meet a Harvard University neurosurgeon who miraculously emerged, back to normal, from deep-coma state. Though a scientist to his core, he speaks earnestly of having been a speck on the wing of a butterfly which was soaring over a beautiful meadow, then left this universe for a realm beyond whose major constituent, he says, was love.

Evidence of an afterlife?

Another scientist voices his theory that a person's consciousness is entangled through the whole brain and, moreover, can migrate outside the brain. Upon death, the quantum information housed in that person's brain is absorbed into the universe as that person's enduring soul.

But another scientist — a so-called "materialist" — argues that the "soul" is the result of neurons firing on a massive scale within the brain. When the brain ceases to function, the "soul" is kaput.

And yet another specialist proposes that a person's "soul" is actually a feedback loop of that person's accumulating experience. As such, it's a self-aware network of brain connections that has evolved over millions of years, informed by everything and everyone that went before — a sort of collective soul.

"Through the Wormhole" is chock-full of such varying, often clashing explanations for the biggest riddles life has to offer.

For someone who delves deep into these mysteries, is the absence of clear-cut solutions frustrating?

Not for Freeman.

"Any question that dogs me I've answered," he declares. "Is there a God? Well, I've answered that. I know, absolutely. My answer is, yes." He chuckles. "Now WHO that is, is where I get into trouble. But I've got enough operating certainty to ease my mind. I don't have to be too concerned."

For Freeman, heady questions without answers can be simply good fun.

 

[smokerx]

thanks for the tip. Gonna download it soon it looks interesting

 

[Saidin]

I believe that the soul exists. We already know that consciousness is not solely confined to the body, so what is it that leaves when we die/astral project?

 

[ewok]

I believe that the soul exists. We already know that consciousness is not solely confined to the body, so what is it that leaves when we die/astral project?

Is that actually known? I thought it was unknown how it even exists let alone that it exists independent of the body?

 

[Kartikay]

Personally I think that the existence of a soul was proven the moment we discovered that simple observation affects the behavior of subatomic particles.

 

[Global]

I believe that the soul exists. We already know that consciousness is not solely confined to the body, so what is it that leaves when we die/astral project?

Is that actually known? I thought it was unknown how it even exists let alone that it exists independent of the body?

There are cases where the congenitally blind in life threatening situations or during spiritual crises where they have out of body experiences and can accurately identify parts of their visual surroundings that they should have no knowledge of. There was a case with this one man who was injured very badly and taken to the ER where he was both sedated and had his eyes covered during his surgery. He had an out of body experience where he saw his body in the operating room as well as the doctor operating him making very funny gestures with his elbows (the doctor was pointing with his elbows during surgery to avoid pointing with his hands) which was supposedly highly idiosyncratic to this particular surgeon. When he questioned his doctor about the weird motions after the operation when he survived, the hospital staff was able to provide no explanation as to how the man could have known the doctor was doing that. The idea behind all this being that if consciousness were confined to the brain, then no one can seem to come up with an explanation of how such phenomena could be possible.

Stanislav Groff had an analogy of the brain to a TV set where he noted that it would be quite the logical jump to assume that the content that's shown on the TV is being produced by the TV just because the TV and its circuitry happen to be closely tied to the viewing of the content. Analogously he speculates that the brain is merely a mediator for consciousness but doesn't necessarily have to produce it. I realize this doesn't really answer the question and isn't conclusive, but it's food for thought.

 

[Entropymancer]

Personally I think that the existence of a soul was proven the moment we discovered that simple observation affects the behavior of subatomic particles.

A mere misunderstanding.

With respect to quantum mechanics, "observation" has an entirely different meaning than in ordinary parlance. Consider the classic double-slit experiment: whether or not someone is looking at the slits (i.e. "observing" in ordinary parlance) has no effect whatsoever on the results of the experiment, the interference pattern will still be present. It's only if instruments are set up to detect which slit an electron passes through (i.e. "observing" in the quantum mechanical sense) that the interference pattern is abolished. That "observation" as it is understood in common parlance plays any role in quantum-level phenomena has not, as far as I'm aware, been demonstrated. I've gone into this distinction in greater detail before, but will refrain from doing so here so as to not derail the thread.

On the existence of the "soul", there are numerous ways to define such a construct. Some of these definitions may describe a construct that actually exists. Beyond that, I know nothing with certainty. Which is to say, I know nothing at all with certainty.



Edit: Global, could I bother you to provide a credible citation for that story? I'm intrigued.

 

[ewok]

I believe that the soul exists. We already know that consciousness is not solely confined to the body, so what is it that leaves when we die/astral project?

Is that actually known? I thought it was unknown how it even exists let alone that it exists independent of the body?

There are cases where the congenitally blind in life threatening situations or during spiritual crises where they have out of body experiences and can accurately identify parts of their visual surroundings that they should have no knowledge of. There was a case with this one man who was injured very badly and taken to the ER where he was both sedated and had his eyes covered during his surgery. He had an out of body experience where he saw his body in the operating room as well as the doctor operating him making very funny gestures with his elbows (the doctor was pointing with his elbows during surgery to avoid pointing with his hands) which was supposedly highly idiosyncratic to this particular surgeon. When he questioned his doctor about the weird motions after the operation when he survived, the hospital staff was able to provide no explanation as to how the man could have known the doctor was doing that. The idea behind all this being that if consciousness were confined to the brain, then no one can seem to come up with an explanation of how such phenomena could be possible.

Stanislav Groff had an analogy of the brain to a TV set where he noted that it would be quite the logical jump to assume that the content that's shown on the TV is being produced by the TV just because the TV and its circuitry happen to be closely tied to the viewing of the content. Analogously he speculates that the brain is merely a mediator for consciousness but doesn't necessarily have to produce it. I realize this doesn't really answer the question and isn't conclusive, but it's food for thought.

That doesn't show its known to exist.

 

[joedirt]

Personally I think that the existence of a soul was proven the moment we discovered that simple observation affects the behavior of subatomic particles.

A mere misunderstanding.

With respect to quantum mechanics, "observation" has an entirely different meaning than in ordinary parlance. Consider the classic double-slit experiment: whether or not someone is looking at the slits (i.e. "observing" in ordinary parlance) has no effect whatsoever on the results of the experiment, the interference pattern will still be present. It's only if instruments are set up to detect which slit an electron passes through (i.e. "observing" in the quantum mechanical sense) that the interference pattern is abolished. That "observation" as it is understood in common parlance plays any role in quantum-level phenomena has not, as far as I'm aware, been demonstrated. I've gone into this distinction in greater detail before, but will refrain from doing so here so as to not derail the thread.

On the existence of the "soul", there are numerous ways to define such a construct. Some of these definitions may describe a construct that actually exists. Beyond that, I know nothing with certainty. Which is to say, I know nothing at all with certainty.



Edit: Global, could I bother you to provide a credible citation for that story? I'm intrigued.

I think it is the act of conscious observation that changes the electons behavior. The observtion here is the detector. You are right that just observing the expirement with no detector will only create a wave interference pattern. This is because you are only watching the experiment in bulk. When we use the detector as an extension of our senses to observe individual electrons then the very act of our observation does change the behavior of electrons and they start acting like particles. In fact i believe this expirement has been done with buckyballs now.

Does it prove a soul? No. Does the act of observation change the expirement? Absolutely...but only on the subatomic level. Stare at object all you want and it won't change because the individual parts, the subatomic particles, are still going to behave according to the laws of statistical mechanics.

 

[Rising Spirit]

An intriguing conception, the Soul. Obviously, semantics play heavily in any description or attempt to define it's immaterial nature, despite it's connection to mortal self. Thousands of generations of peoples have declared it's reality, yet, it cannot be proven by deduction, analysis or procedural experiment... any more than the existence of a Divine being can. It is, however, far easier for mortal man to access their own soul, than to grasp the immaterial quintessence of Spirit.

So, I would suggest that we might first reach some consensus about the parameters of it's existence? Perhaps it is easier to define what the soul is not? This mirrors the Sanskrit conception stated in the Upanishads, with the repetition of the word, neti, neti. This basically translates as, "neither this nor that". We can clearly see that ancient sages were implying that the soul/self is not relative to material laws or dimensions, rather, this central core of being exists both, within and beyond the relativity of the sentient existence.

I have often speculated that the soul is the aspect of the individual which is fused to the Omnividual. By this I mean that level of awareness which transcends the dynamics of subject and object and holds as it's interior characteristic, as a unified field of indivisible consciousness. The proverbial hub in the wheel of existential awareness, so to speak. So, along this line of thought, the soul is not limited the bodily form, nor the mental constructs contained in the brain of the individual. It is not specifically ego, in the strict sense of the word. Traditionally, it is the intermediary field/level of central awareness existing between the dichotomy of self and God. Yes? That immaterial sense of being, which bridges and links the many to the One. :idea:

We might reiterate the essential characteristics and assumptions, of what humanity has held as a spiritual "truth" about the soul. It's role in the existence of the collective humanoid species, goes back to our infancy as a life form. All world cultures, from all times, strongly believe in this specific aspect of the material person, as a self which predates the life term and exists after the body dies. As with nearly all near death experiences, this self can temporarily separate from the physical frame and observe the body from a suspended position floating above the material self. Those well practiced in deep meditation or those under the influence of an entheogen, can also achieve this separation and it has been popularized with the term, "astral projection". But is the astral body the soul? Or is the soul still far deeper a level of awareness that any substantial or insubstantial bodily form?

There is an old Sanskrit chant, which was made famous by the Indian sage Patanjali. While it predates his own time period, for it was culled from the depths of the Rig Vedas, he is known to have emphasized it's importance to adherents of Advaita (non dualism) in his own era. "Cidanand Cidanand Cidanadaham. Hara Halume Alumastu Saccidananaham ". Now, this translate (more-or-less) as, "I am not the body, I am not the mind, Immortal Self I am; In all conditions I am truth-knowledge-bliss absolute." Here the idea that the interior being, the witness behind the circumstances our individual lives, is that which is free from birth and death, as it is rooted in Spirit.

As stated above individuals do actually leave their physical bodies and almost uniformly, float above their material counterpart. I have personally experienced astral projection a number of times. It is my subjective perception, so obviously, it cannot be proven to anyone but myself. Right? Once when I was 11 years old, I nearly drowned in our swimming pool. As I sunk to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. I felt my lungs filling with water. I struggled to swim to the surface for air but was unable to do so. I was pulled out my my father and brother and had my lungs emptied of pool water and I eventually began to cough and choke. The most interesting part of this occurrence, was that during the reviving process, I was floating in the air above my father, brother and myself. I was hovering 8 or 10 feet above my prone body. I had the most profound realization, although in my young mind it was less conceptual than how I describe it here. I realized that I was not JUST my material body or my thoughts... I was awareness which maintained individuality without inhabiting a physical form. Moments later I was back in my 3-dimensional persona and tenaciously clinging to life! :shock:

Years later, under the powerful influence of LSD-25, I again had journeys outside of my mortal frame. Interestingly enough, I've never gotten more than 10 or 12 feet from my material body, as the astral body is bound to the material body. So this implies that the astral plane overlaps of co-exists with the physical plane. Yet, is the astral body the soul? I think the soul is still much deeper and more central than such a subtle form of self.

I have seen a luminous cord emanating from the navel of my physical frame and connected to the abdomen of my etheric body. This is mentioned in many metaphysical books and is fairly universal amongst those who have the subjective experience of astral travel. BTW, as there are many far subtler levels of conscious being, so the soul must be the inner pilot to the astral self, as well as to deeper interiors.

The longest time I have spend in this suspended state of being, was probably 15 minute? Yeah, about that long, as I recall. It was the second and last time I tried ecstasy. In those days, it was called Atom. Anyway, I hovered above myself and three good friends of mine. My first wife and my friend and his wife. We four had sat in an almost perfect square, without even realizing it, and I was floating centrally above this squared formation. I could See luminous lines of energy connecting our bodies and rising to a single point, like a translucent pyramid. I was, trite as it may sound, the EYE at the top of this pyramid. In all honesty, I couldn't really remember which physical body was mine. It didn't seem to matter, as I experienced being the self of all 4 of us, simultaneously. I knew I was conscious of being alive and aware, yet, experienced no thought at all. I had an overwhelming sensation of knowing something profound and indefinable. I somehow just KNEW that the intelligence which created all of universal existence was both, present and immanent in all being. It was not a thought process, it was an intuitive connection to the unified field of the One. An immersion within the Oneness. I was one and I was the one within the many. Very subjective, yet, without identification with any particular person which I was hovering ten feet above.

To my way of thinking, after the fact, this comes a tad closer to defining what soul truly is (for myself). Soul seems to be that characteristic of individuated self, which is the intermediary between the many and the One. This is why I describe the spiritual realization of this reality as, The Awakening of the Omniself.

In terms of purely Christian ideology, this is mirrored in the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. From my vantage point and through my reasoning, The Father is the immaterial and indivisible "nothingness" (or void) which initiates quantum fluctuations, thus the creation of the universe as we have come to understand it (to the best of our vastly limited capacity). The Son is the state of mind of the individual witness or inner pilot. This is both, the ego and the mind which perceives subjective data through the five material senses and even the sixth sense... intuition. The Holy Ghost is the soul which bridges the finite and the infinite.

Even amongst theologians, this is not so clearly agreed upon and most of the interpretations are wholly subjective and the semantics used to speak of them are relative to the intelligence of the human being who expresses them. Sure, much of what can be said about anything "spiritual" is limited to personal subjectivity and cannot be proven to another. Why is this such a big deal, then? In all honesty, we will each find out when we die and until then, we are without proof of anything beyond physical existence. Yet, we do feel and intuit something more.

Perhaps this sensation of knowing that we are living as souls incarnated in material form, is something we need only prove to ourselves? The journey into the clear Light of the Void is a solo voyage and if taken out of context, becomes an arguably impossible state of being to impress upon another sentient being. I propose the theory that we are alone in this paradigm. We are undeniably interconnected to the whole but our awareness is primarily an isolated phenomenon. Our vantage points are all created by our translation of that data with which we are capable of understanding. Is this awareness the truest characteristic of the soul? Is the soul another way of describing consciousness and it's ability to give substance to our picture of reality? These are deep questions which challenge our subjectivity and I am, in all honesty, still surfing the edges of the learning curve. That seems to be what living is all about... developing new insights and probing the parameters of our perception

This is not to say that we are merely isolated reference points, alone in a vacuum of our own mental design, for in our deepest center of consciousness... are the very same being. I believe it to be so, despite the vast potential for illusory perceptions, because of immersions within that mysterious level/state of intuitive being, which radiates KNOWLEDGE OF SELF and in so doing, transcends individuation. I have come to firmly believe we are, at our core, one singular being. Countless flickerings of the Eternal Flame, so to speak. One Spirit, myriad strands of isolated awareness. Again, the hub in the center of the Buddhist Wheel.

Essentially, our individual souls are at their very core, all the very same soul. It could be seen as the triad of ego-soul-self. Furthermore, I am speculating upon the theory that at the interior heart of all matter, Spirit freely dwells in unbound splendor. Hence, as it is described in Sanskrit, within the Vedantic Sanatana Dharma, "Tam Tvam Asi", begins to make more sense. It can be translated a number of ways but most common is "thou art that" or "that thou art." I/you/we are God and Divinity is the true nature of I/you/we. This proclamation makes reference to the idea that the Divine is alive and present within the manifested creation of the physical universe, as well as transcendent of these limiting conditions.

An utterly perfect paradox.

 

[Global]

Edit: Global, could I bother you to provide a credible citation for that story? I'm intrigued.

I saw it on the National Geographic Documentary "Moment of Death" where they interview the patient (Al Sullivan) as well as the surgeon Dr. Hiroyoshi Takata and other doctors.

 

[Agave]

Rising Spirit, excellent post. My understanding of the soul parallels yours but you have explained it so eloquently. I don't know if science will ever have proof of the soul's existence but it matters little to me because it is such a personal matter. What I've been shown is that the soul is the spark that gives birth to our own individual consciousness. The eternal fire at the core of our own being that makes awareness possible. There is also a kind of cord that connects the soul to the greater whole (God?). Of course that could all be my own little delusion but it works for me and gives much to ponder :lol:

 

[Kartikay]

Personally I think that the existence of a soul was proven the moment we discovered that simple observation affects the behavior of subatomic particles.

A mere misunderstanding.

With respect to quantum mechanics, "observation" has an entirely different meaning than in ordinary parlance. Consider the classic double-slit experiment: whether or not someone is looking at the slits (i.e. "observing" in ordinary parlance) has no effect whatsoever on the results of the experiment, the interference pattern will still be present. It's only if instruments are set up to detect which slit an electron passes through (i.e. "observing" in the quantum mechanical sense) that the interference pattern is abolished. That "observation" as it is understood in common parlance plays any role in quantum-level phenomena has not, as far as I'm aware, been demonstrated.

Your definition of observation of inaccurate. You assume that all observation is done directly through one of your five senses, but that is not true. You can observe something indirectly. Most science is done through indirect observation.

We have observed all the planets in our solar system, but have we been to each planet and seen them? No.
Can we see Jupiter's Eye without instruments? No.
Can we count the rings on Saturn without instruments? No.

joedirt expressed my concept precisely when he said the instrument or recording device is an extension of a person's observation. When I use Skype to talk to my parents or girlfriend while I'm away in Afghanistan, I am observing them through a computer and webcam. Technology has increased our ability to observe.

If you lose your arm, are you still you? Yes.
If you damage your brain, are you still you? Yes!
If you lose your eyes are you still you? Yes!!

Consider this: if a soul exists, then even seeing something with your eyes is indirect observation! You are not your eyes. You are your soul.


In regards to the double-slit test: have you at all increased your awareness of the situation by putting your eye next to a slit? No. You aren't observing anything extra. Your eyes don't have the capability to see an electron... so you aren't observing which slit it passes through. You aren't observing when the electron is passing by, and you aren't even observing the mark an individual electron makes on the wall behind the slit. You observe nothing by putting your eye next to a slit in the double-slit test, because you are no more aware of the path of the electron than if you were standing 50 feet away. When you use an instrument advanced enough to detect the electron, you are PRECISELY aware which of hole the electron passes through. That's observation. Squinting at a slit is not observation.

 

[SWIMfriend]

I typed: "how does observation affect subatomic particles" (without the quotes) into google, and this thread came up as the fifth link in the list--suggesting that the topic doesn't get much search interest...

 

[joedirt]

I typed: "how does observation affect subatomic particles" (without the quotes) into google, and this thread came up as the fifth link in the list--suggesting that the topic doesn't get much search interest...

Now that is funny! Lets hope the world doesn't start quoting us nexians for scientific matters! Actually we are a fairly scientific group of people...but still...

 

[Kartikay]

I typed: "how does observation affect subatomic particles" (without the quotes) into google, and this thread came up as the fifth link in the list--suggesting that the topic doesn't get much search interest...

That's pretty hilarious. Another reason why the Nexus is so important! But I'm seriously surprised that this thread comes up so high on google... i mean, you'd think Dr Quantum would show up before us...

but now even if someone types dr quantum, this thread will be tagged! mwahahaha

 

[cellux]

Maybe a Nexus member is an insider at Google and his/her task is to provide searchers with hand-picked, quality information.

 

[Entropymancer]

Kartikay, I understand your point about indirect observation, but it still does not demonstrate that consciousness is a necessary component in influencing the outcome of the double-slit experiment. If by pure chance (without any conscious intervention) a photon-sensing device were to fall next to one of a set of slits (also there completely by chance) in front of a coherent light source, I see no reason to expect that it would not disrupt the interference pattern.

It is a fact that the detecting device interacts with the photon. I suppose it is also a fact that we use the detecting device deliberately for detection. You hypothesize that the latter fact accounts for the change in photon behavior, while I hypothesize that it is the former. Unfortunately both hypotheses are virtually impossible to falsify. But we may consider analogous situations:

Say, for example, that I close my eyes and use a stick to observe whether there are any basketballs on the floor around me; I discover that while they are ordinarily motionless, whenever I observe one (i.e. when I poke it with my stick) it moves. Would you say "Aha! We've discovered that simple observation affects the behavior of basketballs... this proves the existence of a soul!"? Or would you recognize that the physical interaction between the detection device and the object being detected is a more plausible explanation, and has no obvious bearing on the question of the soul?