If Their Is A Soul Where Is It?

[leo100]

[Twain Shakespeare]

I address Indigo because she is the only committed “pantheist” in this discussion, but the comments are on all.

From the bottom up. Indigo. I have a mathematical set of reasons for assuming that something comes from nothing, order comes from simplicity, and meaning is inherent in phenomena. I posted it under the esoteric insights forum, hoping in particular among other hopes you might see it and comment.

Also, Indigo, you offered your answer, "The soul is in the non-physical plane of reality. Thus by definition, it cannot be found anywhere in the physical plane of reality"

My own null hypothesis is, as my friend Rbt Shelby said ("Letter to S. &. M. on The Basis" in his notes on facebook) "Mind and body are like two distinct opposite ends of a stick. (S. &. M.) say this is only metaphoric, but it is more useful and apt than (they) want to see, and certainly not trivial. You cannot deny that the one stick has two ends. The two ends belong to one thing which includes both, but neither one of them IS the other, and neither one of the ends IS the stick, nor ARE both ends of the stick together EQUAL to the stick. There is still an Undivided Middle.”
Rbt calls that undivided middle the basis. It is the part of the noumenon that we are, the “X” of the mystery of personhood.

I have a number of beta hypotheses about the afterlife. The main issue of this thread is “where is the physical (or metaphysical?) location of the soul?” My Betas include just about every speculation above, but until I get an orgone accumulator, I can't think of any meaningful research I could do.
I am agnostic that is even a meaningful question. My null implies the basis may be a verb, a relation. “Where is thought?” may be as meaningless a question as “Where is run?” In any case, which part of the stick is the “soul”? The epiphenomena, the undivided middle, both, or all three? Something else missed in this model?
The clearest real world referent I have for what seems to meant by this term is memory. My current null is that our lives are like a line of gunpowder, and the moment is the point of ignition where experience turns into the ash of memory. But I using as well the metaphor of the burning stick, although that seems to describe the perception end, while memory goes up in smoke.
My thoughts , as you can see, have been more on the lines of “What is the soul?” since right now the “soul” is the same place as Thought and Creation (erroneous conceptions of verbs as nouns,)

My Beta.
Overwhelmingly, the most obvious fact about existence is, it evolves. I can not think of the “soul” doing anything else. Christians go so far as to say the afterlife itself evolves.
Historically, if one accepts human testimony as valid, one can model the nature of the “soul” and even the afterlife, and something of it evolution.
I shall not use that term “soul” anymore. Instead, I shall use four terms from other wisdoms.

In Robert's terms, translated into those of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the body has or is the ba, an animal spirit, which animals share with us, and indeed all things, if one is a pantheist, have, or are, this spirit. The memory end of the stick, the point at which it becomes a burning brand, the western “soul”, is called the ra. The undivided middle, or ka was regarded as the only part that was inherently eternal. Collectively, this burning brand is the baraka.
This concept, however, is highly evolved. I suspect that the Japanese model represents an earlier state in the evolution. The Japanese call the baraka, the stick, a kami, which the same three parts. Let's examine them in terms of Egypt, Japan, and Ostzi, the Alpine Ice mummy.
The ba-body, which lasts until the body is destroyed, still exists in Ostzi's case. The Egyptians mummified, the Japanese cremate.
The ra-memory persists as long as we remain in the personal memory of the living. Ostzi is as dead in this sense as any (non-”Egyptian”: see portion on afterlife below) who died before, say, “Christ”.
The ka persists as long as one is remembered. Tut had an odd experience in those terms, but Ostzi's has been weirder (not to mention “Lucy”s”). On the other hand, Sisyphus has been rolling that rock a long time, and I shudder to think of what has happened to Yeshua and Mohammed by now. In Japanese terms, these kamis become “gods” of a class I call euhemeric (sp) meaning originally human. (those who did not, reincarnate once the ka kami can no longer sustain itself in human memory (bodies having been disposed of by cremation.)
This “Divine immortality” (sans suffering) was the goal of the Egyptian Royal rites of the dead. In the West, the mystery religions evolved from this to give one a (pleasant) immortality, but that is a huge topic, and much fuzzier, but here was the Egyptian method for the masses to obtain immortality (the alternative being simply extinction, snuffing, “nirvanization.”)
Upon death, the ra is weighed by the psychopompus. If its failings outweigh its good, it is “fed to the ba” and, like a kami, “nirvanizes” as the baraka fades in this world. If the ra passes the test, it is united with the ka and even takes the ba with it.
That is my Beta, what I suspect is true, but cannot “prove”,Interested? for at least as late as the time of Siddhartha. Things have evolved since then.

[Ben Masada]

The Truth About the Soul

That's another inheritance from Egyptian myth and Greek Mythology. I have been asked about the soul. Probably by questioners tired of being exploited by the crooks of this world who have been for thousands of years using this one more item to keep the naive ones under the religious chain which, psychologically keeps the channel open for Mammon.

In fact, what indeed is the soul? The soul is not something we have, but something we are for a limited time. The soul is a condition. The condition of being alive. As soon as we are dead, the soul is non-existent. In Israel, whenever there is a massive accident or terrorist attack, the first question in the air is, "How many "nephashote" were there at the area? That's what soul is called in Hebrew; "nephesh." For dead casualties comes the second question. How many guphote, God forbid? That's what the dead body is in Hebrew, guphah. Therefore, guphote, the dead ones.

Now, before you think or say, "Behold, Ben is back with another of his wild interpretations of the Scriptures, let me invite you to Genesis 2:7. "When the Almighty formed man from the dust of the ground, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." That's what man is, "a living soul". At the time of death, as the body goes back to the dust, according to Ecclesiastes 12:7, the breath of life returns to God Who gave it."

The expression, "returns to God Who gave it," means only that something is gone; it is over; it is just no more. It means that at death, when the breath of life is separated from the body, the soul ceases to exist. We are allowed to name the breath of life spirit, which only makes of the soul a temporary emanation. Then, spirit could name almost any kind of emanation.

So, no more fear of souls, or the thought that soul survives the body, or is collected somewhere to be loaned, so to speak, to a body who is being born, or that it will enjoy or suffer any kind of afterlife. We are all living souls and, once dead, the soul is gone as if it did not exist, or ever had any life of its own.
Ben

[ProfWag]

[Ben Masada]

If there is a soul, IMHO, the question ought to be, not where, but what is it. According to Genesis 2:7, when, metaphorically, God created man from the dust of the ground, He breathed in his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. The text says, man became, and not that man passed to have a soul.
It obviously means that living souls are what we are and not what we have. Therefore, soul is the combination of body with the breath of life. That's what in Hebrew we refer to as nephesh. At death, when the breath of life is taken out of the body, this goes back to the dust, and the breath of life which euphemistically is referred to as spirit, goes back to God Who gave it. Then we get back to be what we always had been: Nothing. (Eccl. 12:7)
Ben

[Ben Masada]

[ProfWag]

[Twain Shakespeare]

[Craig Browning]