Report 85

The Soul

This is such a big subject! The concept of a soul as it is popularly thought of, as some kind of immaterial essence of us, is hard to justify on any rational, logical grounds. If it is immaterial how does it interact with the corporeal body? And if it leaves the body, how could it do anything since it is now sans any sensory apparatus or brain with which to analyze information?

And yet the idea seems to have been around humankind for as long as we remember. Why is this? Perhaps it is because we seem to see something, some energizing force, go out of a person when they die. Or is it wishful thinking that death is not final but we carry on to somewhere else? Most of the great religions teach life after death and hence need something that persists after death. 

It could be argued that we do persist after so called clinical death as substances and energies that become one with the earth or environment again. But we seem to want something more than that. We want to be 'me' after death.