Is the soul really just another word for our mind. It seems to me that way back in the day, people didnt know what taht voice inside of us was. So they gave it a name, a "Soul"... Does anyone else agree? Discuss...
I disagree. I think the soul is basically pure consciousness. Mind is an object and an instrument of that consciousness. However, the word soul is used by different people to mean different things -
the distinction between body and soul was first described by Plato around 400BCE. Oddly enough, it is not a notion found in the Bible, though many modern Christians do believe that there is a soul separate from their body. Some might even say that mind, body, and soul is the human equivalent to the holy trinity, but that is a more recent invention and not based on Biblical text. there is a difference between the traditional concept of soul and mind, though, to answer the OP. Mind usually refers to the thoughts we have. Soul refers to the energy that makes up who we are. Body is the physical molecules and cells, bound together by that energy and which gives those thoughts perspective, a point of reference. I think there should probably be a fourth component, if we are going to make such distinctions, to correspond to the ancient four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. edited to add - brain and mind are not the same thing, though. Brain is part of the physical body, and it dies when the body does. Mind is something different, or people would not have memories of past lives....
You mean if we say body, mind and soul are three there should be a fourth - I think that could be what yogis call vital force - life force.
I think that vital force would be the soul. The Father -- the designer, the all-knowing creator and overseer, the mind. The Son -- the all-loving son who took corporeal form and died for our sins, the body. The Holy Ghost -- The all-pervading presence in all things, the soul. Sounds like a good analogy to me.
I see it differently, but I know what you mean. The way I see it the life force is not the soul - it's an energy of the soul, a vehicle of the soul. There would seem to be problems with equating the life-force with the holy spirit of the Christian trinity because Jesus speaks about the Spirit coming to the disciples after he has gone - but clearly, the life force was already in them. Again, it is said to have descended at Pentecost. I don't like much the idea of God the Father as mind either for various reasons. For one it seems to suggest God works on a mental level similar to that of humans. That can't be right for many reasons too obvious to state. Also, so far as we can ascertain from an empirical standpoint, mind is something which has only appeared relatively recently in the cycle of earth evolution. For countless millenia the earth was inhabited by creatures with no mind or any possibility of mind. They did however, have life in them.
i think the mind is seperate from the soul. but yet, connected. like . .. my mind controls my body, but my soul controls something not physical .. . . it's weird to explain
How can a non physical entity control and physical entity... Thats illogical... Need more post for a final statement (oh yea, I started this thread because my friend did a project on the platonic view and it sounded like a mind to me...)
mind is different. it is thought itself. the physical brain is the vehicle for mind. Critters have brains, few of them have mind. soul is what animates it all, ties it all together. ...and then there's life force (I really like that) or the breath of life as the ancients would call it probably. I also have issues with the Christian trinity. Elijah/Elias is the personification of the holy ghost, Jesus' and John the baptist's guiding spirit. God is the Father. Jesus is the son. That still leaves out Mother, the one who brings forth life.
I always liked my own version (though someone else may also have thought of it): God -- the environment, all the "objective" non-self universe. The world. Jesus -- The human body, mankind in general Holy Spirit -- the internal subjective "soul" or mind or consciousness or what have you. It is interesting that Jesus says he brought the Holy Spirit to give to us when he is gone. Clearly, they are all the same in essence, there is no body or consciousness without an environment (indeed, in truth we are our environment, because what's a human without air or water?). Also, I think Mary is the hidden goddess in Christianity. She was raised bodilly into heaven, like Elijah. ALso, the Holy Spirit is spoken of in feminine terms (it's the "wisdom" aspect, which is always female). I think the two are equated. Don't the Muslims consider Mary to be the third in the trinity anyways? Maybe "Holy Spirit" is the term they used to keep from acknowledging it was a feminine source.
what soul is just another word for is awairness, our true self, not mind, which is a generalization of the 'software look and feel' of what runs on that computer we walk arround with in our head called our brain. they are not the same. mind and memory do depend on having a physical brain, in some sort of working order. awairness, ah here we get into a bit of the kind of speculation belief likes to take as fact, but at any rate, awairness may, and if we are to take afterlives seriously, and this is after all at the very least a possibility, then awairness may very well not depend upon mind or brain at all. of course awairness might not be contiguous from one life to another. there could be a kind of serial mortality with nothing else in between. could be. could be just about anything. could be some 'place' awairness goes to 'stand on line' waiting its turn to be born into another life of some kind. maybe a tangable life like this one, or perhapse some other kind of existence entirely. we don't objectively 'know' any of these things. what we do know, is that there is no natural requirement for any of them to not exist. =^^= .../\...
I agree. Most religions of old thought of a two spirited effect. The soul was our conscience, what is left after we die, the spirit was the spark of life that everything has in it. Soul is to brain as spirit is to heart. Without the spirit, the soul has no spark of life, but exists in death, just like if we loose our heart. Its a symbiotic relationship. The severed head can continue to think, see and hear for a while after the heart is cut off, but the heart stops instantly. of course, they are just words, can be switched with no change, its not he terminology that matters.
