What is the "soul"?

Question

What is it? A thing, an element, a molecule, your essense, or what?
How can anyone ask the question, "what happens to your soul after you die?" if we don't even know what is the "soul"?

Answer 1

A soul is a useful metaphor - a placeholder concept for speaking about a thing that does not properly exist, or can not be perceived to "exist" the way real things do. We can only answer the question about death with more metaphors.

We create these placeholders because they are necessary in order to reason about nature. The concept "soul" is an artifact of language, necessary for communicating about certain topics. (same goes for "God"). It's both correct and incorrect to say that there "is such a thing as" a soul, but _it does not matter._

It's extremely difficult not to take the metaphor literally at some level, because symbols are the basis for reason. However, with practice it is possible to reflect internally, without symbols & metaphors, and to "understand" and "believe in" what ought to be meant by the terms "soul" and "god," without spirituality (without dualism).

Answer 2

What is a soul? Good question.

Answer is humans invented things all the time out of their imaginations. Humans create entities like flying dragons, superman, God or Gods, Satan or demons, video games and movies and continue to invent new religions including souls.

A soul is different to everyone. Everybody might have their own opinions of what a soul is. I guess the main definition for a soul is something that remains of a dead person. A living being of a human being is a soul. A soul could be anything people can imagine.

Some say a soul has energy and some say it is like smoke and some say it is invisible like ghosts. The real answer to this question is a soul is men made up invention so no one will know whata soul is since it is not real. An imaginery thing is very hard to define but have many different opinions.

Answer 3

Man consist of mind, soul and spirit. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 in the king James version explains where the word soul arrived from. God is the creator of all mandkind and therefore he knows why he gave each one of us a soul. It is like needing your vital organs to live on earth. Your inner voice is the soul part of you which listens to good and evil. Your soul is like a computer, God is the creator, you are the hard drive, you can GIGO (garbage in garbage out) or you can store whatever you think is best to keep inside. God controls the mouse and keyboard, he types and sends messages into the computer and if the program is there without any error messages, he will be able to SAVE it to the hard drive. The computer has memory (that is what God had created in man) However, the computer can contact a virius and shut down completely and lose all of its memory. Your soul is the same as this illistration, which means you can live life making your own decisions or you can allow God to direct and guide you in life. When the computer dies out it is either sent to junk or refurbish. When you die your soul will either LIVE in heaven forever or DIE in hell forever. Read the Bible its good for the soul....

Answer 4

To me the soul is the energy that keeps the chunk of meat that is your body functioning at the human level. I am sure that the warmth and feel of a living person is a direct relationship with the soul.
When a person passes the warmth and feel of the person rapidly changes. The once functioning body changes from a person to a chunk of meat. The body no longer has the capability of sustaining itself and quickly deteriorates into the basic building blocks of life. Even a very ill person feels human until he breathes his last breath and most of the time anyone can understand when someone dies. They no longer have the tactil stimulus that others can recognize their humanity with. I am sure that the soul is the energy source that makes a human what he is.

Answer 5

The soul is an infintisimal spark of the Absolute Supreme Person Known as God (Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Rama, Govinda,etc.) The soul that is you, is part and parcel of the Supreme God. The soul has all of the qualities of God but not in the same quantity. The soul is eternal and never dies only they body dies and the soul moves on to its next destination acording to the karma and desire of the living entity. The soul can not be measured by any instrument because it is one 10,000th of a tip of a hair in size. It can not be destroyed when the body is destroyed.

Answer 6

Our soul is our essence and it seems to be located at the very edge or very center of our human existence. I also believe that our soul exists in us not just mentally or emotionally but on a physical level. It is something like an atom, very tiny but timeless. It does not die when our body does. I also believe it existed before we were born. It was in a line, waiting for it's time.
When our souls time came it was born into the very next body coming into existence. We could have been born anywhere, could have been a boy or a girl or of any race. Many people assume they exist because of their parents and their parents before them, so on and so forth back through time. But parents pass on genes, they do not pass on souls. We inherited our bodies but not our existence. To make a point, if our parents had died before we were born we would have been born to different parents. I know my way of thinking is not conventional but it is truly what I believe. This only makes mom and dad better, knowing they could have put up with and loved just about anybody. Thanks for listening. It is hard to be both philosophical and religious.

Answer 7

I believed it's our core being. It is not just our human body or the anatomy of man that works within a man but the meaning of being a man. It is our brain that functions the human body but it's the soul that defines the human body. It is the soul that feed the human body. We may feel hungry for a while but you keep on living because you have a soul that feeds you. Think about a person that it's in a coma. He may be in a vegetative state but he is still a human being because his soul is still within him. An autism child who cannot communicate well with other people because he is in his own world but he's soul is still there to keep on living.

Answer 8

The soul, is you! You as a character - the personality of whom you are, that no other person can be, is your soul. When you die, in 'essence' your soul dies... we are not physical shells with an immortal soul lingering until we die physically... we are living souls... according to the bible.. so if you want true answers and are sincerely seeking for TRUTH - then I suggest that you pick up a bible; new international version, King James version... in the first book of the bible,known as Genesis, read the first 3 chapters, and you will clearly read that GOD created man & woman in his image, and breathed into "man", and man BECAME a living soul.

God Bless

Answer 9

The Soul (Hebrew:nephesh; Greek psuche), is the self conscious life principle that was first formed when YHWH (the Eternal self-existent Creator God) breathed into Adam the breath of Life, thus creating a being with consciousness of the material and the spiritual plain of existence. When Adam transgressed, he died spiritually and was alienated from the LIFE (God is Spirit - John 4:24). and his consciousness, that is, his soul, became completely absorbed in the material realm. When Messiah (Christ) appeared, He became the Mediator between God and Man -being both God and Man, and took upon Himself the full moral responsibility for Adam's transgression and all of Adam's descendants. Having died, He put to death in His body the hostility, and being raised from the dead for His faithful obedience, He became the Author of a new Life principle which He bestows as a gift on all who believe in His redemption, thus restoring the relationship with God, and the realm of the Spirit, also called the Kingdom of God. Therefore Jesus said "You must be Born Again"(or born from above)

Answer 10

All I know is that I and many others had out of body experiences, and I have to say that I saw a lot of things, places and people, but was unable to speak or hear anything until I came back. The sounds hit me all at once like there were multiple radios tuned on at the same time. I call it a fifth element.