What is soul? What happens when one dies?

Answer 1

> What happens when one dies?

This is typical religious behavior, although I don't know if you are serious or making a joke. You ask this question of people, knowing full well that no one here has any personal experience in the matter. Do you plan to take the most appealing guess that you receive and live your life as though it is surely the truth? That is what most people do anyway, you know.

Answer 2

Let me start by saying. Humans live in a body have a soul and a spirit. The soul area is were all your choices and emotions lies. The spirit is dead until you accept the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior, then you become spiritually alive. So, when you die, the body goes back to the earth for it has been formed from dust but the most important part is the spirit for that will either make you go to heaven or hell, the choice is yours, did you choose right. Please read John 3:1-13 and you will see that you need to be born again. The soul area is very important in that all your hurts and disappointment will go into this area. So you need to delete all the negative and replace it with the truth and that is what the word of God says not necessarily your teacher or any body that said some negative about you. Hope and trust I have been able to answer this question. Please forgive me, my first language is not English, it is Afrikaans. Tot siens.

Answer 3

Good question - what is a 'soul'? If it's postulated that consciousness, or awareness, or sense of self resides in the soul, it's difficult to see how this can be reconciled with the complete oblivion which accompanies general anaesthesia. How could a straightforward chemical, injected into the bloodstream, anaesthetise a soul so that it effectively ceases to exist during this time? If consciousness, in the form of a soul, were some kind of supernatural faculty, it would seem implausible that it could be completely disabled by a chemical.

How about some of the other things which we regard as essential parts of what makes a person what they are? How about love, compassion, reason, empathy, memory, conscious thought, character, 'spirituality' and so on? Well, there is really no plausible doubt that all these things are properties of the physical brain - We can alter all of these properties very simply with alcohol or other drugs, and observe how they change in people who have suffered significant brain damage. Previously placid people become uncontrollably violent, intelligent people become imbeciles, and so on. Stimulate the brain artificially, and the subject reports corresponding mental activity, e.g. 'religious experiences'. We can see from brain research that all these things - thought, emotion, sensation, character traits and so on - are correlated with activity in the brain, and some things can be identified with specific areas of the brain.

So, if all these faculties and characteristics of what we regard as the 'person' reside in the physical brain, as seems to be undeniably the case, and they all cease when the person dies, then what is left to be attributed to a 'soul'? As far as I can ascertain: Nothing. If there is no part of us that can continue after death, then there is no 'afterlife'... and if there is no afterlife, then most of religion is null and void.

Answer 4

Icarus has outlined it very well. I will simply add this:
In the same way that the creation of everything by a super-being is a fabrication (a lie), so is the idea of we humans having a soul.
The soul is another man-made invention, told to explain to ancient man by another ancient man, to attempt to explain how the consciousness, the soul, yet another conveniently invisible object, leaves the dead body and floats off to wherever.
Whenever one hears the word 'invisible' in any of these stories, one cannot help but be immediately suspicious.
So -
God is a man-made invention (same as all the preceding gods in history)
Thus, there is no heaven or hell.
It follows that there is no satan or angels
Where does that leave the soul?
Dead in the water.

When we die, as with all other living things, we decompose. We are unaware, as our brain function has ceased. We are dealt with by our families as they see fit or as we see fit in a pre-death request. Our bodies cease to be.
There is nothing else and I realise that all this will be unacceptable to very many people, as they cannot face the fact that they will not live on in a very comfortable lounge somewhere, in the company of their lonmg-dead relatives and friends, having conversations with even longer-dead celebrities. Hey - there's Elvis!!! Let's go and have a double cheeseburger with him and sing "Amazing Grace'!
Ain't gonna happen.

God is imaginary. All the accompanying nonsense is also ... nonsense.
Face it. Cope with it.

Answer 5

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. Bhagavad-gita-2.12 & 13

Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both. That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul. Bhagavad-gita-2.16 & 17
An excerpt from the purport by A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acharya of ISKCON,
(International Society for Krishna Consciousness).
There is no endurance of the changing body. That the body is changing every moment by the actions and reactions of the different cells is admitted by modern medical science; and thus growth and old age are taking place in the body. But the spirit soul exists permanently, remaining the same despite all changes of the body and the mind. That is the difference between matter and spirit. By nature, the body is ever changing, and the soul is eternal. This conclusion is established by all classes of seers of the truth, both impersonalist and personalist. In the Vishnu Purana (2.12.38) it is stated that Vishnu and His abodes all have self-illuminated spiritual existence (jyotimsii vishnur bhuvanani vishnuh). The words existent and nonexistent refer only to spirit and matter. That is the version of all seers of truth.

Lord Krishna gives further information in chapter two, verses 22 to 25, "As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones. The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same. It is said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable and immutable. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body."

When somebody is five years the body is different than when one is twenty years old which again is different from the body at 50 years old or 90 years old. The body is changing constantly, but the person in the body, the soul, is the same person in spite of the imperceptible change of the body at every moment. Every moment, the body is changing which is hardly noticeable but is noticed after very long period. The person in the body, the soul, feels himself to be same irrespective of the various changes in the body. So similarly, at the time of death, the body changes from death to birth just as one changes the old torn out cloth and wears a new cloth. The body is a like a dress for the soul. One acquires a new set of body as per one's karma in the previous body. That is the reason why there are differences in the bodies one acquires. It is not that the God is partial and therefore is giving somebody a beautiful body whereas give somebody else an ugly body. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Answer 6

Lets start form the creation, Genesis 2:7 - And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.

A human is himself the soul, there's nothing that live after our death. When we are give birth we come this living soul.

When someone dies, he know nothing he is like a piece of wood without life (without hurting anyone).

Answer 7

363
In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man.
364
The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit

Peace and every blessing!

Answer 8

The only world that exists is the world your body inhabits. "Soul" is simply a word used to describe something about the body, your mind, counsciousness, individuality, etc.
Anything else is nihalism - it is basing your world view, individuality, soul or whatever you wish to call it, on something that does not exist- nothing. Nihalism, the striving toward nothing, is the natural result of assuming that the soul is seperate from the real world.
"Soul" is that about the real things - your body, your mind, and your will - that make you an individual.

Answer 9

The soul is the secret of life that humans will never find and God kept it for Himself. When we die our souls leave our bodies and held in a place waiting for the day of accountability then either eternal happiness or grieve.

Answer 10

Soul is an undying Spirit.As the Gita says-- It has no death. Neither fire can destroy it nor water can make it wet.Soul takes up a new body leaving behind the old one as one switches over to new garments when the old ones get torn out.