Habanerosky

<p>A few nights ago I was spending some time with a friend of mine, and we were sharing a dialogue about who we are, what we are, what our existence is, and we deduced that we must be unique in some way outside of our bodies (i.e. our spirits).
<p>If everybody's heart works the same as everyone else, if everyone's lungs work the same as everyone else, then why does everyones brain work differently? We all have the same chemicals and reactions causing certain changes in our bodies, but we all think differently. For example if one hundred people we in a room and the lights went off and Pink Floyd started playing on the radio, people would imagine different things, even though we are subject to the same environment.
<p>This all leads me to believe that we all really do have unique spirits that govern our bodies further than our brains. In my pondering I have come to realize that the brain is only an instrument created to transpose our spiritual thought into physical thought, thus giving us the means to exist in this plane of existence. The truth is that we are all part of one unified existence after this life, and we are only separated by our physical bodies. In death will come an amazing trancendence into the unified plane that we are all trying so hard to reach through our lives. Perhaps death is the award that we win for living our lives, not a terrible ending of an existence.

politicophile

It sounds to me like you are a substance dualist along the Cartesian tradition. I have a few questions for you, then:

1. How can our spiritual component have a causal effect on our physical component without itself being physical?

2. Is there any physical evidence that we have a spiritual component?

3. Is there any spiritual evidence that we have a spiritual component?

4. Why does your theory of substance dualism lead you to claim that "we are all part of one unified existence after this life"?


Those were the thoughts I had immediately after reading your post. Let me know what you think!

hannukah harry

well, i think you are kinda on the right track to start, but are ending up with the wrong conclusion. everyone's heart and lungs do work the same way, the physiology is essentially the same (although often people do have abnormalities... remember how the n'sync lance guy was gonna go into space and had a congenital heart defect fixed? i took a cadaver lab class and the lady we examined had an extra lobe to her right lung). but my heart doesn't work like everyone elses. yeah, they physically work the same way, but mine sure doesn't pump as efficiently as lance armstrongs.

our brains all work under the same general rules, but some people have different levels of neurotransmitters, different natural intelligence, etc.

now, i believe we really are just a product of our environment. everything that we are today was shaped by everything that we've ever experienced. so frmo the time we're concieved, and our bodies grow, and are born, everything we experience , the way we think, feel, is based upon the interaction of our mental abilities, emotional maturity (both of which are also based on life experience and physical growth/maturity) and experiences. but no two of us ever have the exact same genetics, exact same maturation, and exact same experiences.

for example, a person who as a child has his parents lock him in the dark attic as a punishment may become irrationally terrified of the dark when the lights at the floyd concert turn off. while another person will be filled with anticipation because his experience with darkness and concerts lead him to have a different reaction.

it's not that we each have a unique 'spirit' (spirit meaning soul, not 'oh, she's such a kind-spirited girl!'), it's that we all have different experiences that interact with our different physiologies.

i'm not going to bother with your assertation that we are all part of one unified existence and the rest, becasue i don't agree with it, but that's based on my beliefs and assumptions about the universe. yours are equally valid, but not to my tastes.

__________________
shabbat shalom, mother fucker! - the hebrew hammer

Habanerosky

Politicophile - Thanks for replying and so forth. I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

It is one of many and often clashing beliefs of mine that our brains must be an instrument. The reason I find myself figuring this is because I cannot even begin to understand what life is, and how it came to be. Try to imagine earth before life. There is nothing but rocks, mist and terrible weather. I have trouble even beginning to understand how independent life formed from gasses and electricity. But without the idea of life in your mind, can you explain the idea of the existence of life? This leads me to believe that there must be an outside plane of existence, and that life was placed here by this other plane. On this other plane existence is something that we cannot understand, or even exist in. We live in a world of three dimensions and five senses, but on this other plane, there is something that is not comprehendible with just five senses and three dimensions. This is why I believe that our "spirits" are of this extra plane, and that they can only live inside of bio-mass like the human body. When the body breaks, the "spirit" cannot exist in our plane anymore, so it transcends to the extra plane.

There is no real evidence for this... It is rumored that when living things die there is a white light, perhaps this is the spirit transcending when the being (its means of existence in our plane) breaks.

I have to assume that We are part of a bigger whole because we would all have spirits. This could explain the idea of a "soulmate". Maybe a soul mate is just when a person finds a person with like-spirits?

[p] I'm kindof in a rush, no time to proofread, let me know if I missed any of your questions[/P]

hunnychile

Drop a little pure LSD or some good peyote and you'll both discover many (many?? perhaps all the) answers to these questions. I'm smiling, nah, there are so many paths to Enlightenment. Answers are there - that's the fun of being a human on this planet. Sadly some beings are not evolved - or ready- to see the real Truth. No one said that life is fair. Smile now....

We are all unique souls unto ourselves and yet, we are all part of the one great energy field of Life/Mind and all the same. Our timeclocks are a bit wonky though....

These are a few reasons why I don't understand why people fight or cause Wars. In the end it all reverts back to pure Love, which is the answer and source.

Read, "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz.

__________________
"I need compassion, understanding and chocolate." - NJB

Johnny Rotten

People's brains work differently because we each experience a different string of events throughout our lives that we base our perceptions on. Two people who are identical physically will have unique experiences because they aren't in identical positions when experiencing the same event. I'm a spiritual philosopher, but this phenomenon is easily explained.

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

Habanerosky

Thanks fellas. I understand that our personna is crafted through life experience, what I fail to understand is how our spirit is in us, and then gone when we die. (some people might consider the spirit just raw energy that lives in our bodies and after death leaves to join something called the "unified field")

Thanks for the book suggestion Hunnychile, I will definitely check it out.

hunnychile

You silly, the soul never dies! Isn't that just incredible? Or are you Jewish and you haven't learned this yet?

__________________
"I need compassion, understanding and chocolate." - NJB

zen_tom

Habanerosky, what if this spirit you are talking about is the pattern of impulses that courses through the brain, in the same way an economy is the pattern of cashflow that courses through a market?

If you stop the cashflow, then you stop the economy. It would be very difficult to restart it once it at been stopped, and if you did, would it have the same attributes it had before?

Of course an economy, or an ecosystem, or any system that is the result of lots of small agents interacting with one another across a complex network is unaware of itself and from that point of view is different to a living mind - but is it all that different? What if the self-aware part that is so exquisitely human is just a side effect of a hugely inter-connected complex system?

Saying you can't understand the process, doesn't mean you have to answer the question by resorting to ghosts and higher cosmic planes - you don't understand them either. So do spirits have spirits that live in their heads? When a spirit dies, does it ascend to a super-spirit world? And what about these super-spirits? Where does it all stop? Why should the universe operate on this 2-realm model you describe (i.e. this world, and the spirit world)? All that idea does is give up thinking about it and label these things as beyond understanding and 'spiritual' as if that answers the questions.

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea how these things work either, but a 2-stage heiarchy just seems, well, unnatural. No other system in nature works this way, why should this one?

hunnychile

Bold statements Zen Tom,
....If you're talking about Quatum, and in fact, it sounds as such,then if we postilate that energy is neither created or distroyed, then what? Hmmmm.

__________________
"I need compassion, understanding and chocolate." - NJB

Habanerosky

energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. I dont think that I am resorting to ghosts at all, the spirit is a widely accepted belief. I agree that like in any system if any part malfunctions it will totally fail, but in an economy the money may lose value, but it still exists, in an ecosystem when a major failure occurs the organisms involved are recycled into the earth. So why when we fail would the energy we spend our lives moving around go into another place?

hannukah harry

the spirit may be a widely held belief, but at one time so was a flat earth, a geocentric universe, the theory of phlogiston (which i'm sure i spelled wrong) and the idea that white man can in fact jump. something being part of the majority may just mean that all the fools are on the same side.

__________________
shabbat shalom, mother fucker! - the hebrew hammer

Mantus

A good statement by zen_tom.

Habanerosky, you are not giving yourself answers. You are simply choosing to stop asking questions. Spirit, another plane - okay good enough you can sleep at night. Yet nothing actually changed. You are still in the dark.

Ask yourself. Why can't you just accept something as an unknown?


I can answer one of your questions though.

Judgement is based on experience and knowledge. We all have a unique point of view and thus have differnt lives. This results in varied assimilation of information and responces by each individual. However we are not -that- differnt. Infact, I find that people tend to be rather predictable.

Johnny Rotten

But you're presuming that a soul contains energy. However, no device has ever detected unexplainable energy during death or after. All measured energy in this phase has been studied and explained. Your body runs on energy, but it needs a source, and this source is food and water. It leaves your body in the form of heat.

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

Habanerosky

The things unknown to us are the things we should question. If no one ever questioned whether or not the earth was flat, then people would have probably never founded the United States and countries that are separated by large bodies of water would never meet.

What I am saying is that we need to ask questions about our existence, and although it is possible to give many logical explainations to how we work, where our energy comes from, and how our personalities come to differ, we can always ask the question "why?"

Why shouldn't the energy in us be a part of something bigger? Everything in the known universe is made of energy- particles of positive, negative, and neutral charges. If a massive collection of energy can make a rock, and at the same time another massive collection of energy can make a stream of water, then isn't it obvious that we are only a part of this massive universe of energy? This is the theory of the unified field.

Defined: The universal phenomena described by physics which demonstrates the connectivity of all matter and Energy via the medium of pre-physical existence. The scientific model which accounts for the actions of consciousness and its psychical effects.

So this shows that when organisms die, they are reborn into the unified field as many different forms of energy (ultimately compounds). Maybe the "soul" is the pure energy in the form of electrons and our bodies are the masses of atoms.

zen_tom

I wasn't talking about quantum effects, just plain old interconnecting things. The answer to the question of where the energy goes, is in the ground - or if you are cremated, up the chimney.

The personality doesn't have energy in the scientific sense of the word - different people can have what we call different energy levels; the amount a person gets animated, or is animated by what is around them. Someone dancing or joking around, entertaining those around him/her can be said to have a higher energy level than someone who is so tired after a hearty meal, that they are dropping off in their armchair. In these instances the 'energy' someone has is directly linked with their blood sugar levels and various other physiological conditions - they are certainly don't appear to be soul related.

Another question relating to the question of spirit=personality is the question of how drugs work and in many ways temporarily alter the personality.

zen_tom

I'd agree with you in this respect, but only insofar as to say that we are part of this universe and bound by its laws. But this is precisely the reason why I would argue against astral planes and other things that upset the balance and natural order that is nature, just as we see it.

politicophile

Habanerosky, I have one more question for you: is it possible to confirm or deny the existence of spirits?

If the answer to this question is no (that is, if this is an unverifiable hypothesis), then there is essentially no point in discussing whether or not your theory is correct, as it would be impossible for either side to prove their case.

I personally see this as a case where absence of evidence is sufficient evidence of absence, but you are certainly justified in disagreeing with me.

Jinn

Likewise, a few google searches like <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DVXA,DVXA:2005-20,DVXA:en&q=how+does+the+brain+work">this one</a> might be helpful in developing your scientific knowledge. I was more inclined to believe in a soul until I studied the abudance of science we have on one of the greatest human mysteries: our brains. There are conclusive studies about neurotransmitters and their overriding effects on our moods and personalities. Minutes after birth, I believe we are all very different; we have different serotonin to dopamine ratios.. we have more active brain areas.. and therefore we consequently react differently to identical stimuli: not becuase of a soul, but yes.. because of chemicals.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Habanerosky

People base a lot of beliefs on what they don't know and cannot prove. Almost all major religions believe in an icon that is essentially a greater whole. This cannot be proven until we perrish, thus no one ever will know. It only makes sense to consider EVERYTHING instead of considering only one thing. I too am skeptical about what I am saying, and I think that what everyone has said so far makes a lot of sense, but we should always question, even if there is no possible answer from our earthly resources, right?

politicophile

Mmmm, I respectfully disagree. Suppose that two people were having an argument about the age of the universe. One person said that God created the uiniverse 15 minutes ago (complete with fossil records, memories, and all other evidence of larger amounts of time). The other person argues that God created the universe 15 days ago, whilst planting the same evidence. Which side of the debate would you take?

I would personally be unable to agree with either one of them in good conscience.

Habanerosky

I understand your point, but I wouldn't question when but if infact that happened. Although there is no evidence, there is still the ability to raise the possibility, if for nothing else but fun.

zen_tom

One other question I have to the spiritual types, is what did all these spirits do before there were people on earth?

politicophile

That was the time of the Great Happiness. Before Halliburton ruined the Earth. Now let's hold hands and sing '60's songs!

__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Habanerosky

Amen, politicophile!

Habanerosky

Maybe there is a mixture of pure science and spirituallity. Maybe the spirit evolves along with life. Perhaps spirit lived in the kinetic and physical interactions before life came to be.