Monday. 10.16.06 1:28 pm
Several things interest me about the soul. Different discussions bring concepts that the soul is inseparable to the human being. People believe that rationality and decision-making comes from the soul. They also believe that what we see and feel now is the soul seeing and feeling. The whole concept of life rests on the idea that it is the soul doing all these things and the mind is a mere memory storage facility.
We have to actually separate the soul from the body, and the soul from the mind, to further understand the soul. The soul does no action, does not feel anything, and is not what we currently feel or see. What we see comes from the fact that our eyes are connected to the brain, and our brain processes images that we see. Processes sound we hear, and even emotions come from mind processing.
How do we decide? How do we act on emotions? How could emotions come from something that does logical computations?
- Our brain has the function to actually take things in a current situation and come up with a decision. The input-processing-output theory gets into place. We have used this concept and put it into computers, which is still millenniums away from human beings.
- In the case of emotions, human beings are programmed to actually react a certain way on situation, this is known as instinct. We learned that crying actually calls for help, which is similar to a dog yelping. The sound we emit when something hurts us (more of a shout) is a needed instinct to call any nearest being to assist us. Further discussion on this is on the Free Will Theory.
- More and more emotions could be discussed, more and more theories could be discussed on how it works and how it is different from our concept that the “soul” is doing this all. But the basics can be looked upon. The brain takes certain needs into consideration for our main goal, survival, and does whatever necessary to achieve survivability. Survivability is a complex situation, it also includes, aside from staying alive, perpetuity. This then brings in a bigger array of needs that has to be fulfilled. We look into being the best and to perpetuate the best. We look at herding, looking at levels, level criteria, and so on and so forth.
- End of the day emotions is another math, it is pre-programmed. It stems from a basic need, a deeper cause. But we don’t really realize it, because we have not put this into words yet. Philosophy puts things we don’t understand into words, then from the unconscious it becomes conscious, it starts to exist to us.
What is the purpose of the soul? It gives each and everyone a destiny. Soul carries the Karma which gives each and everyone a story. It brings us to the concept in the Upanishads on God. Paraphrased, it says “God suddenly existed, and he was scared, for he was alone, but he then, in an instant, realized, that there is no reason to be scared, for there is no one else” and then, taking a paraphrased discussion in God’s Debris “God got bored, there is no challenge being God, you can tell your future, you are already perfect” and thus he created something that tries to perfect itself. HE created the entire universe with its own story. The world is developing, the world is perfecting itself, this, to amuse God, who, without the world, would be bored looking around in darkness, who would be bored for the lack of challenge.
Consider the world and Karma as a room filled with balls. Consider that there is no gravity whatsoever, there is no friction, nothing that would slow the balls down. Imagine them hitting each other, cause and effect, the ripples or effect of hitting certain balls and on and on. At our level, we would find it difficult to actually predict what will the balls hit next. But what if we know the math and science? Then we would know what will happen next. This is just like the same case of human beings where we just don’t understand what will happen next because we don’t have the math, but it is already fixed. We don’t know when we will come out of this room but we will get there, so far we are just going around, hitting and getting hit. Cause and effect.
Another concept would be what is a soul? Soul is God. We are God, not the body, but what plays the story. We just don’t realize this because we are currently the mind, and the mind is so engrossed it forgot it is the soul. Imagine the concept of being so engrossed to a game that you forgot you are there outside, you forgot reality and think you are the character, the same is with the soul. It cannot realize itself while the mind has so many things to process. The mind is a crystal, any color near it, it reflects in its entirety, it would be very difficult for the mind to stay away from any processing and then only realize that there is a soul. In the Upanishads, it was discussed that this concept of death, where as each bodily function shuts down, as the mind lets go of everything, it then sees the soul, or doesn’t, if in its last moments it is still distracted.
Does possession, then, exist? No. Souls don’t carry memories or processing power, a person with another soul would live a different karmic life, but would not think differently, because the soul could not bring in the past stories and put it in the person’s brain. What we think is possession is actually a form of dual personality, but for the third world countries. This would be too complicated to discuss over this article, maybe next time.
On tradition and prayer
Does it help if we pray for someone?
God will not necessarily grant something to someone just because we prayed for that person; it is more on the psychological factor that counts. Like many traditions and prayers, the intention of going through such an extent makes us react differently, or causes subliminal changes. Funerals and such helps comfort people, prayers for world peace shows intention, these prayers and traditions are needed to give reason for people to restrain themselves from committing crimes otherwise uncontrollable. Like previous discussions, Knowledge in itself is just gas, it is the match that is the reason. We all have reasons to let out our rage, vent out our feelings, but that is just one of the options in solving a problem, we needed to give these reasons a negative aspect to stop them from being the best decision to stop something, and this is what religion does for us; it gives us that needed factor. Aside from preventing crime; its prayers raise intentions of peace and affection, and brings in psychological factors to help a person live a happier life. In some cases, it means people have to be left ignorant of the whole concept of rationality and life. Human beings need stories to keep them from finding out the hidden factor, we are all still children and we cannot necessarily accept the above, we cannot accept that our fate is already mathematically computed and set. We cannot accept that prayer won’t do much to the dead but would at least help us sleep at night. We cannot accept that some traditions are there just for the sake of our psychological sanity. We cannot accept that some things are put to existence because we are not capable to decide things on ourselves without leaving a great mess. Let’s face it, God gave us rationality but we are not necessarily prepared for it. We are not prepared to make decision on our own completely. Take away religion and we have chaos. God had to put marriage to instill a family, which will aid in the development and advancement of society. Otherwise, we will have pregnant women all over the place and children left uncared, worse, we wouldn’t really exist.
On science
An abstract to development
With the concept of perfection, it is by instinct of survival that we have to be the best all the time. This concept has brought in what is acceptable, what is being envied, and what is being fought upon.
But perfection of ourselves mean that we should go faster, we should be able to think better, and so on.
Technology is an extension of ourselves. Outside development compensates for what we want to improve on ourselves as human beings. We wanted better communication, better speed, better memory, better strength, and so on. These extensions play the role we need, these tools make us more superior, even if it is not our body. We try to possess more land to play on territorial instinct, but now land has a multiple, which raises a value depending on where the land is, pretty much like the fertility land complex animals play.
Whatever discussed above is merely a means to jumpstart topics for conversation, these topics can span books of thoughts, but it gets boring to type.
Categories: OLD STUFF [t]
