Do we have a Spirit? Do we have a Soul? And where's the proof?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I could offer this answer, copied verbatim, from the native American spirit Silver Birch. This is how the matter was viewed by him from the other side.

Q. Spirit and soul - what's the difference?

A. The trouble is semantics, the language of trying to find words that are incapable of explaining the totality of something that is beyond language. Words like soul and spirit are a case in point. You have to define your terms as to what you mean by them.

Let us, for the sake of simple definition, refer to the soul as that portion or particle, that divinity, which comes from the Great Spirit, the infinite spirit.

The spirit is the vehicle of the soul; it will function much more freely once it has separated from the physical body - which is composed of matter; it imposes restrictions on what the spirit can express on earth.

So you are souls with spirits expressing yourself through physical bodies; the personality is that aspect which can be manifested only while you are on earth. It is only an infinitesimal part of the individuality which is the real self; this is because it has no means of fullness of expression while it is cloaked by the physical body.

[East Sun]

Posted by XelNaga (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
We believe because we were told by religion that this is so.

I have been pondering these questions for ever.

There is no way for anyone to prove that we have a soul or spirit.

We may be believers in God or whatever or be Atheists but we
just do not know for definite.

We hear or have been told of OBE's and they seem to be very real
and may very well be real even though not explainable.

That does not tell us if we have a Spirit or a Soul?

I personally do not think we can ever know if we have a Soul or Spirit.

That does not make us any less human.

I hope some Spiritually advanced person can throw some light
on my questions, without going into long rehashed dogma.

Spare me the religion approach.

Is there a definite proof or not.

Dear East Sun,

I guess you will have the answer to this question when you get your first personal experience with "it".

I don't want to get into detail as it is off-topic in a way, but I have been standing next to my sleeping body in my bed.

Now, the "me" looking at my body, was it my spirit, my soul, my astral body, or just pure consciousness, I have no idea.

But there was me, not physical, looking at my sleeping body. Something is there inside of these meat suits, but what? Who knows...

Hi XelNaga,
Could it be that you were dreaming that you were looking at your sleeping body? I don't doubt anybody's
experience no matter what it may have been.
What I was saying in my initial post was that there is no way to prove absolutely that there is a spirit or
soul or even God or to disprove them either.

It has nothing to do with what I do or don't believe. Maybe I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.
But as already said, there is a hell of a lot we don't know and lots we do know and can speculate
for ever.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by East Sun (here)
I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.

Let's look at it this way.

Think of the last time you ate a meal on your own. (Or any time, that you remember clearly.)

What did you eat?

Did that happen? Do you know it? Or just "believe" it? If you remember eating a burger somewhere (or a steak and salad!) — and I asked you if you really did, would you answer "Maybe yes?"

[O Donna]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.

Let's look at it this way.

Think of the last time you ate a meal on your own. (Or any time, that you remember clearly.)

What did you eat?

Did that happen? Do you know it? Or just "believe" it? If you remember eating a burger somewhere (or a steak and salad!) — and I asked you if you really did, would you answer "Maybe yes?"

I can so relate to this post.

When I am alone at home after an active day I ask, did everything go down as I remember or does the mind use creative license to fill in at various places for the narrative to makes sense relative to a current worldview?

Do not read about memory studies if you believe memory is always or mostly based on purely factual happenings. Fascinating work in the field but a deep thinking mind will start to question it's foundational principles from what I've observed. Not that that isn't always a bad idea....

[Constance]

Posted by East Sun (here)

Posted by XelNaga (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
We believe because we were told by religion that this is so.

I have been pondering these questions for ever.

There is no way for anyone to prove that we have a soul or spirit.

We may be believers in God or whatever or be Atheists but we
just do not know for definite.

We hear or have been told of OBE's and they seem to be very real
and may very well be real even though not explainable.

That does not tell us if we have a Spirit or a Soul?

I personally do not think we can ever know if we have a Soul or Spirit.

That does not make us any less human.

I hope some Spiritually advanced person can throw some light
on my questions, without going into long rehashed dogma.

Spare me the religion approach.

Is there a definite proof or not.

Dear East Sun,

I guess you will have the answer to this question when you get your first personal experience with "it".

I don't want to get into detail as it is off-topic in a way, but I have been standing next to my sleeping body in my bed.

Now, the "me" looking at my body, was it my spirit, my soul, my astral body, or just pure consciousness, I have no idea.

But there was me, not physical, looking at my sleeping body. Something is there inside of these meat suits, but what? Who knows...

Hi XelNaga,
Could it be that you were dreaming that you were looking at your sleeping body? I don't doubt anybody's
experience no matter what it may have been.
What I was saying in my initial post was that there is no way to prove absolutely that there is a spirit or
soul or even God or to disprove them either.

It has nothing to do with what I do or don't believe. Maybe I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.
But as already said, there is a hell of a lot we don't know and lots we do know and can speculate
for ever.

when you are meditating, and you are observing your thoughts, who is doing the observing?

[East Sun]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.

Let's look at it this way.

Think of the last time you ate a meal on your own. (Or any time, that you remember clearly.)

What did you eat?

Did that happen? Do you know it? Or just "believe" it? If you remember eating a burger somewhere (or a steak and salad!) — and I asked you if you really did, would you answer "Maybe yes?"

Hi Bill,
I don't think there's a correlation between the two things. I would not say maybe re: eating a burger
of course but would say maybe re: the existence of God.

[O Donna]

When it really comes down to it the question is unanswerable/ ineffable in terms that the most discerning mind will accept.

(? Location ?) Not inside or outside as those are terms relative to a perimeter/ roundabout. 'Spirit', if a term must be used, is none of these places/ things. Personally found the Netti-Netti method of self-inquiry helpful in this regard but that might not be useful for all at all points in a journey. If MEMORY is accurate it probably wouldn't have been of much use early on the self-journey of this writer.

[Constance]

Here is something for you East Sun.

This was an experiment carried out by the Heartmaths institute some time ago...

https://www.heartmath.org/articles-o...-of-intuition/

snippet:

The results were fascinating, showing that both the participants’ heart and brain appeared to indicate receiving and responding to information about the emotional quality of the pictures before the computer randomly selected them, as if they were responding to a future event. Specifically, these responses occurred, on average 4.8 seconds before the computer randomly selected pictures.

Even more profound, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. "It is first registered from the heart," Rollin McCraty Ph.D. explained, "then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs)."

[greybeard]

Discover Your True Self ~ POWERFUL guidance from Mooji

In this simple and powerful introspection, Moojibaba guides us into the clear recognition of our own timeless being.

“Whatever is perceivable, you are already here. You don’t have to work for peace or love, spontaneously they will manifest. All that is beautiful and pure of consciousness is already within you.

Be grateful to the recognition of your own silence, your own self. It is the Lord of the universe, manifesting in each heart.”

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BZEKWnXvD-E

This may help.
I dont know the answers posed in this thread but I know someone who does --smiling
May your God be with you.
Chris

[TraineeHuman]

East Sun, I'd like to say something, at an intellectual argument/discussion level, that's intended to add a little ideas-wise to what greybeard and Mooji are saying. (And what they are both saying is, by the way, something which I've also tried to say in experiential terms a number of times in my own long Spirituality thread. And that experiential reality, by the way, always lies at the core of spiritual experience at its truest, in my experience.)

I guess first of all I could mention that I have postgraduate degree in philosophy. And philosophy is, among other things, the discipline which in a fully professional and accurate way, and at a fully professional level, investigates what exactly do we know and in what way(s) can or can't we prove it or not. By those standards, the claim you've made in this thread that it's not possible to prove the existence of the soul is laughable, I'm afraid, if by "the soul" you mean that which is the ground and the beginning of our consciousness, or something similar to that.

Historically, modern (or post-medieval) Western philosophy is considered to have begun with Renee Descartes' seventeenth century work titled Meditations. There, Descartes begins by asking the reader to begin by truly questioning everything. He then points out it is an absolute fact that no amount or degree of questioning can in any way doubt or disprove that the one who is questioning ipso facto exists. He expresses this fact as: "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, and therefore, necessarily, I exist). However, philosophers have subsequently pointed out and proved that a more accurate and general statement of what this proves is: I have consciousness (or: there is consciousness within me), and that (absolutely, and quite undeniably) proves that in that sense I do exist (precisely because that core consciousness undeniably exists).

Your consciousness, in its grandeur, brings about and sustains all your existence, and not the other way around.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by East Sun (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.

Let's look at it this way.

Think of the last time you ate a meal on your own. (Or any time, that you remember clearly.)

What did you eat?

Did that happen? Do you know it? Or just "believe" it? If you remember eating a burger somewhere (or a steak and salad!) — and I asked you if you really did, would you answer "Maybe yes?"

Hi Bill,
I don't think there's a correlation between the two things. I would not say maybe re: eating a burger
of course but would say maybe re: the existence of God.

I was referring to memory. There's an exact correlation.

You remembered the burger. (For example.) But you can never prove it to anyone. But you just know.

One can also remember a past life. It's exactly the same.

[Charles Harris]

Posted by syrwong (here)
A century ago a scientist took measurements of the weight of six dying men before and after death. His conclusion was that all lost weight to some extent, and one had lost 21g (quite a lot IMO), which presumably was the weight of the soul. Interesting. He was criticised of course, but more interesting is that this experiment was never repeated. Why is it that this important and revealing experiment not repeated? My conspiracy intuition tells me that the measuring the soul, proving its existence is forbidden. The hidden PTB doe not want us to study the soul. Conclusion is: All of us have a soul.

I was going to bring this up if no one else did. I read about the same experiment but can't remember when or where.This would indeed constitute absolute physical proof IMO, or the closest thing to proof I know of.

[East Sun]

Hi TraineeHuman,
Thanks for your reply

''By those standards, the claim you've made in this thread that it's not possible to prove the existence of the soul is laughable, I'm afraid, if by "the soul" you mean that which is the ground and the beginning of our consciousness, or something similar to that.''

I don't see the concept of soul as part consciousness but what spiritual-minded people see as spirit.

[East Sun]

Posted by Charles Harris (here)

Posted by syrwong (here)
A century ago a scientist took measurements of the weight of six dying men before and after death. His conclusion was that all lost weight to some extent, and one had lost 21g (quite a lot IMO), which presumably was the weight of the soul. Interesting. He was criticised of course, but more interesting is that this experiment was never repeated. Why is it that this important and revealing experiment not repeated? My conspiracy intuition tells me that the measuring the soul, proving its existence is forbidden. The hidden PTB doe not want us to study the soul. Conclusion is: All of us have a soul.

I was going to bring this up if no one else did. I read about the same experiment but can't remember when or where.This would indeed constitute absolute physical proof IMO, or the closest thing to proof I know of.

Thanks Charles,

OK syrwong made a good point, that the PTB do not want us to study the soul, but that does not
"prove" we have a soul or not.

Also, the weight of men before and after death could be explained by other means by those same
scientists. The conclusion does not explain the existence of the soul or the opposite.

To you it is the closest thing to proof. Yes, it is close to proof but not proof.

[East Sun]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by East Sun (here)
I'm amazed that so many people believe
totally without a doubt or just do not believe without a doubt. To me it's maybe yes or maybe no.

Let's look at it this way.

Think of the last time you ate a meal on your own. (Or any time, that you remember clearly.)

What did you eat?

Did that happen? Do you know it? Or just "believe" it? If you remember eating a burger somewhere (or a steak and salad!) — and I asked you if you really did, would you answer "Maybe yes?"

Hi Bill,
I don't think there's a correlation between the two things. I would not say maybe re: eating a burger
of course but would say maybe re: the existence of God.

I was referring to memory. There's an exact correlation.

You remembered the burger. (For example.) But you can never prove it to anyone. But you just know.

One can also remember a past life. It's exactly the same.

In my opinion, you can never prove the existence of spirit, soul or god, or the opposite.

I've said it too many times already so that's where I stand on that matter.
On to the next conundrum.

BTW I do believe in reincarnation because of the research done by Dr. Ian
Stephenson. He could prove it to himself but not prove it enough
to convince even some of his peers. (It's years since I read one of his books
so maybe he wrote more about his research later.)

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by East Sun (here)
In my opinion, you can never prove the existence of spirit, soul or god, or the opposite.

I'd say there's plenty of 'proof' on offer. Even if you don't have any personal experiences of spiritual phenomena, you can begin by collating the uncountable experiences of others. Weigh them, judge them, then apply common sense. For anyone who has common sense, that should be enough. [I can't for example prove gravity exists, but I can certainly observe its effects, and so can physics, though it can't quite solve its many riddles - because it can't be dissected or explained. Yet, gravity obviously exists if you apply common sense].

I've read each of these books below (more than once), they are just a few of many but a good start, and I can personally vouch for each of them. I've had many experiences too, and that certainly helps with the understanding. But I'd say this to anyone: If you're on a personal quest to actually find out the reality, better to read these before pondering and wavering on what you seem to think is unknowable. It isn't unknowable. The reality is accessible and entirely knowable. These are not merely metaphysical books, there are many studies involved from multiple scientists and physicians too.

Life After Life - Dr Raymond Moody

Life Between Life - Joel L. Whitton (M.d, Ph.D) Joe Fisher

Journey of Souls - Dr. Michael Newton (Ph.D)

Origin of the Soul - Dr Walter Semkiw

Many Lives, Many Masters - Dr Brian Weiss

Between Death and Life - Dolores Cannon

Life After Death - Mary T. Browne

The Afterlife is Real - Theresa Cheung

[East Sun]

I thank you Star Mariner,

I have reads a lot of the books you displayed there, and still know what I know
to be true, in my reality.

I'm talking about total reality, here.

We know that gravity exists so, what does that prove to anyone?
We are talking about proof of spirit which can not be deciphered in
any logical, definite way.

[East Sun]

Posted by Constance (here)
Here is something for you East Sun.

This was an experiment carried out by the Heartmaths institute some time ago...

https://www.heartmath.org/articles-o...-of-intuition/

snippet:

The results were fascinating, showing that both the participants’ heart and brain appeared to indicate receiving and responding to information about the emotional quality of the pictures before the computer randomly selected them, as if they were responding to a future event. Specifically, these responses occurred, on average 4.8 seconds before the computer randomly selected pictures.

Even more profound, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. "It is first registered from the heart," Rollin McCraty Ph.D. explained, "then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs)."

I read about those tests awhile back but can not really relate to them now.

[Constance]

Posted by East Sun (here)

Posted by Constance (here)
Here is something for you East Sun.

This was an experiment carried out by the Heartmaths institute some time ago...

https://www.heartmath.org/articles-o...-of-intuition/

snippet:

The results were fascinating, showing that both the participants’ heart and brain appeared to indicate receiving and responding to information about the emotional quality of the pictures before the computer randomly selected them, as if they were responding to a future event. Specifically, these responses occurred, on average 4.8 seconds before the computer randomly selected pictures.

Even more profound, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. "It is first registered from the heart," Rollin McCraty Ph.D. explained, "then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs)."

I read about those tests awhile back but can not really relate to them now.

‘If you live your life based on modern science, I feel bad for you son; I got 99 problems but having no intuition or self-guidance ain't one.’
Donny Myers

[TraineeHuman]

East Sun, the way I see it (and have certainly experienced it many, many times too) is that you are actually the (admittedly, undefinable) universe, but, also, necessarily if you're this "you" (which you certainly are), then you are at the same time existing within and (at least in some huge ways) in control of, the context that is your (East Sun's, or whoever's) physical body and physical situation; and also existing in, and controlling, what is the context of whatever goes on in and as your mental, emotional, intuitional and other such aspects, whenever these are genuine and true, and when viewed from a suffering-free perspective.

I see the word "soul" as referring primarily to the intuitional (or, if you like, the wholistic thinking/seeing or the "looking") level of all this but also as monitoring all that happens on the levels below it (physical, emotional, mental, and whatever else). The soul isn't a "thing", such as what a noun could refer to. Instead it's relational -- much more like a verb is. (And then going even further in that direction, if you can imagine that. Like after the lights go on at the movie theater and you're reminded that what you've been engrossed in for over an hour was just a fantasy.)

As far as I'm aware, the soul is also in itself beyond all electromagnetic reality, even though it can enter into or penetrate or even interconnect with the electromagnetic world easily enough, at least in certain circumstances (such as in meditation).

To put it mildly, there's even more to this that I could tell, and that others have of course raised here. But I'll stop at this point. After all, you're apparently claiming all of the above would have to be a fiction of some sort (a so-called "hologram", perhaps?) , or in some way based on fiction or delusion.