The human soul What is the soul? human soul and spiritual development. What is the human soul
SOUL
Soul, Seele) - a specific, isolated functional complex, which would be best described as a "personality" (PT, par. 696).
Jung establishes a logical distinction between the soul and the mental, understanding the latter as "the totality of all mental processes, both conscious and unconscious" (ibid.). Jung used the term psyche more often than soul. But there are also cases of Jung's specific use of the term "soul", such as: 1) instead of the concept of "psyche", especially when in the latter they want to emphasize a deep movement, emphasize the plurality, diversity and impenetrability of the psyche in comparison with any other structure, order or semantic unit , distinguishable in the inner world of man; 2) instead of the word "spirit", when it is necessary to designate the non-material in people: their essence, core, center of personality (KSAP, p. 55).
SOUL
a concept that reflects historically changing views on the psyche of humans and animals; in religion idealistic philosophy and psychology, the soul is an intangible, life-giving and cognizing principle independent of the body. In Hellenic philosophy, the existence of the soul was not questioned. In general, during antiquity, various opinions about the soul - its "materiality" and "ideality" - were identified. A special treatise on the soul belongs to Aristotle and is the first known psychological work proper. It systematized well-known ideas about the soul, put forward and substantiated several important provisions. Here the soul is defined as the essence of a living body - a special organ through which the body feels and thinks. On the whole, the soul is mortal along with the body, but a part of it, corresponding to abstract, theoretical thinking, is immortal. From the standpoint of materialism, the emergence of the concept of the soul is associated with the animistic ideas of primitive man, who interpreted sleep, fainting, death, etc. in a primitive materialistic way. Dreams were perceived as impressions of the soul leaving the body and gaining independent existence. The further development of ideas about the soul took place in the context of the history of psychology and was expressed in the clash of idealistic and materialistic teachings about the psyche. For the first time, the position on the inseparability of the soul from the body was put forward by Aristotle, according to which the soul of a person appears in three modifications: plant, animal and rational. In modern times, Descartes identified the soul with consciousness as a reflection of the subject. In empirical psychology, the concept of the soul was replaced by the concept of mental phenomena. In scientific literature - philosophical, psychological and other - the term "soul" is not used or is used very rarely - as a synonym for the word psyche. In everyday word usage, the content of the soul usually corresponds to the concepts of the psyche, the inner world of a person, experience, consciousness. According to C. G. Jung, the soul is a kind of non-physical reality, full of energy, which moves in connection with internal conflicts. It is full of opposites: conscious and unconscious, masculine and feminine, extroverted and introverted... The problem is that for a number of reasons, primarily socio-cultural, a person sees and develops in himself only one of the sides of a single contradictory pair, while the other remains hidden and unaccepted. Man must discover and accept himself in the process of individuation. The hidden sides of the soul require acceptance, appearing in dreams, symbolically calling out; you need to be able to see the meaning of the call, and ignoring it, typical for an unprepared person, leads to disintegration, the impossibility of self-development and crisis experiences and diseases.
SOUL
English soul; lat. anima). D. - in ethnological terms. The belief or belief that our thought, feeling, will, life are determined by something different from our body (although connected with it, having its seat in it), is probably characteristic of all mankind, and m. b. ascertained at the lowest levels of culture, among the most primitive peoples (see Animism). The origin of this belief m. b. reduced, in the end, to self-feeling, to the recognition of one's "I", one's individuality, more or less closely connected with the material body, but not identical with it, but only using it as a dwelling, tool, organ. This "I", this something spiritual, or, in a more primitive view, the driving principle, the "power" that is in us - is what primitive connects with the idea of "D." (Ents. Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, 1893, T.I., S. 277).
1. D. until the middle of the 19th century. was not only the subject of philosophical and theological reflections, but also the subject of the study of psychology. From the beginning development of experimental psychology, psychology remained only a nominal subject of scientific psychology, which strove to become like the natural sciences. Its real subject was the psyche. Psychology has sacrificed D. for the sake of the objectivity of its subjective science. Psychologists do not deny the existence of D., but refrain from studying it, try to avoid sensitive questions about its nature, transfer D. and the spirit through the department of philosophy, religion and art. D.'s loss is not harmless for psychology. She pays for it with a permanent crisis, the dominant of which is an inescapable longing for the integrity of mental life. In search of integrity, psychologists go over various methodological principles, sometimes absurd (like the principles of determinism or systemicity), look for and sort through various units of analysis, "cells", from which all the richness of mental life is derived. Association, reaction, reflex, gestalt, operation, meaning, experience, attitude, attitude, act of reflection, action, action, etc. have acted and continue to act as such units. functions and possible ontology. They voluntarily or involuntarily follow the recommendations of M. Foucault: You go back to the main thing ...
Much in the philosophical and psychological reflections on D. has been preserved from mythology (see paragraph 1). Aristotle considered D. as the cause and early. living body, recognized D. as an essence, a kind of form natural body potentially endowed with life. Essence is the realization (entelechy), i.e. D. is the completion of such a body. Hence, according to Aristotle, D. is power. Its most important function is to foresee: "[The soul] is a certain realization and comprehension of that which has the possibility of being realized" (On the Soul. - M., 1937. - P. 42). D. seeks and focuses on the future, which does not yet exist, and she herself outlines the contours of future events. But she, according to I. Kant, perceives internal states subject, i.e. perceives and evaluates the present, without which the search is impossible and the future is not needed. This means that D. is at least a resident of 2 worlds: the present and the future, possessing, moreover, a shaping power or energy. This is what Plato says, whose peacemaking fantasy gave rise to a wonderful image of D. He likened it to the combined power of a winged pair of horses and a charioteer: a good horse is a strong-willed impulse, a bad horse is an affect (passion). The charioteer is the mind that takes something from the good and something from the bad horse.
In most semantic images of D., all the listed attributes of D. are present with slight variations: knowledge, feeling, and will. In Augustine, the main abilities of D. are memory, reason and will. If k.-l. of the attributes is absent, D. turns out to be flawed. For example, L. N. Tolstoy wrote that commanders are deprived of the best human qualities: love, poetry, tenderness, philosophical doubt. The presence of all the attributes of D. (mind, feelings, will, let's add: and memory) do not guarantee her wealth. Deep mind, high talent, remarkable professional skills can be. poisoned by pride, envy, which devastate D., kill the spirit. M. b. Platonic united force lacks wings?! Such an explanation is beautiful. And although it is difficult to accept it as a definition, it follows from it that D. cannot be reduced to knowledge, feeling and will. D. is a mysterious excess of knowledge, feelings and will, without which their full development is impossible.
Recognition of the reality of D. inevitably entails the question of its ontology. Aristoxenus (a student of Aristotle) argued that D. is nothing but tension, the rhythmic mood of bodily vibrations. Plotinus argued in the same spirit. Answering the question why the beauty of a living face is dazzling, and only a trace of it remains on a dead face, he wrote that there is still nothing in it that attracts the eye: beauty with grace. A. Bergson remarks on this: "It is not for nothing that they call charm, which is manifested in movement, and an act of generosity, characteristic of Divine virtue, in one word - both meanings of the word" grace "were one."
Similar thoughts were expressed by natural scientists. A.F. Samoilov, evaluating the scientific merits of I.M. Sechenov, said: “Our famous botanist K.A. Timiryazev, analyzing the ratio and significance of various parts of a plant, exclaimed:“ a leaf is a plant. ”It seems to me that we with the same right they could say: “a muscle is an animal.” The muscle made an animal an animal ... a man a man. Continuing this line of reasoning, one may ask, what is D.? The body is busy. M. b. this is grace or, in terms of J. A. Bernshtein, living movement! Ch. Sherrington localized its attributes (memory and foresight) precisely in the final sections of the action. To this should be added the statement of R. Descartes that action and passion are one. A. A. Ukhtomsky gave such reflections a very definite form. Having set himself the goal of understanding the anatomy of the human spirit (N.V. Gogol would call it a "spiritual anatomist"), Ukhtomsky introduced the concept of a functional organ of an individual. Such an organ is any temporary combination of forces capable of realizing a certain achievement. It is similar to the vortex motion of Descartes. (Once again, let us recall the united force in Plato's metaphor.) Such organs are: movement, action, the image of the world, memory, creative mind, human states, even personality. In their totality, they constitute the spiritual organism. According to Ukhtomsky, these organs, having formed, exist virtually and are observable only in execution, that is, in action, in an act, in empirical actual being. There is no contradiction here; thus, a stop can be considered as an accumulated movement. Such, for example, is an image, which is an eidetic energy accumulated in the course of its formation. Such energy, with the sanction of D. and the courage of the spirit, is embodied in action, in work. In fact, Ukhtomsky came to the conclusion about the energy projection of the spiritual organism (combination of forces), in which D.
It would be premature and reckless to identify the functional organs, which are innumerable, with D., but it is impossible not to notice that they are co-natural with D., therefore she can "dispose" of them. Fichte said that a person builds new organs and functions of D. and, as outlined by consciousness, in other words, D. performs the shaping function, which was mentioned above. It is itself "the form of forms." It happens that D. and consciousness plan to create organs to their own destruction: "The curse strikes the soul like thunder: The creative mind mastered - killed" (A. Blok).
Acceptance of the position on the energy nature of D. facilitates the discussion of questions about its location and functions. In particular, Hegel's position becomes clear: "D. is something all-pervading, and not something that exists only in a separate individual." D. can be between people. Perhaps even the unity of souls. D. is a gift of my spirit to others (M. M. Bakhtin). It is in this sense that D. cannot perish; she passes on to another. Of course, if this gift is accepted into himself by another, and if the latter has a grateful memory, D. retains the authorship of the donor. Once upon a time in Russian language "spiritual memory" was equivalent to "testament". D. is an amazing gift that does not diminish from giving, it grows: the more you give, the more remains for the giver. The position that D. is a gift of the spirit does not contradict the Hegelian definition of the spirit: the spirit is a system of movements in which it distinguishes itself in moments and at the same time remains free. This means that D. is congenial not only to functional organs, but also to the spirit.
One more thing: "D.'s place is where the outer and inner worlds where they interpenetrate each other. It is at every point of penetration" (Novalis). In the language of V. F. Humboldt and G. G. Shpet, this is the place between the external and internal forms, at the points of their interaction and interpenetration. Both forms are connected by relations of mutual generation. , and the internal is born outside. Being between them or embracing them, D., to put it mildly, coordinates their interaction. Perhaps D. senses (consciously) the inequality of external and internal forms and thus acts as a source of ideas, feelings, actions, in the end , source and driving force development. Strong D. transforms negative. the energy generated by the "excess of lack" into positive energy, into the energy of creation and achievement.
Eliot said that what is ahead of us and what is behind us are nothing compared to what is within us. Each person has archaeological or archetypal layers, virtual forms of behavior, activity, knowledge, experience, undiscovered abilities. All of them are difficult to access not only to an outside observer, but also to their carrier. It happens that all this wealth, like water, is bound by ice. "D. unchains the bowels" (O. Mandelstam), and so on. allows them to discover and realize themselves. The awake D. is always on the verge, on the threshold of transformation.
So, there are at least 3 spaces "between", or 3 boundaries, where D. is located: between people, the external and internal forms of the person himself, between the past and the future. She does a great job, linking all the listed pairs horizontally, and possibly vertically. The idea of the frontier D. deserves the most close attention. Bakhtin wrote that culture does not have its own territory closed in itself: it is all located on the borders. Every cultural act essentially lives on the frontiers: abstracted from the frontiers, it loses its ground, becomes empty, arrogant and dies. The same is the case with D. Having closed exclusively on itself or in itself, it degrades.
The borderland of D. does not contradict the fact that it can manifest itself outside. Shpet wrote: “In general, is it not because philosophers and psychologists could not find the “seat of D.” that they were looking for it inside, while all of it, D., outside, covers “us” with a soft, tender cover. But on the other hand, blows, which are inflicted on her - wrinkles and scars on our outer face. All D. is appearance. A person lives as long as he has appearance. And personality is appearance. The problem of D.'s immortality would be solved if the problem of immortal externalization were solved Works - M., 1989. - S. 363-365). D. m. b. also high and low, large and small, wide and narrow, even cramped. Poets say that D. has its limits: the limits of D., the limits of longing. This means that for all its borderland, D. has its own space, but the space is completely special. The space of D., its halls are not described by metric or even topological categories, although D. has its own topology. The topology of D. is not unique, but multiple; the topology is not scientistic, but humanitarian, assuming mutual reversibility of space and time determined by meaning.
The space and time of D. is the subject of reflection on the fascinating and endless area of chronotopy (see Chronotope) of the conscious and unconscious life of a person. The search for the ontology of D. must be continued. D. not only outlines the creation of new functional organs, but authorizes, coordinates, and integrates their work. At the same time, she reveals herself more and more fully. It is possible that in this work, D. hides the integrity of a person sought by scientists and artists, which is a stumbling block for psychology, which has long dreamed of putting together isolated mental functions that have already been studied in detail and is looking for the laws of their interaction. (V.P. Zinchenko.)
Soul
Mental, psyche, personality, persona, anima]. In the course of my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, I have had to establish a logical distinction between the soul and the psyche. By mental or psyche I understand the totality of all mental processes, both conscious and unconscious. For my part, under the soul, I think of a certain, isolated functional complex, which could best be described as a "personality". For a clearer description of what I mean by this, I must bring here some more points of view. Thus, in particular, the phenomenon of somnambulism, split consciousness, split personality, etc., in the study of which the greatest merit belongs to French scientists, led us to the point of view according to which many personalities can exist in the same individual.
[The soul as a functional complex or "personality"] It is clear and without further explanation that such a multiplication of personalities is never found in the normal individual; however, the possibility of personality dissociation, confirmed by these cases, could also exist in the realm of normal phenomena, if only in the form of a hint. Indeed, a somewhat sharper psychological observation succeeds without much difficulty in seeing the presence of at least the rudimentary traces of character splitting even in normal individuals. It is enough, for example, to carefully observe someone under various circumstances to discover how his personality changes dramatically when moving from one environment to another, and each time a sharply defined and clearly different character is revealed. The proverb "He barks with his own, but caresses with strangers" (Gassenengel - Hausteufel) formulates, starting from everyday experience, precisely the phenomenon of such a split personality. A certain environment requires a certain installation. The longer and the more often such an installation, appropriate to the environment, is required, the sooner it becomes habitual. Very many people from the educated class are for the most part forced to move in two completely different environments - in the home circle, in the family and in business life. These two completely different environments also require two completely different attitudes, which, depending on the degree of identification (see) of the ego with each given attitude, cause a doubling of character. In accordance with social conditions and needs, the social character is guided, on the one hand, by the expectations and requirements of the business environment, and, on the other hand, by the social intentions and aspirations of the subject himself. As a rule, the domestic character is formed rather according to the spiritual needs of the subject and his needs for convenience, which is why it happens that people who are extremely energetic, courageous, stubborn, stubborn and shameless in public life, at home and in the family turn out to be good-natured, soft, compliant and weak. Which character is true, where is the real personality? This question is often impossible to answer.
These considerations show that splitting of character is quite possible in a normal individual. Therefore, we can rightfully discuss the question of personality dissociation as a problem of normal psychology as well. In my opinion - if we continue our research - the question should be answered in such a way that such a person does not have a real character at all, that he is not individual at all (see), but collective (see), that is, corresponds to general circumstances, meets general expectations. If it were individual, it would have the same character, with all the difference in attitude. He would not be identical with each given attitude and could not, and would not want to prevent his individuality from being expressed in one way or another, both in one state and in another. In reality, he is individual, like any other being, but only unconsciously. By his more or less complete identification with each given attitude, he deceives at least others, and often himself, as to what his real character is; he puts on a mask of which he knows that it corresponds, on the one hand, to his own intentions, and, on the other hand, to the claims and opinions of his environment, and now one or the other moment prevails.
[Soul as person]
This mask, that is, the ad hoc attitude, I have called "persona," the term used to designate the mask of the ancient actor. The person who identifies with such a mask I call "personal" as opposed to "individual."
Both of the aforementioned attitudes represent two collective "personalities", which we will collectively designate with one name "persona". I have already pointed out above that real individuality is different from both of them. Thus, a person is a complex of functions, created on the basis of adaptation or necessary convenience, but by no means identical with individuality. The set of functions that make up a person relates exclusively to objects. It is necessary to distinguish quite clearly the relation of the individual to the object from his relation to the subject. By "subject" I mean, first of all, those obscure, obscure urges of feeling, thought, and sensation that do not flow with clarity from the continuous stream of conscious experiences associated with the object, but which emerge, often hindering and delaying, but sometimes encouraging, from the obscure inner bowels, from deep distant regions lying beyond the threshold of consciousness, and in their totality compose our perception of the life of the unconscious. The unconscious is the subject taken as an "internal" object. Just as there is a relation to an external object, an external attitude, so there is a relation to an internal object, an internal attitude. It is clear that this inner attitude, owing to its extremely intimate and inaccessible nature, is a much less known subject than the external attitude, which everyone can see without any difficulty. However, it seems to me that it is not so difficult to get an idea of this inner attitude. All these so-called accidental traffic jams, whims, moods, vague feelings and fragments of fantasies, sometimes disrupting the concentrated work, and sometimes the rest of the most normal person, the origin of which we rationalistically reduce now to bodily causes, now to other causes, are usually not based at all on those causes to which consciousness ascribes them, but the essence of the perception of unconscious processes. Of course, dreams also belong to such phenomena, which, as is known, often come down to such external and superficial causes as indigestion, lying on the back, etc., although such an explanation never withstands more severe criticism. The attitude of individual people in relation to these phenomena is very different. One does not allow his internal processes to influence him at all, he can, so to speak, completely renounce them, while the other is highly influenced by them; even when getting up in the morning, some fantasy or some nasty feeling spoils such a person for the whole day; a vague, unpleasant sensation inspires him with the thought of a hidden illness, a dream gives him a gloomy foreboding, although he is, in general, not at all superstitious. On the contrary, other people are only occasionally subject to such unconscious impulses, or only to a certain category of them. For some, they may never even come to consciousness as something to think about, for others they are a topic of daily reflection. One evaluates them physiologically or ascribes them to the behavior of his fellow men, the other finds in them a religious revelation.
These quite different ways of dealing with the urges of the unconscious are as familiar to individual individuals as are attitudes towards external objects. Therefore, the internal installation corresponds to the same specific set of functions as the external installation. In cases where internal mental processes seem to be completely ignored, the typical internal attitude is absent just as little as the typical external attitude is absent in cases where the external object, the reality of facts, is constantly left without attention. In these last, far from rare cases, the person is characterized by a lack of correlation, connectedness, sometimes even blind indiscretion, recklessness, bowing only before the cruel blows of fate. Often it is these individuals with a rigid persona who are distinguished by such an attitude towards unconscious processes, which is extremely susceptible to the influences emanating from them. As far as they are stubborn and inaccessible to influence from the outside, they are just as soft, sluggish and pliable in relation to their internal processes. Therefore, in such cases, the internal attitude corresponds to the internal personality, which is diametrically opposed to the external personality. I know, for example, a man who mercilessly and blindly destroyed the happiness of his loved ones, but interrupted an important business trip in order to enjoy the beauty of the forest edge, which he noticed from the railway car. The same or similar cases are known, of course, to everyone, so that I do not need to pile up examples.
[Soul as anima]
Everyday experience gives us the same right to speak of an external personality as it gives us to recognize the existence of an internal personality. The inner personality is that kind and way of relating to inner mental processes that is inherent in a given person; it is that inner attitude, that character by which he addresses the unconscious. The external attitude, the external character, I call persona; the inner attitude, the inner face, I designate with the word anima or soul. To the extent that the attitude is habitual, it is a more or less stable set of functions with which the ego can more or less identify. Our everyday language expresses this very clearly: when someone has a habitual attitude to certain situations, a habitual way of acting, it is usually said: "He is completely different when he does this or that." This reveals the independence of the functional complex with the usual attitude: the situation is as if another personality took possession of the individual, as if "another spirit was infused" into him. The interior setting, the soul, requires the same independence, which very often corresponds to the external setting. This is one of the most difficult tricks of education - to change the person, the external setting. But it is just as difficult to change the soul, because usually its structure is as extremely soldered as the structure of the person. Just as a person is a being that often constitutes the entire visible character of a person and, in known cases, which invariably accompanies him throughout his life, so his soul is a definitely limited being, sometimes having an invariably stable and independent character. Therefore, often the soul lends itself perfectly to characterization and description.
As regards the character of the soul, in my experience it can be established as a general principle that it, by and large, complements the outward character of the person. Experience shows us that the soul usually contains all those universal human properties that the conscious attitude lacks. The tyrant, haunted by heavy dreams, gloomy forebodings and inner fears, is a typical figure. On the outside, unceremonious, hard and inaccessible, he internally succumbs to every shadow, subject to every whim, as if he were the most dependent, the most easily identifiable being. Consequently, his anima (soul) contains those universal human properties of determinability and weakness, which his external attitude, his persona, is completely devoid of. If the person is intellectual, then the soul is probably sentimental. The character of the soul also influences the sexual character, of which I have been convinced more than once with certainty. The woman in the highest degree feminine, has a masculine soul; a very masculine man has a feminine soul. This contrast arises from the fact that, for example, a man is not at all and not at all more masculine, but he also possesses some feminine traits. The more masculine his external attitude, the more all feminine features are etched out of it; therefore they appear in his soul. This circumstance explains why it is precisely the very masculine men who are subject to characteristic weaknesses: they relate to the urges of the unconscious in a feminine pliant way and gently submit to their influences. And vice versa, it is precisely the most feminine women who often turn out to be incorrigible, persistent and stubborn in certain internal matters, revealing these properties in such an intensity that is found only in the external attitude of men. These male traits, being excluded from the external installation of a woman, became the properties of her soul.
Therefore, if we talk about anime in a man, then in a woman we should rightly talk about animus in order to give female soul correct name.
As for universal human properties, the character of the soul can be deduced from the character of the person. Everything that normally should be found in the external setting, but which is strangely absent from it, is undoubtedly found in the internal setting. This is a basic rule that has always been confirmed in my experience. As for individual properties, no conclusions can be drawn in this respect. If in a man, in general, logic and objectivity prevail in the external attitude, or, at least, it is considered an ideal, then in a woman it is feeling. But in the soul there is an opposite relationship: a man feels inside, and a woman reasons. Therefore, a man falls more easily into complete despair, while a woman is still able to console and hope; therefore, a man takes his own life more often than a woman. Just as easily a woman becomes a victim of social conditions, for example as a prostitute, so much a man succumbs to the impulses of the unconscious, falling into alcoholism and other vices. If someone is identical with his person, then his individual properties are associated with the soul. From this association arises the symbol of spiritual pregnancy, often found in dreams and based on the original image of the birth of the hero. The child to be born denotes in this case an individuality not yet present in consciousness.
Identity with the person automatically causes an unconscious identity with the soul, because if the subject, "I", is not different from the person, then he has no conscious relation to the processes of the unconscious. Therefore, he is nothing but these same processes - he is identical with them. Whoever himself unconditionally merges with his external role inevitably falls under the power of internal processes, that is, under certain circumstances he will inevitably go against his external role or bring it to the point of absurdity. (See enantiodromia.) This, of course, excludes the assertion of an individual line of conduct, and life proceeds in inevitable opposites. In this case, the soul is always projected into a corresponding real object, to which a relation of almost unconditional dependence is created. All reactions emanating from this object act directly on the subject, capturing him from within. Often this takes the form of tragic relationships.
The assertion that a person is something much more than a physical body is no longer questioned by anyone today.
Regardless of whether a person belongs to any religion or not, each of us sooner or later thinks about what the soul is.
If we do not take into account church ideas, then it is possible to give a more realistic definition of the soul, as a product of the work of the brain, consciousness, but where does it come from?
It is very difficult to accept that everything for which we live, educate in ourselves, create, will go nowhere. But what about “thought is material”? It is foolish not to be afraid of death. But one must live, if not in anticipation of the afterlife, then at least for the sake of people remembering you with warmth, and not with disgust. We come to Earth with a specific mission. Someone enriches his soul, and someone wastes and burns through during earthly life. Maybe that is why the souls of some people become smaller and thinner because they have not found their meaning and purpose in this life ...
Is the human soul an energy field?
The soul is an ephemeral shell of a living person, however, there is a theory according to which it can be measured with quite earthly units of measurement.
Let us assume that the soul is a product of brain radiation, a stream of consciousness. So, this is a kind of energy field. But any field, from the point of view of physics, is determined by its parameters, which can be measured.
For example, light is measured in quanta, and the electromagnetic field is measured in power and other parameters. Not all elementary particles that make up the field have a rest mass, but have scientists learned how to measure, for example, the flow of electrons or gamma radiation?
“There are many, friend Horatio, that our wise men never dreamed of”
If we do not know something yet, this does not mean that it does not exist or can never be. This means that there is a high probability that over time they will learn how to measure the "spiritual" quantum!
In the end, if any energy field has energy (and the soul has a very powerful potential), then sooner or later it will be possible to isolate it for measurement. As for the soul, this energy can have both a positively directed flow and a negative one.
Yes, now there is no definite data convincingly indicating that the soul exists. But this does not mean that there is no soul! Once upon a time, people could not "see and touch" the electromagnetic field or infrared radiation - there was no technical possibility.
Over time, perhaps, people will learn to measure the strength of the human soul not only by sensations, by the impact on others, but also by precise instruments. Progress does not stand still!
But, to be honest, when talking about the soul, one somehow does not want to think about it from such positions, almost turning feelings and attitudes of a person to the living and inanimate world into kilograms and meters. Let's try to prove its presence (or absence) with more human (that is, spiritual) arguments.
Let's go back to the classics. Lomonosov's conservation law states: "Nothing appears from nothing and disappears without a trace." This means that the soul of a person also does not arise from nowhere, and after death does not die with him.
What is the soul of a person, and where does it go after his death?
Ideas about the human soul in different theories
For example, the theory of reincarnation of souls. That is, the soul after the death of a person does not disappear completely, but moves to another body, living or inanimate. If the soul got into the human body, then in some cases “gene memory” can work.
For example, a little girl, who has lived all her life in the Russian outback, suddenly has dreams in which she sees herself as an English lord, and a man swimming like a fish sees a dream in which he, being in a female body, drowns in a shallow river.
There is a theory that explains not only the presence of the soul, but also its "cycle", that is, its state in every period of time, starting from the moment of birth.
Let us suppose that there is some place in which souls without a body live. It does not matter their origin: cosmic or divine, or something else - the important thing is that this place exists (or maybe more than one, according to religious teachings), and the number of these souls is finite. The state of the soul at any particular moment in time can be different (again, based on religious teachings):
- Located in paradise
- Is in hell
- Found in the human body
- Found in any other body, living or inanimate
- Is in a state of ordeal, trial, or waiting for a decision for his sins in earthly life
Since over the many millennia that have passed since the birth of souls, the population of the Earth has increased many times over, it is natural to assume that some people “did not get the human soul”, and they live either with some other soul (for example, the soul of a tree or a fish), or completely soulless. And this can be confirmed by ancient definitions that remain quite modern even today: “stone soul”, “soulless person”, “wooden person”, etc.
Some human souls have “worn out”, become smaller, some, on the contrary, have become larger. Why is this happening? Can the soul disappear altogether, and can souls multiply?
Where does the soul go after death, and where do new souls come from?
Let believers forgive for invading such shrines - but in the end, this is just an attempt to confirm the theory of the presence of a soul in every living and inanimate object!
Like any energy field, the soul can also be destroyed, that is, go into some other state. Making bad deeds By acting against the laws of God and men, a person wounds his soul. The matter of the human soul becomes thinner, torn to pieces, decreases.
These wounded souls can and should be healed and restored. But, if this does not happen, these fragments of souls either die, or, if they are viable enough, begin their own existence, passing the path of purification and restoration.
Or, on the contrary, two spiritually close people enrich and closely perceive each other's souls so much that, merging in a single spiritual impulse, they give birth new soul, which also has the right to exist.
Why can some souls often pass from one human body to another, while others have to wait an eternity to live their earthly life a second time? Why do some people, doing good deeds, enrich their soul, generously distributing it to others, while others, on the contrary, just as generously share their attitude towards life and people, but only negative, and also feel in spiritual comfort? Maybe the fact is that these are initially different souls? And can the soul be reborn?
Humanity does not yet have answers to these questions. But anyone who has a soul can think and reason about this, that is, who is not indifferent to humanity as a whole and to the awareness of his place in this world.
Share generously your sincerity - enrich your soul!
Let everyone try to give his answer, which will be close to him and understandable. The main thing is that the question is not in a specific definition, but in understanding that the soul - everyone has it! And you can’t always test it for strength, subjecting it to endless torture in the form of misconduct that goes against your conscience, you can’t step over yourself and break your soul.
But you can generously share your soul, because the more you give, the more you receive in return for attention, kindness and just a positive attitude, and the soul, instead of decreasing from division, miraculously increases.
We must cherish and enrich our soul, and not squander it. We are only carriers of the soul, its conductors on Earth, and knowing this, it is simply unacceptable to live in such a way that the soul decomposes. Kind of like renting a house and tearing it down.
Then you will need to answer, first of all, to yourself and your conscience. If there is no way to check whether the answer for this is “there”, where everyone goes after death.
It must be remembered that the soul is eternal, and even after the death of the body shell continues to live, accumulating in itself the earthly life experience. You do not want to serve as a source of negative experience? Then live according to your conscience, do not defile your soul!
Regardless of whether there is a soul or not, whether there will be resettlement or not, we want our descendants to remember us with a kind word, not only because they don’t speak badly of the dead. The memory that our children, grandchildren and next generations- a serious motivator to "behave well."
The song "The Mysterious Russian Soul" has a deep meaning. Perhaps it will bring you closer to understanding what the human soul is?
In Greek, the word "soul" (psyche - from psykhein - "to blow, breathe") meant the very life of a person. The meaning of this word is close to the meaning of the word "pneuma" ("spirit", spirit), meaning "breath", "breath".
A body that no longer breathes is dead. In the Book of Genesis, he breathed life into Adam:
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).
The soul is not something material, material, visible. This is the totality of all our feelings, thoughts, desires, aspirations, impulses of the heart, our mind, consciousness, free will, our conscience, the gift of faith in God. The soul is immortal. The soul is a priceless gift of God, received from God solely out of His love for people. If a person did not know from Holy Scripture that, in addition to the body, he also has a soul, then with only one attentive attitude towards himself and the world around him, he could understand that inherent only to him: reason, consciousness, conscience, faith into God, everything that distinguishes him from the animal constitutes his soul.
It is often observed in life that people who are healthy and wealthy cannot find complete satisfaction in life, and, conversely, people exhausted by illnesses are full of complacency and inner spiritual joy. These observations tell us that, in addition to the body, every person has a soul. Both the soul and the body live their own lives.
It is the soul that makes all people equal before God. Both man and woman are given by God the same souls at creation. The soul that the Lord gave to people carries in itself image and likeness of God.
God is eternal, He has neither beginning nor end to His Being. Our soul, although it has a beginning of its existence, but it does not know the end, it is immortal.
Our God is God Almighty. And God endowed man with the features of power; man is the master of nature, he owns many secrets of nature, he conquers the air and other elements.
The soul brings us closer to God. She is Not Made by Hands, destined to be an abode for the Spirit of God. It is the dwelling place of the Spirit of God in us. And this is its highest merit. This is her special honor, destined for her by God. Even the pure and sinless are not given this honor. It is not said about them that they are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, but about the human soul.
Man is not born ready-made temple of God.
And when a person is baptized, she dresses in snow-white clothes, which usually become soiled with sins during her life. We must not forget that our spiritual nature is arranged in such a way that all thoughts, feelings, desires, all movements of our spirit are closely interconnected. And sin, getting into the heart, even when it has not yet been committed, but only the thought of it has come, and then through action, immediately leaves its mark on all aspects of our spiritual activity. And good, entering into the fight against evil that has penetrated into us, begins to weaken and fade.
The soul is cleansed by tearful repentance. And this is necessary, for it is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit can dwell only in a clean temple. The soul cleansed from sins is the bride of God, the heir to paradise, the interlocutor of the Angels. She becomes a queen, full of grace-filled gifts and God's mercies.
From the book of Archimandrite John (Krestyankin)
When St. Gregory wrote about the soul, he began with an apophatic approach, recognizing from the very beginning that the soul belongs, like the Lord himself, to the realm of the unknowable with the help of reason alone. The question "Why do I live?" demands silence and silence.
When the Holy Fathers spoke about the mind in relation to the soul, they called it "nous" (a term introduced by Plato to designate the Higher Mind. "Nous" is a manifestation of the divine consciousness in man - ed.). The fact that this word is considered a synonym for the word "intelligence" is part of sad story our loss of understanding of the meaning of this concept. Nous, of course, also understands and perceives, but not in the same way as the intellect.
Origin of the soul
The origin of the soul of each individual person is not fully disclosed in the word of God, as “a mystery known to God alone” (St. Cyril of Alexandria), and the Church does not offer us a strictly defined teaching on this subject. She resolutely rejected only the view of Origen, inherited from the philosophy of Plato, about the pre-existence of souls, according to which souls come to earth from the mountain world. This teaching of Origen and the Origenists was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council.
However, this conciliar definition does not establish: is the soul created from the souls of a person’s parents, and in this only general sense constitutes a new creation of God, or is each soul directly created separately by God, then uniting at a certain moment with the body being formed or formed? According to some Church Fathers (Clement of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Theodoret), each soul is separately created by God, and some date its union with the body to the fortieth day of the formation of the body. (Roman Catholic theology has decisively leaned towards the point of view of a separate creation of each soul; it is dogmatically carried out in some papal bulls; Pope Alexander 7 connected the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with this view. of the Blessed Virgin Mary). - According to the view of other teachers and Fathers of the Church (Tertullian, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Macarius, Anastasius the Presbyter), about substance, the soul and body simultaneously receive their beginning and are improved: the soul is created from the souls of the parents, as the body from the bodies of the parents . Thus, “creation is understood here in a broad sense, as the participation of the creative power of God, inherent and necessary everywhere for all life. The basis for this view is that in the person of the forefather Adam, God created the human race: from one blood he made the whole human race” (Acts 17:26). From this it follows that in Adam the soul and body of each person are potentially given. But God's determination is carried out in such a way that both body and soul are created, created by God for God holds everything in his hand, Self giving all life and breath and all” (Acts 17:25). God, having created, creates.
St. Gregory the Theologian says: “Just as the body, originally created in us from dust, later became a descendant of human bodies and does not stop from the primordial root, enclosing others in one person: so the soul, breathed in by God, from now on joins the formed composition of man , being born again, from the original seed (obviously, according to the thought of Gregory the Theologian, spiritual seed) given to many, and in mortal members always preserving a constant image ... As breathing in a musical pipe, depending on the thickness of the pipe, produces sounds, so does the soul, which turns out to be powerless in weak composition, appears strengthened in the composition and then reveals his whole mind ”(Gregory the Theologian, word 7, On the soul). This is also the view of Gregory of Nyssa.
Father John of Kronstadt in his Diary argues as follows: “What are human souls? This is the same soul or the same breath of God that God breathed into Adam, which from Adam and hitherto extends to the entire human race. All people, therefore, it is the same as one person or one tree of humanity. Hence the most natural commandment, based on the unity of our nature: Love the Lord thy God(Your prototype, your Father) with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Love thy neighbor(for who is closer to me like me, a person of my own blood), as yourself“. It is a natural necessity to keep these commandments” (My life in Christ).
From the book of Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
Soul, spirit and body: how do they relate in Orthodoxy?
The soul, not being a “part” of a person, is an expression and manifestation of the integrity of our personality, if you look at it from a special angle. The body is also an expression of our personality, in the sense that although the body is different from the soul, it complements it, not opposes it. "Soul" and "body" are thus only two ways to represent the energies of a single and indivisible whole. A true Christian's view of human nature must always be holistic.
John of the Ladder (7th century) speaks of the same thing when he describes his body in bewilderment:
“It is my ally and my enemy, my helper and my adversary, defender and traitor… What kind of mystery is this in me? By what law is the soul connected to the body? How can you be both your friend and your enemy at the same time?
However, if we feel this contradiction in ourselves, this struggle between soul and body, it is not at all because God created us this way, but because we live in a fallen world subject to the influence of sin. God, on His part, created man as an indivisible unity; and we, through our sinfulness, have broken this unity, although we have not completely destroyed it.
When the apostle Paul speaks of "this body of death" (Rom. 7:24), he is referring to our fallen condition; when he says: "...your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you ... Therefore glorify God in your bodies" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), he is talking about the original, God-created body of man and how it will become, saved, restored by Christ.
Similarly, John of the Ladder, when he calls the body an "enemy", "enemy" and "traitor", has in mind its present fallen state; and when he calls him "ally," "helper," and "friend," he refers to his true, natural state before the fall or after the restoration.
And when we read the Scriptures or the writings of the Holy Fathers, we should consider each statement about the relationship of the soul and body in its context, taking into account this most important difference. And no matter how keenly we feel this internal contradiction between physical and spiritual needs, we should never forget about the fundamental integrity of our personality, created in the image of God. Our human nature is complex, but it is united in its complexity. We have different sides or tendencies, but this is diversity in unity.
The true nature of our human personality, as a complex integrity, diversity in unity, was beautifully expressed by St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390). He distinguished two levels of creation: spiritual and material. Angels refer only to the spiritual or immaterial level; although many Holy Fathers believe that only God is absolutely immaterial; angels, compared to other creatures, can still be called relatively "incorporeal" ( asomatoi).
As Gregory the Theologian says, each of us is “earthly and at the same time heavenly, temporal and at the same time eternal, visible and invisible, standing in the middle of the path between greatness and insignificance, one and the same being, but also flesh, and spirit". In this sense, each of us is "a second cosmos, a huge universe inside a small one"; within us is the diversity and complexity of all creation.
St. Gregory Palamas writes about the same thing: “The body, once having rejected the desires of the flesh, no longer pulls the soul down, but soars with it, and the person completely becomes a spirit.” Only if we spiritualize our body (without dematerializing it in any way) can we spiritualize the whole creation (without dematerializing it). Only by accepting human personality as a whole, as an inseparable unity of soul and body, we will be able to fulfill our mediating mission.
According to the Creator's plan, the body must obey the Soul, and the soul must obey the spirit. Or, in other words, the soul must serve as a working organ for the spirit, and the body is intended to carry out the activities of the soul. This is exactly what happened to a person uncorrupted by sin: the Divine voice was heard in the very sanctuary of the spirit, the person understood this voice, sympathized with it, desired to fulfill its instruction (that is, the will of God) and fulfilled it by deed through his body. So now, most often a person acts who, with God's help, has learned to always be guided by the voice of a Christian conscience, able to correctly distinguish between good and evil, thereby restoring the image of God in himself.
Such a restored person is internally whole, or, as they also say about him, purposeful or chaste. (All words have one root - whole, the same root in the word “healing”. Such a person, as the image of God, is healed.) There is no internal discord in him. The conscience proclaims the will of God, the heart sympathizes with it, the mind considers the means for its implementation, the will desires and achieves, the body submits to the will without fear and grumbling. And after performing actions, conscience delivers consolation to a person on his morally correct path.
But sin has perverted this correct order. And it is hardly possible in this life to meet a person who always lives chaste, whole, in conscience. In a person who has not been reborn by God's grace in ascetic asceticism, his entire composition acts in discord. Conscience sometimes tries to insert its word, but the voice of spiritual desires is heard much louder, mostly oriented to carnal needs, moreover, often superfluous and even perverted. The mind is striving for earthly calculations, and more often it is completely turned off and is content with only incoming external information. The heart is guided by fickle sympathies, also sinful. The person himself does not really know what he lives for, and therefore, what he wants. And in all this discord, you won’t understand who the commander is. Most likely - the body, because its needs for the most part come first. The body is subject to the soul, and last place are spirit and conscience. But since such an order is clearly not natural, it is constantly violated, and instead of wholeness in a person there is a continuous internal struggle, the fruit of which is constant sinful suffering.
Soul Immortality
When a person dies, one, his lowest component (the body) "turns" into soulless matter and surrenders to its owner, mother earth. And then it decomposes, becoming bones and dust, until it disappears completely (what happens to dumb animals, reptiles, birds, etc.).
But the other, higher component (the soul), which gave life to the body, the one that thought, created, believed in God, does not become a soulless substance. It does not disappear, it does not dissipate like smoke (because it is immortal), but it passes, renewed, into another life.
Belief in the immortality of the soul is inseparable from religion in general, and even more so is one of the basic objects of the Christian faith.
She could not be alien and. It is expressed in the words of Ecclesiastes: And the dust will return to the earth as it was; and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). The whole story of the third chapter of Genesis is with the words of God's warning: “If you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then die the death - is the answer to the question about the phenomenon of death in the world and, thus, it is in itself an expression of the idea of immortality. The idea that man was destined for immortality, that immortality is possible, is contained in the words of Eve: “ ... only the fruits of the tree that is in the middle of paradise, God said, do not eat them and do not touch them, so that you do not die” (Gen. 3:3).
Deliverance from hell, which was a hope in the Old Testament, was an achievement in New Testament. God's Son " descended before into the lower parts of the earth“, ” captivity captivated” (Eph. 4:8-9). In a farewell conversation with the disciples, the Lord told them that He was going to prepare a place for them, so that they would be where He Himself would be (John 14:2-3); and said to the thief: now you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
In the New Testament, the immortality of the soul is the subject of a more perfect revelation, constituting one of the main parts of the Christian faith proper, inspiring the Christian, filling his soul with the joyful hope of eternal life in the kingdom of the Son of God. “ For for me life is Christ, and death is gain ... I have a desire to be resolved and be with Christ” (Philipp. 1:21-23). “ For we know that when our earthly house, this hut is destroyed, we have from God a dwelling in heaven, a house not made by hands, eternal. That is why we sigh, desiring to put on our heavenly habitation” (2 Cor. 5:1-2).
It goes without saying that St. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously preached the immortality of the soul, with the only difference that some recognized it as immortal by nature, while others - the majority - immortal by the grace of God: “God wants it (the soul) to live” (St. Justin Martyr); “The soul is immortal by the grace of God, Who makes it immortal” (Cyril of Jerusalem and others). By this, the Fathers of the Church emphasize the difference between the immortality of man and the immortality of God, who is immortal in the essence of His nature and therefore is “ the only one who has immortality” according to Scripture (Tim. 6:16).
Observation shows that faith in the immortality of the soul is always internally inseparable from faith in God, so much so that the degree of the former is determined by the degree of the latter. The more alive in whom there is faith in God, the firmer and more undoubted, therefore, the faith in the immortality of the soul. And vice versa, the weaker and lifeless one believes in God, the more hesitant and more doubtful he approaches the truth of the immortality of the soul. And whoever completely loses or stifles faith in God in himself, he usually ceases to believe in the immortality of the soul or in the future life. This is understandable. A person receives the power of faith from the Source of Life itself, and if he breaks the connection with the Source, then he loses this flow of living power, and then no reasonable evidence and convictions are able to infuse the power of faith into a person.
It can rightly be said that in the Orthodox, Eastern Church, the consciousness of the immortality of the soul occupies a proper, central place in the system of doctrine and in the life of the Church. The spirit of the church charter, the content of liturgical rites and individual prayers support and enliven in believers this consciousness, faith in the afterlife of the souls of our loved ones who have died and in our personal immortality. This faith falls like a ray of light on the whole life work of an Orthodox Christian.
Soul powers
“The powers of the soul,” writes St. John of Damascus, - are divided into reasonable force and unreasonable. The unreasonable force has two parts: ... the vital force and the part subdivided into irritable and lustful. But since the activity of the vital force - the plant-animal nourishment of the body - manifests itself only sensually and completely unconsciously, and therefore does not enter into the doctrine of the soul, it remains in the doctrine of our soul to consider the following forces of it: verbal-rational, irritable and lustful. These three forces are pointed out by St. The Fathers of the Church recognize these very forces as the main ones in our soul. “In our soul,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, - three forces are seen from the initial division: the power of the mind, the power of lust and the power of irritation. We find such a teaching about the three powers of our soul in the works of St. Fathers of the Church of almost all ages.
These three forces must be directed towards God. That is their natural state. According to Abba Dorotheus, who here agrees with Evagrius, “the rational soul then acts according to nature, when the lustful part of it desires virtue, the irritable part strives for it, and the rational soul indulges in the contemplation of the created” (Abba Dorotheus, p. 200). And the Monk Thalassius writes that "the distinguishing feature of the rational part of the soul should be the exercise in the knowledge of God, and the desirable - love and abstinence" (Dobr. T.3. P.299). Nicholas Cabasilas, touching upon the same question, agrees with the fathers mentioned and says that human nature was created for the new man. We have received “thinking (λογισμό) in order to know Christ, and desire in order to strive for Him, and we have acquired memory in order to bear Him in it”, for Christ is the archetype of people.
Lust and anger constitute the so-called passionate part of the soul, while reason is the rational part. In the rational part of the soul of a fallen man, pride dominates, in the lustful part, mainly carnal sins, and in the irritable part, the passions of hatred, anger, and memory of malice.
Reasonable
The human mind is in constant motion. Different thoughts come into it or are born in it. The mind cannot remain completely idle or withdrawn into itself. He demands external stimuli or impressions. A person wants to receive information about the surrounding mipe. This is the need of the rational part of the soul, moreover, the simplest. The higher need of our mind is the craving for reflection and analysis, which is characteristic of someone to a greater extent, and to someone to a lesser extent.
Irritable
Expressed in the craving for self-manifestation. For the first time, she wakes up in a child along with the first words: “I myself” (in the sense: I myself will do this or that). In general, this is a natural human need - not to be someone else's tool or machine gun, but to make independent decisions. Our desires, afflicted by sin, demand the most educational work to be directed towards good and not towards evil.
Lustful
The sensitive (emotional) side of the soul also requires its own impressions. These are, first of all, aesthetic requests: to contemplate, listen to something beautiful in nature or in human creativity. Some of the artistically gifted natures also have a need for creativity in the world of beauty: an irresistible craving to draw, sculpt or sing. A higher manifestation of the sensitive side of the soul is empathy with the joys and sorrows of other people. There are other heart movements.
The image of God in man
The sacred writer about the creation of man narrates:
“And God said: let us make man in our image and likeness… And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
What is the image of God in us? Church teaching inspires us only that man is generally created “in the image, “but what part of our nature this image manifests in itself, it does not indicate. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church gave different answers to this question: some see it in reason, others in free will, and still others in immortality. If you combine their thoughts, then you get a complete idea of what the image of God is in a person, according to the instructions of St. Fathers.
First of all, the image of God must be seen only in the soul, and not in the body. God, by His nature, is the purest Spirit, not clothed in any body and not participating in any materiality. Therefore, the concept of the image of God can only apply to the immaterial soul: this warning is considered necessary by many Fathers of the Church.
A person bears the image of God in the highest properties of the soul, especially in its immortality, in free will, in reason, in the ability to pure selfless love.
- The Eternal God endowed man with the immortality of his soul, although the soul is immortal not by its very nature, but by the goodness of God.
- God is completely free in His actions. And he gave man free will and the ability, within certain limits, to free actions.
- God is wise. And man is endowed with a mind capable of not being limited only to earthly, animal needs and the visible side of things, but to penetrate into their depth, to know and explain their inner meaning; a mind capable of ascending to the invisible and directing its thought to the very originator of all that exists - to God. The mind of man makes his will conscious and truly free, because he can choose for himself not what his lower nature leads him to, but what corresponds to his highest dignity.
- God created man in His goodness and has never abandoned and never leaves him with His love. And a person who has received a soul from the inspiration of God strives, as to something, to himself, to his supreme Beginning, to God, seeking and thirsting for union with Him, which is partly indicated by the exalted and upright position of his body and turned upward, towards the sky, his gaze. Thus, the desire and love for God express the image of God in man.
Summarizing, we can say that all the good and noble properties and abilities of the soul are such an expression of the image of God.
Is there a difference between the image and likeness of God? Most of St. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church answers that there is. They see the image of God in the very nature of the soul, and the likeness - in the moral perfection of man, in virtue and holiness, in the attainment of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, we receive the image of God from God along with being, and we must acquire the likeness ourselves, having received only the opportunity for this from God. To become “in the likeness” depends on our will and is acquired through our corresponding activity. Therefore, it is said about the “council” of God: “Let us make in Our image and after our likeness”, and about the very act of creation: “In the image of God I created him,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa: By the "council" of God we have been given the opportunity to be "according to the likeness."
arch.The soul is what hurts a person when the whole body is healthy.
After all, we say (and feel) that it is not the brain that hurts,
not a heart muscle - the soul hurts.
Deacon Andrew
Soul 1) an integral, substantial part of the human, which has properties that reflect Divine perfections (); 2) different from the human part (); 3) person (); 4) animal (); 5) the life force of the animal ().
The human soul is independent, because, according to St. , it is not a manifestation of another essence, another being, but is itself the source of phenomena emanating from it.
The human soul was created immortal, because it does not die like a body, being in the body, it can be separated from it, although such separation is unnatural for the soul, there is a sad consequence. The human soul is a personality, because it was created as a unique and inimitable personal being. The human soul is reasonable and, because it has a reasonable power and free. The human soul is different from the body, because it does not have the properties of visibility, tangibility, is not perceived and is not known by bodily organs.
Irritable soul power(παρασηλοτικον, irascile) is her emotional strength. St. calls it a spiritual nerve, giving the soul energy for labor in the virtues. This part of the soul of Sts. Fathers ascribes anger and a violent beginning. However, in this case anger and rage do not mean passions, but jealousy (zeal, energy), which in its original state was a jealousy for good, and after the fall should be used as a courageous rejection. “It is the business of the irritable part of the soul to be angry with the devil,” say Sts. Fathers. The irritable power of the soul is also called.
Lustful part of the soul(επιθυμητικον, concupiscentiale) is also called desirable (desirable) or active. It allows the soul to aspire to something or to turn away from something. It belongs to the lustful part of the soul, which tends to act.
“Curb the irritable part of the soul with love, fade the desirable part with abstinence, inspire reasonable prayer ...” / Kallistos and Ignatius Xanthopoulos /.
All the forces of the soul are aspects of its single life. They are inseparable from each other and constantly interact. They achieve the greatest unity when they obey the spirit, focusing on the contemplation and knowledge of God. In this knowledge, according to St. , there is no trace of their separation, they are in unity like unity.
The human soul is connected to the body. This connection is an unmerged connection. As a result of this union, two natures are present in a person - spiritual and bodily, which, according to the word of St. , are unmixedly dissolved. Of the two natures, God formed one human being, in which "neither the body is changed into the soul, nor the soul is changed into the flesh" (St.). For all that, such a union is not merged, but it is not inseparable and inseparable, since the human body acquired mortality and separation from the soul as a result of sin.
The concept of the soul
The soul is a certain special force present in a person, which constitutes the highest part of him; it revives a person, gives him the ability to think, sympathize, feel. The words "soul" and "breathe" have a common origin. The soul is created by the breath of God, and it has indestructibility. It cannot be said that it is immortal, because only God is immortal by nature, while our soul is indestructible - in the sense that it does not lose its consciousness, does not disappear after death. However, it has its own "death" - it is ignorance of God. And in this regard, she can die. That is why it is said in Scripture: “The soul that sins, it will die” ().
The soul is a living, simple and incorporeal essence, by its nature invisible to bodily eyes, rational and thinking. Having no form, using an equipped organ - the body, giving it life and growth, feeling and generating power. Having a mind, but not different, in comparison with itself, but as the purest part of it - for as the eye is in the body, so is the mind in the soul. It is autocratic and capable of wishing and acting, changeable, i.e. voluntarily changing because it was created. Having received all this by nature from the grace of the One who created her, from whom she received her being.
Some sectarians, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists, reject the immortality of the soul, considering it to be merely a part of the body. And at the same time they falsely refer to the Bible, to the text of Ecclesiastes, which raises the question of whether the human soul is similar to the soul of animals: everyone has breath, and man has no advantage over cattle, because everything is vanity!” (). Then the Ecclesiastes himself answers this question, which the sectarians neglect, he says: “And the dust will return to the earth, as it was; and the spirit returned to God who gave it. And here we understand that the soul is indestructible, but it can die.
Soul powers
If we turn to the patristic heritage, we will see that usually three main forces are distinguished in the soul: mind, will and feelings, which are manifested in different abilities- thoughtful, desirable and lustful. But at the same time, one must understand that the soul has other powers as well. All of them are divided into reasonable and unreasonable. The unreasonable beginning of the soul consists of two parts: one is disobediently reasonable (does not obey reason), the other is obediently reasonable (obeys reason). The higher forces of the soul include the mind, will and feelings, and the unreasonable ones include the vital forces: the power of the heartbeat, the seed, the growth (which forms the body), etc. The action of the power of the soul animates the body. God deliberately made the vital forces beyond the control of reason, so that human mind was not distracted by the control of the heartbeat, breathing, etc. There are various technologies related to the control of the human body that are trying to influence this life force. What yogis do hard: they try to control the heartbeat, change breathing, control internal processes digestion? and are terribly proud of it. In fact, there is absolutely nothing to be proud of here: God deliberately freed us from this task, and it is stupid to do this.
Imagine that, in addition to your usual work, you will be forced to do the work of the housing office: organize garbage collection, cover the roof, control the supply of gas, electricity, etc. Now many people are delighted with all kinds of occult, esoteric arts, they are proud that they have mastered the regulation of this life force soul that is not subject to reason. In fact, they are proud of the fact that they changed the job of a university teacher for a job as a sewer. This is due to the foolish idea that the mind is better able to handle the body than the unreasonable part of the soul. I will answer that in fact it will do worse. It has long been known that any attempts to rationally build life lead to very irrational consequences. If we try to use the power of our mind to manage our body correctly, it will be complete nonsense.
It is difficult for a person to believe in what he cannot perceive with his senses, what he does not see, cannot touch with his hands, hear or smell. That is why it is so difficult for him to imagine the soul.
Increasingly, there is information that unusual experiments are being carried out by scientists in search of an answer to the question: what is the soul made of?
In the world of matter, every object has physical and material characteristics. In an attempt to determine the composition of the soul, scientists conduct experiments that make it possible to detect precisely its material characteristics - weight, composition and ability to move.
Most of the experiments of scientists in this field are based on observations of dying patients.
How much does the human soul weigh
Back in the late 90s, scientist Lyell Watson stated that the soul has at least one physical parameter - weight.
To confirm his theory, he designed a special scale bed on which he placed dying patients. And he discovered an interesting fact: the human body loses weight after death. The weight loss was from 2.5 to 6.5 grams.
75 years before this experiment, the American Duncan McDougal conducted a similar study. His goal was determine the weight of the soul.He also tried to find out how much lighter the human body becomes when physical death occurs.
The measurements showed that the soul weighs 5.2 gold pieces, that is, 22.4 grams.
How to explain that the two researchers had different results?
Perhaps each person's soul has its own specific weight?
Scientists have suggested that the weight of a person's soul directly depends on his thoughts and actions.
Many fellow scientists disagree with the results of both experiments.
The weight that the body loses after death is associated with the body's metabolic processes that continue after death. Since the supply of oxygen in the body is very small, and after the heart stops it completely stops entering the lungs, other energy reserves of the body begin to be spent.
Therefore, it is not easy to convince people who have knowledge of general physiology and anatomy that in the above experiments it was possible to determine the weight of the human soul.
Is it possible that the soul has no weight at all? Or does it still have, but so small that it is extremely difficult to determine it?
Doctor technical sciences Nikolai Zalichev is convinced that the weight of the soul can be calculated.
“I decided to conduct an experiment, albeit cruel, but with mice. To do this, I took glass flasks in which I placed one mouse, two, three - up to four mice. The flask was hermetically sealed and placed on the balance. After the mice suffocated - which is inevitable - its weight immediately decreased by a fraction of a percent. There were ultra-precise scales.”
The result of this experience showed that after the death of the creature, the weight decreased by one thousandth.
Means, the soul is a very thin substance, which has a tiny weight.
What is the soul made of?
According to one version, the soul consists of a vacuum.
It is known that all the stars and planets in the Universe are made of matter. What is the vacuum made of?
Scientists from the US suggested that the vacuum is antimatter. Antimatter is a substance whose properties are poorly understood.
Russian astrophysicists do not agree with them. They believe that if the vacuum consisted of antimatter, it would interact with matter. But the substance that fills the cosmic vacuum absolutely does not interact with it.
This means that the soul cannot be made of vacuum, otherwise it would not be able to live in close connection with our body. Therefore, the researchers hypothesize that the soul is a clot of matter that floats freely in space.
If the soul is a bunch of matter, then why can't scientists still track its movements? Today they have at their disposal a very sensitive technique that captures the highest frequency energy bursts. For some reason, this equipment cannot catch the frequency of the soul.
Doctor of Technical Sciences, Vladimir Atsyukovsky, put forward his hypothesis. He believes that the entire space of the Universe is filled with an elusive gas, which by its nature is a powerful source of energy. This is what the human soul is made of. This gas is called ether.
“There is such a biofield that can form the so-called soul. Etherdynamics does not deny this in any way. But he doesn't insist. Because the subject has not been researched. Suppose there is a question: I do not know the exact answer, but I cannot say that it is not possible.
The concept of ether appeared in ancient times, and our ancestors called it "filler of the void."
Back in 1618, the French physicist René Descartes put forward the first scientific theory about the existence of the luminiferous ether. And many scientists began to look for this invisible gas.
Isaac Newton until the age of 75 tried to discover the properties of this gas. He understood that it was necessary to find the physical basis for the mathematical law gravity, but he failed.
At that time there was not enough knowledge, the physical properties of gases were studied very little. Gas dynamics was not yet founded.
Lost Soul Element
Some scientists are convinced that once a gas called "ether" occupied the top line in the table of chemical elements of Dmitri Mendeleev. But then, with repeated reprinting of textbooks, this line mysteriously disappeared.
If the ether really exists, all the laws of modern theoretical physics will be untenable. Everything will have to be reviewed, and this is incredibly difficult and not everyone understands. Therefore, it is much easier to use only mathematical laws.
If the aether actually exists, then Albert Einstein's theory of relativity can be completely refuted.
If world science recognizes the existence of the ether, then the ideas of mankind about the surrounding world will change completely. This will confirm that the soul is real.
Scientists on the verge of creating a soul trap
Scientists in the United States and Japan in 2013 reported that they were able to fix the moment when, and they also managed to determine what substance it consists of.
In their opinion, the human soul is a bunch of proton-neutron structure. This structure is reminiscent human figure with head, arms and legs.
Everything in the human world consists of colorless protons and neurons. They resemble transparent structures so tiny that the human eye is unable to see them.
Scientists plan in the near future create a plasma soul trap. It will be a complex installation that will allow them to keep the energy of the soul in a special container after the onset of the physical death of a person.
