What is the soul?

Philosophy as well as brain science has made quite a few advancements in the last hundred years.These "immaterial forms" are brain functions. The brain creates these forms based on sense input, knowledge, and the way the organism functions in its environment.Form is thus a functional abstraction and a reification of a process.
Tree(treeing) is a space time phenomena that is close scale to human(peopling) space time phenomena. It is a matter energy vortex and we can recognize that pattern.In brief form is immaterial because it is a concept.lfen

Let me see if coming at it from this directions is productive.You seem to be dividing the universe into either mind and matter, or being and thing. My question is where do you classify energy? process? or action?I don't see energy, process, or actions as being either matter, mind, being, or things.lfen

From an earlier post in this subthread Robin wrote:
"Logically, that is all there is."I haven't yet figured out a fast way to quote from multiple posts. I can quote from the post I'm replying to. I suppose I could open multiple tabs in firefox to copy from the different posts.Robin did say entity but earlier he also seemed to say that entities were logically all there is. His brevity can be ambiguous.Of course I'm trying to figure out how to explain that entities are a result of our brain's response to the world. My model is that entities don't exist out there in the universe. What exists out there are processes. We concretize aspects those processes that we relate to for some reason. Such as eating them.lfen

Processes in my mind are a better modeling of what goes on and of what we are.The most important process to me is my "self process". The thing model leads to the question "who am I?". Not a bad question. The process model leads a questioning along the lines of "What am I" or "How am I functioning."This model leads to an appreciation of the universe as a higly complexly interacting system of mutually interdependent processes.So what part of the process of a human being is being referred to by the word "soul"?I believe the ancients were referring to the breathing process but later it appears some consciousness of emotion or feelings is perhaps referred to?lfen

True but in addition to what Is, there is the appearance of persons, minds, or souls. That's where the suffering lies though.The interesting part is the source. It's perhaps impossible or near impossible for ego focused consciousness to recall what lies beyond relative concerns but whether it's characterized as impersonal or transcendent it is so much richer.lfen

I didn't say it was impersonal, especially I didn't say it was purely impersonal. What I said was "whether it's characterized as impersonal or transcendent". I was groping to find a way to indicate something that language by its very structure doesn't model accurately at all. I would say there is personality but no longer the perception that there is a discrete entity or person.As to "What good is an "appearance" of anything?" Well, what good is a sunset? The scent of a rose? Holding a sleeping baby in your arms? The sweep of the milky way seen in the mountains far from any city lights?Bernadette Roberts accounts for it in this passage:

Franklin Merrell-Wolff is another westerner who gives an account of existence beyond the self. I have misplaced my copy of Pathways Through to Space but I did find some excerpts on the net. Here is a rather recent account (mid 20th century) of the experience of a westerner who has written several books on the subject. The excerpt breaks off at this point but as I recall the only thing Franklin discovered worth doing was to free others from their sorrows so that might experience what he had recognized.lfen

"self" is a long standing and powerful component of human culture. It is perhaps the fundamental basis of human culture. I'm not sure but it certainly one of the key definers of it.I don't think you created or chose to believe the concept so you can't give it up or choose to unbelieve it.One thing that is significant to me is this phenomena is reported by individuals from a variety of cultures from 2500 years ago in India (Buddha) to the present in America (Wayne Liquorman) or Bernadette Roberts. That is the personal aspect and by that I am referring to the awakening of an individual.Another aspect that may not come from individual awaking at all is the systems theory aspect which we see in such things as ecology and quantum mechanics, general semantics, or Wittgenstein's philosophy. These are modern intellectual approaches to a variety of scientific and philosophical problems.As I get ready to leave I'll just put out my definition of the soul which not surprisingly is that the soul is one word people use to refer to their illusionary sense of being seperate entities.lfenedit typo: approachers to approachesThis message has been edited by lfen, 04-25-2006 11:25 AM

I think what you are calling the self I would call the organism. The true nondualist in Buddhism or Advaita would never assert you lose your self or become one with anything. That goes against the fundamental perception of the teaching.You could lose the illusion of being a self. One analogy the Shankacharya gives its mistaking a length of rope in shadow for a snake. You don't ask what happened to the snake when you finally recognize the rope.The assertion is that it is whole. You can't make it whole, you can't make it one. It already is one! It's the separateness that is the illusion.I don't have time this morning to go into much detail. Roberts and others quite clearly are aware of the sensory processing and distinguish it from the conceptual processing that is the bases for the sense of self.You have focused on the crucial area though and that is consciousness. Our scientific understanding of consciousness is just beginning and it may challenge or confirm aspects discovered phenomenologically by Buddha and others who have undergone a transformation in the way they experience.I think this is on topic as it is this phenomena that the notion of a soul was offerred as an explanation. I would caution that popular notions of what Buddha taught etc. are not in fact what Buddha taught and are oversimplifications or misunderstandings.To begin with I suggest it's important to grasp that boundaries are human conceptual impositions on phenomenal reality. Can a river exist without clouds and rain? A description of lungs and their function take place within an implicit atmosphere and that atmosphere includes the complex ecology of the earth, plants, and ultimately the sun light providing energy for plants and so on. I've been offering the model that the universe is one large complex process of multiple interacting and interdependent processes. Nowhere is there a thing or entity. Thing is an artifact of our brain function.Gotta run.lfen

I certainly agree it's a conceptualization. Not sure what you are getting at by "imposed" but it's likely I would agree with that also. I think mystery and wonder are central. I would say that what Is exists independently of how we think of it. What is "separateness"? And how do you mean permanent state, do you mean it's eternal? Fatal means it kills. What does this fatal illusion kill?lfen

Hi Infixion, you are quite welcome to join in. This isn't a great debate thread and the board is for participation.Samsara refers to the the phenomena of birth, death, and rebirth. It is a key concept in Hinduism as well as Buddhism and will take a range of meanings. But it refers to the temporal, to the conditioned to things arising and falling away and hence the sorrow or pain or discomfort of our lives.Nirvana refers to an extinguishing that results in freedom from samsara and the attaining of peace. In Buddhism beingsbecomes aware that they are suffering as they pursue goals and pleasures around and around. Desire leading to achievement leading to fullfilment but then maybe failure, or ennui. Seeking nirvana is seeking a way out from all this. I'm a bit tired after work and I am not seeing just how to tie this into the discussion on the soul. It does apply but I'm a bit brain tired tonight. Nonetheless, the formula "samsare is none other than nirvana, nirvana none other than samsara" is a core Buddhist teaching of non duality.The Hindu concept of the soul was the atman. At the time of the Buddha it appears the atman was conceived of as some sort of permanent object. The Buddha introspectively examined his stream of consciousness looking for the atman. Failing to find any permanent self lead to or was his awakening. He declared all the elements that make up a human to be empty of self. That he was able to found a compassionate religion based on this difficult to understand profound insight is something that still amazes me.Well, that's all for now.lfen

That is the majority experience of our lives and of humanity. The Buddha said that awakening was rare. The word "sage" refers to those who claim to experience life from a non "me-ness" perspective.Revealed religions are based on some experience a self has that imparts information about some ultimate reality. Buddhism as a religion is based on the experience of an individual who discovered that there was no self, or soul and who said that that perception is true for everyone and that they might be able to see it.On the other hand you don't have to accept or be interested in it.
I'll quote a brief passage from the first page of Wayne Liquorman's book Accepting What Is: You might hear in this the opening words of Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching that the true Way is nameless but in order to talk about it he has to uses names so he calls it the Way.lfen

This is one of the best, if not the best question you've ever asked!
This is a fundamental question.I'd like to hear from the physic people here for I think an answer is energy which then leads to the question: What is energy? I have chosen energy because as I understand it fundamentally all we can say about what matter is is that it can transform into energy per the E equals mc squared expression.Contemporary nondualists would most likely answer Consciousness (note the capitalization) as in Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Consciousness without an object. Merrell-Wolff and Liquorman explicitly use the word Consciousness to indicate the fundamental mystery that is happening. Ramana would have spoken of the Self (the capitalization means this refers to pure Isness and not to self as the subject experiencing the objects of human existence.)running out of time this morning. That is such an excellent question I'll be thinking about it for some time.lfen

RR,I am very interested in your experience. Experiences like you had have been recorded through history by people in different parts of the world and different religious traditions. Your experience gives you a tiny taste of what the Buddha was talking about, or what the Hindu Sages down to Ramana are talking about. This was also experienced by Christian contemplatives, Sufi mystics, etc.What I want to briefly comment on is that you moved from concepts about derived from language to direct experience of. For some individuals who experienced this there were headaches, sometimes severe, and sometimes for a prolonged period of time, but that is not a feature for all. The experiences though having typical features are individual and different.If you are interested in other's experiences I can give you some references but you may prefer to just allow your path to unfold on its own.lfen