If you believe in a personal soul, why?

[Hedge90]

As I see some of you here have a belief in a personal soul that retains some degree of identity and integrity after a person's death. I see no good logical reason for this. The way I see it, our physical body, including our brain, is a specific configuration of M@L, and they carry everything that makes us a "person": our sense of identity, our personal qualities, our sensations and feelings. I'd figure when a person dies, and this specific configuration dissolves, the only thing that "remains" is the collection of all the experiences they had, but these just dissolve in M@L, together with all the other experiences that ever happened to anyone. There's nothing about "you" that should somehow survive as an integral consciousness that still defines itself as separate from M@L, because the instruments that generated this separation in the first place are gone.
So, to all of you who nevertheless believe in a personal soul, what are your arguments for that?

[AshvinP]

As I see some of you here have a belief in a personal soul that retains some degree of identity and integrity after a person's death. I see no good logical reason for this. The way I see it, our physical body, including our brain, is a specific configuration of M@L, and they carry everything that makes us a "person": our sense of identity, our personal qualities, our sensations and feelings. I'd figure when a person dies, and this specific configuration dissolves, the only thing that "remains" is the collection of all the experiences they had, but these just dissolve in M@L, together with all the other experiences that ever happened to anyone. There's nothing about "you" that should somehow survive as an integral consciousness that still defines itself as separate from M@L, because the instruments that generated this separation in the first place are gone.
So, to all of you who nevertheless believe in a personal soul, what are your arguments for that?

These issues must be teased out. One is the question of whether we have "ego-I" as a product of our "physical configuration". The second is whether there is a soul which is truly "personal". They are definitely related, but not exactly the same question.

1 - If consciousness is fundamental, then there is no possible way to claim anything "physical" gives rise to any aspect of consciousness. The "physical" is always a partial image of the mental (spiritual) configuration which allows for "ego-I". Does that configuration completely disappear at death? No, I don't think so. But these things cannot be answered quickly or without significant cognitive effort. What happens at the threshold of death can be illuminated in significant detail through that effortful process. The notion that our personality just merges into MAL is basically another way of saying, "I have no idea what happens, so I will just go with whatever feels best for me right now." I am not saying that to pick on you, because plenty of others do it as well. We must become aware of that tendency and resist its temptation first and foremost. Then we can move on to figuring out exactly the essence of "ego-I" and how it metamorphoses between birth and death and rebirth.

2 - For this one we should start thinking in polar terms. There is the Universal-Particular, Absolute-Contingent, Eternal-Temporal, etc. We could also label them Transpersonal-Personal. The key is to realize that there is no "personal" which exists separately from the transpersonal. They are two aspects of the same underlying Unity. So the Soul is truly universal, but also expresses itself in particular-personal configurations which are also real.

I know I have not yet given any arguments for either of those conclusions. I will have to get back to you on that later.

[pandaproducts]

I do not believe in a FUNDAMENTALLY distinct and separate mind that is a 'soul'. I believe Brahman = Atman. That said, I think there is a hierarchy of dissociation so that when you die you do not immediately return to the universal mind but rather return to being your Higher Self, from which this alter personality you currently inhabit springs from. I reach this conclusion through reading near-death experiences, my personal experiences, and the experiences of those who have sought the introspective path. (Rupert Spira and many others). This would also be able to make sense of reincarnation. Yes, there is indeed genuine reincarnation going on (same Higher Self/Higher Alter dissociating into all these little alters throughout lifetimes) but it is not FUNDAMENTALLY separate existing as an agency that is not universal mind.

[Hedge90]

I know I have not yet given any arguments for either of those conclusions. I will have to get back to you on that later.

I'd appreciate it. You are right, what I currently think is I have no idea what's beyond death, so I go with the simplest answer I can conceive, which is what I wrote down. I never said, though, that there's anything "physical" generating consiusness - I said that how your separation from M@L came to be in the first place is the emergence of your body and brain. It is, basically, your brain that "cuts you off" from being one with everything else. I don't see how an "I" can remain without this instrument. But I'm looking forward to your argument.

[Hedge90]

I myself became interested in Hinduism (and religions in general) after I had a peak experience and got into idealism. I have another question for you, completely irrespective of the previous one. Do you have any opinion on why Brahman created dissociated fragments of himself, and what purpose the whole process of dissociating from and returning to Brahman has? One of my main problems with most of theology is they basically describe a God that just does the whole shebang for the hell of it. The starting state and end state are the same: all came from God and all ends in God. This is what I liked about Bernardo's hypothesis about an infinite but changing existence: that with our lives, we itself enrich the totality of experience.

I do not believe in a FUNDAMENTALLY distinct and separate mind that is a 'soul'. I believe Brahman = Atman. That said, I think there is a hierarchy of dissociation so that when you die you do not immediately return to the universal mind but rather return to being your Higher Self, from which this alter personality you currently inhabit springs from. I reach this conclusion through reading near-death experiences, my personal experiences, and the experiences of those who have sought the introspective path. (Rupert Spira and many others). This would also be able to make sense of reincarnation. Yes, there is indeed genuine reincarnation going on (same Higher Self/Higher Alter dissociating into all these little alters throughout lifetimes) but it is not FUNDAMENTALLY separate existing as an agency that is not universal mind.

[SanteriSatama]

As I see some of you here have a belief in a personal soul that retains some degree of identity and integrity after a person's death. I see no good logical reason for this. The way I see it, our physical body, including our brain, is a specific configuration of M@L, and they carry everything that makes us a "person": our sense of identity, our personal qualities, our sensations and feelings. I'd figure when a person dies, and this specific configuration dissolves, the only thing that "remains" is the collection of all the experiences they had, but these just dissolve in M@L, together with all the other experiences that ever happened to anyone. There's nothing about "you" that should somehow survive as an integral consciousness that still defines itself as separate from M@L, because the instruments that generated this separation in the first place are gone.
So, to all of you who nevertheless believe in a personal soul, what are your arguments for that?

No personal soul, but these incarnations occurring as partial members of more enduring spiritual beings (or "magnetic bodies the size of Earth", as a physicalist could say) seems quite plausible even on epistemological level of empirical evidence.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I can only speak to the understanding that in the vast context of the entire spectrum of one's experience, including the consensus waking state expression, all the dreaming state expressions, and various supranormal expressions, that which one is in essence is not restricted to this persona associated with this transitory corporeal form, but is actually more of a trans-spatiotemporal gestalt of many such integral expressions, which subsumes all of them. How that gestalt corresponds to what is often ambiguously referred to as a 'soul', I'm not sure. Likewise, I'm not sure how it corresponds to what is referred to as M@L, i.e. a relational, ever-evolving, uncaused, never-ceasing Gestalt of all such sub-gestalts. In any case, ever since the indelible realization of that which one is in essence, I can't get overly concerned about this given subjectified locus of all of the above carrying on.

As I see some of you here have a belief in a personal soul that retains some degree of identity and integrity after a person's death. I see no good logical reason for this. The way I see it, our physical body, including our brain, is a specific configuration of M@L, and they carry everything that makes us a "person": our sense of identity, our personal qualities, our sensations and feelings. I'd figure when a person dies, and this specific configuration dissolves, the only thing that "remains" is the collection of all the experiences they had, but these just dissolve in M@L, together with all the other experiences that ever happened to anyone. There's nothing about "you" that should somehow survive as an integral consciousness that still defines itself as separate from M@L, because the instruments that generated this separation in the first place are gone.
So, to all of you who nevertheless believe in a personal soul, what are your arguments for that?

[AshvinP]

I know I have not yet given any arguments for either of those conclusions. I will have to get back to you on that later.

I'd appreciate it. You are right, what I currently think is I have no idea what's beyond death, so I go with the simplest answer I can conceive, which is what I wrote down. I never said, though, that there's anything "physical" generating consiusness - I said that how your separation from M@L came to be in the first place is the emergence of your body and brain. It is, basically, your brain that "cuts you off" from being one with everything else. I don't see how an "I" can remain without this instrument. But I'm looking forward to your argument.

I am not clear on what distinction you are drawing between physical generating consciousness and body/brain generating separation from MAL (self-consciousness)? If you mean the appearances of brain and body being related to self-consciousness in humans, then yes that is certainly true. But I do not hold the physical body and brain to be the totality of our bodily organism, bc there is also etheric and astral bodies which are now invisible to most people.

I still don't have time for full argument now, but consider that your "I" is an immanent given of your experience, so it must be accounted for. And if you are going to claim it disappears after death, I would say the burden is on you to make that argument. It can't simply be "physical body generates ego so when we die ego goes away". I am sure you will admit that is not a satisfying account of the most central aspect of our experience.

That being said, there are strong positive arguments for the essential ego being eternal, and I will try to get to those later. Related to another thing you mentioned about MAL purpose for disocciating, consider that MAL is eternal and atemporal in essence. All possible experiential states are "superimposed" so to speak. What we call time and past-present-future is how the relational and sensible unfolding of these states appear to us. So we only ask about "purpose" of fragmentation because we are reifying linear temporality and then wondering why MAL went from point A to point B.

[SanteriSatama]

It's quite marvellous how deviously cunning ego can be, what a wonder! Of course ego is just a self perpetuating loop of talking over in 1st person to avoid listening, a bundle defence mechanisms of abstract spatial thinking, but you gotta admire the beast!

PS: it takes an ego to know an ego.

[Hedge90]

It's quite marvellous how deviously cunning ego can be, what a wonder! Of course ego is just a self perpetuating loop of talking over in 1st person to avoid listening, a bundle defence mechanisms of abstract spatial thinking, but you gotta admire the beast!

PS: it takes an ego to know an ego.

I'm not equating soul with the ego. When I had my peak experience, I had a very definite empirical experience of the distinction between what I ordinarily think of as "me" (which is just a bundle of sensations, memories and feelings tied together into a tidy package, but are nevertheless no more a single entity than a bunch of groceries that happen to be in the same basket), and the thing experiencing "me". If there is indeed soul, than it is this thing experiencing "me".