SCIENCE OF SPIRIT

We all know what soul or a spirit is, right!! Or we dont. We all had probably experienced some kind of unusual activity within our direct locality but let me tell you that those experiences happened not because of actual existence of a spirit but because of mere hallucination of the brain due to abnormal release of particular hormones that increases fear and creates illusion infront of our eyes. No worries!! I will explain all these in the later part of this blog. But lets start from scratches, what is a soul ? Lets first tackle it in religious perspective. Every religion and ancient civilisation had their own explanation for this soul concept.

Ancient Egyptian believed individual made of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. The earliest reference of a soul as a seperate entity is of Kuttamuwa Stelle for an astounding 8th century BCE. Ancient Egyptians believed the soul had three parts, the ka, the ba and the akh. The ka and ba were spiritual entities that everyone possessed, but the akh was an entity reserved for only the selected few that were deserving of maat kheru. Their beliefs were that the living were responsible to help the dead, journey into the after life. “ The living had a duty to help those who had gone before them, and to those who would come after, by building and maintaining tombs. Tombs were the interface between time and eternity. This belief also included the preservation of the deceased body. Egyptians believed that even after death, ones spirit would live on because the life force was a seperate entity that could detach itself from the body. This life force is named ka. Weird, right!! Far out of the realm of science.

Kuttamuwa Stelle

According to Christian eschatology ( a part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind ), when people dies, their soul will be judged by god and determined to go heaven or hades( or hell ) awaiting the resurrection. Other Christians understand the soul as the life, and believed that the dead have no life until after resurrection. Some Christians believe that the soul and the bodies of the evil doer will be destroyed in hell rather than suffering eternally. Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. ‘ Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell ‘ - Matthew 10:28.

According to Baha ifaith soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of man hath failed to grasp and whose mystery have no hope to get unravel. Heaven can be seen partly as the soul state of nearness to God, hell as a state of remoteness to God. Baha ullah, founder of Baha ifaith in 19th century taught that individual have no existence prior to their life here on earth and soul evolution is always towards god and away from material world. For those who dont know Baha i faith, it is a relatively new religion teaching the essential worth of all religion and the unity of all people. Established by Baha ullah in 19th century initially developed in iran and parts of the Middle East. Baha ullah key theme is world unity. The goal of developing a new world society is a paramount need at the present time. Central to the baha i faith is that all human beings are equally Gods creation regardless of gender, race, nationality or creed and should be respected and treated without prejudice. Literally, a noble approach to unite all of humanity.

In hindu philosophy, especially in Vedanta school of Hinduism, atman is the first principle, the true self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essense of an individual. The SIX ORTHODOX SCHOOL OF HINDUSIM believe that there is atman in every being. Hindus believe that the soul is immortal and on the death of the body it teleports to a new life on earth. Wheather this is better or worse than the previous one depends on the amount of good or evil done in previous life. This is the law of Karma.

In islam, Quran, the holy book of islam, the soul is named as ruh. Islam hold different position regarding the abode after deceased. In the common sementic view, man is a union of body and soul, and spirit not as a seperate entity distinct from the body. The quran itself refers to ruh used to designate immortal soul. After death, most muslims believe that the soul will enter Barzakh, a state of waiting, untill the Day of Judgement. When a person dies, their soul is taken by Azrail, Angel of death. God sends two angels to question the waiting soul. Muslims believe they get to Paradise by living religiously, asking Allah for forgiveness and showing good action in their life. These good actions will be rewarded on the Last Day. Therefore, obeying the rules set by Allah is of ultimate importance. Muslims believe there are 7 levels of Heaven. Each heaven is made of a different material, and of different prophet lives in each Heaven. First heaven is made of silver and is where Adam and eve live. Abraham lives in the seventh Heaven in a place made of divine light. Vivid descriptions of hell are used in quran as a way to stop muslim from participating in sin. Muslims beleive that they will be sent to Hell if they reject the teaching of the Quran or take no responsibility of their action.

According to chinese traditions, every person has two type of soul called hun and po, which are respectively yang and yin. I am sure you all had heard of it and also saw it in chinese kung fu movies , right !!. Taoism believe in ten soul, sanhunqipo i.e three hun and seven po. A living that losses any of them is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness, while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability, lower desire realms, or may evern be unable to reincarnate.

Portray of Chinese imaginery spirit

Plato considered the psyche to be the essense of a person, being that which decided how we behave. He considered this essense to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. Plato said that even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as bodies die, the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. However, Aristotle believed that only one part of our soul was immortal that is the intellect. Plato was the first person in the history of philosophy to believe that the soul was both the source of life and the mind.In Plato's verses, we can find that soul has many disparate roles. Plato believes that the soul is what gives life to the body in terms of self motion. The soul is also the mind, the center of thought arousal.

Plato and Aristotle

Now, lets come to the main part of this blog, Scientific perspective about soul. Scientists believe that mind is merely a complex machine that operates on the same physical laws as all other objects in the universe. There is currently no scientific evidence yet to support the existence of soul and there is considerable evidence that seems to indicate that souls do not exists. If we could rename soul with mind then I think it makes some sense. The whole perception of soul is beyond comprehension because its hard to grasp this idea with a rational mind or through rational approach. It all makes sense when you see these things from a religious approach. What can you say about a being that you cannot see but claims to be existing around us, we cannot perform any experiments or verify or falsify it since it has no material body. Does it interact with normal matter ? Well if you ask any spiritual leader or guru, the immediate answer would be yes. Lets shed some light on it. If our body houses a soul then it might possibly interact with us since I can move my hand. Soul is believed to be an energy or force, so whatever it is it interacts very strongly with matter. Now if we scribble out the history of science, there are 4 fundamental forces of nature: Gravity, weak and strong nuclear and electromagnetism and we know precisely how they interact with each other through rigorous experimentation. And now scientist are looking for the 5th force of nature with ultra high precision instruments but we dont see any evidance for it. So the whole theory of soul gets ruled out. The soul can interact with light, as people claims they can see sometimes. But we know how we can see thing biologically and also at the physical level, so if we try to incorporate soul in the equation, it simply gets ruled out. The main question is why we at the macro level interact with soul extremely strongly everytime but at the micro level, the subatomic particle, why dont these interact with it ? Thats quite intriguing for me. People says soul is immortal that a person might die but its original imprint of you remains forever. Now the immortality part is quite horrendous because immortality is completely ruled out by laws of nature. Neither physicals laws nor biological laws support immortality. There are some organisms that has the power to gain immortality, if you google it you will find one organism specifically, a jelly fish Turritopsis dohrnii. But this biological immortality is little bit different, they are not truly immortal. They can switch back and forth between life stages in response to stress means that, in theory, they could live forever. It can be termed as ‘ Ontogeny reversal ‘. It can get killed by predetors but if we ignore all these interventions, naturally Turritopsis dohrnii can live forever. It is also one of few organisms that survived all the 5 mass extinctions happened across geological timescale, more specifically the great Cambrian explosion. But when it comes to humans and other complex organisms, we cannot inherit the ability to gain immortality. Nature simply dont want us or dont allow us to be immortal. Looking down in all these facts immortality of the soul can be ruled out.

Turritopsis dohrnii

Ontogeny reversal

Now you might ask why we fear ghost or spirit despite of knowing the fact that it doesnt exist. I cannot precisely answer this question but I have some thoughts on it. Lets say hypothetically,a baby is born and from that period onwards till he is 25, he never encountered the concept of spirit or ghost. I strongly believe that if you tell him to travel across the cremetorial places or a haunted place at 12 am or 3 am, he will not fear to go there and also he will happily roam there and come back home. These are all speculation and my personal opinions. What I can say definitely that the fear arises because of release of a hormone called Norepinephrine. So, if we find out a way to suppress it, I think we can perform some experiments to test it in real world. Another question, why we fear watching horror movies. Not everyone, but there are people who fear watching creapy horror movies, but why ? I dont have the answer. It might be sound effects of the movies because horror movies without sound are useless. Also may be because how film makers portray a spirit or a ghost, like horrible. The three most fearsome scene I had ever seen in a horror fantacy are the corridor scene from Conjuring part 2, the joker from IT movie and the movie Horror Story. Normally I am a sakth launda but after watching I slept with my mother for probably 2 weeks. Sang hanuman chalisa while going to bathroom at midnight. But sometimes I forget the verses so thats the moment of ‘Oh shit’. Ok lets come back to our topic, since I mention about the sound effects and portrait, the question arises is why only those kind of sounds and those kind of portray look fearsome. This boils down to our auditory and visual systems so we have to dig deep into it to answer these questions, and thats what makes me more curious.

Physicist Sean M Carroll has written that the idea of a soul is incompatible with quantum field theory(QFT). He writes that for a soul to exist not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there cant be a new collection of spirit particle and spirit forces that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Some theorist had invoked quantum indeterminism as an explanatory mechanism for possible brain - soul interaction, but neuroscientist Peter Clarke found errors with this view point, noting there is no evidance that such processes play a role in brain function.

The most interesting part is the weight of the soul. In 1901, Ducan MacDougall conducted an experiment in which he made weight measurements of patients as they died. He claimed that there was weight loss of varying amounts at the time of death, he concluded the soul weighed 21 grams, based on measurements on single patient experiments and discarding conflicting results and has no scientific merit. 21 grams, ridiculous!!! 😂😂 same as the weight of an apsara eraser.

What are your thoughts on soul ? Comment down below. Hope you like it.