As we go through the history of mankind, there is a fact that is clearly revealed to us. Generally speaking, people, including pre-humans were everlastingly curious about their actual lives and especially about life after death; what would happen with mankind in this very moment or after our death eventually.
If
man’s prehistoric moments started to be somewhat deciphered, there are very
many bits still unknown. For this an Almighty and an Omniscient Person was
invented – a God capable to answer all questions. We shall quote below the way
God created man (Adam):
“God
made man out of dust, He breathed life in his nostrils and man thus became a
living soul.”[1]
According
to my opinion, this was a great progress made comparing to the degree of
knowledge possessed more than three milleniums ago.
If
man’s genesis was known at some extent, and if he has seen death with murdered
animals, man would not accept for himself such simple a death, that is why he
created a mystic belief of resurrection. We wrote the word “mystic”, as man
could not literally see the phenomenon.
People’s beliefs developed along centuries, but they needed a conclusive example, not extracted of god and idols, but they needed to see people dead and resurrected in front of them. They called fakirs, yogis, and other persons endowed with supernatural powers, who could “rise others from the dead”, but results were far too vague (in cases of clinical death), and if they succeeded, then they were attributed divine or semi divine powers, and yet there were skeptics who would not believe it this time either.
Resurrection
of the dead became harder and harder to demonstrate. Priests and shamans had
finally found something more at hand. They had found the soul, going apart from
the body, growing independently from the body, escaping from the flesh prison
where it has been imprisoned without his will. Transmigration and, as the case
may be, reincarnation begin. We are just about to found a land (a republic) of
independent souls.
A
study of souls will follow now, intending to classify souls after man’s death.
They are classified as follows:
1.
Souls that disappear after death.
2.
Souls whose bodies are dead, but who live well, without doing anything
specifically.
3.
Souls who, after the body’s death, wait to take their place back in
their bodies after Messiah’s arrival.
4.
Roaming souls, who roam without any specific reason.
.
Travelling souls, who would finally reach the Nirvana.
We shall now quote a few examples from religions in mankind history.
In the times of
Zoroaster (Zarathustra), (660 – 583 B.C.), the custom was that the soul come
in front of a judgement committee composed of Mithra, Sraosa and Resna, who are
to select them according to their deeds. For good deeds, the soul is sent to
Heaven; for bad and excusable deeds, it is sent to the Purgatory; for bad and
mean deeds, they are doomed to burn in the flames of Hell.
Buddhism asserts that
after man’s death, if the man was bad, his soul would be a pilgrim in many
beings until it is saved from the suffering of eight righteous paths: the
righteous look, the righteous judgement, the righteous speech, the righteous
behaviour, the righteous activity, the righteous deeds, the righteous memory and
the righteous meditation.
In Georgias, in the
dialogue Socrates – Calliciles (49 B.C.), Plato explains that a wise man would
have told him that we a re in fact dead, and the body is nothing but a tomb to
us.[2]
In Phaedon, Plato as
well quotes from the dialogue Socrates – Cebes: “Secret doctrines (orphic,
our note) tell us that we people, would be in a sort of prison in ourselves,
enchained with chains that we are not allowed to loosen and get free.” [3]
The same Plato
describes to us the dialogue between Socrates and Hermogeanes: “The word
(body) can definitely have several meanings, in case that someone would change
at a small extent. And, in fact, as some people say, it is the tomb (sema) of
the soul, the soul being now buried in it at the present.”[4]
According
to Aristotle – Octavian Nistor writes – the soul is the thing that makes the
body look alive, the everlasting present possibility of the vital functions of
the body, an accurate functioning of an organic body. For it, the soul is the
shape, the energy, the actuality of the organism who develops and accomplishes,
makes its own self, theologically and spiritually speaking. It is not separated
from the living organism, because it is its psychic power.”[5]
We
shall below quote assertions given by a few representatives of Christian
patristic and scholastics upon soul.
Tertulian:
the soul is a fine matter, has a divine aspect and it is endowed with organs.
Arnobius:
the soul is conceived as material.
Origenes:
the soul is a vital spirit.
Augustus:
the soul is an immaterial, spiritual substance, unitary, spread inside the whole
body and structuring it.
Albert
the Great: the soul is an immaterial substance, which stays apart from the body
after death.
Thomas
d’Aquino: the soul…cannot be a body itself, as it is the act of the body.
…The soul is a simple shape or substance.
Duns
Scotus: the soul is an essential shape of man, besides the form of his
substantiality.
Nicolaus
Cusanus: the soul is a spiritual essence, complete in each part of the body.
We
have taken these, integrally or partially from The Appendices between Antiquity
and Renaissance – the thinking of Middle Ages.[6]
We
have seen above several possibilities of defining the word “soul”. We can
now see the great importance of Christian religion and theology.
(As
a parenthesis I wish to bring forth a new notion, which in the Latin language is
approximately expressed by animus = spirit and anima = soul. According to Plato,
there is a spirit of the world, there is a spiritual power. The rational and
spiritual part of the soul is the highest part of it. According to Aristotle, it
is the highest power of the soul, which belongs to man only. It is situated
inside soul, it is something divine, but it comes from “the outside”. It is
the shape of the shapes, the most precious thing in the world. And yet, the
parents of the Church, as Tetian and Drigene tell apart the spirit from the
soul. Augustus thinks that the spirit is the rational soul.)[7]
Let
us see now what is the impact of different categories of souls upon mankind, on
the social, economical and planetary points of view. We have to take into
account the percentage of believers compared to the whole multitude of people,
people who believe in life after death, especially in actual conditions of
exponential growth of people.
At
the beginning of the 20th century, it is believed that there were
about 1.5 billion people, while, at the end of the century, the number will be
allegedly over six billion, so the rate of growth is about four times. We
don’t have to mention that the demands of every individual will be much higher
at the end of the century than at its beginning.
We
don’t intend to plead for a demographic, social or social-psychological
theory, but speaking about the resurrection of the dead (the coming of Messiah),
we have to say that there will be a higher number of souls. If the coming of
Messiah happened at the beginning of the 21st century, the population
will double, coming close to 12 billion.
We
have seen so far the aspects and meanings given to the “word” or the
“notion” of soul.
We don’t intend to closely analyse them all. In our case, when we have to deal
with this, in the chapters regarding Theosophy, we took into account all the
meanings of this notion. There were times when the word “soul” was even
taken out of dictionaries. Biology, Psychology and other dictionaries do not
recognise it, while not even those strictly specialised do contain it.
Of
the definitions given to the “soul”, it seems to me that the most
appropriate is Aristotle’s. He asserts that the soul is “that something that
makes the body come to life”. Aristotle doesn’t need any vital principle,
any Messiah, any reincarnations, any transmigrations, any Ahura-Mazda, Angra
Mainyu, or Avestas, any of Buddha’s paths or Nirvana, any of the divine
conceptions of patristic or scholastic Christians. And he so simply put it out.
As
we have previously shown, megaera, meaning life on our planet is possible when
the temperature of the Earth crust is between 48°C
and -17°C or between 321°K and 256°K
and the other parameters mentioned in the chapter Genesis
of the Biotic from An
Essay about a Finite Ontology, creating conditions necessary to life on
Terra.
We
already know how life appeared on Earth, so let us see the sequence of the
following steps: the cell, tissues, organs, organisms, species, biocenoses
(genus), the living world and terrestrial biosphere.
The
living world stands for a (finite) multitude of (alive) individuals with all
their genera and species with man at its peak. “What a marvellous name!”
Pindar cried out two and a half milleniums ago and Maxim Gorki repeated this
almost one century ago.
We
shall consider as the living world all the multitudes of plants and animals, to
whom are added viruses (when they have animal or plant characteristics). Unlike
all living creatures (enumerated above), man imposed himself in his greatness
because he is able to name things, to express orally (or in writing) many
feelings and to judge his fellow beings in many ways. Consequently, man is a
superior being having a conscience to his soul, physic and psychic. As centuries
and milleniums passed by, man started to realise what was concrete and what was
abstract, what was good what was bad, what was theoretically beautiful and what
was ugly. Eventually, some people show actions which relieve the work of their
fellow beings and which make their lives more comfortable. People were awarded
noble titles – men with great souls. Thus, the word “soul” became well
known and every human being would finally be endowed with the name of “great
soul”.
As
time passed by, thanks to priests, shamans or other thaumaturges, the notion of
“soul” became self reliable, separated from the body; it became
something “saint”. “Souls” can take the shapes of different bodies.
As we have formerly established, I shall follow the great Aristotle in his talks upon studies and attitudes towards the body, that can be seen as an object or as a subject for which a lot of ink was spilled and wasted during three milleniums. I shall now repeat Aristotle’s ideas:
According
to Aristotle, the soul is the thing that makes the body alive; it makes
sure of the vital functions of the body and of the good functioning of the body.
The soul is the shape, the energy, the actuality of a developing organism, which
spiritually and theologically accomplishes itself (according to Octavian Miron).
Finally,
let us define the soul and its dependence upon the body:
1.
All living creatures (plants and animals) have souls.
Every creature (plant or animal) have only one soul during their whole
lives.
3.
The soul exists and manifests itself since the conception (and not the
birth) of the body until its biological death.
4.
The soul of any (living) body has no colour, no smell, no taste and is
limited to any dimension of the body to whom it belongs.
5.
The soul is inalienable, inseparable from the living body and
indivisible.
6.
The soul cannot reincarnate or/and transmigrate.
7.
The soul cannot exist without having a unique carrying body.
8.
There is a biunivoque relationship between the one and only soul and the
one and only living body.
9.
The soul cannot be divine or/and sacred.
1
The soul is an attribute of the individual life.
There is a quasi-synonymy between the life of a body and its corresponding soul, which are different from one another only because of the “quasi”. It is truly a comprehensive relationship between bodies and souls.
As we have shown above,
convincingly enough I believe, that the role of the soul is rather unimportant
in the anatomic and physiologic study of the living bodies. It is just a study
of a “science” with many adepts, and it has not a decisive role in the
general evolution of sciences. Or not?