Temporal Death and the Soul

This seems to have developed into a very confusing thread.

I am not going to posit on the existence of a soul, nor go into a long essay on the nature of cellular death.

Instead, I'm going to explain what I do when I am having a day when death could be imminent.

I know that take off and landing is the most dangerous time when travelling by plane. I also know that having an anaesthetic is also a risky procedure even though I've flown many times including over vast oceans and I have had probably more than my share of operations. I'm still here.

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, he has Caesar say these words as he get ready to go to the forum

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”​


With this in mind, when flying or about to go under before an operation, I take the time to calm myself with some deep breathing, then I count my blessings and remember all the good things and good people in my life, then I hand myself over to God, trusting that whatever happens will be for the good, and if it is that I should die, I have faith enough to trust that that too will be good.

After all, it is written in the gospel of Luke 11 - "What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?"

@Gardenlover, have no fear, the future is unknown for all of us, and you will be in good hands in the form of the medical team. Trust them and trust whatever higher power you relate to.
 

Em in Ohio said:
I think of the soul as simply one's personality - the sum total of your unique mind. I believe it dies with our physical body.

But we might consider it immortal in that the First Law of Thermodynamics states energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.

When under anesthesia, the loss of consciousness doesn't vanquish who you are. When you come out from under the influence of anesthesia, you will hopefully have the same personality (soul).
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I think of the soul as Absolute nature within and underlying all existence. This is unchanging, eternal. It's neither energy nor matter. It is the state of existence, pure Being.
This is under the most subtle layer of all that exists. It's trancendental and unmanifested. It's the essential constituant in all relative life.
Physics constantly gains knowledge of finer and finer strata of existence.
In the Absolute, you are correct. This is YOU! This SOUL cannot be created nor destroyed. The soul will live through all eternity and
evolve with each lifetime into higher and higher beings, closer and closer to the absolute.
Per Einstein, there exists a relative field and an absolute field. The soul exists in the absolute.
 
Sorry, Gardenlover, when you're dead, you're dead. It's just like being pregnant-you is, or you ain't. Having cardiac surgery, with your heart stopped, and on mechanical support means you are still alive. There's no "coming back", because you never left. You were never dead. And dead generally means when the brain dies. As to your soul, that's whatever your belief is will occur.
 

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Thanks for all the conversation everyone! Some wonderful feedback.

I am just a little apprehensive but not scared about the upcoming surgery, nor am I scared of dying. The questions I posed in the beginning where just something that came to mind while I was talking with my wife. I enjoy hearing other peoples point of views so I posted the questions here. Who knows I might even learn something. :)

Thanks to each of you who responded!
 
Gardenlover said:
Thanks for all the conversation everyone! Some wonderful feedback.

I am just a little apprehensive but not scared about the upcoming surgery, nor am I scared of dying. The questions I posed in the beginning where just something that came to mind while I was talking with my wife. I enjoy hearing other peoples point of views so I posted the questions here. Who knows I might even learn something. :)

Thanks to each of you who responded!
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PS BIG Molly Hatchet fan here. I even got to party with the band once 40 years ago.
 
Gardenlover said:
When we die it's obvious that our bodies are no longer animated. All the body parts are often still there and in their correct places, but we are no longer the life of the party.

As I mentioned in another post, I will be having heart surgery. During the process my heart will be stopped and a machine will take over the process while the heart is being worked on.

I was talking about the following points with my wife and thought it would be interesting to hear other opinions.

1. At what point are we dead? When the heart stops or something else?
2. What part of the body houses the soul? Heart, brain or perhaps the entire body? If the whole body, do we lose part of our soul if if lose an arm or a leg?
3. At what point after death does the soul leave the body and where does it go?
4. If the soul leaves your body and then you are later brought back to life, does the soul ever have trouble finding it's way back to the body?
5. What forces the soul to return to the body, if in fact the soul leaves at death?
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I had open heart surgery almost 15 years ago for a mitral valve repair. It was curious for me to think of being on a machine for life support. For some reason I had no fear, but I was worried about my husband's and daughters' extreme concern for me.

Honestly, I was hoping for an out-of-body experience. I wanted to float on the ceiling and watch the operation, and come back to my body. :D It did not happen and I was disappointed..I have read quite a lot about OBEs so I was hoping for a similar experience

#2. I do not think our body necessarily houses our soul/spirit..I think our body may be within our energy/spirit/soul and somehow we are connected to, part of, a universal source/energy. We are all connected...
#3 where the soul/spirit goes is the great mystery. I think of it in terms of other dimensions.
#4 I can't imagine a possibility of the soul not being able to come back and find the body...considering all the magnificence of our world and our lives there is no way IMO a spirit would lose its way back to a body. I have also read that some believe there is a silver cord that attaches body to soul.
#5 Some believe they return because their life's work has not been completed or there are those depending on them. Some have said they were given a choice.

For me, while the surgery was a major event, it could be managed with medication for any discomfort. You sound positive about it all and that is an important factor in healing. I wish you all the best!👍
 
I take a somewhat simple view of things...
When you're dead, you're dead. Anything that may be loosely described as a 'soul' resides within you and is basically a distillation of all the things that make you, you. When you die, it dies too.
Your'e only here for a short time, so make the best of it. Do not let the darkness after you die trouble you any more than the darkness before you were born.
There is no God, no heaven, no hell. We live on one of trillions of planets - and we are mere specks of Stardust.

And as for hospital and major surgery , these guys can perform the closest thing to miracles that most people will see.
 
People who die understand they are dead. This is a good thing, imagine believing your'e alive when you are not?
 
I know I am a bit late to this party, but here are my 2 cents anyway:
Gardenlover said:
1. At what point are we dead?
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When the body starts the irreversible process of decomposition, when the point of no return is past. Heart stoppage that is reversible ain't it.
Gardenlover said:
2. What part of the body houses the soul? Heart, brain or perhaps the entire body? If the whole body, do we lose part of our soul if if lose an arm or a leg?
3. At what point after death does the soul leave the body and where does it go?
4. If the soul leaves your body and then you are later brought back to life, does the soul ever have trouble finding it's way back to the body?
5. What forces the soul to return to the body, if in fact the soul leaves at death?
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I don't believe in a "soul", have seen no evidence one exits...
 
As a followup to this earlier post given some of my time to dig up some links:

https://www.seniorforums.com/threads/temporal-death-and-the-soul.73436/#post-2183453

The below provides evidence what we humans refer to as "mind' is a phenomenon across species in the animal kingdom of complex dynamic oscillating brain wave fields within physical neural system containers they exist within. As humans, it bears on understanding the nature of consciousness, soul, spirit, life, and what we as intelligent entities truely are beyond mere flesh and bones. And as I've previously suggested, for a race of AI like Ultimate Intelligent Entities, such might allow mechanisms for preserving existence of organic life beyond organic mortal death by creating non-organic containers that mimic the EMF impededances of organic systems. Something that would arguably be the most important accomplishment in a seemingly fine tuned universe for life we find ourselves in, that they might pursue.

This is a worthwhile to read general article for a public audience summarizing recent science understanding the differences in intelligence between species including convergent evolution. This will be important for we humans to grasp if we ever meet extraplanetary aliens. It contains several fascinating stories of octopuses escaping their laboratory tanks.

Another Path to Intelligence

https://nautil.us/another-path-to-intelligence-23113/

This article documents recent attempts to record oscillating brain wave fields in widely varying species on the evolutionary tree. This shows the dominant neuroscience paradigm that considered brain waves to be mere epiphenomon is not logical. Otherwise evolution would not have created such also in other species. IMO it is necessary because such fields are in fact the physical phenomenon of mind.

Comparison of ongoing compound field potentials in the brains of invertebrates and vertebrates

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0165017388900057?via=ihub

The following is a longer more detailed research that reflects the kind of research being performed. Snippet from below:

...It has been persuasively argued that in order for animals to evince any degree of consciousness, they must possess highly elaborated neural structures capable of generating a ‘global workspace' in which sub-networks of signals (or percepts) from otherwise disparate inputs are bound together within a single dynamic network. This vast network, comprising a conscious gestalt of bound percepts, may then be broadcast widely throughout the brain, at which point complex responses can be elicited (Baars, 1994). The Global Workspace Theory (GWT) was clearly formulated with the mammalian brain in mind. GWT proposes that conscious gestalts arise specifically from signaling both within the cerebral cortex and between cortex and thalamus.

...In addition to indirect circumstantial evidence of consciousness in cephalopods provided by the outstanding flexibility of their behavioral repertoire, and their relatively complex and specialized neural structures instantiating circuitry resembling that found in vertebrates, the likelihood of consciousness in these invertebrates is supported by more reliable objective, basic neural correlates, such as EEG-like signatures and evoked compound potentials.

Cephalopod Behavior: From Neural Plasticity to Consciousness

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2021.787139/full
 
I believe the evidence is all around us, there’s too much order and design to believe that this is all circumstantial or happened haphazardly or by accident.

There is an intelligent creator, maker, God,fill in the noun that you’d like to use, but to me life would be pointless if this is all there is, I mean really what is the point. I believe this is a birthing process into the next dimension, to the next phase of life if you will. While there’ll be no papers or scientific documentation to support my view, it just makes plain old common sense to me,I feel it in my soul. If your scientific, in the least little bit, you’ll have to admit that science has more questions than answers in so many things, many things exist all around us even if they can’t be explained. Hopefully one day science and spirituality will marry to provide all the answers we need. And with this I wish each and everyone of you all the best life has to offer.
 
One more thought on the subject if I may, two nights ago I was praying in the dead of night, you know when you don’t think morning will come and you seem all alone. I asked God why he didn’t show Himself as the Old Testament or even the New Testament and other accounts written elsewhere may suggest. The answer that immediately came into my mind was because it would blow my mind, literally blow my mind at this stage in life, I couldn’t handle it.
 
Gardenlover said:
One more thought on the subject if I may, two nights ago I was praying in the dead of night, you know when you don’t think morning will come and you seem all alone. I asked God why he didn’t show Himself as the Old Testament or even the New Testament and other accounts written elsewhere may suggest. The answer that immediately came into my mind was because it would blow my mind, literally blow my mind at this stage in life, I couldn’t handle it.
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I couldn't either, not in this body anyway. :)
 
Gardenlover said:
One more thought on the subject if I may, two nights ago I was praying in the dead of night, you know when you don’t think morning will come and you seem all alone. I asked God why he didn’t show Himself as the Old Testament or even the New Testament and other accounts written elsewhere may suggest. The answer that immediately came into my mind was because it would blow my mind, literally blow my mind at this stage in life, I couldn’t handle it.
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I like tht explanation 👍 :)
 
Gardenlover said:
One more thought on the subject if I may, two nights ago I was praying in the dead of night, you know when you don’t think morning will come and you seem all alone. I asked God why he didn’t show Himself as the Old Testament or even the New Testament and other accounts written elsewhere may suggest. The answer that immediately came into my mind was because it would blow my mind, literally blow my mind at this stage in life, I couldn’t handle it.
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Believers believe that God "showed Himself" through miracles, angles, spectacles, and (re. Christians) an immaculate conception. And I think all contemporary one-god religions believe he has no form to show.
 

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