The death of a soul

Alright, most of us believe in one, or at least the general idea of a spiritual essence that exists as our core being.

The question is now, if that soul exists, is that soul eternal?

What is the nature of the soul in and of itself?

Can a soul split into multiple souls or essence, on that same note, can multiple souls or essences combine into one?

What of the ideas of "Astral Death?"

We believe that the soul is more of a pattern than a glob of energy. We've taken the Germanic concept of the soul, which has various parts, as a working hypothesis.

As it is a pattern, it changes. Those changes can be divergent, leading to two or more different souls with common origins, or convergent, bringing two or more souls together into one. The latter seems the more difficult process, given what we understand of things like integration of multiple systems and the common-sense realization that getting some of us to think enough alike so that we'd effectively become one entity seems awfully hard.

Not only is this soul not eternal, but it is continually changing state. It seems more appropriate for "soul" to be a verb than a noun, or at least souls to be regarded as subtle body software rather than hardware. It logically follows that a complete pattern discontinuity - soul erasure - is a possibility, though again, probably difficult. Perhaps some of the cases that the New Age community identifies as walk-ins - one soul departing the body and another entering as the result of severe trauma - are actually complete soul reformattings caused by the trauma.

-Shainin

I do not think that a soul could "die" otherwise what would be the point of reincarnation.
how every i do believe that a soul could shatter, but only in extrema cases, such as an Armageddon type thing.
I believe that horrible acts like murder might put strain on a soul making it more likely to brake.

Well a soul is energy...and energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change. I could also see how it could, in theory, be fractured, etc. since that wouldn't technically be destroying it. I don't believe in soul death. That would require destroying energy. I think the closest thing to soul death would be wiping it of a "soul type" and reverting it to pure energy.

Terro Wrote:Alright, most of us believe in one, or at least the general idea of a spiritual essence that exists as our core being.

The question is now, if that soul exists, is that soul eternal?

What is the nature of the soul in and of itself?

Can a soul split into multiple souls or essence, on that same note, can multiple souls or essences combine into one?

What of the ideas of "Astral Death?"

The trouble with questions like these, is it talks about possibility, not probability. I think all this things are pretty much possible, but some are so improbable for various reasons they should be considered impossible.

Is a Soul eternal? That question has two variables, what does Soul mean, and what does Eternal mean? I'm not trying to split hairs, but even the notion of eternity can have different means. Soul, in the sense of the Higher Self/Essence that spits out little pieces of it to make me, is it Eternal and going to last for all time? No, my Soul lasts as long as it is needed, before it is reabsorbed into /its/ Higher Self. Just as when I physically die, Ges is no more, and becomes one in the Higher Self, so that Soul/Higher Self will one day finish what it needs to do, and become one in its Higher Self. Just as a glass of water (minus the glass) isn't truly destroyed when you pour it into a bucket of water, it also doesn't exist as it was anymore. That's how I see Souls the energy can't be destroyed, but it will be absorbed up the Divine hierarchy as each "Soul" finishes its purpose, until...The end.

I can see a lot more purposes for a Soul having multiple incarnations than for multiple Souls have a single incarnation (not like being a multiple, but like a mix of Soul A and B).

I'm all for the notion of Astral Death. This physical form contains a subtle form, which contains my Lower Self. When my physical form ceases, that doesn't mean my subtle body has to. Now it is hard to really maintain yourself in such a state without a body, leading to psychic vampirism (in the Fortune coining of the word, not the modern sense) being a spirit that needs to steal energy to maintain itself. (Oddly enough it seems like you can incarnate to not take a body, and be relatively fine, but losing a physical body makes it hard to maintain the subtle). After a time, which I think is relatively short (the Buddhist in me wants to say 49 days) the subtle or astral body dies, it falls apart being unable to maintain itself, which then releases the Lower Self, to continue incarnation.

Gah, all I can think about reading this thread is .... where do souls come from??

It's one of those questions that haunt me .......

dazedwolf Wrote:Gah, all I can think about reading this thread is .... where do souls come from??

It's one of those questions that haunt me .......

I think soul either get created by someone/something or simply "bunch of energy" gets concious and starts evolving.

There's going to be a lot of replies of the "It doesn't die, it reverts to pure energy" type, so I will say this:

When a physical body dies, does it get completely annihilated? Even if it's blown up, no. It decays into basic organic stuffs. Or ash. So really, isn't it the same concept when a soul loses its conscious identity and becomes pure energy, or one with "the cosmos" or Nirvana or whatever you believe in? (Personally, I believe I will eventually become one with Slipknot. *bad joke*)

Can you kill a soul? Well, virtually anything is possible. You just have to figure out how. I'm not going to claim I know how, but I don't see why it would be impossible, if the soul on some level is willing or believes it should die, or if you had some kind of strong link with the soul and could affect it (ie, by slowly draining it until it is too weak to want to survive, etc). But I don't think it is possible to kill a healthy soul just by blasting it with hate, or whatnot. The soul would have to be in an especially weakened state.

Seraphyna Wrote:Well a soul is energy...and energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change. I could also see how it could, in theory, be fractured, etc. since that wouldn't technically be destroying it. I don't believe in soul death. That would require destroying energy. I think the closest thing to soul death would be wiping it of a "soul type" and reverting it to pure energy.

Here's the thing.

Sure, you can't destroy energy, just change it.

But a "soul", as you seem to be discussing it above, is not just energy - it's energy arranged in a specific way.

Say someone writes a book. He never shows it to anyone, no-one ever reads it. There is only one copy. The writer dies, and the book is then burnt.

The matter that made up the book still exists (in oxidised form). But the book itself? It's destroyed. Why? Because the book was the arrangement of molecules of ink on molecules of paper, and the understanding of the story in the writer's head. Likewise, if you take a soul and burn it - the energy still exists, but it is so scattered and altered that the pattern which defined the soul is gone . . . and without that pattern, the soul is gone too.

Archer Wrote:The matter that made up the book still exists (in oxidised form). But the book itself? It's destroyed. Why? Because the book was the arrangement of molecules of ink on molecules of paper, and the understanding of the story in the writer's head. Likewise, if you take a soul and burn it - the energy still exists, but it is so scattered and altered that the pattern which defined the soul is gone . . . and without that pattern, the soul is gone too.

Sure, I make the same point with a water metaphor, you make it with a book burning metaphor...what does that say about our contrasting personalities?