[whitecrow]

This is an interesting thread. The question is something I suppose most people have asked themselves at least casually, and here we really are wrestling with these concepts and what they mean to us.

Well done, y'all!

I notice a lot of the discussion revolves around definitions. All the words - soul, knowledge, spirituality - are actually pretty hard to pin down, aren't they.

The older I get, the more I realize that definitions, while useful, are limiting and never absolute. It seems better to me to search out examples of what people mean when they use these words, and listen to what the concept sounds like. I arrive at a holistic definition - which first and foremost I know is my definition and may work fine for me and not so well for you.

I can think of two good examples. Read any of the world's great religious scriptures, and unless you are a specialist in ancient languages you are probably reading a translation, with all the loss of nuance and depth implied. It's like the enzymes being destroyed in cooked food. And yet, with even a minimal amount of study, one is capable of being transported by the depth and beauty of the revealed message. This is because the meaning is holistic and does not fully depend on the printed word.

The second example is a simple fact that everyone knows: anyone can make the facts lie. Every politician is a master of this art. At the same time, the greatest truths and deepest insights often or even usually are embodied in works of fiction.

Look at "knowledge". We all have met people who claim to "know" something that is questionable, whether it's religious dogma or the certainty that their wife would never cheat. So, what do we "know?" I am sixty years old (almost), and all my life I have "known" that this earth is a big rock going round in space and that everything on it is fully solid and real. I've "known" that God was this big guy out there somewhere who was going to make everything alright in the end. Et cetera.

Well, come to find out that my definitions ain't worth an earring to a possum. "Solid" is actually mostly empty space quickened by electromagnetic fields, and nothing is what it seems. Then it hit me, delicious irony: that's exactly what mystics have said from day one! It's all an illusion...not that it isn't "real" because it is, but it is not what it appears to be.

Does it even matter if you or I can offer a "real" definition of what a "soul" is? I'm not so sure it does. Whatever my soul is, I know it exists. Whenever I try to wrap it in words it becomes ineffable, like smoke.

One more point, then I'll shut up. We shouldn't let definitions get in the way of communications. When they enable communication they are fine but when we cannot agree on a definition let us agree on something else. You and I may never mean the same thing when we say soul or spirit or even knowledge, but I suspect we seek the same things. We might even be able to find something to come to blows over...but I'd lay odds we're far more likely to find common cause.