The body is just a shell
What is the origin of the soul? What is its essence? How is the soul related to God? When does it enter a person and where does it go after the death of the body? The first well-documented attempt to answer these questions was made by the ancient sages in the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead.
“The interest of scientists in this book has increased many times over at the end of the last century,” says Igor Garin, professor, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, head of the laboratory of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, laureate of the State Prize. - Then came the results of a study of near-death conditions, obtained by Dr. Raymond Moody, author of the best-selling Life After Life. And it turned out that they - states - are very accurately described in the "Book of the Dead." It is completely incomprehensible where its authors drew information about the stages of dying, which have become thoroughly known only to modern resuscitators.
Personally, I believe, - continues Igor Ivanovich, - that the source of such a supernatural "revelation" is located in a person's head - where in the subcortex of each of us the memory of centuries is stored. It can be extracted through psychoanalysis or hypnosis. Or it sometimes pops up by accident. And lets you remember where the soul was before. Therefore, it finds its temporary home in the brain. Although there are other opinions.
Without which there is no life
Since time immemorial, people have been looking for what makes a person alive. Breath? It is logical. After all, the dead do not breathe. Based on such considerations, many peoples placed the soul or spirit in the chest, abdomen, head - in the parts of the body involved in breathing.
But even without blood - what kind of life? - the ancient Jews reasoned and considered it - blood - the bearer of the soul. This opinion is still held by Jehovah's Witnesses. “For the soul of every body is its blood” (Lev. 17:14), they refer to the Bible. And they resist a blood transfusion, believing that a part of someone else's soul will flow with it.
The Eskimos, knowing that damage to the cervical vertebra brings death, put the soul into it. For some reason, the inhabitants of ancient Babylon considered the ears to be the most vital organ. There they gave a place for the soul.
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Modern people also have no consensus. Naive ideas are especially different.
Interesting observations were made public by German psychologists from the University of Lübeck. In a group of children from 7 to 17 years old, in a relaxed manner, they asked where the soul could be. The elders answered: “Everywhere,” and pointed with their hand from forehead to knees. The middle ones pointed to the head and circled their hand around it. But the youngest brought their finger to a place located just to the left of the heart. By the way, there were the majority of such answers. But some children chose the solar plexus or the eyes.
The heart is the head of everything?
Or maybe the soul is still in the heart? Indeed, in the public consciousness, a soulful and a cordial person are one and the same. And science in recent years has received shocking confirmation of the "heart" hypothesis.
For example, psychiatrist at the Sinai Hospital in Detroit Paul Pearcell interviewed 140 transplant patients and wrote the sensational book Heart Code. The conclusion of the physician is this: our soul with all its subtleties is placed not in the brain, but in the heart. The personality is programmed in it. And it controls the activity of the brain, and not vice versa.
Pearcell believes that feelings, fears, dreams, thoughts are encoded in the cells of the “fiery motor”. This "cellular memory", which is essentially the soul, is transferred to another person during transplantation. At least partially.
Here are just a few of the many cases in which a transplanted organ changed the person who received it.
A 41-year-old man had the heart of a 19-year-old girl who died in a train accident. And that seemed to be replaced: a stormy temperament, sharpness of movements, a frenzied interest in life - earlier this was unusual for him. After all, since childhood, he grew up slow and reasonable.
A 35-year-old woman got the heart of a 24-year-old college student. From cold and shy, she suddenly became a passionate lover. Every night she literally pestered her husband with lovemaking. “You have become a prostitute,” the spouse once said. Later they found out that the student, whose heart is now carried by his wife, earned money for study with her body.
The recent incident in Princeton (England) "spoils" the picture. And it testifies that someone's soul, perhaps, sits not in the heart, but in … the kidney. After all, it was she who was transplanted to 37-year-old Cheryl Johnson, taking from a deceased 60-year-old man. And the woman's character changed dramatically.
“If before she was kind and affectionate, now she’s just a shrew,” says her son Joseph. - Annoyed over trifles. Recently I almost got into a fight in a restaurant over a poorly cooked steak. Before the operation, she loved silly love stories. Now I am addicted to the classics. Reading Fyodor Dostoevsky!
Even the clock stops
“Many would like to find a soul,” says Professor Garin. - Or at least prove that it really exists. Now quite serious scientists are engaged in this, who primarily study anomalous phenomena preceding death. For example, thanatological research is being conducted by Professor Charles Tart at the University of California, Davis. And physicist Robert Monroe even founded his institute in Faber, Virginia. Thus, they support the idea, incredible from the point of view of rational thinking, of preserving some part of consciousness after physical death of the brain. They are trying to understand if it has a material basis. In other words, do there exist "carriers" of the soul - any elementary particles of which it consists? They check eyewitness reports about meetings with the spirits of deceased relatives, who, if you believe this,appear during the first days after physical death.
By the way, the well-known researcher of near-death conditions of a person, Dr. Melvin Morse, who previously likened them to narcotic hallucinations, discovered an incredible fact: a quarter of the respondents were faced with the phenomenon of stopping or incorrect movement of wristwatches. This strangeness gave reason to assert that the movement of the soul is accompanied by a certain energy field, sufficient to influence material objects.
The same Tart put unconnected recorders and oscilloscopes in the wards of the dying. And a second or two after the last exhalation of a person, the instruments registered some kind of bursts. As if the parameters of the surrounding electromagnetic field were changing. Was it not the soul that made itself felt?
BTW
Weight - 22.4 grams. Or less?
In 1915, a scientific experiment was described by the American physician McDougall, who tried to determine the weight of "that unknown that is called the soul." The purpose of the experiment was to "catch" the fluctuation in a person's weight when he dies.
Measurements showed that the "soul" weighs 22.4 grams.
However, modern researchers, using more accurate measuring instruments, have received different numbers.
Doctor of Natural Sciences Eugenius Kugis from the Institute of Semiconductors of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences found that at the time of death a person loses from 3 to 7 grams, which, according to a specialist, is the weight of the soul.
Researcher Lyell Watson of New York University received slightly less weight. In his experiments, the deceased became lighter by 2.5 - 6.5 grams.
Something similar is recorded during sleep. In an experiment by Swiss scientists, 23 volunteers lay down on hypersensitive weighing beds and fell asleep. At the moment when a person crossed the line between reality and sleep, he lost weight from 4 to 6 grams.
REFERENCE "KP"
Death Tutorial
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thedol, is believed to have originated in the 8th century AD. But, according to researchers, its author - the legendary preacher of Buddhism in Tibet, guru Padmasambhava - used some more ancient sources. The book teaches a person to die correctly. Prepares for the transmigration of the soul.
VERBATIM
The Tibetan Book of the Dead says:
After death, the soul sees and is aware of everything, but is not able to convey what happens to it to others. She sees her relatives and friends just like she used to see them before. She even hears their lamentations.
She is able to observe her body from the side. She can see that a part of the food is being set aside for her, that her body is being freed from clothes, that the place next to her bed is being swept.
Then the soul meets with the Luminous Beings - without fear and with joy.
The deceased looks into a mirror in which he sees his life actions. At this moment, the soul begins to realize the true purpose of its past earthly existence.
Then Judgment comes, and then the soul lives in anticipation of a new unconscious birth for 49 days. Continents, places and families will open before the soul, where it will be reborn again.
VIEW FROM THE UNIVERSE
The Lord God is a programmer, and our souls are his programs?
There is a theory that the soul is just information about our personality, which is recorded on some medium. Which one?
Now scientists are experimenting with so-called quantum computers, in which the information carriers are elementary particles. In the future, they must increase the power and speed of computing systems to the top level. Even now, a very small volume can accommodate a huge flow of information. Scientist Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims that the most powerful device will be a device that will use all the particles in the universe. And their - protons, neutrons, electrons and other little things - according to the scientist's calculations, about 10 to the 90th degree. And if these particles had been involved since the Big Bang, they would have already performed 10 to the 120th power of logical operations. This is so much that it is impossible to even imagine. For comparison: all computers during their existence have performed less than 10 to the 30th power of operations. And all information about a person with all his individual quirks is recorded in about 10 to the 25th power in bits.
And then Lloyd thought: "What if the universe is already someone's computer?" Then, he reasoned, everything inside her, including us, is part of the computational process. Or his product … So, somewhere there must be a Programmer.
Following Lloyd's computer logic, we can assume that initially not just information in the form of a soul is invested in a person, but a program after all. Special: capable of self-learning and improvement. Thanks to what it is transmitted and then withdrawn, we do not know. Likewise, the carriers of the accumulated information have not been found, which does not seem to disappear without a trace. But to place a soul-program in a person does not need much space. One chromosome is enough. Maybe there she is - somewhere next to the carriers of the genetic code? And if the Universe resembles a large computer, then we can all be permanently entered into its database. And at the time of death, the "message" is sent to a new e-mail …
INSTEAD OF AFTERWORD
“It is much easier to endure life with the thought of the possibility of returning or joining God,” says Professor Garin. - The main thing is that belief in the immortality of the soul gives a person hope for a repetition or change in real life - a moment.