Does the human soul exist in general and does it remain after death? This is the ultimate question we, as humans, face. The issues from this question include varying beliefs and possible disagreements between people on their own personal philosophy of life after death. In his book, Soul: A Cosmology, Joseph Grange states “They play in the fields of expression and thereby give birth to Soul in its myriad forms.” What he means here is that the soul is a unchanging and continuing form of oneself.

There is a soul and the soul continues on even after the physical body has died. The idea that people do not have a soul is absurd. The soul is the part of the human that has feelings and thoughts that involve those feelings. Grange continues on to say “... we can become philosophically aware of feelings, their import, and their structure.” This is the soul, that awareness of what we feel. The soul remains or is reborn, depending how you believe, after the body has died because the soul is continuous.

The soul is also knowledge. The knowledge the human gains throughout their lifetime can continue on in the form of the soul. That the more knowledge we obtain and our soul can possess the more secure connection we have with our reality. The soul is the main part of the human condition. In this way, the soul is everything we are, or an expression of the true us. Without a soul there are no unique abilities. I could not be writing this article for you and you could not be reading it. Together, right now, we are a unique moment in time, the merging of two souls for one common goal. To showcase the amazing power that writing has on humanity.

The soul is said to possess two main parts that make up the human existence, the eternal and the temporal. The eternal, the feelings of the human condition as it currently stands. The temporal, the knowledge of the human throughout their lifetime. The eternal is our emotions and the temporal is our knowledge. This means the idea that we as humans do not have a soul is proven false. Once again, without a soul there would be no sense of the eternal. We would not, could not feel.

The main objection to this is that we do not have a soul and that it therefore, cannot remain after the physical body has died. This objection is important because it helps to solidify the point that the soul does exist. Anything that is controversial in life has an opposing viewpoint. In this case, the opposing viewpoint can be fiercely denied as false. Socrates believed that only the composite could scatter or separate. Since our soul is an unchangeable piece of us, it cannot scatter. This means that the soul cannot die.

The religions are a major influence on people who either believe or do not believe in the soul and life after death. Kenneth Dortor wrote an enlightening essay in The Classics of Western Philosophy: A Reader's Guide, reflecting on the idea’s of the soul in meditation and corporeality using Plato’s Phaedo. He says “If the living died without returning to life, eventually everything would have been dead. Therefore, souls must be reincarnated.” Dortor continues on to say “Soul imparts life to whatever it enters.” So when the soul is reincarnated, what many religions believe happens after the body dies, it gives life to that new body. Similar to what is shown in the picture above, death takes the human and life reincarnates the soul for a new human. A more modern example can be found in much of popular culture today, but the main one that comes to mind is from the television show ‘Charmed’. Particularly, the episode titled “Saving Private Leo” when Piper is killed and a ghostly form of her, essentially her soul, leaves her body and begins to float on to the next phase of her life as seen below.

The soul does exist and does continue on after the physical body dies. The soul is a continuous unchanging source of life, feeling, and knowledge that make us humans. Without a soul we are but an empty shell of physical being and therefore we do not exist. Whether you believe all of this is true or not is up to you, but no matter what you choose to believe, know that those choices are one more thing that make you unique.

Welcome to a unique existence!