The Soulful Conscience

     In an earlier entry, I explained my belief that intelligent life and nature (possibly the totality of the Universe) is separated into 3 different aspects. Click here to read about the brain, the mind, and the soul.

     The soul is the most fascinating and mysterious subject of the 3. First coined by Socrates and his pupils, the soul developed into the mystical spirit that floats out of the physical body during the afterlife of Christianity and other prominent religions. This "soul" is either allotted into an everlasting paradise or cursed into eternal damnation. However, philosophical thinking differs very much from religious thinking. The "philosophical soul" ventures much more in depth and explores different possibilities of the true nature of the soul. I believe that creatively philosophizing and imagining new ideas and theories about the soul connects, absorbs, and contributes to the intelligence of the cosmos.

     The conscience. Those inner feelings and that silent voice in our head that human beings experience while conscious. Well, what exactly is consciousness? Where did it come from? (Click here to read about The Evolution of the Brain). As you are reading this, you are obviously conscious. You are "in" reality, aware of your surroundings, aware of yourself, and aware that you are reading this passage. At the same time, your mind could be and probably is on a million different things. Why is this? A look at a theory in a branch of philosophy called the "philosophy of mind" can give us some insight on this phenomena.

     What if... The brain in our head worked like the lungs in our chests? What if our brains absorb consciousness, intelligence, and art, manipulate it with awareness, and then release it back to the Universe? For example, Greek or Hindu gods and goddesses. A wonderfully creative and complex mythology that was imagined by intelligent human beings. As they experienced and perceived the world, they envisioned amazing gods and goddesses that represented elements, colors, celestial bodies, and more...

     Our brain is a sponge that is soaked in a concoction of consciousness, art, and nature, while simultaneously being squeezed out into a vat of cosmic intelligence.

     Now, where does the soul play a role in the constant photosynthesis of our minds? Well, what if the "soul" is consciousness? Or the "sun" to start the photosynthetic process? What if what we experience, perceive, and create during our existence is the energy that is left to venture out into the cosmos after we pass away? Maybe this energy is transferred to another life form so it too can experience the beautiful art that is consciousness, awareness, and possibly bona fide intelligence. Psychophilosophy is a branch of study that I feel needs to be more carefully and more openly observed. For "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Socrates).

The conscience thrives in reality, while the soul thrives in eternity.