Merle, <br/><br/>You've got that completely backwards. You're the one saying
you know we have a soul. I'm saying I see absolutely no evidence in reality
that points to a soul. And I gave you personal examples. All you've done is
point to google and dead philosophers. And you say we're lazy!!<br/><br/>Ok,
I'll try your methods. Please read this and come back to us:<br/><br/>""There
are some philosophers," he says, "who imagine we are every moment conscious of
what we call 'ourself,' that we feel its existence and its continuance in
existence and so we are certain, both of its perfect identity and simplicity.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself' I always
stumble on some particular perception or other -- of heat or cold, light or
shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself... and never can
observe anything but the perception... nor do I conceive what is further
requisite to make me a perfect non-entity."
<br/><br/>Bergson says, "All consciousness is time existence; and a conscious
state is not a state that endures without changing. It is a change without
ceasing, when change ceases it ceases; it is itself nothing but change."
<br/><br/>Dealing with this question of soul Prof. James says -- "The
soul-theory is a complete superfluity, so far as accounting for the actually
verified facts of conscious experience goes. So far no one can be compelled to
subscribe to it for definite scientific reasons." In concluding his interesting
chapter on the soul he says: "And in this book the provisional solution which
we have reached must be the final word: the thoughts themselves are the
thinkers." <br/><br/>Watson, a distinguished psychologist, states: "No one has
ever touched a soul or has seen one in a test tube or has in any way come into
relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience.
Nevertheless to doubt its existence is to become
a heretic and once might possibly even had led to the loss of one's head. Even
today a man holding a public position dare not question it." <br/><br/>The
Buddha anticipated these facts some 2500 years ago. <br/><br/>According to
Buddhism mind is nothing but a complex compound of fleeting mental states. One
unit of consciousness consists of three phases -- arising or genesis (uppada)
static or development (thiti), and cessation or dissolution (bhanga).
Immediately after the cessation stage of a thought moment there occurs the
genesis stage of the subsequent thought-moment. Each momentary consciousness of
this ever-changing life-process, on passing away, transmits its whole energy,
all the indelibly recorded impressions to its successor. Every fresh
consciousness consists of the potentialities of its predecessors together with
something more. There is therefore, a continuous flow of consciousness like a
stream without any interruption. The subsequent
thought moment is neither absolutely the same as its predecessor -- since that
which goes to make it up is not identical -- nor entirely another -- being the
same continuity of kamma energy. Here there is no identical being but there is
an identity in process. <br/><br/>Every moment there is birth, every moment
there is death. The arising of one thought-moment means the passing away of
another thought-moment and vice versa. In the course of one life-time there is
momentary rebirth without a soul. <br/><br/>It must not be understood that a
consciousness is chopped up in bits and joined together like a train or a
chain. But, on the contrary, "it persistently flows on like a river receiving
from the tributary streams of sense constant accretions to its flood, and ever
dispensing to the world without the thought-stuff it has gathered by the
way."[12] It has birth for its source and death for its mouth. The rapidity of
the flow is such that hardly is there
any standard whereby it can be measured even approximately. However, it
pleases the commentators to say that the time duration of one thought-moment is
even less than one-billionth part of the time occupied by a flash of lightning.
<br/><br/>Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPhone
