What does it mean to be spiritual and what, exactly, is the soul?

“What does it mean to be spiritual and what, exactly, is the soul?”

I’m glad you asked…sort of. On the one hand, I’m really happy you’re interested. On the other, I’m not sure you’ll be completely satisfied with my answer by the end of our conversation. But I hope you will be curious.

You see, I could use all sorts of philosophical and scientific and theological language to describe the soul, and that’s not because I’m super smart. It’s just, I’ve been interested enough to listen to loads of actually clever people try to explain it. So, I’ll pass along some of what I’ve heard them say.

Spoiler alert: I’ve never found these kinds of technical explanations very helpful.

Humans, for thousands of years, have attempted to understand and describe the soul. The crux of the challenge revolves around finding satisfactory definitions for the parts of a person that we can see with our eyes (such as the body and brain), versus the parts we cannot see (like thoughts and feelings), and then explaining how they work together. This is often referred to as the ‘mind-body problem’.

If you’re interested in trying to unpick the mind-body problem, be ready to encounter terms such as dualism, physicalism, vitality, and consciousness. Understanding these words can sometimes feel like its own problem! And you will soon realise that you can’t turn to science alone or philosophy alone or even theology alone for definitive explanations. It seems the soul is too complex for that.

PLATONIC DUALISM

A few of the earliest and most influential concepts about the soul go back to the philosopher Plato, who divided reality into two distinct substances: all things physical and mortal can be attributed to the body, while everything non-physical and immortal belongs to the soul. The soul lived on, while the body decayed and died. Interestingly, this way of seeing the world, which became known as ‘Dualism’, not only split reality into one of two categories, but also attributed worth or value to each entity. The soul, or the ‘true essence’ of man, was good, while the body was evil.

ARISTOTLE AND VITALITY

Plato’s most prominent student, Aristotle, saw things differently. Rather than describing the soul as something separate from the body, he viewed the soul as the entity that makes a living thing alive. The soul gives life (which, later, gave rise to the term ‘vitality’). This meant that plants and animals also possessed souls.

PHYSICALISM

Both Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on reality and the soul shaped human thinking for centuries. However, if we fast forward all the way through the scientific revolution and the age of enlightenment, we find that most scholars and scientists have come to this conclusion: “We no longer need to assume the existence of an entity such as the soul in order to explain life as we know it.”

Several variables have helped to shape this viewpoint, but the most significant is a foundational belief in ‘physicalism’, which, when put simply, suggests that ‘the only things that exist in the universe are purely physical.’ All of reality can be explained as a result of physical matter and physical forces alone. Therefore, all states, such as mental states, emotional states, and supposed spiritual states, are ultimately physical states, which are nothing more than physical processes in the brain.

All of reality can be explained by physical matter and physical forces alone.
Mental states, emotional states, and supposed spiritual states
are ultimately physical processes in the brain.

SOUL-LESS?

I’ve admittedly kept the previous explanations for the soul very brief. Some will certainly wish to poke holes in the overly-simplistic explanations I’ve provided, as well as remark on theories I’ve not provided at all! But if you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you’ll know that keeping things practical is an intentional feature of mine, rather than an accidental bug.

We could spend a great deal of time picking apart each viewpoint I have presented. Humans have been doing this for millennia. For example, though not all people have given up on the concept of dualism as a generally helpful way to understand reality, both religious and non-religious thinkers have largely rejected Plato’s sense that the physical world is evil and the non-physical world is good.

Rather than weigh each individual perspective, however, I’d like to focus on ‘physicalism’ for one or two beats longer. This idea that ‘the only things that are really real are physical matter and physical forces’ has been drummed into our modern brains at an almost subconscious level. It’s probably the main reason you’ve come here to question whether or not the soul is real at all.

But I don’t think we really believe that physical reality is the only reality. Because it doesn’t really make sense out of our daily realities.

While the scientists can show a correlation between our non-physical thoughts and feelings and our physical bodies and brains, it doesn’t fully answer the questions around causation. Nor does it come close to explaining consciousness and what it really means and feels like to be you.

If reality is physical matter alone, then there is no such thing as pain, and joy, and love. Those emotions are merely chemicals and neurons in your brain. Your feelings are simply a series of inputs and outputs that have been programmed into you, much like a computer. In the same way, if reality is physical matter only, then there is no such thing as free will. Instead, your choices are determined by the chain of chemical events taking place in your central cortex.

And what are we to make of morality? If emotions are the ‘electrical’ events in our brains and our choices are simply chemicals firing across our neurons, how can we be responsible, or accountable, for the ways our bodies move? While that kind of reality could initially seem like a consequence-free pass to do whatever we wish to do, it wouldn’t feel so fair when hurtful things are done to you.

It seems to me that a physical-matter-only kind of world means that your feelings, your choices, and your actions don’t really…matter.

When this conversation started, I confessed that the technical explanations for the soul never seemed very satisfying. But, nevertheless, we decided to explore quite a few of these concepts. I hope at this point you don’t feel even more confused, or worse, care even less. Perhaps you will conclude that since we can’t do ‘any science on the soul’, you’ll remain sceptical about its existence and carry on without ever uncovering it.

That’s why I want to offer my painfully practical definition for spirituality and for the soul, and let the philosophers and scientists continue to split hairs:

To be spiritual means that, as a human, you have a spirit or a soul.

And the soul? It’s the ‘you’ that cannot be explained by the body or brain alone. It’s the you that feels. It’s the you that longs. It’s the you that senses there is something more.

The presence of the soul has profound implications. It means that as human beings, we are all spiritual beings. It means you are spiritual.

Rather than continuing to try to explain your soul, I’d rather help you discover it. And use it.

That’s what this soul-stirring journey is all about. We want to bubble up that longing you feel for purpose, meaning, connection, peace, joy, fairness, and for casting your affection on someone far greater. Then we want to simply ask, ‘So what’s that about?’ Can that be explained by the body, the brain, and random chance alone? Or could it be a clue that we’re made of more?

Perhaps, along the way, we can even introduce you to the One we believe your soul truly longs for. Christians will say that our species became human when the Creator breathed life into particles of dust, and that’s when mere matter became a soul. But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

For now, I’m sure my simple definition disappoints the philosophers and scientists, and maybe the theologians as well. But I hope it’s helpful for normal people like you and me.

So what do you think? Are you soul’d?