According to findings within the Bible, it can be summed up that the soul and mind are part of the fleshly parts of human beings (non-spiritual). The soul (outer man) is the organ of our personality and consists of the mind, volition and emotion. It appears that the soul is behind all our actions with our body following its direction.

Apart from “Soul” (outer man), it is imperative that mankind know that human beings have a “Spirit” (inner man) because every communication of God with man occurs there.

Before the fall of man, (Adam and Eve), the soul was governed by the spirit. This is the order God still wants, first spirit, then soul and last, the body.

May the God who gives us peace make you holy in every way and keep your whole being, spirit, soul and body free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. [1 Thessalonians 5:23].

Death according to the Bible is a deep sleep of our soul, the soul being the organ of our personality and is composed of the mind, free will and emotion. Our “Body” returns to dust, it decays. Jesus compared death to rest and sleep. Throughout the Bible death is compared only to sleep. Even when the disciple Stephen was stoned to death, the Bible says that he “fell asleep”. [Acts 7:60] The apostle Paul wrote about some who had “fallen asleep” in death. [Cor.15:6].

”Our spirit that part of us of God returns back to Him until our bodies are made to be risen again for God’s judgment.

Our bodies will return to the dust of the earth and our breath of life (spirit) will go back to God, who gave it to us. [Ecclesiastes 12:7].

According to the Bible the human spirit (God’s Breath which gives us life) has three functions:

1. Conscience, the discerning organ that distinguishes between right and wrong.
2. Intuition, a direct sensing independent of any outside influence and is that knowledge that comes to us without help from the mind, emotion or free will, it comes intuitively. We really “know” through our intuition, our mind merely helps us to understand.
3. Communion, for worshipping God. The soul is inept to worship God. God is not understood by our thoughts or feelings. He can only be known directly in our spirits (inner man).

We will all die a first death and remain in a deep sleep until we are risen again by God for His Judgment. Some according to the Bible will rise to never experience death again and others will be judged to eternal death (hell) that is a forever separation from God.

No one has been predestined by God to go to hell, that cannot be found anywhere in Scripture. God does not will anyone to eternal death. Eternal death (hell) is the result of an unbelieving life before one dies his/her first death.

Well, as has been said, sleep is minute death, and waking up is minute resurrection. So, maybe it does prepare us, in a sense. But who knows? I have no proof whatsoever that there is anything beyond this physical realm — nor does anyone else.

However, I have been wondering lately if our womb just gets larger as we go along. First, we have our biological mother’s womb, which provides us, ideally, with all the sustenance we need — and then we are physically born. We then enter a much larger womb: our physical Earth, which by the natural and moral laws should provide all of us children with sustenance (although, due to the greed of man, this is not the case for everyone) — and then we physically die. Then, just maybe, after this, there is still another womb, an even larger womb, but of a spiritual nature. As I wrote before: who knows? No one. Still, in our mother’s womb, none of us had consciousness, or if we did, we don’t remember it. But even if we did, none of us could imagine a life outside the womb, or even conceive what it would be like. Maybe our current state of consciousness — or maybe, in the next realm, it would not even be seen as true consciousness — precludes us from seeing what is beyond our Earthen womb.

Something endures or remains all through life and only disappears (as far as we know)if a person has extreme dementia. I find that there is an “I” that is there despite all the experiences and changes that occur in life. This is not simply memory or nostalgia. There is a sense of something that is independent of the experiences and memory. There is a reflexive consciousness that ties everything together. I have changed but yet I have not changed. Here is a paradox.. I have changed but I remain the same. I do not think a purely physical entity can reflect back on itself. I know that I know. I know that I am and that I was. I have a concept of what future means although it has no material existence. I can’t measure or weigh this something. I just know it is there.

Sophist… I don’t know how you can claim to know for sure that there is something there. My suspicion is that people believe in an afterlife not so much out of fear of death, but because, without an afterlife, it is personal negation. People see it as a loss of all they’ve done to mark out themselves as unique individuals. However, I say this in light of my personal belief that people are unique, but that, in the main, it’s a uniqueness that’s been forged by passive experiences and learning. I think the person who actively forges his or her own individuality falls in the minority; possibly, they are even rare. Still, when it’s all said and done, there’s nothing unique about being unique, despite how it’s accomplished. The enjoyment is in the active process, not the process that comes from without. But, to reiterate the main point… I think what scares the hell out of people about dying is the possibility of this personal obliteration, and this is why they engage in wishful thinking about some form of an afterlife.

EJ Rotert,

So why do you think that there will be no afterlife (eternal life)?

To prove to us that such was to come, Jesus came down to us as man (flesh), die and resurrected so that we could know what was ahead for those of us who died believing upon Him.

So, is it that you do not believe that Jesus died and rose again?

Or, is it that you do not believe that there is a God?

The anthropologists and paleontologists tell us that one of the basic characteristics of all human societies as far back as they can project is some form of burial ritual that includes the assumption of an afterlife.

Stone age burial sites where the bodies are buried with tools and food, all the way up to today.

Khalid, an interesting question about the dualism of the mind and the soul. Do we even HAVE a soul? What is it? These, of course, are some of the biggest questions there are, and the ones that are impossible to answer.

I do have some thoughts, however. First, I’m convinced that most of our burial rituals are actually designed for us, the survivors. They are a formal way to say farewell to the one who is gone. Sometimes I think we lose something when we don’t have a celebration and a party (an old fashioned Irish Wake?) after a death. Why not celebrate a life well lived?

Second, I would define the Soul as that part of us that raises these questions. The ability to ask them appears to be unique to humans…but we don’t know for sure, because we haven’t figured out how to actually communicate with our dogs.

Last, I guess I don’t see anything wrong with carrying along a hope for an afterlife. After all, one of the deepest of human urges is related to meaning. An afterlife gives some weight to that yearning.

I never said I didn’t believe in an afterlife. I just said it was wishful thinking on people’s part. There’s no way I can know whether or not an afterlife exists. I can only wait to have the truth revealed. If there is no afterlife, though, it’s kind of hard to say the truth was revealed to me, because I wouldn’t be around any longer in any form to perceive it.

Whether God exists or not is an ultimate truth. No one can say whether or not an ultimate truth exists, whatever the proposition may be. People can only believe that an ultimate truth is as they believe it to be. But that is not indubitable knowledge. Personally, I believe God exists; it’s just that I can’t know for sure. That’s why I’m agnostic.

As for Jesus, no, I don’t believe Jesus was the son of God and I don’t believe he rose from the dead. Although it’s been proposed that Jesus was just one of many militant messiahs that existed at the time — and the perception of him being a peaceful man simply gained traction over the centuries — I choose to believe he was simply a sage who was acutely aware of the hope he was giving to a hopeless, downtrodden people. I believe he realized the greater good that would be achieved if he went along with their belief that he was the son of God. But I wonder if he would have consented if he had had the foresight to imagine the walls of division that Christianity would erect, or the horror that it would unleash at times upon the world.

Still, all this doesn’t diminish Jesus’ historical standing, at least not in my eyes. He ranks up there with Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Mani — all the great ones.

Sorry… That last post was directed to D. Walker.

The statement “I think therefore I am.” seems self evident. If you are wondering if you exist, the fact that you are wondering about it is proof you exist. Are we going to see the same proof after death? Hopefully, we will see.

A number of thoughtfull comments. D. Walker, I am not sure if your defined terminology is the dominant Christian view of soul vs spirit. But if I understand you correctly, the spirit and the mind are two separate entities. The question is still, does the mind survive death? If it does not then it is not part of our core self and we need to get to know our core self better.

EJ Rotert questions if anything survives death (others are hopeful but not confident about life after death) and also offers the ‘expanding womb model’. Thinking of death and realizing our ambivalence about what follows is at the heart of some of our decisions in this life. Conversely, other folks (underrepresented in our dialogue) stake a strong position that whatever faith they are following ‘guarantees success after death’ and then they follow very rigid positions on just about any point of philosophy and generally shun questions like the one raised here, considering even discussion of such issues as akin to heresy (jeopardizing their success in the life after death).

The point being that our attitude towards death (and what follows) does subconciously dictate our actions here.

The Qur’an trys to teach through examples. Of death the comparison is made to the annual cycle of death and resurrection in plants. How they wither and die in the fall and winter. But the kernel of their existence (the seed, dna if you will) gives rise to a new plant when conditions are favorable again. Similarly for us, while each of us has a fairly unique dna, the kernel of our existence is the soul, which has the capacity of surviving in a different n-dimensional reality. In this model of thought hell is remorse and annihilation. In this model, to have success in the life after death we have to separate from and annihilate all that isn’t the soul/spirit in this life. Sufi’s refer to this as ‘die before you die’.