What happens to the soul after ressurection?

I started reading "Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" by Ed Regis, and the chapter on cryogenics got me thinking about something I haven't revisted for years.

What happens to the soul after ressurection?

I'm looking for religious and scientific answers alike. Hence Paranormal Studies category in lieu of Religious.

There are many different religions in the world, not all of them can be correct in their exact doctrines. I'll provide a few scenarios to explain the problems with raising the dead, once technology allows for it.

• Reincarnation - Say that those who believe in reincarnation are correct and our soul is reincarnated into a new body. Person A has their body cryogenically frozen. The body dies due to freezing, and the soul passes on from life to life until one day technology advances to the point where we can safely thaw out the body and resuscitate it, bringing it back to life. What happens to the being that Person A had become over these generations?
  
  Is it possible for one soul to inhabit two bodies? Are both alive, have a soul, and are now linked in an inexplicable fashion to either? If so, is this fractured soul any lesser or greater than a single soul? Would they be drawn to each other like magnets? Would one try to destroy the other to free up the other half and join it together again? Would such even be considered murder?
  
  What if a soul can only inhabit one body at a time? Would the newer being suddenly drop dead as the older one sprang back to life? Would it cause mental disorders for the newer being? Would the older being remember anything of it's newer lives? Would it be drawn to places the older being never visited, but the newer beings frequented?
  
  What if the soul isn't transferred to the ressurected being? Would it be a mindless zombie, lurching about eating brains? Would it be a human vegetable, living off life support alone? Based on dogs brought back from cryogenics, this would not seem to be the case. So then, would it be a normal average Joe, like you and eye, but lacking a soul. Would it be an abomination or a miracle?
  
  
• Afterlife - Similar situation, except this time a religion that proposes an afterlife was correct. Once we die, the soul rises up into the afterlife. Perhaps Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Hades, Valhalla, or the Elysian Fields... but then one day the old body is raised from the dead.
  
  An Escape? Perhaps one has been sentanced to Hell, or some other negative afterlife, to serve a sentance dealing in years or eternity... if the old body is raised from the dead, does the soul get to escape Hell, and have a second chance at life on Earth? If so, what are the implications for divine order? This would seem to contradict the word of God. What happens once technology can give God the finger?
  
  Hell on Earth? Conversely, imagine if you achieved the Good afterlife, where you were enjoying hoards of virgins, or playing harps on clouds, or basking in the presence of the Almighty? Only to find yourself ripped from it and transported back into the limitations of a human body in a strange world? How incredible of a horror would this be?
  
  Passengers? What if the afterlife involved a mixture of souls, altogether, what sort of passengers would be brought with you? Might it include demons, or angels, or bits of other souls. If you dump a cup of dye into a tub of water, then scoop up a cup of the result, and you have not just the dye, but the water too. If the body were resurrected, would it only draw the bits of soul that originally belonged to it? Somehow distinguishing it from the rest? Or would it draw down whatever filled the right space?
  
  Substitutes Perhaps instead of the soul altogether, the Powers That Be have the ability to block it from exit. But since there's a doorway open, they decide to investigate, and find themselves stuck in the mind of this human body. What would be the result of a body raised, possessed by Angels, Demons, or Misc.?
  
  Souless Again, assuming no soul transfer happened whatsoever, what would the result be? If it were a walking, talking, thinking human who lacked only a soul, would this mean there was no chance of it entering heaven, because the original owner was already there? Would it mean that this being could perform the most heinous of acts without remorse or fear of going to hell? Would any God worth following be so merciless as to deny this being entry into God's Kingdom? Would Satan be so picky as to deny the opportunity to gain one more admission? What kind of life would one face without any accountability to the afterlife?
  
  
• No Religion, Just Energy - Now let's assume that there is no God, no Satan, no Powers That Be... the soul is made of nothing but energy that gets passed and used throughout the rest of the Universe in a normal fashion. Then one day the body is revived...
  
  Does it get filled with any old energy to form a new soul? Perhaps the energy loss from heat dissipation off a lightbulb, some static from metal, electricity from the resuscitation instruments... Could a new soul be formed from this, to fill up the body, like water filling a cup? This would imply that none of us is, strictly speaking, an individual soul, but merely a temporary finite seperation of an infinite pool of energy.
  
  Does the original energy get pulled from wherever it's gone since? If so, would this mean that simultaneously, some people would feel rather tired, batteries would drain themselves, clocks would get thrown off, an engine might die, etc? This would be an almost completely untracable result. Would we have any knowledge of the previous splitting of our energy? Would we know how a battery feels?
  
  
• The is no Soul - Last, but certainly not least, is the possibility that there is no soul. That we are the sum of our parts, and nothing more. When we die, we die, and that is the end of the story. This seems to have the least amount of complications for resurrection of the dead. After all, if there is no soul involved, there's no need to worry about where it will come from, or if it will come at all.
  

In any event, I'm sure there are many more scenarios and questions which I've left out, but hopefully I've stirred up enough thoughts that you will be inclined to share them with me.

Excellent overview thelibra.
I myself ascribe to what Mr. Neale Donald Walsch asserts in his books, Conversations with God, in that we are here to experience and that upon or demise, we return to the Creator (God) so that he may experience what we had experienced.





seekerof

[edit on 23-12-2004 by Seekerof]

I think we can presume the soul is energy, most seem to agree on that yes? This presumes the energy of the soul acts in every way identical to other forms of energy. I think that might presume too much, but I'm willing to go with it because some (most?) forms of 'uncoupled' energy seem to exhibit quantum properties. This might mean that they (soul molecules?) would dance their little electron dance and be affected by all those forces in the universe that affect things. If they were to be separated, even one molecule, would it harm your consciousness? Probably not. But degradation of the pattern, as more and more energy flows to other 'bodies' of energy in a way that seems awful similar to old age in the living, breathing human creature. Human beings seem to project their souls slowly over a lifetime out through their head (specifically eyes -remember they're "fountains" not windows. In order for consciousness to be maintained indefinitely after death would require an energy pooling mechanism. Maybe the pyramids weren't designed to let the kings out, but to keep their souls condensed and sentient until they were reunited with their creators. I'm supposing a lot, but I've been thinking a lot about quantum theory lately, and that strange jaunt to collect anti matter from the frozen north could provide a wealth of additional brain nuggets. I think that quantum behavior is a state innate to many forms of energy, which means that your soul might very well exist in heaven, hell, purgatory, and earth simultaneously. Quantum particles exhibit the same behavior as their compressed twin, even if two parts of the same quantum 'event' are in different locations. Theoretically quantum energy particles should be able to hold their pattern, even after they lose it, based on time theory and the persistant state of the energy. In other words, if it has ever existed it is present on at least one level, the hum of energy unbound, as it once existed, cast out. This is a very exciting time for mankind, and I think, on a slight digression, we should rally behind the species and make some progress to get off this precarious rock.

Reincarnation - Say that those who believe in reincarnation are correct and our soul is reincarnated into a new body. Person A has their body cryogenically frozen. The body dies due to freezing, and the soul passes on from life to life until one day technology advances to the point where we can safely thaw out the body and resuscitate it, bringing it back to life. What happens to the being that Person A had become over these generations?

One idea is that there can be no sentience without a soul. In this case, since the soul has departed, the reanimated body would exist as a vegetable only. Personally, my thinking is that instead, this "new" life, would be just another doorway for another new or reincarnated soul, just as conception is. So, the boy may be back, but perhaps it isn't really the same person. If the memory cells are still intact, it may be possible for the new soul to tap into that info, but it'd be like watching someone else's life... Interesting idea though....

Is it possible for one soul to inhabit two bodies? Are both alive, have a soul, and are now linked in an inexplicable fashion to either? If so, is this fractured soul any lesser or greater than a single soul? Would they be drawn to each other like magnets? Would one try to destroy the other to free up the other half and join it together again? Would such even be considered murder?

I doubt it's possible, but then again, it may be possible that two souls can vie for a body, such as in possessions, so who's to say the reverse isn't so? Perhaps such "soul fractioning" is actually common, such as in twins. This could explain the connection many twins have. Often, twins have ended up marrying the same named individual, naming their kids the same names, etc. even when separated at birth. If this is so, I think they'd be drawn, but not to kill to become one, again...similar to twins.

Afterlife - Similar situation, except this time a religion that proposes an afterlife was correct. Once we die, the soul rises up into the afterlife. Perhaps Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Hades, Valhalla, or the Elysian Fields... but then one day the old body is raised from the dead.

An Escape? Perhaps one has been sentanced to Hell, or some other negative afterlife, to serve a sentance dealing in years or eternity... if the old body is raised from the dead, does the soul get to escape Hell, and have a second chance at life on Earth? If so, what are the implications for divine order? This would seem to contradict the word of God. What happens once technology can give God the finger?

Again, solved by the new soul idea... The old soul still having to do it's time.

Hell on Earth? Conversely, imagine if you achieved the Good afterlife, where you were enjoying hoards of virgins, or playing harps on clouds, or basking in the presence of the Almighty? Only to find yourself ripped from it and transported back into the limitations of a human body in a strange world? How incredible of a horror would this be?

My thinking is that the "afterlife" is kind of a transition state between incarnations. The "soul" creates it's own pocket universe. It could be a heaven, it could be a hell, it all depends on the mindset of the soul upon death. If creating a hell, eventually, the soul will realize it has punished itself enough and will then "get out" and again reincarnate. You wouldn't be whisked out of this place just because your old body was reanimated. The cord connecting your soul and the body would likely be gone by this point. However, I suppose nobody really knows the time limit, as people have technically "died" then been brought back. I'm assuming it probably isn't a "physical" limit, but more of a "mental" one, and that once the soul has accepted it's new state, the cord is then dissolved.

Passengers? What if the afterlife involved a mixture of souls, altogether, what sort of passengers would be brought with you? Might it include demons, or angels, or bits of other souls. If you dump a cup of dye into a tub of water, then scoop up a cup of the result, and you have not just the dye, but the water too. If the body were resurrected, would it only draw the bits of soul that originally belonged to it? Somehow distinguishing it from the rest? Or would it draw down whatever filled the right space?

Again, the new soul idea solves this well..

Substitutes Perhaps instead of the soul altogether, the Powers That Be have the ability to block it from exit. But since there's a doorway open, they decide to investigate, and find themselves stuck in the mind of this human body. What would be the result of a body raised, possessed by Angels, Demons, or Misc.?

I suppose any of that would be possible...but such entities seem immune to being "trapped" in a body, based on the few accounts of such happenings...if they truly exist as depicted.

Souless Again, assuming no soul transfer happened whatsoever, what would the result be? If it were a walking, talking, thinking human who lacked only a soul, would this mean there was no chance of it entering heaven, because the original owner was already there? Would it mean that this being could perform the most heinous of acts without remorse or fear of going to hell? Would any God worth following be so merciless as to deny this being entry into God's Kingdom? Would Satan be so picky as to deny the opportunity to gain one more admission? What kind of life would one face without any accountability to the afterlife?

I'm still of the mind that without a soul there is no sentience and so if no soul inhabited it, it simply wouldn't come back (the body). It might be animate as in a vegetative state, but the brain activity would be nil.

No Religion, Just Energy - Now let's assume that there is no God, no Satan, no Powers That Be... the soul is made of nothing but energy that gets passed and used throughout the rest of the Universe in a normal fashion. Then one day the body is revived...

Same as my idea. I personally believe that a being can go through many incarnations and not realize that he or she is incorrect on religion. Upon death, the pocket universe created by the soul is in accordance with the soul's beliefs. If a Christian, it may well create streets of gold, pearly gates, etc. If a muslim, hey, just might get all of those virgins. Likewise, these pocket dimensions could overlap others of those the soul was close to in the last, or former lives. In most cases, other individuals in one's pocket universe will be similar to those who populate our dreams. We make them act, speak, etc. without really realizing we're pulling the strings. That doesn't mean we can't genuinely interract with them though, if in the same state. Again, our two universes would overlap at some point, and we'd be able to have the two souls together as long as both wished it.

Does it get filled with any old energy to form a new soul? Perhaps the energy loss from heat dissipation off a lightbulb, some static from metal, electricity from the resuscitation instruments... Could a new soul be formed from this, to fill up the body, like water filling a cup? This would imply that none of us is, strictly speaking, an individual soul, but merely a temporary finite seperation of an infinite pool of energy.

Physics tells us there is conservation of energy, or at least all the energy that ever was, is, and so on. Perhaps energy becoming a soul is simply an evolution of other, more primitive energy.

Does the original energy get pulled from wherever it's gone since? If so, would this mean that simultaneously, some people would feel rather tired, batteries would drain themselves, clocks would get thrown off, an engine might die, etc? This would be an almost completely untracable result. Would we have any knowledge of the previous splitting of our energy? Would we know how a battery feels?

My thinking is that the energy (or soul) would simply continue on it's current path, and again, the opening created by the reanimated body would be a doorway for a different or new soul to either accept or not.

The is no Soul - Last, but certainly not least, is the possibility that there is no soul. That we are the sum of our parts, and nothing more. When we die, we die, and that is the end of the story. This seems to have the least amount of complications for resurrection of the dead. After all, if there is no soul involved, there's no need to worry about where it will come from, or if it will come at all.

In this case, the question would be a moot point...

[edit on 23-12-2004 by Gazrok]

I personally believe in reincarnation, but what happens to the soul after death, I have always felt is creation of our beliefs. If you believe in heaven and hell, your afterlife will incorporate those beliefs, etc, etc..

now back to reincarnation, I do feel that it is possible for two souls to inhabit one body, since that would explain possessions to me, but I don't believe that one soul can inhabit two bodies for an extended period of time without giving up one of the bodies.

and I agree with Gazrok in that

My thinking is that instead, this "new" life, would be just another doorway for another new or reincarnated soul, just as conception is. So, the boy may be back, but perhaps it isn't really the same person. If the memory cells are still intact, it may be possible for the new soul to tap into that info, but it'd be like watching someone else's life

Would you say a kid who falls through the ice in a lake and is under water for an hour has NO pulse No heart beet and whos body temp is 54% and Brain acctivity NONE. Is dead ? For all intents and perposes this person IS dead but because the water is so cold it delays the cemical reactions in the brain that usaly take place within minits after death so aloways doctors to rewarm him and get his heart started again .But even in cases such as this there is usaly damage to the brain and months or years of theropy is needed to revers it.
The morel to this is If you frezz someone fast enough to not damage there cells then theres no reasion why you couldent wake them back up a year or hundred years later.
Ps mabby in these cases the soul is frozzen with the body or its delayed by the cold as well. what do we realy know about eather of these things? souls or frozzen bodys? Wate another 20 years some answers are on the way.

Ooo! Intriguing topic! I have another question, perhaps slightly off topic:

What happens to the soul when the body is in stasis?

It sounds like you're assuming that as soon as the body was frozen, the soul or energy moved on. I've always wondered, what if the soul were still with the body? Is it possible that the soul is trapped, tied to life through a mostly dead body? I've often wondered this, especially when pertaining to those who are in a coma or who are "vegetables". Are they comatose because the soul has left, or is the soul trapped in a body that no longer functions?

Forgive me if I offend anyone with this, but could this also apply to people with mental handicapps? Does a soul have intellengence and if so is it reflected in the body it inhabits? It seems to me that maybe the soul is fully functiaonal, but because of the body's limitations it is incapable of learning.


I can't help but think of the movie Dogma, with God being trapped in catatonic body. There's also a book by Madeleine L'engle "An Acceptable Time", I think that has the perspctive of a boy with a brain injury, and how he is unable to think properly. Like he was stuck and couldn't quite get free.

[edit on 23-12-2004 by Cercey]

For more information on this subject, check out the Journey of Souls series of books by Michael Newton.

www.near-death.com...

Dr. Newton is a hypnotherapist that specialized in doing regressions as therapy. When he accidentaly regresseda patient too far, he was stunned to have the patient describe scenes from previous lives - and even more interesting - between lives.

His books are collections of case studies showing the different stages your soul goes through between lives.

After reading these books, death will not seem such a scary thing ...

In regards to a new soul inhabiting the old body...

This brings up some interesting moral and spiritual questions then.
First among them for me would be to ask what the point of cryogenically freezing onesself would be, if someone else would be the run returning to that body?

Secondly, is it morally right to force a soul to accept the older body that they never had the pleasure of experiencing childhood in? It would be like selling someone a "new" car, only to have them find out they bought a decades-old Pinto.

Thirdly, if it was a new soul, inhabiting an old body, that would mean that it had the mind of a child in the beginning, would it not? A child that, granted, had access to the memories and knowledge of the previous of the previous owner, but had not yet learned the filters and wisdom that comes with age. Perhaps this new being might view the world with wonder, and know math and how to read, but start throwing a tantrum when they don't get their way... If adults acted as children do, we'd all be in jail or dead...

In response to the soul remaining attached to a human in stasis...

If I considered this angle, I forgot what my thoughts on it were. You raise an excellent (and quite on-topic) point. What if freezing the body keeps the soul attached to it in some way? My instinct is to say there is a timer on this. Even a frozen body dies at some point, unable to be revived with currently known technology...

Ah, but does the soul care about technology? If modern medicine can resurrect a body frozen for only a few moments, and bring back the same soul, what's to stop future medicine from bringing back a body with the same soul several hours, or even years later?

So this begs the question... does the soul have a timer to the body?
Or does the body's animate state keep the soul attached? Perhaps the bioelectric energy our bodies generate act as "static cling" for the soul, and once that charge dissipates, the soul drifts off...

Curiouser and Curiouser... more thoughts, please! I'm really enjoying this.

Libra
The key that's missing to figure your puzzle out, could it be a workable knowledge of the properties of certain types of energy. I think if we understood exactly which forces exert force on the soul, how those forces are continued, where they stem from, we could start to conduct experiments (at least hypothetical given known values).

What science needs is a soul-scope. The equations are missing, so of course we haven't been able to finish the problem. No men have, to our civilization's knowledge. We lack the language to explore the territory, to quantify and compare, or am I mistaken? We would have to take into account hundreds of factors when trying to figure out whether that which best represents the soul exits (before or after freezing, coma, death, rape maybe even? pick-a-trama ) and if it does exit does it maintain sentience as we know it. Maybe measurements will be easier now that we can photograph electron clouds. That should make decent headway, and shed some light on the migration of human energy patterns.

This si a very interesting topic.
My opinion on souls is that there is no kind of energy or divininity, what I think the soul is, is something that holds the aspects of our minds together, and since we create it with our minds it like all the other parts of our mind die with the body, since its created by the mind it would be remade (like a computer rebooting) when the body was brought out of cryogenesis, though by the time astronaughts are using cryo I doubt they will actualy be dead, more like there body working 1/5,000th normal speed, like your heart beating once every 5hours.

Great topic, it's a question I've always pondered myself.

Using your example of someone being frozen, and keeping in mind that hyperthetically there's a soul that leaves a body upon death, then I see two possibilities:

No one has ever been brought back from being cryogenically frozen (that I'm aware of anyway lol), if the soul has left maybe the body would just automatically reject being brought back.

Many years from now when they think they can do these things, and they start bringing these bodies back to life they may run into the problem of vitals starting but the person just being a vegetable, before the body eventually just gives up.
As a result of being scientific they probably wont realise that the body cannot live without the soul, and will not understand these results as a result of that.

or...

Although being frozen quickly enough shows all the signs of death, you are not actually dead but just 'put on hold'. Because you are put in this state so quickly without any actual harm being done to your body, your soul does not see it as 'death' and also waits in this 'put on hold' state, waiting to be brought back.

Mind you, that raises the question of people who have been frozen almost instantly in snow storms e.t.c. and have remained frozen, maybe never to be found. Does that mean their soul would be trapped forever unless the ice eventually melted or someone found the remains?

It's a mind twister...

Just a note about cryogenics. To the best of my knowledge, you have to actually be dead *before* you can legally be frozen. At least at this point in time. It is not legal to freeze someone who is still living. So, no, I can't imagine anyone unforzen coming back to life, at this poiint in our history. Perhaps in the future it would work, were the body frozen before it actually died, but for now I don't think it will.

Personally, I wouldn't be caught dead frozen, but that's just me. Too freaky.

Anyway, I'm really liking this thread!

Well I'm sure we'll find out when they thaw out Walt Disney.

I think, the soul dies. But it is possible to separate the soul from the body, and keep it living for a certain amount of time. I guess, it is also possible to replace into another body. But what's the point? Your memories will be lost, anyway!!

While I am not stupid enough to test if the soul really exists or not by selling it, I am slowly coming to the belief your soul does not exist. What is a soul? From my understanding it is what makes you, you. You're personality, the way you behave, determines whether you are loving or cold-hearted etc etc. Now, all these things can be controlled with drugs. If the soul is a metaphysicaly thing, how could physical drugs possibly affect it? You can change a persons attitudes, entire personality, ethics, morals, beliefs etc through drugs, brain-washing etc etc.

I DO however believe in a spirit. This is not the soul that people talk of. It is ALMOST like a life energy (I'm not saying it IS a life energy, because "life energy" does not exist). I can't really give a good reason for WHY I believe in a spirit but not a soul, apart from the fact not too long ago I experienced an OOBE. Strangely enough up till the OOBE I DID believe in a soul but afterwards for some reason I found it hard to believe.

Resurrection? Well, energy cannot be destroyed, and I believe your spirit is basically pure energy (just a gut feeling), therefore your spirit is never destroyed, merely converting from one form to another (bound to a physical body to not bound to physical things, then POSSIBLY back to a physical medium again). Resurrection is not possible for human beings, although I think spirits are able to posess physical objects, such as other humans.

Anyway, I'm gonna shutup now cos I'm starting to sound like a loon. It's hard to explain what I mean without souding like I've had a few too many magic mushies

Originally posted by LordGoofus
While I am not stupid enough to test if the soul really exists or not by selling it, I am slowly coming to the belief your soul does not exist. What is a soul? From my understanding it is what makes you, you. You're personality, the way you behave, determines whether you are loving or cold-hearted etc etc. Now, all these things can be controlled with drugs. If the soul is a metaphysicaly thing, how could physical drugs possibly affect it? You can change a persons attitudes, entire personality, ethics, morals, beliefs etc through drugs, brain-washing etc etc.

I think, you are wrong. Any person in this world CAN be tought to behave well, or become a fanatic suicide bomber. This is only the matter of teaching. Therefore, the way you behave, think, do things, has nothing to do with your soul. If a little child is let in the jungle, he will behave like wolves or dogs. But he doesn't have a soul of wolves!!!!

Your soul is nothing more, than your awareness!! If you die, you won't take your behaviour pattern with you, because that's in your brain, the way you tought to live. That's all!!

Vertu, in that case, if someone had their eyes removed, eardrums burst, nerve endings destroyed and taste buds...well, however you'd remove them....that takes all your physical awareness away from you. Now pump that person full of drugs and as far as they are concerned, they live in a purple elephant and you're a little green leprechaun come to steal their teddy bear....that's not exactly "aware" is it? The drugs and sense deprivation are tricking their brains into thinking their senses are picking up things that don't exist.

If you are talking about actual thought patterns, these too, can be manipulated through various methods, and are shown to be caused by chemical reactions, so that kinda kills any idea of some higher force making you think these thoughts.

In short, when you use the word "awareness", what precisely do you mean? Physical and psychological awareness can be modified, so what does that leave?

By awareness I mean, that you are aware of yourself and your surroundings. If all your 5 senses are taken away from you, you will still be aware of yourself, and you will still keep thinking. It's another thing, that others will not notice much of that. Once a person dies, he will not be aware of anything, his awareness will no longer exist.

Still, it is impossible to take your memories, behaviour with you to death, because that's all simply brain function. Now imagine, that you are Adolf Hitler: You die, and you 'reincarnate' into a beautiful young girl . Do you really think, that girl will start killing jews and start a WW3? I doubt that. Simply because that person took all his existance to the Underworld.

It would be very interesting, that someone learns stuff, and he comes back from the dead, in the form of a baby, and he knows whatever he learnt in his previous life. There was no such thing before, and never will be.

Another interesting thing: if a "soul" travelled to Heaven or Hell, how crowded would that place be? Anyone ever thought about that?!

Vertu,
There have been instances where people supposedly have been able to recall their "past" lives. What if for example this girl does remember a bit about being hitler in her past life. I still doubt she'll go out killing people and i think it'll cause her pain to remember.
A few religions believe in a cycle of death and rebirth. The reason for rebirth is for the "soul" to learn the lessons that it couldnt in the past life. So if thats true then vertu's definition of "awareness" makes a lot of sense.