Ontology of the soul (18-08-2019)

(Third text published on Textup, sent by Daedalus )

 

The fragmentation of the thinking being into multiple instances, dimensions or parts is a more or less arbitrary intellectual aberration. It is only of interest for didactic purposes but exposes one to epistemological aporias.
(Translator's note. Aporia: "A statement that expresses or contains an impossibility of a rational order")

 

Someone asks: "Does the soul have a personality of its own?"

If the answer is "yes", then where does this personality come from? Was it already present before the birth of the thinking being? How many personalities of this kind are being formed?

[Here it is understood that the notions of "dimension", "time" and even "discursive coherence" are deliberately set aside for the sake of simplification.]

 

If the answer is "no", then does everyone have the same soul, like clones? Does the soul really exist? Is it only a simple vital breath without singularity of its own, generated by the Creator, also called God, Absolute Indeterminism?

 

The different factors that constitute the thinking being are the following:

- A physical body, subject to the determinism of its environment, with senses that allow perception and a brain that processes information.

- A "soul", animating the body.

- A "collective reservoir" capable of processing information and influencing the physical environment.

 

It is important to bear in mind that the extreme simplification required for the presentation of these different factors runs the risk of generating fixed and truncated representations that are vectors of misinterpretation or inconsistency.

 

In the absence of tools that can unquestionably validate the existence and nature of these different intellectual abstractions, start as close as possible to what you see and know: yourself.

 

Who are you? What defines you as a thinking being? Is it not precisely your capacity to think? But what is thought?

It only appears in relation to the different perceptions we have of our environment. Thought is measurement, comparison, apprehension, remembering, etc.; it processes information sequentially.

 

Am I then only thought? Some will argue that a computer is also capable of some form of "thinking". Am I only an "elaborate computer" in that case?

 

No, because others will say "that a computer has no consciousness".

But what is "consciousness"? Does not consciousness have the faculty of understanding itself, of folding back on itself, in a reflexive movement: "I am conscious of being conscious." What happens at the precise moment of this inner observation, when it is total and authentic?

 

Before answering, it is important to start again from what is closest: where does it come from? Is it an attribute only of living beings?

 

To grasp it, it is necessary to go back to the lowest, the most elementary, that is, to matter.

 

Matter seems to be governed solely by the deterministic laws of physics (chemical bonds, structural arrangements, gravitational constraints, etc.). We also observe other external determinisms in the microorganisms studied in the bacteriologist's Petri dish. These external determinisms are no longer the only elements to be taken into account in the study of the plant world, and they prove insufficient to explain the behaviour of coelenterates or arthropods. They are incapable of circumscribing the social phenomena of vertebrates, especially of the higher mammals, and they inexorably fail to decipher the human being.

 

There therefore seems to be "something more".

Symmetrically with the external determinisms, an "internal" influence seems to emerge. For convenience it may be called "consciousness". This "internal side" is intimately related to the "external side" of the physical determinisms, since in reality it is its reverse.

 

From there it is understood that even the most elementary matter contains within it this "internal" property.

Are the simplest cells closer to molecules or to animals? If they are perceived as the basic forms of the living, is it incorrect to apprehend them as representing only "another state" of matter? - a state raised to a higher level of complexity and therefore manifesting a greater degree of "consciousness"?

 

Some ideas already developed elsewhere can be taken up here: The "degree of consciousness" of a quartz crystal would thus be higher than that of an isolated elementary corpuscle, but infinitely lower than that of an amoeba evolving in the stagnant water of a pond in East Asia.

But there are qualitative laws of growth. For example, space constraints necessarily induce structural reorganizations in living organisms (new state).

One can then speak of "discrete" or "stepwise" evolution. A progressive moving away from equilibrium effectively translates into an increase in tension up to the breaking point and the SUDDEN emergence of a new, more stable state, until the next break, and so on. Matter always centres itself more and more on a kind of "interiority" proportional to the degree of "consciousness". Let us take the well-known example of a closed, totally irregular surface which centres itself on itself until it becomes a circle, which in turn can increase its order of symmetry and become a sphere by gaining a dimension, etc.

 

There is, then, a law of complexification, an "orthogenesis", directed from matter towards the living. From the laborious assembly of the elementary bodies that form primordial matter to the marvellous development of the most basic nervous system, there is a discrete process of increase of "consciousness" in which each level corresponds to the emergence of a new property that is irreducible to the sum of its parts.

From the non-living protein mega-molecule to the living paramecium, there is a significant increase in "consciousness".

In reality, the unicellular organism gains in "vision". It perceives its environment (salinity, temperature, acidity of the medium...), unlike the inert protein, which is nevertheless much more complex in its arrangement than the water molecule...

 

One can guess that, in a similar way, the development of the nervous system, in the course of evolution, increases in mass and complexity, by qualitative leaps, until its final result: the human brain.

 

What happens then? The degree of "internality" and "consciousness" reaches such a level that there then occurs a new break, a new equilibrium: a capacity of "vision" that gains "a dimension", like the circle that becomes a sphere. This is, of course, free will.

 

Now, free will is neither more nor less than the capacity to extract oneself, to distance oneself from all the forms of determinism proper to the living organism: the free being can deliberately refuse to satisfy its basic needs, or refuse to follow its various conditionings blindly, etc.

 

Free will "comes", as you have already understood, from the "soul". One can imagine, for didactic purposes, a kind of "great reservoir of free will", which would be generated by the Creator and of which souls would be the "fragments".

 

When a "fragment" joins a physical body, it becomes singular and turns into a kind of unique cell (in reality, it is the body that determines this "fragmentation"). Now, the soul is not "only" free will; it is also a kind of "mneme", since on joining a physical body it influences that body and only that body, which is subject to the various forms of determinism of the plane on which it evolves. In other words, this "portion of free will" comes to "inhabit" one body and only one body. Through this limit it closes in on itself, through the "conservation" of the different life sequences of this unique body, which is expressed in the time interval proper to its existence (birth - death). In this way the soul "cohabits" with the body whose information it preserves and to which it "provides" the tool of "free will".

 

Therefore the question "how many souls are there?" makes no sense.

As for the "personality", the "character", the "temperament" of the thinking being, it is understood that these are in reality only hereditary products or the result of personal experiences in the history of the individual. The soul is articulated with the body and the character it has "inherited", but "free will" allows the decentring described above. That is also why it is wrong to consider the soul as "not responsible" for the actions of its body. Understand that there is a subtle interrelation between the different instances which does not allow them to be radically distinguished without inducing incoherence.

 

You can also see that a soul only becomes "singular" at the moment of connection with its body. "Before" that, does it exist "isolated" somewhere? Does "my" free will exist in some still place, waiting for the connection with "my" body? What is this "my"? What is the "I"?

 

Some also wonder what "oriented" the orthogenesis of living organisms in such a way as to lead to the appearance of consciousness.

It is an influence of that other giant, non-physical "organism", that "effector reservoir" also called "collective consciousness".

Now, just as the degree of individual consciousness can grow, there is also an increase in the degree of collective consciousness.

What happens when this increase leads to a process of centring, of coiling in on itself?

It leads to a singular point of convergence.

 

On the individual plane, the natural evolution of humanity leads to the inexorable growth of more and more "consciousness", that is, to inward folding, to increase of vision and to over-centring, which manifests itself in a lesser influence of determinisms and in a gradual flowering of free will.

 

You can now visualize the image of that centring which comes to generate the contraction of each individual pole on itself, "attracting" all the other centres, taking part in the emergence of a collective HIGHER FOCUS of hyperconsciousness.

 

Finally, as has been expressed elsewhere, what happens at the "cosmic" level if all Humanities reach as many centres of hyperconsciousness?

 

Here is the answer: Just as the origin of the physical world proceeds from a primordial singular point, its "culmination", its "finality", takes the form of a dizzying Supra-Conscious TERMINAL FOCUS.