Do We Have Souls?

Do we have souls?

For me, whether it's true or not I have a sense of my own soul and I have a sense of a Divine presence. Maybe it's an evolutionary trick; some psychologists who investigate this stuff say that many of us believe in a separate soul because our minds cannot comprehend non-existence.

On the other hand maybe there's something to it... Michio Kaku, one of the founders of String Theory, is comfortable with a "non-personal" God, and if that God exists Its mind is made of cosmic strings. The strings vibrate in a cosmic symphony and they play out existence. It almost sounds like a Greek myth.

And time isn't linear, right? It folds around itself. In that sense we are immortal, whatever that means.

Or we're not. So to paraphrase Aurelius very liberally and probably badly...

What is it to us if there are no gods? Will we do anything differently? But there are gods, and they have given us all the tools we need to become more like them. That's my own interpretation of what he says, anyway, or rather that is the sense I get from it. Here is the actual quote:


"Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for humankind: and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm."

Does my belief in Divinity and the soul motivate me to do anything evil? I don't think so. I would say the opposite; we are taught as Stoics that our fellow humans are pieces of a Divine whole. They are our brothers and sisters in that sense. We are to love them and be patient with them, and when they do bad they do it because they are ignorant of the good. This applies to me as well. When I do bad it is because I am ignorant of the good. Other people ARE us and we ARE them. I find that meditating on the Divine helps me to put my thoughts about this into practice. It makes me more forgiving and understanding.

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Image, "Dying Bacchante," courtesy of the New York Public Library, is public domain