when soul meets body

“Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I’d pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person – a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person’s experiences – a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piecing of beauty we’ve ever known.” ~Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

We had quite the discussion in blogging class Thursday. J L brought up a great topic for his blogging/technology in the news presentation: inserting nano-chips in the brain as a form of medical treatment.

There were a lot of good points brought up during the discourse, but I was fixated on the moral/ethical/spiritual aspects of altering the brain with technology. In class, I asked if this technology would violate the line of separation between the soul and the body. Now, I just have a whole slew of questions about the soul itself.


Is there a difference between the mind - the brain - and the spiritual concept of the soul?

And, assuming that there is a difference, where does the soul end and the mind begin?

I'm not a big believer in intelligent design or anything like that, but I've never really questioned the reality of the soul. I wonder why that is?


I don't have any answers for these questions. And I don't have any clue about how to talk it out either. I just wanted to throw these questions out into the cosmos (assuming, of course, that an orderly universe exists.)

Cheers.