If there is life after death then there must be something of us that can and will survive death. Under the topic of “Things Unseen” we described life as being in the realm of the unseen. We can know life is present by what it does and not by what it is. And in the topic of “What Makes Me – “Me” we further discuss metaphysics, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of “the nature of being and beings, existence, time, space, and causality”.
Many religious, philosophical, psychological, and mythological traditions, call this part of us the soul. As defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the soul is the incorporeal and, in many conceptions, immortal essence of a person, living thing, or object.
The soul is the “animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life”. The soul is “that which confers individuality and humanity”. The soul is the “seat of human personality, intellect, will, and emotions”
“You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”C.S. Lewis (British Scholar and Novelist. 1898-1963)
To get a better idea how this works, let us compare ourselves to a computer. The computer can be said to have two major components – hardware and software. Both of these components are needed for the computer to be fully functional.
Controlling the hardware is the CPU (Central Processing Unit) – the computer chip. If you were to probe the CPU you would see electrical impulses. Monitoring these electrical impulses are a way of observing the CPU controlling the computer’s internal functions.
These impulses are not random but are organized by instructions fed to it by a programmer. The programmer is the one that organizes the process by which the computer will execute commands in order to solve practical problems. Without the programmer and instructions, the computer would only output nonsense.
We are like this computer. We have both hardware (body) and software (soul). Controlling the various body parts and functions is the brain (the body’s CPU). If you were to probe the brain you would see electrical impulses. These impulses are not random but are organized. Different parts of the brain have different functions.
What orchestrates the brain to solve problems and animates the body is the soul.
Death is when the soul leaves the body and animation stops, brain activity stops. The body no longer functions.
The question is this: because the soul is incorporeal does it survive death? Is it immortal?
“It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again. The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 - 1882 