The idea of a Soul represents the most important thing within us that is preserved upon death but I find it isn’t explained properly how a Soul is preserved by the belief systems of today’s organised religion.
One question would be, how can a Soul be preserved if we keep changing throughout our entire lives e.g. were I to suffer Amnesia today or any other day, my personality would not be the same so would I have the same soul? It’s the same with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Total Recall where he wakes up on Mars, realises that he has undergone hypnotherapy without being aware of it and his previous alter-ego, Hauser, had masterminded a plan to manipulate the current persona of Schwarzenegger’s character, Douglas Quaid, in a devious plot to enslave the Martian population in partnership with Quaid’s nemesis, Vilos Cohaagen. So although Quaid and Hauser have the same body, they are entirely two different “souls” working against each other, an aspect that complicates the idea of a soul.
Plus there are other factors to consider like how the environment and Genetics interact with this concept of the Soul. My opinion on an alternative theory of the soul developed through talking with my fellow Facebook friends. From my discussions with them, I have come to realise and accept that perhaps there isn’t a Soul but in actual fact there is the Unconscious mind, where all our hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares, instincts, everyday experiences etc. are stored and only come out in our dreams, through interpretation of the way we react to images or objects called projection or body language we show which we are not aware of when we interact with people in our daily lives. You know that saying, “the company/ army/ Government/ drugs/ money owns your soul”, that could mean in my interpretation that these organisations or objects have such a strong influence on us that it is ingrained in our Unconscious Mind and affects what we think of constantly and our habits.
On the idea of Reincarnation, perhaps Carl Jung’s work on the Collective Unconscious may shed light why certain groups of people believe in reincarnation. The Collective Unconscious is made up of symbolic Archetypes; these Archetypes appear essentially in every Myth and culture which shows it is universal and isn’t made up by our own individual experiences (which make up our own individual Unconscious Minds). You can say that the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious are akin and equivalent to our instinctual behaviour from the moment we are born, thus you can say that the instincts of the previous generations who have passed away and the newborn has been preserved as they are all connected to this universal, omnipresent Collective Unconscious regardless of Time, Space and Culture. It is here that there is a preserved continuity.
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