Soul as parasite

M

MetaKron

Registered Senior Member
A soul is often thought of as being the "real" person that survives the death of the physical body, that may or may not be a hologram of that person's latest physical form. The essence of the idea is that identity and memory pass from the body to heaven or from the body to a new body. Sentience remains within this invisible electromagnetic form.

And this is an Eastern philosophy learned in Tibet by one Yeshua of Galilee who took the philosophy home with him and eventually got hung by Roman soldiers for his efforts.

They tell us that a body cannot be sentient without receiving a soul from wherever. I'm interpreting this rather broadly, most of these philosophies talk about the souls coming from some invisible realms where the people may have forms analogous to physical bodies, or not as the case may be.

Then they tell us that the soul is more important than the body, and that its needs come first. Isn't this exactly like the actions of a parasite? Without regards to its host a parasite consumes what it needs, grows and eventually leaves the host when the host dies. It may or may not reproduce within that host, and it may or may not be able to survive the death of its host and infect another.

It has occured to me more than once that the relationship can be either parasitic or symbiotic. A parasite takes without giving back. A symbiote provides something that the host needs while the host provides it with room and board. Since the soul is allegedly the seat of human sentience, a parasitic soul might be thought of as the kind of soul that continually makes decisions that are bad for the body. Two versions of this have been popular. One is drinking, smoking, and having sex for pleasure, which I think feeds the soul just as well as the other, which is "mortifying the body" in some way or the other that satisfies religious requirements. There is the idea in a parasitic relationship that the parasite actually has to cause harm to operate.

The lines are never that clear. If a parasitic soul contains any sort of sentience, it would be advantageous to the survival of the host. A soul that is too self-sacrificing might even unconsciously work against the interests of the host by not having enough of itself involved in the current reality that it can help the host to survive.

And maybe this all just consists of what the person has learned as he or she grows up. Even so, the learning and the self-image that a person has been taught can be parasitic or symbiotic or some mix.
 
I think the point you are missing is that an entity can survive without a parasite - if you take away the soul,your corporeal self quickly degenerates into dull matter - the body is a covering from the soul, just like a shirt is the covering for the body - are you are a parasite of your shirt?

Bhagavad-gita 2.22 As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.
 
Yeah, but you said it yourself..
"A soul is often thought of as being the "real" person that survives the death of the physical body"

So the soul is the ME that thinks (Cognito ergo sum or whatever), so this body I'M riding is my shirt. So it's not like we have parasites, we ARE the parasites. Technically. But the life-giving properties change the contex somehow. If without a soul, matter is just dead matter, then we are parasiting a dustpan, that would not have any meaning without us. Although I think the term parasite somehow would demand that we would be an addition to an already existing form of life, so we couldn't practically be parasites. It's not two lifeforms competing, it's a single lifeform and some stuff it needs to exist.

Of course, if the question is the soul parasiting itself (if soul would consist of ideas, and if the ideas conflicted, would it be possible that the soul splits, at least partially?) by doing something that hurts itself... Well, isn't that excatly whats happening all over the globe?
 
First I'd like to say that that would be great if we had a soul that came from some foreign realm, and life was a secondary objective. Also, my one cousin and I do do obstacle courses that we made up on a few sets of oil tankers behind the projects he lives in. We always jump upward, so we land with our arms, not with our feet. Everytime I get ready to do certain jumps, a nervous feeling comes over me, and I don't want to do it. Then it's like I get pissed off with myself and it's almost like a duality. It's always the same thought: "I can't stop myself, if I run any jump, I have to do it, or fall 20ft. into a rusted pipe." Because of that, I believe that the soul has duality, if it even exists. It could just be my sub-conscious holding me back. If anything, our bodies are parasites to our souls.
 
Well....
First of all, souls come here for a reason, so just dying propably isn't a good idea. I'd think we'd have some primary objective IN life, and life would be necessary to achive it.
And then again, if we come here willingly, I suppose our bodies wouldn't really hurt us in order to survive? Rather we gave them something they need, and we get what we need. And further, if we assume life cannot exist without souls, it wouldn't be interaction between two lifeforms. (addressing the necessity to call this existence parasitic..)
 
And second, nothing says that your one soul cannot disagree with itself. It's like democracy; some people say do this, some other people say do that. Then they have to compromise what they didn't REALLY want to do, while maintaining to what they really DID want to do; and in the end they do only the stuff their supposed to do, and don't goof off some stupid thing no one really wanted but it sounded neat.
 
Ogmios said:
Yeah, but you said it yourself..
"A soul is often thought of as being the "real" person that survives the death of the physical body"

So the soul is the ME that thinks (Cognito ergo sum or whatever), so this body I'M riding is my shirt. So it's not like we have parasites, we ARE the parasites. Technically. But the life-giving properties change the contex somehow. If without a soul, matter is just dead matter, then we are parasiting a dustpan, that would not have any meaning without us. Although I think the term parasite somehow would demand that we would be an addition to an already existing form of life, so we couldn't practically be parasites. It's not two lifeforms competing, it's a single lifeform and some stuff it needs to exist.

Of course, if the question is the soul parasiting itself (if soul would consist of ideas, and if the ideas conflicted, would it be possible that the soul splits, at least partially?) by doing something that hurts itself... Well, isn't that excatly whats happening all over the globe?
Click to expand...

Well, these questions have a lot of branches. A very common idea is that a body can be alive without a soul but it's missing a soul. Another common idea is that a new soul can grow with a new brain. The new soul might be the "animal soul" and in some theologies that soul isn't considered to be sentient. The reincarnated soul may be an interloper.

There is also the idea that the "soul" that people are looking for is like an overlay of the real person, a persona forced on the victim to make that person seem more acceptable to society. Control freaks abound and they aren't comfortable with something that just growed, they gots to make it even though they haven't a clue how. This persona takes on its own reality.

What are we going to think of as the soul that was handed to a person by God, according to Christians, who seem to think that when a person doesn't have exactly that soul, he ain't right? Some sects of Christianity and Judaism make a distinction between God and Nature, so that what is natural for animals isn't natural for humans. Humans are of God, animals are of Nature, and I have listened to strange people behind a public preach to the congregation that Satan rules over the Earth because that's his assigned theater of operations. If they think that your soul "just growed" then you are in a heap of trouble. (All dialect deliberate)

Some people think that thought patterns make up a soul and thought patterns can definitely be parasitic. A soul that is a "real soul" that is imposed from without almost has to be a parasite. The soul that belongs there can be tought to act as a parasite, draining the body without replenishing it, and it would act as a parasite if its education prevented its natural healing powers (presuming it has some) from working, or if its education taught it to always hate the body.

The question of the soul parisitizing itself is closest to what I am asking.
 
MetaKron said:
A soul is often thought of as being the "real" person that survives the death of the physical body, that may or may not be a hologram of that person's latest physical form. The essence of the idea is that identity and memory pass from the body to heaven or from the body to a new body. Sentience remains within this invisible electromagnetic form.

And this is an Eastern philosophy learned in Tibet by one Yeshua of Galilee who took the philosophy home with him and eventually got hung by Roman soldiers for his efforts.

They tell us that a body cannot be sentient without receiving a soul from wherever. I'm interpreting this rather broadly, most of these philosophies talk about the souls coming from some invisible realms where the people may have forms analogous to physical bodies, or not as the case may be.

Then they tell us that the soul is more important than the body, and that its needs come first. Isn't this exactly like the actions of a parasite? Without regards to its host a parasite consumes what it needs, grows and eventually leaves the host when the host dies. It may or may not reproduce within that host, and it may or may not be able to survive the death of its host and infect another.

It has occured to me more than once that the relationship can be either parasitic or symbiotic. A parasite takes without giving back. A symbiote provides something that the host needs while the host provides it with room and board. Since the soul is allegedly the seat of human sentience, a parasitic soul might be thought of as the kind of soul that continually makes decisions that are bad for the body. Two versions of this have been popular. One is drinking, smoking, and having sex for pleasure, which I think feeds the soul just as well as the other, which is "mortifying the body" in some way or the other that satisfies religious requirements. There is the idea in a parasitic relationship that the parasite actually has to cause harm to operate.

The lines are never that clear. If a parasitic soul contains any sort of sentience, it would be advantageous to the survival of the host. A soul that is too self-sacrificing might even unconsciously work against the interests of the host by not having enough of itself involved in the current reality that it can help the host to survive.

And maybe this all just consists of what the person has learned as he or she grows up. Even so, the learning and the self-image that a person has been taught can be parasitic or symbiotic or some mix.
Click to expand...

If you want to sell your soul it's not difficult. In fact some people are waiting to steal your soul from you and tell you how to think, what to feel, etc.
 
TimeTraveler said:
If you want to sell your soul it's not difficult. In fact some people are waiting to steal your soul from you and tell you how to think, what to feel, etc.
Click to expand...

They will also cheat me on the price, not only quoted but they will also contrive ways to pay less than they promised and receive more than I agreed to give.
 
I have begun to suspect that the body is a sort of cocoon for the soul. That the purpose of life as we experience it is to mature a soul.
 
Trying to do it without the hemming and hawing:

I was taught by Christians that the soul was an add-on to the human body and that animals don't have souls. This sounds like someone goes in and adds something that is not natural. It's like the body is the horse and the soul more or less controls the body, the way a rider rides a horse.

In Jane Robert's "Seth" books, she talks about wars, pestilence, and criminality being things that a soul just has to experience. It's like the riders don't respect the horses and ride them to death. There is a lot of talk of wars being "inspired by God" as, presumably, communicated to us through our souls.

Maybe it's how you look at it, but these "souls" seem a lot like puppet-master type parasites who don't like themselves or each other very much. Oh, I'm sure that in the multi-dimensional reality/unreality/surreality of the soul, this stuff is all pretty minor and somehow legitimate, but dammit. Animals have feelings. They even seem to me to be ensouled. I feel like there is a reality to material beings that must be treated with respect and compassion. Respecting ourselves and this reality means we do not treat everything as if it is there for us to rearrange according to our worst mental problems.
 
river-wind said:
That is a commonly held Native American belief. does life experience slowly kill our souls?
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I wonder about that. Does an old soul simply get old? This is a shame.
 
the soul is unchanging, interminable, atman = brahman

if you understand this, you can understand that everyone lives in their own personal universe or reality,

if you understand that, you can understand that there is no individual, nor non-individual

if you understand that, you can understand that all that exists is "neither this, nor that"
 
But the individual is a process within this atman. It has a life of its own, able to animate matter to make flesh. This is a very complex and delicate thing that is deserving of respect from the very highest of brahma.

I don't know for absolutely certain, but I would like to believe that the disrespect is a mistaken projection upon the almighty by a dysfunctional humanity and that the dysfunctionality is not ordained by God, but is part of our development that "just happens" according to physical laws. I personally resent a sentient being, however omni-everything, screwing my life around just to see what will happen. I much prefer to think of it as impersonal or at least neutral to a given person.

God does things to people because people have their iniquities, their incomprehensions, their inability to balance their checkbooks, but He does it because He expresses Himself through the laws of physics, totally impersonally. There may be a lot of validity to the idea that someone can project positive or negative thoughtforms into the continuum and get positive or negative results. This is also impersonal and entirely up to the individual or groups of individuals involved.
 
MetaKron said:
But the individual is a process within this atman. It has a life of its own, able to animate matter to make flesh. This is a very complex and delicate thing that is deserving of respect from the very highest of brahma.

I don't know for absolutely certain, but I would like to believe that the disrespect is a mistaken projection upon the almighty by a dysfunctional humanity and that the dysfunctionality is not ordained by God, but is part of our development that "just happens" according to physical laws. I personally resent a sentient being, however omni-everything, screwing my life around just to see what will happen. I much prefer to think of it as impersonal or at least neutral to a given person.

God does things to people because people have their iniquities, their incomprehensions, their inability to balance their checkbooks, but He does it because He expresses Himself through the laws of physics, totally impersonally. There may be a lot of validity to the idea that someone can project positive or negative thoughtforms into the continuum and get positive or negative results. This is also impersonal and entirely up to the individual or groups of individuals involved.
Click to expand...
The individual is created by false ego or the sense of self. There really is no individual

God does not really do anything to you, rather it is you, consciously or unconsciously that have caused things to happen to you. If you monitor your thoughts and bodily feelings this is evident. Also, God is you, your inner self.
 
VitalOne said:
The individual is created by false ego or the sense of self. There really is no individual

God does not really do anything to you, rather it is you, consciously or unconsciously that have caused things to happen to you. If you monitor your thoughts and bodily feelings this is evident. Also, God is you, your inner self.
Click to expand...


If there is ultimately no individuality in existence, where did it come from?
Inother words - how did individuality manifest from something that has no individuality?
 
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