I tend to stay away from overtly religious topics, but there’s one topic that I really don’t believe is entirely religious -- though it may initially seem so.
Where does the soul come from?
The soul, the spirit, our consciousness, the essence of who we are – whatever you want to call it. It’s that “thing” that seems to live in our skull, inside our brain, looking out from our eyes and directing the body to do our bidding.
Are you with me?
Then let’s start from the beginning, which is always a good place to begin.
Two people – generally a woman and a man – have sex and the woman becomes pregnant. A future human being begins to develop inside her.
(RELIGION ALERT: This is where religion usually comes into the conversation regarding whether that unborn child is actually a fully-formed human – or just a “vehicle” for a future, fully-realized human to occupy.)
Be that as it may, no one can deny that the unborn child is a combination of both parents, as each gives approximately 50 percent of its physical makeup. ("Oh look, she has her mother’s eyes!” or “Hey, he has exactly the same hair as his Dad!”)
Physical traits like these are pretty easy to explain, as they tend to exist across all mammals.
But then comes the mystery: Where does the soul come from?
Is it also some kind of amalgam of the parents’ souls? Does each parent provide a piece of that child’s soul? Or is it entirely unique to the World, coming THROUGH its parents but not FROM them?
At this point in the conversation, I guess we need to get a tad religious: Are souls waiting SOMEWHERE for a body to inhabit? I can almost picture a heavenly waiting room with little souls sitting in a line while a soul master calls out a number.
“Number 10 gazillion and five, you’re up!”
And – magically – that soul transports into that new baby’s body. Most souls are blank slates, ready to be formed by parental love and worldly experience.
But some souls seem to come into this world with skills and innate intelligence that suggest memories of a previous existence. In other words: Reincarnation.
I mean, how does a three-year-old know how to play a Mozart concerto on the piano? Or a 10-year-old to graduate from college?
Generally speaking – in a true reincarnation scenario – Death wipes away the experiences and knowledge gained in Life and we start over in another body.
If you believe in that sort of thing.
But all this is somewhat beside the original point, which is: WHERE does the soul come from?
Are our souls simply part of the Universe, waiting to be born and walk the stage of Life again – or for the first time?
Of course, no living person knows the answer. All we can ever do is speculate.
As humans, we grow up and eventually we grow old and die. Our bodies slowly crumble, as do our minds. But what happens to our soul?
Is it somehow immortal, passing from one body to another, or moving on to some other unknown dimension of experience?
Religions try to provide comforting answers to questions like these. And that keeps the faithful coming back every Sunday to fill the collection plate and keep the preacher/pastor/minister/priest/guru in expensive suits.
But all these religious guides go to the bathroom the same way we do, and they don’t really know anything definitive about the soul.
And what happens to people suffering from ongoing dementia or mental handicaps? Does their soul remain intact through their Earthly suffering?
So WHERE does the soul come from, and WHERE does it go once freed from the body?
I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see…
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