I tend to not consider things as being supernatural just because scientists can not explain, except for when something is traditionally thought to be supernatural or non-physical at the least. Such is the case for ‘consciousness’ if it is indeed synonymous with what we’d call the ‘soul’. And as such, if it is supernatural or non-physical, then we can not expect for it to follow any physical laws, or at least not in any strict sense.
Discussion:
What is consciousness? (Define it!)
Is it natural, supernatural, or both?
Is it the same as what we call the ‘soul’?
Chapter 2 – Spirit (Theology for Beginners - Frank Sheed)
“To say that “a spirit has no shape, no size, no color, no weight, and does not occupy space” is closer to a definition of nothing, or rather a definition of what a spirit is not, rather that what a spirit is.”
[1] Spirit Knows, Loves, Is Powerful
“Spirit is the element in us by which we know and love, by which therefore we decide. Our body knows nothing; it loves nothing; it decides nothing. Spirit has power too – the mind uses the body, not asking the body’s consent. The mind is the principal, the body the instrument.”
[2] Spirit Produces What Matter Cannot
“Spirit produces ideas. Since we are continually producing things which have no attribute of matter, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is in us some element which is not matter to produce them. This element we call spirit.”
“Our ideas are not material. They have no resemblance to our body. Their resemblance is to our spirit. They have no shape, no size, no color, no weight, no space. Neither has spirit, whose offspring they are. But no one can call it nothing, for it produces thought, and thought is the most powerful thing in the world – unless love is, which spirit also produces.”
[3] Spirit Is Not in Space
“A spirit differs from a material thing by having no parts. A part is any element in a being which is not the whole of it, as my chest is part of my body, or an electron part of an atom.”
“Our soul has no parts, for it is a spirit. There is no element in our soul which is not the whole soul. It does a remarkable variety of things – knowing, loving, animating a body – but each of them is done by the whole soul.”
Spirit and soul are not two words for the same thing. Spirit is a partless, spaceless, immortal being, which can know and love. Soul means principle of life in a living body.
“A being which has no parts does not occupy space. Think of anything one pleases that occupies space, and one sees that it must have parts. Space is simply what matter “spreads” its parts in. But a being with no parts at all has no spread. Space and it have nothing whatever in common; it is spaceless; it is superior to the need for space.”
“The trouble is that we find it hard to think of a thing existing if it is not in space, and we find it very hard to think of a thing acting if it has no parts. As against the first difficulty we must remind ourselves that space is merely emptiness, and emptiness can hardly be essential to existence. As against the second we must remind ourselves that parts are only divisions, and dividedness can hardly be an indispensable aid to action.”
For example – the judgments we make all the time. If we judge that mercy is more useful than justice, we have taken three ideas or concepts, mercy, justice, and usefulness – found an identity between them in our mind for comparison. There must be no “distance” between the concepts in our mind. The power to make judgments is dependent upon the partlessness of the soul – one single, undivided thinking principle to take hold of and hold in one all the concepts we wish to compare.
[4] Spirit Is Always Itself
“Spirit is the being which has a permanent hold upon what it is, so that it can never become anything else. Material beings can be destroyed because they can be broken up into their constituent parts; what has parts can be taken apart. But a partless being lies beyond all this. Nothing can be taken from it, because there is nothing in it but its whole self. For the whole self to be taken out of existence, that would be annihilation.”
“A spiritual being, therefore, cannot lose its identity. It can experience changes in its relation to other beings – knowledge, love, death of the physical body – but with all these changes it remains itself, conscious of itself, permanent.”
