That man is a body composed of concrete cells are made up of atoms, but the presence of the spirit between these atoms makes it lively breed and grow and live. And self is guiding this body with the spirit of the driver also draws his car, driven either to safety or to pounce in the ravine.
The threefold nature of man might be illustrated in several ways. Dr. Clarence Larkin uses three circles (Rightly Dividing The Word, page 86). The outer circle stands for the body of man, the middle circle for the soul, and the inner for the spirit. At this point it will be well to quote a portion from Dr. Larkin’s book:
In the outer circle the ‘Body’ is shown as touching the Material world through the five senses of ‘Sight,’ ‘Smell,’ ‘Hearing,’ ‘Taste’ and ‘Touch.’
The Gates to the ‘Soul’ are ‘Imagination,’ ‘Conscience,’ ‘Memory,’ ‘Reason’ and the ‘Affections.’
The “Spirit” receives impressions of outward and material things through the soul. The spiritual faculties of the ‘Spirit’ are ‘Faith,’ ‘Hope,’ ‘Reverence,’ ‘Prayer’ and ‘Worship.’
https://bible.org/seriespage/2-man-trinity-spirit-soul-body
soul :
The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
A person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.
spirit:
he non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
Ref.: en.oxforddictionaries.com
Nope I do not deal with all this to great lengths ...
Of course I do have a good/healthy /resilient spirit and I thank my parents and family for it ...
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
"What Is The Difference Between SPIRIT And SOUL?
There seem to be a confusion about the terms “Spirit” and “Soul” and I am happy to share with you my observations.
Wikipedia says:
The English word “spirit” comes from the Latin “spiritus” (breath). The term is commonly used to refer to a supernatural being which is transcendent and therefore metaphysical in nature. For many people, however, spirit, like soul, is a natural part of a being, and is identified with mind, or consciousness, or the brain.
In many religions and parts of philosophy, the soul is the immaterial part of a person. It is usually thought to consist of ones thoughts and personality, and can be synonymous with the spirit, mind or self. In theology, the soul is often believed to live on after the person’s death, and some religions posit that God creates souls. In some cultures, non-human living things, and sometimes inanimate objects are said to have souls, a belief known as animism.
The terms soul and spirit are often used interchangeably, although the former may be viewed as a more worldly and less transcendent aspect of a person than the latter.
As a linguist, I believe that there are no two words with the same connotation – if there are several different words for a seemingly same thing, it is still not the same thing. And it is for sure not the case with such an essential phenomenon like spirit or soul.
Let me offer you my experience based differentiation:
THE SOUL is the essence of all what makes us human and unique – our emotions, desires, experiences, thoughts, worries and joys…
THE SPIRIT is the essence of our divine nature – it is something almost impossible to precept, but once percepted, it gives a vast realisation of what we actually are, that we are one with the whole. The spirit makes the ego and the soul disappear, and it is truly the ultimate. The Spirit is same in every being (human or animal or else), because it’s the reflection of the same divine light."...
Please, go to the attached website link for more information...
https://1000petals.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/what-is-the-difference-between-spirit-and-soul/
dear
The translation of sacred texts comes into question when the word body is used instead of soul or spirit. The translators may not have been aware of the difference it makes to speak of the soul or the spirit. ... All that we see, hear, and feel enters into our soul and there we make sense of what is outside us.
from this link bellow
www.huffingtonpost.com/kristina-kaine/is-there-a-difference-bet_1_b_8947542.html
regards
Dear colleagues , they are very wonderful and interesting responses and informations.
Geat Appreciation for all.
Best regards...
Dr. Y.A.Salih
Thank you so much dear colleagues for your valuable answers. I highly appreciate it.
Thank you Dear Dr. Mahfuz Judeh for your kind recommendation.
Best Regards
As the difference between energy and material the one define the other in a infinity of solutions that we cannot read in separate manner: non-definition of the definition.
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
Although one soul lives in the whole body, and all the body's members are controlled by one soul, still the whole body and the whole soul and the parts of the universe are vivified by a certain total spirit.
---- Giordano Bruno
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
---- Swami Vivekananda
The spirit is the active ingredient that makes one alive and the soul is the entire being of a person.
Dickson Adom
The soul is the core of humanity’s existence; it is who we are. The spirit is the minor part of humanity that connects with God.
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.
---- Joseph Smith, Jr.
I think the spirit is the immaterial will, which is one of three cognitive faculties possessed by the soul (memory, reason, and will). So the spirit is the part of the soul that freely makes decisions.
[changed 2017-10-28]
Words like soul, spirit, etc. do not have an inherent meaning (= reference to something else) outside the particular model of man you are studying or adhere to. And that particular model of man is always expressed within a particular language you adopt to express your thoughts. As long as you don't specify the language together with the model of man you are talking about, the question is not answerable, at least not definitely, because:
- Perhaps words like soul, spirit, etc. are just (literary) metaphors some people like to use in some contexts to denote a complex state of mind not yet fully understood.
- Or, perhaps, words like soul, spirit, etc. is just shorthand some people like to use in some contexts for things which can be fully explained using well-defined simpler words.
Anyway, as long as we don't know which is the bigger picture of world and life we are dealing with (i.e. what philosophers would call "world-view" and researchers would call "model of man") any definition and discussion of these words is doomed to be either
- circular, i.e. referring to itself to explain itself, or highly
- personal, i.e. having different meanings or connotations for different persons.
Most people would agree that that is not very satisfying in the end.
What might be interesting, however, is to provide as many different uses of both words in the English language (the lingua franca here on ResearchGate). How are they used? In which context of other words? Where do they seem to overlap, where not? Could they be replaced by other words or phrases without loss of information? Etc.
Once we have a long list of such citations from ordinary discourse and literature in English (or any other language ...) we may start analyzing them in-depth, to find out why people are using those different words and if it really makes sense outside the particular contexts in which we found those words. That could be the beginning of a systematic (literary) study of soul and spirit.
But beware: it could arguably turn out, that there are as many answers to your question as there are languages and cultures on this planet. And that would again imply, that the meaning of words like soul, spirit etc. is completely in the eyes of the beholder ... Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that reassuring?
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
Please, see the attached slide that shows "difference between spirit and soul",...
Soul is the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc.
Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal.[ In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and may have been influenced by Plato and in Eastern Orthodox Christianity the soul is said to be immortal by grace, but not nature). For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal.] Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) hold that all biological organisms have souls, as did Aristotle, while some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. The latter belief is called animism.
Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, understood that the soul must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions. At his defense trial, Socrates even summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence (Apology 30a–b).
The English word spirit, from Latin spiritus "breath", has many different meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the material body. It can also refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.
The word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both contrast with body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.
The term may also refer to any incorporeal or immaterial being, such as demons or deities. In the Bible, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit
Soul is consciousness (thoughts) expressing itself through' its own body by birth; and 'spirit' is consciousness (thoughts) expressing itself through' someone else's body.
Spirit is all pervasive infinite, indivisible perfectly motionless blissful existence. It does not perform any action but is just an observer. The fraction of this infinite Spirit, when it begins to move, becomes energy. Entire universe is made up of energy which is always in motion. So the universe around us is the Spirit in motion. Motionless Spirit and the Spirit in motion are indivisible like the ocean and its waves, Milk and its whiteness, fire and its power to burn.
Human body is made up of two kinds of energies. The gross body made up of head, torso, hands, feet, and sense organs and the subtle body made up of mind, ego, intelligence, memory, Behind the subtle body is the all pervasive motionless Spirit, the observer, which imparts consciousness to the mind. Only mind is capable of making direct contact with the Spirit behind. But the mind is so focused on observing the universe through the five senses that it has not the sufficient power to turn around and look what is behind it. When a person dies part of the subtle body also dies. But the core part of the subtle body does not die. This core part is the Soul of the person. The soul transmigrates from one body to another and undergoes repeated cycles of birth and death. Between the death and rebirth are heaven and hell. During this transmigration, the Soul undergoes the process of evolution and becomes stronger and stronger. Eventually, after going through all kinds of experiences, it is able to detach itself from the gross body and unite with the all pervasive Spirit behind and obtain Salvation, Nirvan which is the blissful state of motionlessness.
Thank you very much my dear colleagues for the wonderful answers
The Spirit is the energy that God has transmitted in his creation from living beings on earth, moving them, making them multiply, making cells divide, and when the cell dies, this energy is exhausted. The soul can be imagined as invisible, unobservable vibrations and not in any device, but we can see the results of its existence. It is these spiritual vibrations that move the cells and drive them to divide and continue their lives. But the soul is the aura that surrounds the body and sticks to it and leaves it only during sleep and at death.
Spirit is what we are (human spirit) soul might be our projections !!!
What is very strange is that many people seem to believe, that spirit, soul, brahma, or whatever you call it is located in the brain (see the numerous pictures and diagrams before).
This raises so many research questions left unanswered:
- How do you know?
- How did you find out?
- How certain are you about this claim?
- What evidence for your claim do you have?
- What counter-evidences are there?
- Is it compatible with current theories of the brain?
But there are also more fundamental questions, like:
- What exactly do you mean with location?
- Does the spirit, etc. have a location at all?
- Does the spirit, etc. need a location at all (to work correctly)?
- Why didn't science (Western or Eastern) find it until now?
And many other questions ... Shall we start to discuss these questions one after the other, to make systematic progress?
Or shall we be satisfied with just repeating what others (e.g., previous generations, authorities) have said and written before, without questioning whether it makes sense or not, without progressing from tentative definitions and speculations to concrete hypotheses and theories?
Definitions and speculations are easy to give, but they don't bring us very far in understanding and explanation. Concrete hypotheses, models and theories are what we need to make progress. For example:
- Given that nobody has yet seen the "soul" or observed its working without any doubt, we may hypothesize that it doesn't reside in the brain (head) but is spread out over the whole body, as a kind of super-state of the central nervous system and main organs (cf. Sir Roger Penrose, Gerald Edelman, ...)
- Or we may hypothesize that the "soul" is mediating or wandering between our world and some other possible world (under different names) given that we believe in the multiverse model of cosmology (David Deutsch, Max Tegmark, ...)
All these have been speculated about since many years (2000 or more), but it is only very recently that some great scholars have started building consistent models (not yet theories, because nothing is yet confirmed by experiment or empirical observation). See the references below.
[Please see my previous comment (22 days ago) on possible meanings of the many words].
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Edelman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
"Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain."
----- Tom Robbins
The words "soul" and "spirit" are found throughout the Bible, each occurring hundreds of times in the Old and New Testaments. The Hebrew word translated "soul" means a breathing creature, one in which life is present, whether physical life or mental life.
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
"The soul is joined to and is separated from the body. Therefore, the soul is corporeal."
----- Chrysippus
Thank you, my dear colleagues, for these wonderful scientific answers
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
"Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel."
----- King Solomon
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
“The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.”
― Daniel Defoe
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
“The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.”
― Daniel Defoe
Thank you, my dear colleagues, for these wonderful scientific answers
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
"The word of God is that unto our souls, which our soul is unto our body."
----- John Jewel
Dear Colleagues, Good Day,
"We need worship for our spirit, fellowship for our soul and committed subservience for our body."
----- Larry Norman
No difference. Nobody seen them. Nobody can describe them from practical experience.
I have followed this thread with great interest. As Vossen has stated, our responses reflect our backgrounds -- academic, cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious among others. Might we also wonder if our historical and technological backgrounds have a role in the development our concept of soul, spirit, and body (as has been mentioned as the locus wherein resides the soul).
If I were to guess, I would say that we might trace the concepts of 'body', 'soul', and 'spirit' (as well as other related terms) backwards through the history of our respective cultures. I'm neither an anthropologist nor a religionist. As things are, I have various levels of training and experience in education, history, linguistics, psychology.
I was born in the central part of the United States at the end of the 1950s. My ethnic roots are found predominantly in Scotland, Ireland, and England. My parents grew up in an agricultural setting. I was the younger, male child with an older sister. The families of both of my parents had lived in the same area for several generations. My family religious background would be categorized as protestant Christian, thus my sister and I were educated in Old Testament and New Testament dogma, a strong, agrarian work ethic, and a public education.
My father was in the military during the conflict between the Axis powers and the Allied powers during the mid-20th century. Afterwards, he went into law enforcement, banking, and farming. My mother spent her early to mid adult years in the health care industry as an office worker and in the banking industry in customer service. My father completed a university degree; my mother completed two years at the university, before joining the work force to help pay family expenses. My sister and I completed university degrees. She ended up with a career as a flight attendant. I began a career in teaching in 1982 (and have continued in some form since then).
My journey has taken me to Mexico, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Canada, Finland, and Sweden. Beyond my undergraduate degree in biology, I have graduate degrees in linguistics, Asian studies, and educational psychology. My wife is from Thailand, so our family is multicultural. We communicate in English, Mandarin, Thai, and Lahu. My wife's mother speaks Lahu, Lisu, Thai, Chinese, and English. My father-in-law speaks, reads, and/or writes 11 different languages including the national languages of China, Myanmar, Thailand, and the United States of America.
As you might imagine, within our family we have lively discussions on culture, history, and matters of personal belief. I have produced this long introduction to pose the following questions?
What aspects of humanity are shared by the illiterate farmer and the college professor? by females and males? by those born in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas? Australia? I would propose that the broad spectrum of opinion on 'soul' and 'spirit' may be traced back to a single seed from which all of us are descended.
What distinguishes a living person from one who no longer lives? There is a difference and, by and large, the process is unidirectional. Life has a beginning and an ending. What first generates the spark in a zygote of human genetic material?
I am going to state what I consider is a reasonable response to our host Sahib Al-Zuwaini's initial query. "What is the difference between soul and spirit?"
My educational, cultural, and societal background is fairly complicated, but can be traced by at least one pathway from the American public school educational framework to Europe and, at least to some extent, to ancient Greek culture and language.
ψυχή is Greek for 'soul' or 'psyche', from which is derived the English term 'psychology.' Perhaps this might be related to the idea that soul resides in the brain, although I have heard that some cultures consider the throat the seat of the soul.
πνεύμα is Greek for 'spirit' or 'ghost' or 'essence' from which are derived the English terms 'pneumatic' and 'pneumonia.' The English derivatives seem to point to the concept of 'breath' or 'wind.'
σώμα is Greek for 'body,' while σάρκα is Greek for 'flesh.'
My point here is that my understanding of the notions of 'body,' 'soul,' and 'spirit' may be related to Koine Greek and Greek culture from the dawn of the CE. Beyond that, and the contributions above, that understanding somehow became linked with at least two of the three Near Eastern monotheistic religious traditions -- Judaism and first century Christianity. I defer to those from other faith communities to affirm/deny that possibility.
Beyond my own understanding, I would appeal to members of First Tribes, Northern European, and South and Southeastern cultures to comment on the etymologies of the cosmological notions that comprise humanity.
I offer this simple answer to Sahib Al-Zuwaini's query.
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