Spirit

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Artistic depiction of a spirit

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The word spirit is commonly used to refer to a supernatural being which is transcendent and metaphysical in nature. For many people, the human spirit, like the soul, is a natural part of being, identified with the mind, the consciousness, or the brain.

The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath".

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The Paranormal Spirit

Spirit phenomena
General classifications
Angel
Demon
Discarnate
Earthbound Soul
Ghost
Nature Spirit
Poltergeist
Spirit (general term)
Spirit Guide
Thoughtform
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In the world of the paranormal, a spirit is a demon, sprite, or a ghost. A ghost is usually seen as a wandering spirit from an entity is no longer living. The spirit has survived the death of the body and maintains the mind and consciousness of the individual.

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Spirits in Folklore

  • Brownie: a good-natured, invisible household goblin who lives in farmhouses and other country dwellings; performs labors for people while they are asleep; if offered payment for his services, the brownie disappears and is never seen again
  • Demon: a supernatural being, spirit, or force capable of influencing human lives, usually by evil means
  • Devil: the supreme spirit of evil; rules over a kingdom of evil spirits
  • Fairies: a diminutive supernatural creature, generally in human form; influences humans and their affairs through magic; live in a "fairyland" and also in everyday surroundings
  • Ghosts: the spirit of a dead person; appears in forms from a fog-like mist to a perfect replica of the dead person
  • Wraith: the visible spirit of someone still alive


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The Human Spirit

The Human Spirit is a property of intelligence that drives it to adapt the environment of the organism. The drive is generally unique to humans, progressive in that the drive allows intelligence to grow. This phenomenon can be measured, predicted, and applied to science.

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Origin

Environmental adaptation allowed life to evolve in extreme environments on Earth. Intelligence is an adaptive trait that originates from primitive functioning, evolving beyond any other.

Intelligence in humans seeks to defy evolutionary forces of biology by adapting extreme environments to the organism.

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Aspects

  • Human Will
    • Willpower
    • Overcoming adversity through sheer will to succeed and learn more about oneself
    • Human will stems from the observation of the human spirit
  • Planning and Preparation
    • Ability to overcome adversity or surviving calamities, either as individuals or as a group
    • Civilization develops when groups of individuals observe the human spirit in action
  • Organization
    • Serves to create complex obstacles
    • Great social catastrophes occur that occasionally stagnate or destroy civilizations
    • Social and political constructs that allow technology and quality of life to improve
    • We collectively observe the human spirit in action through the development and organization of social sciences
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Results

Positive results of the aspects of the human spirit lead to progress. The reward of progressing in these aspects is a deeper understanding of the natural world and better ways to adapt it for our needs.

The human spirit drives us to choose risk based on probable rewards. Without the drive of the human spirit to test our abilities to adapt to new environments, we risk suffering the fate of species that do not have intelligence: extinction.

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The Soul

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The Soul (religious interpretation)

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The soul is the immaterial spirit or essence of a person. It is usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality. It can be synonymous with the mind or the self.

In theology, the soul is often believed to live on after the person's death, and some religions believe that God creates souls. In some cultures, non-human living things and inanimate objects are believed to have souls.

The terms soul and spirit are sometimes used interchangeably, although the soul may be viewed as worldlier and less transcendent aspect of a person than the spirit.

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Philosophy

The Ancient Greeks used the same word for "alive" as they did for "ensouled". Some of the earliest Western philosophical views pointed out that full "aliveness" and the soul were conceptually linked.

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Plato

Plato considered the soul to be the essence of a person (or a being) that decides how we behave, an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die, the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies.

The Platonic Soul consists of three parts:

  • The Logos
    • Mind, nous, or reason
    • Equates to the mind
    • Allows for logic to prevail and for the optimization of balance
  • The Thymos
    • Emotion, spiritedness, or masculine
    • Comprises our emotional motive
    • If left unchecked, it leads to hubris
  • The Eros
    • Appetitive, desire, or feminine
    • Equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs
    • If left unchecked, it drives us to hedonism in all forms
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Aristotle

Aristotle defined the soul as the core essence of a being, arguing against its having a separate existence. He did not consider the soul as a separate, ghostly occupant of the body; it was an actuality of the living body, unable to attain immortality.

He did believe, however, that the intellect, which he viewed as part of the soul, was eternal and separable from the body.

Aristotle believed the soul had four parts (powers) of the soul.

  • Calculative and Scientific Parts
    • On the rational side
    • Used for making decisions
  • Desiderative and Vegetative Parts
    • On the irrational side
    • Responsible for identifying out needs
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Later Philosophical Views

  • Avicenna
    • Muslim philosopher-physician
    • Immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature and not a purpose for it to fulfill
    • Viewed the soul as the final intellect
    • Soul originated from the heart
  • Saint Thomas Aquinas
    • Saw the soul as the first principle of the body
    • Soul is not corporeal
    • Soul had an operation separate from the body and could not subsist without the body
    • Soul could not be destroyed in any natural process
  • James Hillman
    • Soul refers to the antagonistic component of a person
    • Believed that religion and humanistic psychology tend to the spirit at the expense of the soul
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Christianity

Religions around the world view the soul as a creation of God.

Some Christians view the soul as the immortal essence of a human, and that after death, God either rewards or punishes the soul. Others consider the soul to be the force of life, which ends in death, and is restored in the resurrection.

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Roman Catholic Belief

  • Defines the soul as the innermost aspect of humans, which is of the greatest value in them, by which they are most especially in God's image (soul signifies the spiritual principle in humans)
  • At the moment of death, the soul either goes to Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell
    • Purgatory: place of atonement for sins that one goes through to pay the temporal punishment for post-baptismal sins that have not been atoned for by sufferings during one's earthly life
    • Heaven: permanent paradise
    • Hell: permanent torture
  • The soul is created immediately by God (creationist view of the origin of the soul)
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Other Christian Beliefs

Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence but do not generally believe in purgatory. They believe that at death, God judges each soul individually and then sends them either to Heaven or to Hell.

Other Christian denominations believe that the soul:

  • Goes to sleep at the time of death and stays asleep until the Last Judgment
  • Lies in sleep with the body in death until Jesus comes
  • Leaves the body and returns to God at the time of death, with its fate resting solely with God
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Science

Neuroscientists and biologists believe that the mind and the consciousness is the operation of the brain. Much of the scientific study relating to the soul has been involved in investigating the soul as a human belief or as a concept that shapes cognition and understanding of the world, rather than as an entity in and of itself.

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Also on tinWiki

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External Links


Relevant discussion threads on AboveTopSecret.com

AboveTopSecret.com's threads dedicated to this discussion:
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