The human soul – fact or fable?

The second people hear the word ‘SOUL’, the first things that come to their minds are ghosts and spirits. This is a preconceived misconception as people usually confuse souls with ghosts, or more accurately poltergeists. People believe that the soul is stronger or more powerful than them and man has always feared things stronger than himself.

According to the Oxford dictionary, the soul is an immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal.

Bahá’u’lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the body, but is, in fact, immortal.

Most atheists think that the idea of the immortal material soul is just a fable spun by people to make sure they do good deeds. But, a group of German researchers headed by Duncan McDougall in 1988 performed an experiment in which they measured the weight of the human soul!

They took the help of 200 patients who were on the verge of death and put them on a highly sensitive industrialized weighing scale. Upon the death of each person they saw a very small amount of change in the weight which was exactly the same for all patients, the difference in the weight was 1/3000th of an ounce which is about 0.00944 g. They tried to link this to some physical deterioration occurring at the time of death, but it could only be attributed to being the weight of the human soul or some kind of external life force.

This theory started to seem very plausible to people and there have been many follow-throughs in this area ever since. One famous mention of this science was in Dan Brown’s book, the Lost Symbol, in 2009 where he has written about Noetic science. Although this has almost scientifically proven that the soul exists, many people don’t agree. When I come to think of it, where did the idea of a thing such as soul arise? I believe it has its roots the materialistic nature of man, who cannot accept the fact that all things eventually end.

People find comfort in knowing that their family, friends, and they themselves will live on. But, this view is contradictory to the general acceptance of the idea. People think that it is the spirituality in them that makes them believe in things such as the soul which is considered to be very pure; but I believe that somewhere in this idea, the materialistic nature of people comes into play. The fact that people have linked the soul to rebirth, where people can experience the material world again and again proves this thought.

I believe that people should come to terms with the fact that things end and that they may not have a chance at another lifetime. Even if this is proved wrong (although no one can know for sure), people will learn to live in the moment and have no regrets when their end arrives. This is not to say that rebirth occurs or does not occur, because that is one mystery that is not likely to be solved anytime soon, it is just to say that people should live in the present and not worry about things so far into the future.