And do believe that I, this random guy on the internet has a soul
I personally don’t believe that I anyone else has a soul. From my standup I don’t se any reason to believe that our consciousness and our so called “soul” would be any more then something our brain is making up.
That’s a very broad question that can mean different things to different people. Answering it and understanding each other is hard due to the semantic complexity. It also contains an emotional dimension that cannot be described analytically.
Here’s my take: Yes I do believe that everyone has a soul and it comes in two intertwined flavors; the nonlocal and the local soul.
The local soul is local in space and time. It’s what makes you unique. For example your beliefs, thoughts, actions and so on.
The nonlocal soul isn’t localized in space or time, but rather exists on a fundament level just like say quantum fields seem to do.
Within all of us exists a dynamic between the two, from rejection to enlightenment. One isn’t better than the other, it is simply a duality that exists and that is meaningful to all of us in some way.
I also believe that time and space are an illusion. Our perception is supervenient on entropy. For example when someone dies they seem to be gone, but they are actually still alive in the past. And so this unifies the local with the non local.
Looking forward to replies.
Do you believe that we all share one nonlocal soul? Also the terms local and nonlocal doesn’t really make sense if you don’t believe in space and time, but it doesn’t really matter (:
Your first question is intriguing. The short answer is yes, but maybe not the way you imagine.
Imagine you could instantly copy yourself. Since there are two people now each with their own subjective experience, which is changing them over time, you can say that there are now two local souls. If one dies, something is lost, even if the other keeps living. That what is shared between them is the non local soul. It isn’t really a thing, but rather the quality of awareness.
That’s spatial locality and it’s the same for temporal locality. Say the current you vs the you 5 minutes ago. They both have different local souls in a certain sense, and their own subjective experience.
You could also imagine that with the multiverse, where every possibility splits off like branches on a giant tree, and so you are constantly split off into countless versions of yourself.
So space and time exist and introduce locality. However at the end of the day it all comes from the same fountain, and each droplet just lives in its own grand illusion. That is not to say that it has no meaning, mind you.