Psyché

In the world there are certain words that we all know what they mean, but we cannot agree on their definition. If we use them, everyone will understand us and will know what we mean even though they understand them in a different way than we do. We do not all love the same, but we all know what love is. We do not all understand art in the same way, but we know when to use the term.

Something similar happens with the concept "soul". If I speak to you about the soul, surely all of you will be able to follow the conversation, even if you do not reach the same conclusions as me, but you will be able to understand what I mean.

Throughout history, the great philosophers have defined the soul in multiple ways. And not only that, but some have also even dared to place it in some part of the human body. For many people, abstract concepts become tremendously complicated and I deduce that from there arises the need to find a place for the soul. It is a way of shaping it.

We nearly agree that the soul is what moves us, what pushes us, what defines us and forms our personality and consciousness. Many people would place it in the brain. We could say that the soul is born from neural connections and that, after all, soul and thought are one. Others, perhaps, would be more passionate and less rational and would place it in the heart. The soul is what makes us feel, what drives us. Someone might even take it to the stomach. It is possible that the soul is more part of impulse than reason.

But can we really locate something that is incorporeal and does not have a universal definition? Moreover, religion has been defending for centuries that the soul is independent of the body. It is about our “I”, our “psyche” trapped in a piece of matter that is detached the moment it stops working and being useful to it (the soul would therefore be a motor) and, then, depending on whether that soul has sown goodness among the others or not, it reaches a pleasant place or one where it will experience eternal suffering.

Are we still us if we are only soul? What if we are only body? Or is it just us if we share both? Can our soul invade other spaces? After all, as beliefs express it, the soul is a kind of parasite or the body is its prison. Perhaps the body itself is that material manifestation of the soul that we are looking for so much. It may not be in any specific place. It may be that, finally, the soul is being seen in all our appearance.