The Soul, the Spirit, and the Supernatural

When people say that something is spiritual, they might mean "supernatural", they might mean "emotional", or they might mean a combination of the two. I think that "soul" and "spirit" mean about the same thing, and they both have more than one definition. You know, like "the soul of darkness" and "the spirit of '76". For our purposes, however, I think we can agree that the soul or spirit is the invisible part of a person that allegedly goes to Heaven or Hell when the person dies. Although people have tried, I don't think that anybody has succeeded in weighing, measuring, or otherwise quantifying the human soul. That means it's still in the realm of the supernatural.

A long time ago, the supernatural realm was really big, but it has gotten smaller each time somebody has discovered the true scientific nature of one of it's phenomena. For instance, thunder and lightning used to be considered supernatural, but now they aren't anymore. Then there are the gray areas about which a general consensus has not yet been reached. Two examples would be ESP and the near death experience. Some people consider them to be totally fictitious, others believe there must be a scientific explanation for them, and others believe that they are supernatural phenomena.

I thought you might be onto something when I mistakenly believed that you said you believed in a soul that was both natural and mortal. I don't know if I would agree with that, but it's something to think about. Long ago I had the idea that even God Himself might not be supernatural. (Notice I said "might not".) Lots of things are invisible, like electrons and oxygen, but nobody questions their existence or considers them to be supernatural. Okay, they are detectable and measurable with instrumentation, but they are invisible to the average guy on the street. Then there's those alternate universes, the existence of which has only been postulated. Are they supernatural?

I don't think we are always conscious of our dreams. Well, to even call it a dream, we would have to be unconscious. If we were conscious at the time, it would more properly be called a vision or a hallucination. Anyway, the experts say that we dream a lot more than we think we do, we just don't remember most of our dreams after we wake up. Did you ever notice how you sometimes vividly remember a dream when you first wake up, but the memory begins to fade almost immediately? If you were to write it down, you would have access to the memory later, but would you be remembering the dream itself or just your written description of it? This is probably for the best, if we remembered all of our dreams, our minds would be so full of dreams that there would be little room for anything else.