Quest for the Soul

[It] will come by slow degrees and the ray of deliverance will shine forth gradually.⁴¹

With establishment of the modern State of Israel, messianism seems to have become of less interest.

Soul in Scripture

In Judaism emphasis has always been placed on scriptural exegesis rather than philosophical speculation, and discussions of concepts like the soul were almost totally lacking during the Biblical period. However, the exami-nation of scripture provides important clues and helps us understand how the notion of a soul developed over time. Three Hebrew words translate roughly as “soul” or “spirit”: nephesh, ruach, and neshamah. Sometimes these words overlap in meaning, while at other times there are hints of im-portant differences.

Nephesh

Nephesh (#pn) occurs 744 times in the Old Testament, and overwhelmingly the editors of the King James Bible translated it as “soul.” But in the Torah, nephesh often meant simply “living creature,” without distinction between man and animals. It was frequently used in conjunction with chai (yx), which meant “life” or “alive.” For example, Genesis tells us: “God created great whales, and every living [chai] creature [nephesh].”⁴² In the next chapter where we read: “man [Adam] became a living soul,”⁴³ “living soul” corresponds to precisely the same Hebrew phrase as “living creature.” Both Adam and the animals were alive: they had vitality. The nephesh was not something separate from the physical nature but an aspect or attribute of it.

Nephesh began to acquire the meaning of “soul,” as we would understand it, only in the later sections of the Old Testament, the Nevi’im and the Ketuv. In Psalms we find: “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake,”⁴⁴ “Praise the LORD, O my soul,”⁴⁵ and in Ezekiel: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”⁴⁶ Nevertheless, the association.

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thermostat, is in some sense conscious of its environment. If Gaia, or the universe for that matter, is a “mind,” the conceptual jump needed to accept purpose is much shorter. A cognitive entity can express purpose or intent. The cognitive process may be internal or external to the system. If it is ex-ternal, one final link is needed to bridge the gap between the nonphysical and the physical: a mechanism for the transmission of force. Brain, Mind, and Soul Mind and Soul René Descartes, leading protagonist of the modern dualistic school of phi-losophy, is credited with the famous statement: Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). This statement contrasted with the Buddha’s conclusion, after a long period of contemplation, that the self is illusory.50 Be that as it may, Descartes acknowledged the existence of spirit, which he equated with God, and continued to believe in a soul. In his last major work, The Pas-sions of the Soul, published in 1650, he asserted that soul and body were composed of dissimilar substances and contact between them was minimal. In fact the two came into contact at only one point: the pineal gland, which he termed a “double gland.” The body was little more than an automaton, whose various organs and muscles were manipulated by “animal spirits” that circulated through the body. Descartes emphasized the role of freewill, and rejected the notion that righteousness depends on divine grace. The Jewish-born philosopher Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) accepted the Cartesian notion of an association between soul and mind, but he re-jected the notion of soul–body dualism and also questioned the reality of freewill. In Ethics 51 he argued that there is but one, infinite substance, of which thought and extension are only attributes. Neither Soul nor body is a substance, but each is a property of the one substance. In fact, what we call “soul” is simply the “Idea of Body.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) proposed the theory of the prees-tablished harmony between the soul and body. He claimed that God does not need to bring about man's action by means of his thoughts, or to wind some sort of clock in order to reconcile the two; rather, the Supreme Watch-maker has so exactly matched body and soul that they have been in mutual