Do you have a Soul !?!

Well, man has always been tried to demystify the secrets of life and death. There has been quite a few scientific research, theories and findings on this too. But all that aside, as a reality of life, the soul concept has been accepted in one form or other, in almost all the religions of the world, and because of this, even some scientific researches have been said to be initiated at many places. As a given, science always accepts only the truth and thrives to find the reality out of every theory or belief, thus in turn bringing to light the real truth.

Thus before starting on with any sort of research on the soul concept, it should be mandatory that we examine the truth behind the existence or non-existence of the soul in the first place. To get the real picture of the same, all we have in hands are the scriptures written over the ages and followed more or less blindly by various religions of the world.

Lets start with the chief religion of my country, Hinduism. A holy scripture, Geeta, clearly describes the soul as nirguna (Devoid of any properties/character), and so does most of the holy scriptures of other religions as well. While some other holy scriptures also mention that the soul of every human has a character of its own(saguna). So there’s a clear case of contradiction within the different holy scriptures of a single religion. This definitely calls for an immediate attention towards study of the gunas (Properties/characters) and nirgunas(lack of properties/characters) of the atma (soul).

The Hindu scriptures describes the soul as that of two types: jeevatma (soul of the living) and paramatma (soul of the almighty). Even the jeevatma is divided into two types: duratma (the bad soul) and the good soul. Well, this shows a define ‘character’ of the soul in the first place.

Post demise rituals
Almost every religion of the world makes it mandatory to perform some or the other sort of a ritual to bring peace to the soul of the dead human. This clearly indicates that the soul has a direct connection with these rituals. Now, if the soul is said to have left the physical body (as THE cause of death), then how exactly can it possibly be affected by the ‘worldly’ rituals, would be a definite question?

Moreover, these post-demise rituals are only performed for the dead human beings, which is biologically just another species out of the millions of species of living beings on this planet. Does any religion specify the necessity of any such rituals for a dead animal or (duh) plants as well? I guess nope. Does that mean only the human beings have a soul? If yes, then how on earth do those other millions of species live, soulless? Oh well, coming back to the Hindu scriptures, many deities and other great priests are said to have had their reincarnated avatars on the earth as animals other than humans. So the animals must also have souls, otherwise this could not have been possible at all. But again, even in those scriptures, there is absolutely no mention of any such post-demise rituals for these so called animal avatars as well. Point to ponder.
Again, in the same rituals, there has been clear distinction between souls who’ve ‘received’ these rituals and those who haven’t, ’cause only those who do, can attain the heaven and not those who
didn’t. That’s the primary reason for the necessity of such elaborate, costly and sometimes even painful series of rituals to bring peace to the souls of the dead and to ensure they reach the heaven. This can clearly be stated as one of the ‘properties’ of the soul.
Digging even further, every religion (and even communities with a religion) have a more or less different series of rituals clearly defined in their own holy scriptures, i.e. the souls ‘belonging’ to a specific religion will attain peace and heaven, only if they are treated with the ritual defined in that religion. This indicates, that the soul is well aware of the community, language, caste, religion etc. that it comes from and understands these pretty well. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been affected by those rituals. Another clear ‘property’ of the soul.
In some religions, like Hinduism itself, the post-demise rituals also involve sacrifice of some animals and dedication of its meat to soul along with many scented floral decorations and incense
sticks. Oh, do the souls roaming out of the bodies also have their senses of smell, vision, taste, etc. well intact? That’d make another nice ‘property’.
Hindu scriptures also mention clearly, that if a person of the lower caste (shudra) touches the corpse of a high caste person (like brahmins), then the brahmin‘s soul can never attain the moksha (heaven). Ok so the soul, that is obviously caste aware, doesn’t actually leave the brahmin‘s body even after his death and closely monitors the caste of every person touching the body. Or even if it has left the body, it still has a physical existence out of the body to be able to monitor the whole ritual process being performed with the body. This shows a definite ‘character’ of the soul.

Polymorphism, the soul way
Moving ahead, it is said that the ghosts are nothing but either the unsatisfied souls or those with some unfinished business. And quite obviously, as the souls cannot perform any task on the earth on their own, so they can ‘possess’ some human bodies. Well, has anybody heard of any animal (other than human) being possessed? Perhaps not, ’cause apparently souls can also recognize the species it wants to possess. And then, this possession theory also leads to a clear inference, that at a given point of time, a human body can ‘contain’ more than one souls. Isn’t that amazing?
You must also have heard of cases when some Siamese twins are born, who have more or less portion of their bodies joined together. Sometimes even the whole two babies have a single body with just two heads with two different brains. So, do they also have a common soul? If so, then it can mean that just like above inference, its also possible that a single soul can be shared by two bodies. In fact, many of these twins don’t survive the separation operation by doctors. Is it because the single soul couldn’t decide which body to take after separation, and thus left the bodies in confusion?

Reincarnation
This is again said to be one of the ‘properties’ of the soul only. Its written in many scriptures, that the souls are born again and again on the earth, or in other words, get recycled repeatedly. Even some religions, like Hinduism, takes this concept to the extent that the souls can be reincarnated in any form, even animals or humans (no mention of the plants, though). A human soul being reborn as an animal is indeed mentioned in the shastras (Hindu scriptures), but not elaborated enough to get many meaningful inferences out of them.
Coming to the real life, we do hear about numerous claims of reincarnation around the world. But all of them, amazingly, happen to be reincarnated in the same country, religion, and even caste, as their so called previous life. Is there a single claim of a person being reincarnated in Iraq, while his previous birth was as an American? Or anyone who was a Christian in the UK in the previous life, got reborn in a Buddhist family in Thailand? Nope… This again leads to the obvious inference, that the souls are well aware of the religion, caste, and even region they are born again and again. They never change these and always get recycled within these constraints. Another amazing ‘character’ of the soul.
Moreover, it is said that whatever deeds we do in life are actually done by the physical body on earth governed by the free will, and the soul, which is governed by god, is devoid of all the deeds done by the body. In that case why does the soul have to suffer in hell or enjoy in heaven depending on the physical body’s deeds? Moreover, the scriptures also say, that the person suffers the punishments of the wrong deeds of his/her previous life and will enjoy, in the next life, the fruits of this good deeds done in the present one. That means the soul does carry forward all those deeds from one life to the other. One more ‘property’ of the soul.
You know, that as a part of the marriage rituals in almost all the religions, the man ‘promises’ that “I’ll be your husband for many lives to come, and you’ll be my wife for all the lives”. How do you know, you’re going to be reincarnated as a man in your forthcoming lives, and she’ll be a women? Does soul has a gender ‘property’ too? Similarly, according to scriptures, kings get reincarnated in royal families only, and the same with priests, etc. A man who cleans your drains today will never get a rebirth in a royal family. Another clear case of carry forward the caste, religion, etc. ‘properties’.

Conclusion
These were just a few examples of the properties and characters of the soul, well described in the same holy scriptures that also claim the soul as being nirguna (devoid of property/character) and nirakar (devoid of shape). With all these open contradictions in the same scriptures, how can we even think of going ahead with any scientific research on the concept?
There is surely NO proof of the existence of the soul other than in those contradicting scriptures. The first question should then be, how did those writers of the scriptures come to know of the existence of the soul?
The only answer I can think of is, their imagination. The same imagination of a human being that gave birth to the invisible pink unicorn, and for that matter, the god.