Got Soul?

It's 2:41...it's been a long week, but I can't sleep yet. After reading The first two meditations of Descartes I've been perplexed with the concept of a soul. So, I'll hunker down in the laundry room with some apple jacks and we'll see if I can get to the bottom of this. If not the bottom, somewhere. As long as I don't go in circles and some conclusion materializes I can call this blog post a success.
First of all, I have to state a grievance I have with Descartes concerning Meditations I and II. Aside from being terribly hard to follow, he makes a few contradictions. The most problematic for me is the many assumptions he makes concerning his religious background. This is not to bash his faith, in fact I admire it. This guy searches for answers through logic, yet he stays true to his roots. Bravo. However, listen to this:
" I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences" (Descartes, Med. I).

How can he build himself a new foundation in building a tower to the sun of knowledge mentioned centuries earlier in Plato's Republic if he constantly refers back to the assumptions implanted in his head by religious teachings?

For now, I'm not going to dwell on that. First and foremost this blog entry is to explore the notion of a soul. In our class discussion we came to the conclusion (however vague and ambiguous that conclusion may be) that the soul is not of this world. It is beyond the physical realm. Here's the trouble...I honestly don't know how we reached this assumption, and assumptions are something I would like to avoid all together. I called Descartes out for making assumptions, and I'm no hypocrite. So why isn't a soul a physical thing, or a thing at all? Dammit...Houston we have a problem: how do I know I have a soul?

Descartes "proves" that the soul...or mind (that's just his word for it) exists by first posing the idea that nothing physical exists. This is an undeniable possibility. Sure we could get into that Inception or Matrix mumbo jumbo, or I could just site a real life example from my own experiences. As a child I had chronic night-terrors, the psychological reasoning behind why I had these episodes is irrelevant and just another boring sob story, so I'll stray from that. However, these night-terrors felt like reality, just as sitting in front of this computer listening to the hum of the washing-machines feels like a present reality. Reality check: according to Descartes himself what I consider "reality" may be in question. In his Meditations, or from what I read of them (there's a ton, and they're all designed like a logic labyrinth), Descartes basically convinces himself that he could very well be dreaming; his physical body might not actually exist, or at least not as he perceived it during his writing. By this point I'm thinking get on with it already man, I get it, there's no obvious or easy way to prove or disprove that all of what I am currently doing (physically) is or isn't a dream. Blah, blah, yawn, snore.

Now Descartes may have a very round about way of making a point, but he is one smart son of a bitch. He makes the assertion that because he is doubting the existence of the physical realm he must exist, for how can something that doesn't exist doubt anything. Nothing does not doubt, nothing does not exist. So, to doubt=to exist. This existence is the existence of a "soul" or "mind". Why? Because if we doubt our physical bodies but believe we exist because of this doubt, what is our existence comprised of? The answer is beyond our realm of conception, so to understand it better, to label it, to sort of bound some of this wild discourse we call it the soul. Okay, it took long enough to justify the belief of our existence through the form of a soul...but what is it I'm actually blogging about here? I've lost sight in this thick fog of doubt.
Somehow Descartes, the guy that bases his existence on doubt, is still a believer in The Almighty. I can just see Professor McKinney clasping her hands together and establishing this point as "interesting" or "intriguing". Makes sense anyways, because I was certainly baffled, bewildered even, when I reached this conclusion.

I'm about to tread some dangerous waters here, walk a slippery slope, if you know what I mean. Know where I'm going with this? Give you a hint: Namaste. You've probably seen the movie Avatar (James Cameron's, not the last air bender), right? Remember how the big blue hippies monkey things say "I see you" to each other as a sign of respect and compassion? Yeah, that's essentially what Namaste means. Really when you say "Namaste" to someone you are acknowledging that the God in you recognizes the God in them. I'd love to connect this to the previously mentioned rough sketch of a soul. Wouldn't it be great to greet people by saying "Hi, my soul recognizes your soul". What a great ice-breaker...but can the connection be made? We'll see, I'm (obviously) spit balling here.

The Slippery Slope:

For the record, I am not trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, I am merely attempting to make a connection between the existence of our souls to the concept of The Almighty. We know have souls because we doubt our physical existence. This also suggests that these souls are beyond the physical realm, because for all we know the physical realm is an illusion. Therefore we must accept the existence of a realm beyond the one we can perceive. Good, I think I'm on the right track here. Now, I don't really want to get into where our souls came from, who/what created them, and why...I'm already on a slippery slope, that would just lube the cliff I'm climbing. I feel I'm at an impasse. Shit.

Okay, it's 4:03am...I have come to the conclusions (with the help of Descartes doubt) that I exist beyond this physical realm in the form of a soul, whatever that may be. Also I must accept that there is a realm beyond the physical, the one in which my soul resides. This realm may be related to the concept of Namaste and The Almighty, but that is way too much to tackle a few hours from day break.
I know I have a soul; successful blog post.

Namaste,

T