Monday, June 18, 2007

Soul Weight - Does human weight depend on his consciousness ??

History: I was discussing about 'mass' and 'weight' with my wife, Sowmya and my brother in law, Sunil. It came up when physics topic regarding acceleration due to gravity was being discussed. Near earth's pole our we weigh more and near equator we weigh less. It suddenly struck me and asked 'Why dead body weighs more as compared to when he was living?'.


Sowmya: Air goes inside body and air weight increases the body weight.


It made lot of sense and it was a consensus.

Argument:
My theory was: Human weight depends on his consciousness. By mind's power he can generate a force against gravity and thus he weighs little less than actual weight. When he dies, the weight immediately increases a little, i.e. before even air occupies the body. This also gives a support for those stories where we hear people can sit and walk on water.

Sunil: Body's weight is not at all dependent on consciousness.


Very interesting topic huh !

Your thought ??:

Please do let me know what you think in this theory??

Googling:
Today I was googling on body weight and related topics. Did not get anything on these lines, but I got another very interesting article, which tries to prove that Human Soul has weight :-)

Reference: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Religion (Soul Man)

In the above link, Dr. MacDougall tries convey following on the basis of his experiments with dying people:

1. Human Soul has a weight of 3/4 of an ounce
2. Only human beings have souls and no other animals do. He tested on Dog and he draws the verdict
3. He also tries to captures Soul's photo using X-Rays
4. He claims Soul to be a Physical substance

Hindu Philosophy:
As we all know Hindu philosophy has explained a lot on 'Atman' - The Soul. Some of the points derived from Hindu Philosophy which contradicts Dr. MacDougall's theory:

1. Atman is niraakaara (Formless), nirvikaara (unchangeable), nirguna (No Attributes), anaadi (Birth less) and ananta (Endless). This contradicts that Soul has any weight, colour, visibility, Form. So this completely contradicts, that soul is a physical entity

2. According to Dwaita siddhanta Atman has 2 forms, Jeevaathma and Paramatma. Jeevatma is the one which gives life. Or it can be considered as Life. So it clearly contradicts, that animal does not have soul. All living beings has Souls

Please share your thoughts..

10 comments:

Kishan said...

Great THought...

Let me think...

Karthik CS said...

@Kishan:

Anna bondu .. where are you.. If this thought is waking you up, then it has reached 'Saarthakya'

avinash said...

Why not a more scientific reason for it mate? Why does it have to be karma, consciousness and the soul always :)

Anyways, where is it established that a dead body weighs more than its living self? Does it feel more heavy? then the link below should answer ur question. http://www.anyqa.com/Other/1233-general-2.html

On the other topic
[quote]
2. According to Dwaita siddhanta Atman has 2 forms, Jeevaathma and Paramatma. Jeevatma is the one which gives life. Or it can be considered as Life. So it clearly contradicts, that animal does not have soul. All living beings has Souls
[/quote]
Would you say plants have jeevathama? If so, woudn't killing plants for food be wrong? If not, are u contradicting scientific proof of plants being living creatures? /:)

yest dina agitu nin thale thindu :))

- Avinash

Karthik CS said...

@Avi:

thu l***r. I agree plants have jeevaatma and we cut and eat. To live you need to eat life. This is not the forum to discuss veg and non-veg aayta? When we discuss that please come with all these contradicting points. elli hodru alle barteeyallo.

@All: Avi and myself used to be neighbours. We both used to study for BE exams together. He is a 'Proud Non-Vegeterian' and I am proud 'Vegeterian'. We used to fight a lot on these lines. This is just to give history why Avi is deviating like this :-)

Karthik CS said...

There are some offlines discussions happening in Swastik forum. Let me put all of them together:

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Karthik C S karthik_c_s@yahoo.com
To: swastik@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 6:00:15 PM
Subject: Re: [swastik] New Blog Entry: Soul Weight - Does human weight depend on his consciousness ??


OK guys.. there are two different aspects here.



1. Feeling lighter or heavier
2. Actual weight itself

The first one is not the what I have expressed. My argument is, weight itself vary with your mental situation. Thats why I have written 'Exerting a force against gravity'. You Feel light usually when you are happy, when you breath longer or when 'Enne' goes inside :-) .. But how about actual weight. Does it really remain independed of your mental situaltion ?

How jobless I am .. thinking so much on silly things.

Regards
Karthik
----- Original Message ----
From: Jayaprasad Murthy jayaprasad.murthy@ gmail.com
To: swastik@yahoogroups .com
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 2:45:24 PM
Subject: Re: [swastik] New Blog Entry: Soul Weight - Does human weight depend on his consciousness ??

i second your thought Sri. well said. But it all depends on a person with a given situation. May be Kar words are based on that.
On 6/20/07, Machani, Sridhar sridhar.machani@ hp.com wrote:

I think it does. As with most other things we deal with, human weight is relative and it varies with every different perception - such as where we stand (literally and otherwise), how we/others feel/expect/ wish, etc.

For me, human weight almost entirely depends on how we feel about ourselves at that moment. We feel "lighter" or "heavier" accordingly. Which is a state of mind, or if you prefer to call it, "consciousness" .

Sri


From: swastik@yahoogroups .com [mailto:swastik@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Machani, Sridhar
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 5:58 PM
To: swastik@yahoogroups .com
Subject: RE: [swastik] New Blog Entry: Soul Weight - Does human weight depend on his consciousness ??


Kar, I read this post yesterday and my instant thought was - "how/why
does it matter?" But I must appreciate the fact that you've got some
'intelligent' company to discuss such things in the first place!

Alright, here's what I think now...hmmm, still thinking.

Sri

-----Original Message-----
From: swastik@yahoogroups .com [mailto:swastik@yahoogroups .com] On Behalf
Of Karthik C S
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 4:10 PM
To: swastik@yahoogroups .com
Subject: [swastik] New Blog Entry: Soul Weight - Does human weight
depend on his consciousness ??

http://karthikcs. blogspot. com/2007/ 06/soul-weight- does-human- weight-depend- on.html

Regards
Karthik


.

--
Best Regards,
Jayaprasad
--Ajaata Shatru :)

satishds said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
satishds said...

Basically plants dont have a Central Nervous system, So they cant interpret pain . They are not "Creatures" . They are called flora and all animals have CNS and they can experience pain. there is no Term called killing plants!!

Anonymous said...

right, then have u ever noticed this?

1. A plant mobilising its chemical defenses when attacked by an insect?
2. When a leaf is infected by a pathogenic fungus, might the rest of the plant wish to bolster its chemical and enzymatic defenses against the spread of the pathogen
3. Plant's tissue injuries corrected either by dying or healing.

A miracle I presume that they do all this without a CNS or its equavilent!! They don't feel *like us*, but it would be a mistake to say that they *don't feel*.

Sounds like you are clearly not addressing the issue....but it is merely defining the question out of existence.

Basically the point is, plants are living things and we "Kill" them for food. Whether its right or wrong, whether they feel pain, whether they kill humans in return and whether Devegowda is really literate are all infact valid questions but am afraid not under disucssion here.

Anonymous said...

good..u shud have understood first that they are all not in discussion first !!

Jen Kumar said...

I am a late bloomer on this post, but just found your blog today.

I do agree with the thought when you feel happier you feel lighter and feeling sad brings you down. You see this in US especially I am sure there must be some study correlating obesity with depression.

This can also get into the matters of self-esteem. The greater one's self esteem could correlate to feeling lighter- hence skinnier?

I also believe this is partly genetic and habitual. For instance if plenty of people in the family are overweight and thinking that that is beautiful then what can change that?

Also some correlate weight to emotional baggage- the more problems one thinks they have to face the more overweight they may be. Shedding pounds could equate shedding of old ideas no longer needed or even I have heard of people cleaning clutter from their homes who think getting rid of physical clutter helps get rid of their body clutter (weight)...

thanks for posting this.