Your soul – a part of you separate from your physical body, yet still distinctly ‘you.’
It may remain after your heart has stopped beating or your breath ceases, it may not. Many religions believe it to be an immortal essence, to continue to a sort of afterlife or be reborn again in this world.
Metaphorically, we all know what having a ‘heavy’ soul is. Perhaps you’ve wronged someone, or you feel like you’ve been wronged. Maybe you’ve lied, stolen, cheated, or pillaged. You can feel the twisted knot, tangled deep, deep within yourself a place unreachable by any surgery or medication. That’s a heavy soul.
But did you know your soul has mass (physical weight)?
An old experiment from the 1900s, patients were placed on a scale just before their death. At the instantaneous moment of their death, each patient lost a small, yet notable, amount of weight. Yes, really.
Although each person lost a slightly different amount, the average was calculated to be around ¾ of an ounce, or 21 grams.
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In Egyptian mythology, ‘weighing of the heart,’ was a way to determine the fate of the deceased. In the Duat (the underworld), the deceased’s heart was depicted on one end of the scale against a feather representing truth and justice. Judged by Anubis, a heart too heavy or light would tip the scale, and the soul would be rejected and devoured by Ammit. Nom Nom Nom.
Greek and Christian beliefs reflect a similar fate. Both have their own end-of-life ritual judgement, ‘weighing of souls,’ for the former and ‘Last Judgement,’ for the latter.
Basically, whatever your beliefs, you’re going to be judged in this world and in the next.
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Based on our current, flawed explanation of gravity, anything with mass has a gravitational force. So if our soul has weight, could this explain our attraction to other people? Can your soul physically draw another soul closer?
More importantly, where does our soul go when it leaves the body? If our soul lives with or without our fleshy homes, why do we have bodies at all? Why have a non-immortal vessel for an immortal soul? What awaits us?
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2/31 #YearOfChallenge