.Please if you could give your definition as short as possible. — dimosthenis9

Spark.

So whats your short answer to define Spirit? — dimosthenis9

Mind-stuff.

Mind stuff you mean like it's an mind illusion and Spirit doesn't exist? Or like you call all minds functions Spirit?

Mind stuff you mean like it's an mind illusion and Spirit doesn't exist? Or like you call all minds functions Spirit?

I simply meant to say that whatever spirit is, falls under the category of mind. Spirit is another aspect of what we broadly consider the mental.

And no, I do not think mind is an illusion at all. Mind is the most immediately known feature of existence we have as sentient creatures.

Spark. — James Riley

Brevity, but that calls out for a volume of supporting commentary.

Or, not what it is, because it's an abstract descriptive term, and therefore nothing, but how it is defined, and that has varied and changed over time. Roll your own. "Spark" is imo excellent; Heraclitus would have approved. The Greeks had pneuma. "What's pneuma," you ask? Well, breath, for starters; beyond that you're on your own.

Ok thanks

No rebuttal? :joke:

Sure thing. Hope you find a satisfying answer.

Well do you actually believe in soul existence? And if yes is there a way that mind and soul communicate? By the way give me your definition of soul also if you believe in it. I know I bombed you with question but you asked for it man. Sorry. Hahaha

My answer may not help because you are asking for the briefest possible answer to the idea of spirit and I have started reading a book on the meaning of spirit, by Joel Kovel, 'History and Spirit' (1999). It surveys the use of the word ranging from its use by Hegel, its use within religion, the occult and in psychoanalysis. I have only just started the book, so I am unable to explain it fully at present.

When I have read the book, which may take a while, because I have several on the go, I may write on your thread or create my own thread with my own questions. However, the thing which I am puzzled about is why do you want the briefest definition when it is such a complex topic?

I'm no biologist, but it's my understanding the firing of a synapse involves electricity, and that the body has electrical impulses firing all the time, in the heart and whatever. I don't know when this starts, at conception, or even before. But I can imagine the creation of everything absent a spark, in which case we have a meat bag.

How, why, when, what, I don't know, but I think we get a jump start and then POW! there you have life. I think that spark is eternal and it doesn't go away before or after death. It may change forms, it may flip to matter and back again, or not. But I think it comes into us, branching off but connected, and then flows back into the whole when we die. From death's perspective, we never left, we were never separate, we where always part of it, like a finger to a hand, a hand to an arm, and arm to a torso, a torso to a human, a human to All, and everything else. Sometimes All will stare at it's finger and say "This is good." And it is. Except when it's not.

It may be total BS, but I like the visual of a mass of enzymes and whatnot floating around as a glob in an ancient sea and then BAM! a lighting bolt comes down out of a storm cloud and the rest is history.

However, the thing which I am puzzled about is why do you want the briefest definition when it is such a complex topic? — Jack Cummins

I just saw a video on LinkIn of a chick picking up a snake and moving it from an urban walkway over to a water body and some reeds, while other people freaked. The caption: "Any fool can do something complex; it takes a genius to do something simple." (Pete Seeger) Spark! I'm a genius! LOL!

That's why we're here and not some other place, to ask questions and argue about stuff! :cool:

I think we use words such as "soul", "spirit" and the like to attempt to highlight one or another aspect of the mental. Thus you can say "that got to my soul", "that's a spiritual experience", etc. I don't think "soul", "spirit" and so on pick out independent aspects of the world.

If I had to make up a definition of soul, it would be something like the emotive aspect of something touching my experience in a specific way. So I'd say a song reaches my soul, because it interacts with me in a very specific way. I would not say that a song reached my mind. While strictly true, it's a strange statement to make.

But, I could be quite wrong about all of this.

"A thunderbolt steers all these things." Heraclitus. Pretty good company.

I think that the simple and complex come together in a strange way. Life provides simple solutions but explaining how it works is far more intricate. But, there are probably different angles and levels of analysis, and some more useful at various times, and according to the needs of the person asking the questions.

:sparkle:

:100:

When you read the book just write what is the idea you got for what spirit is If you want of course. The reason I want the simplest answer is cause exactly since it is such a complex issue with so many aspects still I havent found a definition that is clear without huge analysis. Cause even in great thinkers and philosophers books they might use Spirit many times and in many cases they use to describe different things. Using and thinking of Spirt like a geeeeneral term that includes everything isn't enough for me. Of course it's a huge matter. But what is the meaning you give to it?You can't use terms like spirit and soul referring to different issues without giving a definition of what exactly is that you believe spirit is. And by you I don't mean you of course I mean anyone who use these terms.

So as you said the emotive aspect of an experience you have like the song you mentioned. But How it interacts with your emotions. The process that the song through your mind "creates" that emotionally energy around you isn't a indication of soul existence? Or you believe that even the way it interacts to you emotions is a pure job of mind? Well for me the shortest definition for soul is :That Soul is the universal energy inside human. And that kind of energy has some to do with the soul system of human. In a way it is the Aura that covers the person. That energy that interacts with human feelings in unconscious way. But as you said it might be totally wrong.. Lol

Yes, I thought that my answer may not be the one you are looking for, so I will save my own reading for anything which I write. Personally, I use the word spirit with caution because I see it as a rather fuzzy term which can be used to describe one's internalised experiences of reality to that of ghosts. Saying that, the notion of soul is equally ambiguous, especially as many query the existence of an actual soul. However, my own working definition of spirit would probably be along the lines of: the aspect of oneself which appears to be subtley different from the domain of the physical body, and probably arising from the animating lifeforce.

We don't understand how we move a finger. We just move it.

So if you now go "up" to things as complicated as emotions and music, our understanding is almost zero. We have no clue.

It's not clear how emotions interact with a mind like ours. You can say that about the soul if you want, but it amounts to saying something like "This phenomenon S, is energy for this thing we have mind".

I don't know what that means.

I think you'll need a more clear definition or idea of what a soul could be, and how such a thing could possibly be energy for the mind.

Spark. — James Riley

More: fire.

"Spirit" (breath) is rhythm & melody (dancing & singing), child's play (laughter) & imagining

"And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you" ...

Yet more than imaginary, "spiritual" means ecstatic (i.e. self sans ego (how unbounded immanence feels)). :death: :flower:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d8QzACfFGlw :fire:

Breath.

Anything further just muddies the picture.

Buzzkill. S/he only just got here, fella. :smirk:

So we need humour them?

spirit (n.)
mid-13c., "animating or vital principle in man and animals," from Anglo-French spirit, Old French espirit "spirit, soul" (12c., Modern French esprit) and directly from Latin spiritus "a breathing (respiration, and of the wind), breath; breath of a god," hence "inspiration; breath of life," hence "life;" also "disposition, character; high spirit, vigor, courage; pride, arrogance," related to spirare "to breathe," perhaps from PIE *(s)peis- "to blow" (source also of Old Church Slavonic pisto "to play on the flute"). But de Vaan says "Possibly an onomatopoeic formation imitating the sound of breathing. There are no direct cognates."
Meaning "supernatural immaterial creature; angel, demon; an apparition, invisible corporeal being of an airy nature" is attested from mid-14c.; from late 14c. as "a ghost" (see ghost (n.)). From c. 1500 as "a nature, character"; sense of "essential principle of something" (in a non-theological context, as in Spirit of St. Louis) is attested from 1680s, common after 1800; Spirit of '76 in reference to the qualities that sparked and sustained the American Revolution is attested by 1797 in William Cobbett's "Porcupine's Gazette and Daily Advertiser."
From late 14c. in alchemy as "volatile substance; distillate;" from c. 1500 as "substance capable of uniting the fixed and the volatile elements of the philosopher's stone." Hence spirits "volatile substance;" sense narrowed to "strong alcoholic liquor" by 1670s. This also is the sense in spirit level (1768). Also from mid-14c. as "character, disposition; way of thinking and feeling, state of mind; source of a human desire;" in Middle English freedom of spirit meant "freedom of choice." From late 14c. as "divine substance, divine mind, God;" also "Christ" or His divine nature; "the Holy Ghost; divine power;" also, "extension of divine power to man; inspiration, a charismatic state; charismatic power, especially of prophecy." Also "essential nature, essential quality." From 1580s in metaphoric sense "animation, vitality."
According to Barnhart and OED, originally in English mainly from passages in Vulgate, where the Latin word translates Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah. Distinction between "soul" and "spirit" (as "seat of emotions") became current in Christian terminology (such as Greek psykhe vs. pneuma, Latin anima vs. spiritus) but "is without significance for earlier periods" [Buck]. Latin spiritus, usually in classical Latin "breath," replaces animus in the sense "spirit" in the imperial period and appears in Christian writings as the usual equivalent of Greek pneuma. Spirit-rapping is from 1852.

Spirit is that within and above us that illumines our mind from within and provides us with awareness of ourselves and of other things.

No, just my/ourselves.

Well, I found some of the other replies quite amusing....

Spirit is chi - our awareness, knowledge or understanding of the flow of energy through a structured system. Simply or naively put (in common English), it’s breath, as Banno says. But it’s really the variable process behind breath - the imagined possibility or perceived potential - which we refer to as ‘spirit’. Breath is actual evidence of such. It’s where we must start in terms of awareness. I don’t believe it’s the most accurate definition, though.