/7

Ok, this gets a bit heavy now, if you don't understand the following skip over it, certainly don't waste your time, it is simply here to give some substance to what we have been leading up to, in the previous sections, I hope to make it more intelligible as we progress through this work and by the end of this book you will have a deeper understanding of the question we have been looking at, namely, Who are we? 

“Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) understood the soul to be the first actuality of the living body. 

Consequent to this, he distinguished three orders of life: plants, which feed and grow; animals, which add sensation to the operations of plants; and humans, which add intellect to the operations of animals. 

Concerning the human soul, his epistemological theory required that, since the knower becomes what he knows, the soul is definitely not corporeal—if it is corporeal when it knows what some corporeal thing is, that thing would come to be within it. Therefore, the soul has an operation which does not rely on a body organ, and therefore the soul can exist without a body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings is a subsistent form and not something made of matter and form, it cannot be destroyed in any natural process.The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Aquinas' elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the First Part of the Summa Theologica.”

Another writer puts it this way :

“In many religious, philosophical and mythological traditions, the soul is the incorporeal essence of a living being.”

Now let’s tone things down to more normal language as I have a great dislike of language which obscures meaning by failing to use plain speech. This is not the same as dumbing down ideas, but we have to be able to express concepts in everyday language otherwise we fail on every level of communication.

If you go back over the previous sections of this book then you will clearly see, at least I hope you can or I have failed miserably, that the answer, the thread, the idea contained within each exercise or description can be reduced to this one word, soul.

This is who you see when you look in the mirror. You see yourself on some level as you really are, your true self which has no bodily physical existence, your essence, the thing that make you who you are, a unique soul.

I think you need to step back now, before reading any further,  and draw breath as we have come a long way in a very short time and yet our journey has barely begun.