The health of the soul

I am fascinated by the unknown, the esoteric and the mysterious.

For many there is no mystery, we live we die, end of story.

Not me.

Since I've had a health issue I've read books, thousands of them. Quite a few from the alternative section in the book shop.

When you do this over the course of several years they begin to soak in, permeate and be absorbed.

I have ended up with a very simple yet unprovable thought; there is more to life than death.

I cannot shake it even with the best intentions of my logical mind.

In my defense my logical mind has had help. Mr. Dawkins and a few others have tried, but I could not and cannot be dissuaded.

I'm not an evangelist on the matter quite simply because the in-comprehensiveness of the issue has me stumped.

How can you explain what is unquantifiable, especially in the age of data, data, data!

I am not, equally to the point, talking about faith or religion as I can't explain them either, even living in such a holy country, Ireland.  

I'm flirting around this issue looking for the relationship of this fascinating topic with that of health and well-being.

Does it make a difference to health in relation to believing or not believing in something more. 

Research on this is interesting. If you Google “Proof of the soul” in google scholar, 668,000 academic papers come up. 

Similarly use google scholar to search ”Proof, there is no soul” and you get somewhere in the region of 680,000. Quite close and no doubt a lot of irrelevant studies involved in both.

After reading exactly zero of these papers I can say with some confidence the case is wide open, debate continues and nothing is a fact. 

Therefore I believe it is a personal judgement. 

Belief in the soul, life after death or that we are merely a good carrion for worms is up to you. 

I take a little comfort in my ignorance and have decided to believe there is more to this life than death and a full stop. 

We are, all of us, going to die however, if we can see hope and belief beyond those final moments we can also rest easier when dealing with serious health issues.

To me, equally importantly, when our prognosis is not good, loved ones take great comfort in knowing that life after death means we don’t really die but maybe “slip into another room”, unseen but loved all the same. 

That warm feeling that death is an end to suffering, but thankfully not an end to memories of the life that was lived. 

So, with or without health issues, live a good life.

Then at your end with or without belief you leave behind a world that is a bit better because you were in it. 

This is an ideology both God and Dawkins can agree on.