Does the Human Soul really Weigh 21 Grams?

[Asgard]

though this notion has been a fixture of spiritual lore for some time now it would seem that far more investigation is required before any legitimacy can be applied to it.

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That the human body should be home to a physical soul which survived death was at one time rarely quest­ioned. Then came the advent of scientific disciplines such as anatomy, chemistry and physics, whose probing and measuring raised awkward questions about where in the body a soul could live and what physical form it could take. With no medical proof being forthcoming, in 1854 the German anatomist Rudolph Wagner suggested that there must be a “special soul substance” in the body, evidence of which should be sought out by experimentation. Wagner was much ridiculed for his beliefs, and some years later his rival Ernst Haeckel mocked that at the moment of death it might be possible to liquefy the soul by freezing it and then “exhibit it in a bottle as immortal fluid”.

The nature of a human soul was a much-discussed topic within Victorian psychical research communities, many of whose members were also eminent scientists. Different philosophical conclusions were reached, but none was based on empirical evidence, it being deemed too difficult to measure any of the soul’s presumed physical propert­ies. However, not everyone was prepared to accept this, and in the winter of 1896 Dr Duncan MacDougall, a Massachusetts-based surgeon, came up with a novel idea. “Why not,” he asked, “weigh on accurate scales a man at the very moment of death?”

MacDougall was a member of the American Society of Psychical Research and had a fascination with the idea that the human personality could survive death. Like others in his profession, he knew of no physical locat­ion within the body where the soul could be found but believed that it was “unthinkable that personality and continual personal identity should exist… and not occupy space”. He termed the hypothetical space occupied by the human personality the “soul substance” and argued that, because it did not leave the body until the moment of physical death, it must be held in place by an organic link. This, suggested MacDougall, meant that the soul substance probably had some form of mass and was “therefore cap­able of being detected at death by weighing a human being in the act of death”.


SOULS IN THE SCALES
By 1901, MacDougall had adapted a set of industrial beam scales (accurate to within five grams) so that one side held a platform onto which was placed a lightweight hospital bed while the other contained individual weights which could be added or subtracted to measure any change in mass. Once installed in his hospital, the surgeon then approached several terminally ill patients to ask if they would allow themselves to be weighed during the final hours of their life. On 10 April 1901, his chance came, and at 5.30pm a man “of the usual American temper­ament” and suffering from tuber­culosis was placed onto the apparatus. He was attended by at least four people, including MacDougall and Dr John Sproull, a sym­pathetic colleague. Like many suffering from this disease, the exhausted patient was calm and as he ebbed away, any change to his weight was noted.

MORE:http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3445/soul_catcher.html

[ElecGeekMom]

Fascinating concept. I've never heard of that before.

If we consider that gravity may be an EM phenomenon, then perhaps the "turning off" of the soul at death affects the way the physical body is influenced in its interaction with gravity.

[Grey Cloud]

Fascinating concept. I've never heard of that before.

If we consider that gravity may be an EM phenomenon, then perhaps the "turning off" of the soul at death affects the way the physical body is influenced in its interaction with gravity.

Hi Mom, [sorry, couldn't resist]
Your idea makes more sense than the OP but I would suggest that the soul has the (physical) body and at death the soul lets go of the body. The body stays where it belongs, i.e. here on Earth, and the soul returns whence it came.

[Scott MC]

The Vedic perspective (something that humans lived by for millenia) is that the soul is covered by what are called subtle and gross elements, in this order:

- ahankara - 'false ego', by which we think "I am man or woman, or fat or thin, or black or white, or a big this or that, Australian or Eskimo", etc
- intelligence - the discriminative faculty
- the mind - accepts and rejects. It is meant to function under the control of intelligence.....

The above are called the "subtle elements", and they accompany the soul when at 'death' it is forced to leave the body. Then there are the five gross elements (panca maha-bhuta)..

- "ether" - I strongly suspect that this is plasma
- air - air is fairly well understood(?)
- fire - Apart from is effects, it is barely understood by science and almost impossible to measure
- water - water is a big mystery to science
- earth - the nature matter is a mystery to science, more & more perplexing the closer you look

Pranayama, a part of yoga, is a Vedic practice meant to enable the practitioner to 'disentangle' the soul from the body by halting the circulation of the 'life airs' that contain it there.

According to the Vedas when the soul leaves the body it is accompanied by its subtle coverings and the 'life airs' to its specific destination, as determined by the laws of nature (to do with consciousness:).

At birth for some reason (I don't know why, I'm not a vedic scholar) memory of the past life is lost, but in many cases it is observed that inclinations are carried over into the new body, and so there are child prodigies, past life memories, inexplicable phobias or attachments, etc.

So it appears that the subtle elements and life airs weigh that much, oh, and the soul's in there too, lol, nearly forgot (I always do that).

P.S. It is important to note, imho, that if plasma = akasha / kham / 'ether' of Bhagavad-gita and the Vedas - then plasma is, according to the Vedas, the 'field' for the activities of the mind(!)

[Scott MC]

It is important to note, imho, that if plasma = akasha / kham / 'ether' of Bhagavad-gita and the Vedas - then plasma is, according to the Vedas, the 'field' for the activities of the mind(!)

TMI in one post , got a bit carried away there. The point is a '21g' soul is roughly consistent with the Vedic version.

[stickwhistler]

I ask forgiveness because I have posted this link before - albeit a year or so ago.

http://twm.co.nz/fabriconsc_boyd.html

It is a longish article but worth reading anyway, the pertinent bit to this thread being ...

"One example of experimental and instrumented results which the microtubulin model fails to account for, was a series of experiments wherein terminal patients volunteered to be placed inside hermetically sealed chambers. These chambers, and everything contained in the chambers, were weighed to an accuracy of one ten thousandth of a gram. Inevitably, when the individual inside the chamber passed on, the measured weight of the sealed chamber reduced on the order of 3 to 5 grams of mass. This mass discrepancy was coincident in time with the passing over of the volunteer in the chamber. The researchers came to believe that this might be due to some energetic component moving away from vicinity of the body. Subsequently, they placed very sensitive electromagnetic detection systems all over the outsides of the chambers. Then they were able to observe that when the terminal patient died, that an electromagnetic impulse was picked up by the detection apparatus. (By E = mc ^2 , three grams of mass is equal to about 17,000,000 kilowatt/hours of electricity. Consciousness is a powerful thing.)"

You'll find the above paragraph approx 75% down the page using the 'slider' on the right of screen.

[JaJa]

The Institute of HeartMath throws up some interesting research, amongst many things they have shown that the heart emits an electromagnetic field that is 5000 times stronger than the brains electric field, that the heart field changes according to emotions, that it can be measured a few feet away from the body, that the heart develops and starts beating before the brain begins developing, that the heart sends more information to the brain rather than the other way around as once previously believed. This short video clip summarizes these scientific facts.

Here is a link to a fascinating PDF that documents many things including electromagnetic communication.

Back to the OP, I included this research because if the heart has an electromagnetic field, at the point of death, this field will surely collapse and all the energy [if that's the right term to use] will rush to escape - will that energy weigh anything?

[Atlas]

Fascinating concept. I've never heard of that before.

If we consider that gravity may be an EM phenomenon, then perhaps the "turning off" of the soul at death affects the way the physical body is influenced in its interaction with gravity.

I can dig it. I never really believed in the notion of a soul that travels around after our body dies. When the lights go out that's it, and the energy that once traveled our nervous system disperses or converts into another form of energy. That it could pull us toward the Earth is not something I thought of, but the movement of energy from one location to another has to account for our growth. If there really is some missing mass mystery (in the ballpark of 21 grams) that isn't the result of bad science then I would think it's a combination of the EM field within ourselves being turned off, water loss due to vaporization, and perhaps the expulsion of CO2 and use of oxygen by still-living tissue. Perhaps some gases or other elements trapped inside our bodies can escape once the disappearance of the EM field releases them? Some things to consider. If anyone finds some scientific research alluding to any of these possibilities please post them.

[hex]

Is the meaning of life really 42? or maybe 23?

[skally]

Is the meaning of life really 42? or maybe 23?

Can you expand on this please Hex - curiosity is killing this cat

[Atlas]

Is the meaning of life really 42? or maybe 23?

Can you expand on this please Hex - curiosity is killing this cat

Half of 42 is 21, as in 21 grams. 42 is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when a supercomputer determined that specific number as the meaning of life. An even greater supercomputer, known as Earth, was built to determine the exact question that was asked to come to the answer "42," but it was blown up by aliens to make room for an interstellar highway right before the question was asked.

[hex]

Is the meaning of life really 42? or maybe 23?

Can you expand on this please Hex - curiosity is killing this cat

Half of 42 is 21, as in 21 grams. 42 is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when a supercomputer determined that specific number as the meaning of life. An even greater supercomputer, known as Earth, was built to determine the exact question that was asked to come to the answer "42," but it was blown up by aliens to make room for an interstellar highway right before the question was asked.

Yes -although that 2*21 is 42 was just a coincidence.

I was comparing these two statements "human soul weighs 21 grams" and "the meaning of life is 42" because they are about as meaningful ...

Weighing dying people to determine the mass of a soul is not bad science - it's not science at all. Hudred years ago "psychical researchers" tried to photograph ectoplasm, record the voices of ghosts etc but I wouldn't count that as science.

The whole idea is prima facie absurd.

The researcher was also poisoning dogs, and didn't detect any mass loss, so he concluded that dogs have no souls ...

[Skull]

The atheistic Jains teach that 'Yes' - the soul is a subtle form of matter. Even karma is more than a law of action, karma is also very subtle particles of matter that are attracted to the human soul.

http://www.jainuniversity.org/philosophy_jain.aspx

[DoctorGlen]

The typical claim of 21 grams illustrates the problem with taking summary statistics as if they actually exist. The data actually ranged as high as 42 grams (and was published in long before Hitchiker's Guide began in 1978, so there could indeed be some connection...)

My summary analysis of MacDougall's 1907 study published in American Medicine:

At the time of death, all of 6 humans but none of 15 dogs show up to 0.75 oz. mass loss immediately on loss of body electricity functions, and up to an additional 1.0 ounce (total up to 1.5 oz.) over a period of up to 18 minutes following clinical death.

I have the reprinted the original data as well as the article by Dr. MacDougall on my old website which is now back online at:
http://wizard-of-eyez.com/soul.html

It is very interesting to me that the transition of this spiritual substance from the biological body suit was in at least half of the observed cases clearly documented to be biphasic. Perhaps there are two phases of matter involved in the soul, a superconducting condensate vessel and an electronic/ionic plasma content, which may follow somewhat analagously to the tail of a comet... By the way, we also know from Professor Fritz Popp's research that this is a tremendous release of coherent photons from cells at the instant of cell death. Perhaps in cases with biphasic release of the soul substance it is related to the time of cell death in organ tissues where the spiritual substance is not integrated and coherent with that of the dominant heart-centered condensate-based spirit body. I am currently working on an explicit model which would be predictive and explanatory of the observations of electronic and photonic human functions including those from Oriental and Ayurvedic medicine (with meridians and other electroacupuncture vessels as paired Birkeland current circuits and chakras as photonic vortices)....