Bill D - The things you don't believe in are not supernatural. They're just unfamiliar to you (in terms of direct experience, I mean). Nothing is supernatural. If you wish to believe you don't have a "soul", well, I can't see that that will cause any more problems than if I wish to believe that you do have a soul. In either case, you will go on being exactly who and what you are, regardless of your belief or mine, and so will I.

Soul = consciousness = awareness = life. Shoot a person in the heart and his soul leaves his body. The body is still there, but it is devoid of consciousness, awareness, and life...because the soul has separated from it. The soul has not been shot, and is perfectly all right, but the body is no longer useful to it, or workable for it, so the body is abandoned and becomes lifeless. You are that soul, and it is that very soul which has the consciousness and the freedom of will to believe anything it wants, even that it is only a body or a mind tied irrevocably to a mortal and limited body. This is what is termed in most religions "the fall", that when souls descended into pyhsicality they became lost in that physicality and forgot that they were anything BUT physical beings.

And...you leave your body when you dream...although you are still connected to it to some extent, as is evidenced by the fact that your dreams trigger physiological responses in the body, just like they do in your dog's body.

The things you experience in dreams are experienced in the astral worlds, which are nonphysical realms of existence. They are not real physically, but they are real astrally. They are forms of energy you cannot see with the five senses, but you can see them with another sense entirely, and you DO!!! Every night. That other sense is centered in the area of your "third eye", between the eyebrows.

And no, I can't prove it. The only things I can prove are things which, frankly, don't interest me a whole lot because they are so dull and utterly obvious and prosaic that I can hardly be bothered with them anymore. You don't read "Dick and Jane" books when you're in college.

Bill, you don't realize it, but your beliefs are based on FAITH... rock solid faith that your five physical senses are the only available gates through which to observe reality. This is like having faith that everything you learned in Grades 1 to 3 comprises the sum total of All Knowledge in the Universe.

You are a rationalist's equivalent of the born-again Christian, Bill. The simplicity of your faith is seamless and like a rock.

And your mind will never deliver you out of that rock, because your mind is limited. In fact, it is the product of the very belief IN limitation that brought you into being. Your soul is not. "Bill D" is just a temporary, mortal adventure that your immortal soul is having, and will presently be done with.

And I expect we shall continue having these debates from time to time, because people defend their postion of faith most zealously, whatever it may be! :-)

- LH