This is from an article in yesterday's NYTimes Science Times (what a really great read!)...
"Or as V. S. Ramachandran, a brain scientist at the University of California, San Diego, put it in an interview, there may be soul in the sense of “the universal spirit of the cosmos,” but the soul as it is usually spoken of, “an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense.” Belief in that kind of soul “is basically superstition,” he said."
Wow, I couldn't have put it any better myself. I mean I think it's been on the tip of my tongue, but I just haven't been able to verbalize it. And well, it certainly rings true with John Hegelin's rap at Maharishi University about the Unified Field. And so, when I look up at the stars and I think "those are my brothers," maybe I'm not such a lunatic.
There's also an interesting article on EVODEVO, which sounds like a new evolution of an old eighties band ("We are not men, we are EVODEVO!"). Plus there's an article telling us that we are no different than the rest of the animal kingdom. If we have souls (see above) all the other animals do too (this made the Lovely Carla so happy to hear- this has been one of her themes for a long time!). The feelings and emotions and moral reasonings we think are so special, that we think make us different, all have a physical basis that we share with all living things on this little old planet...take that you arrogant, homo-sapien-centric, hubristic mob!
Also there was a tantalizing comment attributed to Francis Crick (he of the DNA double-helix) that we might be refuse from an alien invasion. The long chain, the incredible flowering of the diverse life on the Blue Planet may have started from some junk bacteria blasted out in to space by some kind of advanced space beings. Hmmm, I think I'll have another cup of coffee and mull that one over for awhile! Maybe we have this incredible wanderlust because ecoded somewhere deeply in our DNA, we know that this is not our ancestral home, no...we are refugees from another planet, another people far, far, away! "E.T. go home!"
