Q&A: Soul
Soul
Question
Hello and blessings to the Rabbi.
I read your books The Science of Freedom and others [and many thanks for them], and I understood that we also have a layer of soul (or psyche). My question is: how can this be brought closer to reason? After all, with every birth God is not creating a new soul; this too is a natural process. And how can one understand that by connecting two physical materials, a soul results? Can a soul also be created in a laboratory?
I conclude with many thanks for all your books, which revive my spirit.
Answer
First, our immediate experience is that we have a soul. So I do not see what here needs to be brought closer to reason. On the contrary, I do not see how materialism can be brought closer to reason. That is true even if you do not understand how the soul enters the body.
But I also do not see the difficulty you are raising. What is the difference between creating a soul and creating a world? How did you reach the conclusion that it is unreasonable that the Holy One, blessed be He, creates souls? And if you insist that He does not, why not assume that there is a reservoir of souls prepared from the creation of the world (in Kabbalah they speak of it this way). \
In a laboratory I do not know how one creates a soul, and I also do not know how one creates a piece of matter there. In a laboratory nothing is created ex nihilo. But that does not contradict the possibility that if we synthesize a complete body, a soul will enter it. Not necessarily a soul that we created.
It is not reasonable that God creates souls in the sense of something from nothing; that is, certainly the placing of the soul into the body is part of the laws of nature. So I have come to learn that there is indeed a law of nature that whenever we create a complete body, a soul immediately enters it.
Is there any indication of when the soul enters, in terms of the stages of pregnancy?