The "Living Soul" of Consciousness: Where Science and Spirituality Intersect

Patricia Hofer

Jan 2025 · Wheatmark, Inc.

About this ebook

So what does it mean to be "a living soul"? Has anyone ever seen one? And, surprising as it may be to those with the surety of scientific investigation, no one has ever seen consciousness either. However much they both are investigated. However much they both are the subject of speculation. Always and ever, invisible. Maybe the closest we can come to a possible explanation can be found in what Plotinus wrote in the second century CE: "We aren't separated from spirit, we are in it." Unlike Hofer's other writing, this little book isn't an argument for the existence of God. What is being documented is humanity's search for, and embrace of, what we know but cannot physically see.

• From Homo sapiens inspired to walk out of Africa 70,000 years ago to those who constructed a place of worship 11,600 years ago

• From a pot-bound “rationalistic interpretation” of religion to the inspiring invisibility of "numinous awe"

• From the 20th-century brain-bound search for consciousness to the 21st-century consciousness research that opens the door to its invisibility

Hofer refers to this invisible place as our “living soul.” Theoretical physicist John Wheeler described it as “a special room, a museum of wonders.” (from Chapter 13)