Is the Human Soul Real? Six Pieces of Evidence That Suggest It Is

Have you ever seriously wondered if you had a past life, or if the very idea of a “soul” is even real? The question of whether or not humans possess an immortal soul, a spiritual part of us that exists before birth and survives physical death, has been a chief question for philosophers and scientists for ages.

The general belief is that the soul is what allows for the possibility of reincarnation, where we start a new life in a different body. Most people, if you think about it, seem to believe in some form of a soul. After all, telling someone, “You don’t have a soul,” is generally seen as a serious insult. Still, sceptics exist.

If you’re on the fence, here are six clues that may point to the reality that we, at least us non-cloned humans, do, in fact, have souls.

1. Souls Captured on Photo and Video

We often hear of photos or videos that supposedly capture blurry images of ghosts or an elusive creature like Bigfoot. If cameras can catch those, it stands to reason they might also be able to capture an image of a soul. Regardless of whether these pictures are ultimately proven real or not, they are incredibly interesting and often very hard to explain.

For instance, consider the viral photograph taken after a terrible motorbike crash in Powell County, Kentucky. A passerby, Sal Vasquez, took a picture of the incident and posted it online. The comments section exploded because people claimed he had actually captured a translucent, human-shaped figure, the dead man’s soul, leaving his body.

Another example is a video from a Chinese hospital that appeared to show the body of a deceased woman lying on a stretcher, covered by a sheet. You can clearly see a ghostly figure that seems to exit the body of the deceased woman and float away.

2. Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

The story is familiar: someone nearly dies, is brought back to life, and then recounts an experience of seeing a white light or floating toward it. The reason you’ve heard this story before is that it happens a lot, and the accounts are often strikingly similar.

Following the horrific 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China, doctors resuscitated many victims. A large number of these individuals recounted very similar experiences of floating above their own bodies. Instead of fear and pain, they reported feeling overwhelmingly at peace.

Sceptics often suggest that NDEs are simply biological reactions, a phenomenon explored in a 2011 study. However, people like Harvard neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander disagree. Dr Alexander was a sceptic until he fell into a coma for a week due to bacterial meningitis. During that time, he claimed to have taken a surreal journey into the afterlife, experiencing something so real it made the human world seem artificial in comparison. He said this dimension was filled with love and that communication was telepathic. After regaining consciousness and miraculously healing from his meningitis, he was so moved by the experience that he wrote an entire book, Proof of Heaven, about his journey.

3. Energy Fields and Life Force

Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, a physics professor at St. Petersburg State Technical University, is famous for his research on human energy fields. He conducted an intriguing experiment where he photographed a person using a special bioelectrographic camera at the exact moment of death.

The camera, which uses a high-intensity electric field to produce a flow around the object, seemed to capture pictures of the soul leaving the body. Korotkov explained that the “life force,” visible as a blue energy, first left the core, then the head, and finally the heart and groin region.

4. Brain Activities and the “Operator.”

Canadian neurosurgeon Dr Wilder Penfield, widely considered the father of neurosurgery, spent decades researching the brain. Initially, he believed the brain could explain all human behaviour, but years of research ultimately changed his mind.

In one experiment, he monitored a patient’s brain activity while asking them to raise their arm. When the arm was raised, a specific part of the brain was activated. When the patient lowered it, the same part was deactivated. When asked, the patient confirmed they chose to raise their arm.

In the second part of the experiment, Dr Penfield artificially activated the same part of the brain with a machine, causing the patient’s arm to rise. When asked this time, the patient replied, “No, it went up by itself.”

This experiment suggested two things to Penfield: first, the brain acts like a control panel; it still needs an initial trigger to give directions to the rest of the body. Second, in the first part of the experiment, an internal “something” triggered the action. Because of this, Penfield concluded that the brain is like a computer, but it is programmed by something outside of itself. In his final book, The Mystery of the Mind, he stated: “I came to take seriously even to believe that the consciousness of man, the mind, is not something to be reduced to brain mechanism.”

5. Ghosts and Lost Souls

“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” Well, actually, most of us are. Jokes aside, we all know there are countless pictures, videos, and testimonials out there that are presented as evidence that ghosts may be real. The common belief is that ghosts are the spirits or lost souls of the deceased. If ghosts are real, then the underlying concept of a soul, a non-physical part of a person that can exist outside the body, must also be real.

6. Reincarnation Cases

The concept of reincarnation, where an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body after death, is a core tenet of several major world cultures. Throughout history, there have been countless documented cases of people claiming to remember their past lives.

Professor Ian Stevenson, and his successor Dr Jim Tucker, formerly of the University of Virginia, spent decades researching these claims, investigating over 3,000 cases where children were able to recall incredibly specific details of their supposed previous lives.

A famous case involves a boy named Sam. When Sam was four, his father brought home an old photo album. Sam, who had never seen a photo of his grandfather before, pointed to a picture of a car and said, “That’s my car.” It was his grandfather’s first car. When Sam’s mother showed him a picture of his grandfather as a young boy with other children, Sam pointed to him and said, “There I am.” Testing him further, his mother asked what else he remembered. Sam replied, “Someone turned my sister into a fish.” It turned out Sam’s grandfather’s sister had been murdered, and her corpse was dumped into a body of water. How can a little kid remember such accurate details of a person who died long before they were born, unless that consciousness carried over?

Personally, I believe that the soul is what makes us who we are, and that’s why the concept of a “clone apocalypse” and the creation of more and more lifelike machines is a bit unsettling. If the soul is the “operator” or the unique life force, will a cloned human automatically get one?

I really don’t think that when we die, it’s just over. The evidence, while not always accepted by mainstream science, is intriguing and hard to dismiss entirely.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you believe we all have souls, and what do you think will happen when we start cloning people?