From: morale@lib111.its.rpi.edu (Enrique Morales)
Subject: Re: Projection... How to do it?
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 02:53:30 GMT

leonardo@ada.seas.ucla.edu (Leonardo E. Blanco De Freitas) writes:

I see a few fallacies in your arguments and "facts."

>    It seems there is a lot of talk about loss of mass at the exact time of
>death, the implication being that the soul has left the body and we have
>registered the phenomenon. I have heard such stories myself, and I see no
>reason to believe that the experiments or the observations are not true.
>However, here are two things to consider before you assume that the lost
>mass is due to the soul:

>1) That's too much energy!

>    Granted, some people might say that the soul is an energy entity, and that
>it might have some big figures involved. However, those people don't realize
>what they are saying. Fortunately, somebody did realize. I just read a posting
>(sorry for not having the reference or the name of the author), in which the
>person remembers his relativity classes, in particular, E=mc^2...
>    You see, when you talk about 1/4 lb. of mass disappearing, mass which was,
>supposedly in the form of energy (i.e., soul), you are talking, as the person
>pointed out, about enough energy to wipe out entire cities. If you could
>convert all this energy into some form that could be used by your car, and
>if that car had the same efficiency and the same power consumption, that
>amount of energy would power your car for thousands of years (I won't bother
>to make precise calculations).
>    Therefore, we should be able to detect such large concentration of energy
>even when it is not "embodied." But that doesn't seem to be the case...

Just because this energy is contained doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 
To take a more practical example: a nuclear reactor(since this is straight
E=Mc^2 stuff). When it is made, it is heavier than when it is shutdown.
All these joules that it expended supplying the city(or whatever else)
were present at its construction. So when the reactor loses mass gradually,
nothing amazing happens. Heat is made; water is heated; electricity is made.
After this the reactor is lighter. Just because a body has a soul with all
this energy doesn't mean anything amazing should happen just as it doesn't
with a new reactor. Just because the body loses this energy doesn't mean
anything should happen if you already know that the soul cannot affect
matter directly. It is just an energy transfer. In the reactor, we can
track the transfers:atomic motion(atom splits)->heat(water[for an example]
heats to steam)-> mechanical motion(turbine)->electrical(generator).
In old times we didn't know of atomic energy, but it existed; we didn't
know about electricity, but it existed. My point is that this lost mass
could be a mass to an energy type that we don't know about yet(thus we can't 
detect it). Just because you don't know what it is or where it is, does
not mean it does not exist. People were still killed by lightning 
before electricty was discovered.



>2) Whatever energy the soul is made of, it is not detectable.

>    The soul "lives" in another plane of existence (sorry if that sounds
>cosmic or new-age, but there are really no other terms to describe this).
>I personally believe that the soul (and, yes, I believe in the existence of
>something that, for convenience, I call "soul") "lives" in a world that is
>just as physical as the world the body lives in. The only difference is that
>the soul is supposedly older. The world of the soul would be such that the
>soul is always in the same three-dimensional coordinates as the body, but it
>is in a different unknown fouth dimension; a parallel universe, if you will.
>    Now, being in another universe, there should be no interaction between the
>soul and objects in our world (aside from communications between it and the
>body through the so-called silver cord), except in the rare cases of
>telekinesis (if those are true at all). What do I mean by no interaction, you
>ask. Well, the soul cannot produce an effect on this universe. In fact, it
>makes sense: that is why it uses a physical body in the first place: because
>it cannot act here on its own... But, back to the issue, if the soul does not
>have an effect on this world, that means that the equivalent mass of its
>energy cannot be measured. But some suggest that we can detect the
>disappearance of such mass. Contradiction....
                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not if you look at it in my terms. We can detect the mass, but not the 
form of enegy(or whatever) it transforms to. To give you an example:
Suppose you have a log of wood, a VERY accurate scale, and a photo detector
(detects light). You weight the log. You set it on fire. You weigh the
resulting ashes and gasses. You find the mass lost to light and add all
these. What happens to all the mass lost to heat, IR and other non-visible
energy? You see what I mean? Just because you can't measure it doesn't 
mean it doesn't exist. If you had an IR detector you could calculate what
the heat out was and account for the rest of the mass. Just like if we
had something that "detected" souls we could account for that 1/4 lb you 
talk about. But for now we have to do like physicists: see the effects
(lost mass), speculate about the cause(theories), and wait until the
technology is here to be able to definetly prove(or dispprove)our theories
(experiment).

>    Conclusion: from a scientific-using-cosmic-notions point-of-view, IF it
>is true that the body loses mass when it dies, that mass is not that of the
>leaving soul.

Conclusion: Given the present data, the above conclusion is not logical.

Clarification: I did not mean to prove that the missing mass is the soul.
I only meant to prove that given the present data, the possibility is
still there that it might be the soul. There is not enough evidence to
rule out the soul as responsible for the lost mass.

>PS.: did any of you OOBErs ever feel heavy when OOBEing? I think not...

Do you know if there is gravity in the astral realms? I think not...
Does one feel "heavy" when in a gravity-free environment? 
No.(ask the astronauts)

Therefore, not feeling heavy does not necessarily indicate a lack of mass.
Ask the astronauts if they have any mass while in space.

>     I rest my case.

I rest _MY_ case.

>--------------------
>Leonardo Blanco
>leonardo@seas.ucla.edu

Enrique Morales
morale@rpi.edu

P.S. Methinks that whoever taught you logic robbed you of your money.