I am in the middle of reading a really interesting book and in it a chap tells his son that all books have a soul and that every person that reads them leaves a bit of their soul/spirit in there to be passed on to the next person. Interesting concept, never though of books having a soul before!
L&L
MC
RE: Do books have souls?
hi all..
I think that when any author makes a great effort to put a piece of his soul to his book with a good writing , then we can feel it; have some emotions to that book
however, we can't say that an inanimate being have a soul ! in this perspective , we could say that a TV or a PC have a soul also
that's my opinion 😮
* an interesting thread, thanks 🙂
RE: Do books have souls?
Ah that explains why I love charity shops - sometimes buy the most bizzarre things - always wondered why - must just be good vibes on them!
Dont' think books have souls but do think they (like everything else) can have energy from others on them as venitian says
review lines of the book that u read
The undoubted flaws in The Shadow of the Wind do, ironically, stem from an overvaluing of words at the expense of things. A trivial yet revealing mannerism is the frequency with which a character reads some book or other deep into the night, enthralled, only for the sun to come up on cue as the last page is reached: the whole universe, it seems, is at the service of the act of reading
these lines I read in a web site complete-review.com
I hope to find this book.
-- shona
Oops
Oops. Mispost. Please ignore.
Do you think that posts you read on a forum have similar impact?
If books have a soul, then the author is creating a new soul each time they write a different book. Is it the book that has the soul or the characters within the story? If the latter, that would be a lot of souls being created from one person. I'm still trying to grasp whether there are a finite number of souls or if new ones can come into existence at any time.
I like the explanation of energy and that focussed attention on characters by the masses increases their strength. Eg. everyone 'knows' Bridget Jones, right?
Very interesting thread. Shall we see if we can create a forum soul by giving it our energy? It's birthday is 9th March 2008, making it a Pisces 🙂
Catherine xx
If books have a soul, then the author is creating a new soul each time they write a different book. Is it the book that has the soul or the characters within the story? If the latter, that would be a lot of souls being created from one person. I'm still trying to grasp whether there are a finite number of souls or if new ones can come into existence at any time. Catherine xx
I don't see how an author can create a new soul each time they write a different book, as you only have one soul, but I guess they give a little away while writing, which starts a thought, that if that is the case then would there be a point where they have no or very little of their soul left as they have written so many books. Can you get rid of a soul? But then thinking about this some more, if you believe in past lives, do you have a seperate soul or that life and all others, or just the one to see you through all incarations?
I am in the middle of reading a really interesting book and in it a chap tells his son that all books have a soul and that every person that reads them leaves a bit of their soul/spirit in there to be passed on to the next person. Interesting concept, never though of books having a soul before!
L&L
MC
I've had a similar thought about houses. Every house you move into inherets a part of your soul, and it affects the impression that the next person who moves in gets.
The book is called The Shadow of the Wind by carlos Ruiz Zafon
L&L
MC
This book really is wonderful - i read it a few years ago and it really touched me. Not sure if i beleive that books have souls but think of it more as a metaphor - about what a book is (a collection os someones words, whose meaning is adapted and enriched with every interpretation of it) and in that sense - they do have souls.
Of course books have souls!
Just think of all the books you have read that have changed you!
I grew up in Poland which is a country with a very painful history. If you all good people knew what kind of books are school lectures here...you would all become depressed...
So 80 percent of my natives are 🙂
Books i have read at school were about suffering kids, unfair world, war and pain... 😀 Nice eh? 🙂
Now...im not reading any papers...:) None...polish or british...or any other...
I dont watch TV either...dont listen to the radio...
If you only realize how much, sorry for the word, shiet media sell to us...its terrible.
There are some websites and magazines wich consider positive news from the world..and they are worth reading...
There are also some books, which contain only positive sentences...
I strongly recommend reading Saint Germain books.
If you get a proper and a deep understanding of this greates book that has ever existed...you wont have the need for reading anymore 🙂 As you will become complete.
This book has The Most Beautiful Soul i have ever encountered.
Has anybody read that yet?
Lots of love to you all!
Bea
I find that some books seem to have living words....
Words that are so alive, they dance in the very movement of their being...
Words which touch your soul and speak so insistently.....
they dance in the very movement of my being....
Words which you know are true even though it is the first time you have read them,
there is just that instant YES within!
And then you read it over and over
just wondering how it could have been written
and when and by whom
and you want to ask
"How did you know that?"
How do the living words, get living?
books
hello all,
Reality in my view the ways that books have been published is a certain frame of longing the ways that you have completed the session of reading is a placement of were and when the book was put in consious effert the ways that volume of the intelect gives you a will of the author the book itself i believe do not have souls but the completeness of the script will bring about the parts of the tranqilness of the miracleness of understanding what is being read/ my way of looking at literature is the ways that the form of the past relates to the future the passion of the reading of the book is really what counts instructional creativity is a tool that looks at the reailty that will bring about the form of individual pleasures...As you look to getting rid of the negitive projections of the rememberance you may look to the individual comfrontation of the the pleasures of balance to reclaim the positive and conditions of the flow of individuals realm of filtering the positive.... the vibrational process is a place of were not when the book is formed the creative balaance brings together the promatic pace of the reader....Gypsee
hello all,
Reality in my view the ways that books have been published is a certain frame of longing the ways that you have completed the session of reading is a placement of were and when the book was put in consious effert the ways that volume of the intelect gives you a will of the author the book itself i believe do not have souls but the completeness of the script will bring about the parts of the tranqilness of the miracleness of understanding what is being read/ my way of looking at literature is the ways that the form of the past relates to the future the passion of the reading of the book is really what counts instructional creativity is a tool that looks at the reailty that will bring about the form of individual pleasures...As you look to getting rid of the negitive projections of the rememberance you may look to the individual comfrontation of the the pleasures of balance to reclaim the positive and conditions of the flow of individuals realm of filtering the positive.... the vibrational process is a place of were not when the book is formed the creative balaance brings together the promatic pace of the reader....Gypsee
........:cool:
Thank you Gypsee so much for sharing your viewpoint....
I hope it is alright to share some of my thoughts after reading your words....
So a book is a physical reality of our longing....
So it could be something that we long to share and some may do it in a book...
And the one who is reading can also join the same place of the thoughts of the author....
So a book is the author's thoughts made real and then the reader can also be at the same place by reading....
Yes! So this is how we get touched by the words of others!
So it can be a sharing of our souls...
a sharing of our innermost thoughts....
a sharing of what we truly are...
so a book has the potential to allow healing....
not just for the author in the flowing of the writing
but also for the reader in their reading
who may just feel so touched by the words...
It is that response within, isn't it?
Oh thank you Gypsee... you have answered my question....
How do the living words, get living?
I just Love this...
the tranqilness of the miracleness of understanding what is being read
thank you for your sharing Gypsee...
I've read this thread several times in the past and only now feel I want to post on it...
My own thoughts...
Firstly I am thinking of what we mean by a soul in this context as there are various definitions of "soul" and all seem to relate to features of people rather than inanimate objects.
I'm now thinking of what actually is a book. Book is such a generic term and relates to several things. We have the wood or the living tree that was used to create the paper; the bindings of the book that hold all that paper together; the ink on the page that could come from various places... chemicals produced from sources such as oils which are dead trees from millions of years ago, or natural vegatable inks from recently living plants; the words that have been written by an author (or authors) and the editing and re-writing that has been done through the editor and proof readers etc.; the art work for any pictures within the book and on the covers; the people involved in actually creating the paper, printing it (choosing the typeface, inks, machinery etc.), binding it, packaging it, shipping it, unpacking it, selling it and then us ourselves reading it. Is it not all of these things that create the "soul" of the book?
So everyone has a part in creating the book, from the authors and makers, to the reader.
If I take just the commonly expected example of the words of the author, and just look at that a little more...
The author has created a "world" inside their mind, with situations, explanations, characters (real or otherwise), and an expectation of where the book will start, where it will end and what needs to go in-between. They allow that world to play out in their mind over and over again whilst they 'test' storylines and check and double-check that it will go where they want it to go, changing things if necessary to ensure it does. Their creative power is used to put that world down in words, those words being constructed in a fashion that they have learnt from their parents, teachers, friends and from the society in which they live.
We, the receiver of those words, are reading them with our own understanding of the world and who we are in it. We create our own "world" from those words, whilst most commonly we only create it from the start and let it build up as we go along, without any knowledge of where it is leading to. Words are so limiting; We could not possibly be in the same world as the original author, without the forsight of the intentions the author had, without the society and teaching of the author, without the mind of the author.
So, I guess I conclude, that whilst there are "imprints" of the energy from the various sources involved in the creation of the book (the books own "soul" or being) we are taking the book to ourselves and allowing it to give us an insight into our own world, our own "soul", our own "self". We are perhaps opening ourselves up to the recognition of our interdependence with everything connected to the book, so if it is linked with positive happy things we feel our connectedness to that positive happy side of ourselves and if it is linked with negative or dark things we feel that negative and dark connection within ourselves, recognising that we have all these "soul" concepts within us, but that these are our concepts of "soul" and not the "soul" of others.
The same applies to things written elsewhere, such as the words on internet sites, posts on forums, or even words conveyed across other media such as TV and radio. How many times do we find ourselves reading something a second time and getting a different perspective or feeling about it? How many times do we find ourselves hearing/reading words and understanding it differently to someone else.
So a book has a soul, we have a soul, and the touching of these souls triggers us to see ourselves, but I don't feel that we actually take on other souls.
All Love and Reiki Hugs
I started to read a new book the other day, in one of the chapters a character is describing her suffering from insomnia.... I read this chapter in the evening before I went to sleep... I can only say, I slept very badly that night. Something that is very, very rare for me.
I then went back to another book for about a week, which I finished to read this weekend.
Last night, I went back to the "insomnia" chapter and again, slept very poorly. Coincidence? or did what I read had a deep effect on my subconsciousness that I had difficulties sleeping?
Do book have souls? I think we give book souls the way we read them, understand them and what we make out of it i.e. what effects they have on us and we allow them to have on us. I believe the same can happen with movies and/or computer games etc. However, I believe that some people are more affected by the written word, where to others a movie (something they see or hear) has a longer lasting effect.
Love
Zimba
what about e-books??
Do books have souls? Clearly not, but undoubtedly they do possess their own consciousness. Many years after they were written (some) books can enchant, inspire, comfort, strengthen, uplift the soul - make a tremendous positive impact on people's lives The right words at the right time can work magic. Not taking into consideration the recognised holy books, books I personally have gained a lot from are Sir Edwin Arnold's brilliant 'Light of Asia' and Jon Wynne Tyson's great work 'The Extended Circle'
There is a saying a home without a book has no soul.
Myarka.
Some books contain a piece of magic and others are full of wisdom, creativity and knowledge. Books come from trees, and as they're organic and they have mirror like reflections of the writer's and authors mind, yes in a way books have a soul.
Literally..Not
But books truly affects our inner soul, sometimes in a positive and negative way. It influences our perspective in life which could be considered as beneficial..:)
[DLMURL="http://www.petstoresavings.com/pet-stores/dealking.com-coupons/"]Pet Lover[/DLMURL]:dogrun:
I remember when this thread was first posted but haven't shared my thoughts until now. The outside world calls on me heavily today, so forgive my laconic response!! I would say no, a book does absolutely not have a soul.
To begin, I'll briefly outline what I see to be the body/spirit/soul distinction. By my own definition, a soul is that part of a human which is eternal and transcends the body after death and this is because it contains a particular type of 'knowledge'- that is ontological knowledge rather than 'knowing' how to solve a mathematical problem for example. The body is the physical part of ourselves, and when we die, it decomposes. However there is also a spirit- this is life energy, and that, by very nature is seperate from the soul. The spirit is the kind of energy people would perceive of showing up as an aura, and this part of us floats away into the ether/earth when we die.
For me, books are a collection of paper and ink. The paper and ink have a certain kind of life-energy (because they are taken from living/natural compounds)but they do not possess knowledge. But what about the ideas in the books? The storylines? Surely they possess knowledge? I would conjecture that no, they don't- they contain knowledge disemminated by the writer. The writer has the soul and the knowledge because they are an autonomous being, paper and ink is merely a way of capturing this. Of course, this doesn't mean that if you burnt a book, it would essentially destroy the knowledge- of course it doesn't. But that's not because the book has a soul and is therefore eternal. It is because ideas do not exist in the physical dimension- they are part of our consciousness. In fact, the ideas would be there wheher or not you'd even written about them.
I think the key things for me, is that you cannot have a soul unless you are an autonomous creature. If you're not going to interact with the world. what would be the point of having one? Books are not autonomous and therefore do not have a soul, however they have a degree of spirit (life-energy) because of the natural materials they comprise. For the people who see books as having 'living words'- yes I agree to an extent. But all communication is 'living' isn't it? It's interactive, makes us feel particular emotions etc. But it is the effects on upon us, living people with souls that produces this effect, the books themselves do not and cannot have souls.
i think that when books are written they contain the thoughts and ideas of the writer at that moment when they are written, but they cannot truly have a soul, because a soul is evolving forever moving, forever learning. but it is true a house without a book has no soul and that could be the person who lives in that home is not learning and evolving. just my thoughts on this.
A second-hand book could also have the energy of who read it.
Just a different point of view...
The easiest test for a soul is :- If its capable of generating love it must have a soul. Whether its a primary or a licensed soul its another matter.
I love this thread, i've often wondered why i love books so much, they have some sort of magical, mysterious, calming quality to them, and since learning reflexology and massage i have become more aware of the energies around us. I don't think i'd say books themselves have souls, but i definately believe that people leave some of their energy in the pages of books. For this reason i mostly always have bought my books from charity shops, second hand.
I love the thought that books could have been to so many places before ending up with me (unfortunately i can't bring myself to give books away, which i guess contradicts me buying second hand!).
To reply to Daffodil's 'what about e-books?' - i really think i would lose the will to live if e-books ever replaced real books. It's not progress, it's just another symptom of our throw-away society, IMO. You can't love an e-book 🙂
There is a saying a home without a book has no soul.
Myarka.
i totally agree with this!
😀
Yes, I believe books have souls - I first heard of the concept a long time ago. It seems even more true with library books. Books that were handled and read by someone before you, leaves a part of that person for the next reader to feel.
Do books have souls: hello I believe that the book itself does not have a soul but the true author itself should be rewarded with win others have a faith in the proceeding of the ways that the book can touch others. Gypsee
:hippy:Hello All.
i believe that the author leaves a trace of his soul in the book he writes,
as much as the person reading it, can get so engrosed in it can alsp leave their soul in it,
take care
For me a book is like a friend si yes books have soul