Spirit: Encyclopedia - Spirit

Spirit

The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. In religion and spirituality, the respiration of the human being has for obvious reasons been strongly linked with the very occurrence of life. A similar significance has been attributed to human blood. Spirit has thus evolved to denote that which separates a living body from a corpse, but can be used metaphorically (she performed the piece with spirit or she put up a spirited defence) where it is a synonym for such words as 'vivacity'.

In its religious context it has attained a number of meanings:

1. A ghost, daemon or sprite
2. The nature and essential substance of human souls, through which each is connected to all others, and by the experience of such connection is a primary basis for spiritual belief. In theological terms, a "spirit" (singular lowercase) is the deepest part of the soul of man, and the transmitting organ by which human beings can contact God.
3. The Spirit (singular capitalized) refers to the concept that all connected "spirits" form a greater unity, which has both an identity separate from its elements plus a consciousness and intellect greater than its elements. The Spirit is also used to describe God.

In Western theology, it is referred to as the Holy Spirit, referring to a Triune God (Trinity): "The result of God reaching to man by the Father as the source, the Son as the course ("the Way"), and through the Spirit as the transmission."

In more general spiritualistic terms, it refers to an ultimate, unified, non-dual awareness or force of life combining or transcending all individual souls or individual units of consciousness.

The term spirit has been used in this sense by at least Anthroposophy, Aurobindo, A Course In Miracles, Hegel, and Ken Wilber. In this use, the term is conceptually identical to Plotinus's "One" and Friedrich Schelling's "Absolute." Similar to Greek pneuma and Sanskrit akasha. See soul for a more detailed description.

Spirit - Etymology

In the Bible, the word "ruach" (רוח; "wind") is most commonly translated as the spirit, whose essence is divine (see Holy Spirit. Alternately the word nephesh is commonly used. Nephesh, as referred to by Kabbalists, is one of the three parts of the human soul, where "nephesh" (animal) refers to the physical being and its animal instincts. Similarly, both the Danish and the Chinese language uses the term "breath" to refer to the spirit.

See also

• Angel
• Atman
• Deva_(deity)
• Brahman
• Cryptid
• Daemon (mythology)
• Soul
• Ghost
• Legendary creature
• Cryptozoology
• Monster
• List of fictional species
• List of legendary creatures
• Legendary creatures of the Argentine Northwest region
• Book of Imaginary Beings

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Spirit", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki