Science is something that I have grown to really love. Not because I necessarily wanted to, and definitely not in the manner I would have wanted to, but over the years, science has not only grounded me, but it is intriguing enough to help me look at illness in a logical, scientific, and interesting way - without allowing my emotions to completely cloud the outlook.
With that said, I am actually a fairly spiritual person. Don't get that term mixed up with being particularly religious. It is not something that I often discuss, but I wanted to bring up the notion of having a soul.
I believe that living beings, no matter how small or even with no existence of a brain, each being has a soul. This belief is something that is almost impossible to comprehend, and just as impossible to measure.
So when science fails to provide an explanation, that is when I start to wonder about the existence of some higher power or concept of fate or destiny.
One particular idea that comes out of this notion is the idea of intuition and our soul's recognition of our existence.
The specific example that I would like to use is when a patient is in a coma. The majority of the implications of being in a coma are well-explained and relatively well understood by science. BUT there has always been this question of whether or not a coma patient can still actually experience the outside world... Like incorporating a phone ringing into a dream when you are still asleep - your mind finds a suitable image related to that sound.
Now, of course, in certain cases, there is no brain activity at all. Without brain activity, the patient is considered deceased in the mind, and only alive because of machines. But if we can't measure intuition and we can't measure the existence of a soul, I sometimes wonder about what is truly happening beneath the surface.
Perhaps that is why so many people believe that speaking or singing to a coma patient does, actually, make a difference. If there is any energy, any speck of stardust that can still experience this world in one form or another, even in a vegetative state of the physical body, I wonder what is experienced - beyond our understanding.
I mean, if we believe in a middle-ground, a place where dead or dying souls roam the Earth as ghosts or spirits, then is it fair to believe that coma patients, unresponsive patients with a working heartbeat, could still be reachable?