the Mind or Spirit and, conversely, alterations of the Mind or Spirit will affect one or more of the
internal organs.
We can now discuss the five mental-spiritual aspects one by one.
The Ethereal Soul (Hun)
The Ethereal Soul broadly corresponds to our Western concept of "soul" or "spirit". According to
ancient Chinese beliefs it enters the body shortly after birth. Ethereal in nature, after death it
survives the body and flows back to "Heaven" (Tian); this is the ancient Chinese concept of
"Heaven", i.e. a state of subtle and non-material energies and beings, and has therefore nothing
to do with the Western and Christian concept of "Heaven". The Ethereal Soul can be described
as "that part of the Soul [as opposed to Corporeal Soul] which at death leaves the body,
carrying with it an appearance of physical form".20(184)
The Chinese character for Ethereal Soul is as follows:
This is composed of the following parts:
= clouds= spirit, ghost.The ancient form of this last radical is:
This is itself composed of two parts:
is a head without bodyis a swirling movement.