The pre-scientific concept of a "soul": A neurophenomenological hypothesis about its origin.

In this contribution I will argue that our traditional, folk-phenomenological concept of a "soul� may have its origins in accurate and truthful first-person reports about the experiential content of a specific neurophenomenological state-class. This class of phenomenal states is called the "Out-of-body experience� (OBE hereafter), and I will offer a detailed description in section 3 of this paper. The relevant type of conscious experience seems to possess a culturally invariant cluster of functional and phenomenal core properties: it is a specific kind of conscious experience, which can in principle be undergone by every human being. I propose that it probably is one of the most central semantic roots of our everyday, folk-phenomenological idea of what a soul actually is.