The English word “Android” refers to a robot designed to resemble a person both in appearance and behavior. I have tried to use this work as the starting point for a discussion on spirit, especially issues relating to the immutable human soul and spirit in the digital technology era.

In today’s world, “technology” is no longer a cold word used to symbolize modernization. It is now a medium actively restructuring the world in which we live and even the way in which people relate to and interact with each other. Machines no longer exist as passive tools or object images and the boundary between people and machines is becoming increasingly blurred. For example, people can now transcend their physical selves in virtual worlds, wandering at will in a world crafted by “0s” and “1s.” Now that technology allows people to shed physical form, I am especially interested in issues relating to the nature of the human soul and spirit in this new environment.

Experience tells us that “death” implies the end of the life of any organic organism. The question is that given the development of a virtual environment does the “soul” necessarily disappear with the death of the body? René Descartes drew a clear distinction between spiritual awareness and physical form, believing that thought consciousness was sufficient for the existence of the human self. In this context, virtual space has become a world in which the self can exist in perpetuity. If spiritual consciousness is transferred to the Internet, once an organic organism dies, human self consciousness and spirit can not only continue to exist but perhaps, through a computer program, even be open to greater possibilities. In the film Ghost in the Shell II, a captain in the army says: “Whenever you are online I will be with you.” In other words, it is possible for people to experience spiritual existence in a virtual world and in so doing enjoy immortality.

In the real world, physical death signifies the disappearance of everything. However, in the virtual world no physical forms exist and so human self and spatial existence are determined by human thought consciousness and spirituality. Early Christians believed that the “Kingdom of Heaven” was where the spirit rid itself of all travails associated with corporeal form. Buddhists believe that only when we leave our physical shell can we be reincarnated or enter Heaven. It could be said that such religious views are allusion to possible homes to which the soul returns once it is separated from the human body.