Not to get religious on you but isn't it our soul that differentiates us from un living things? I know quantum theory says that we're all made of the same stuff but a table surely isn't aware of itself and it sure as hell doesn't possess a soul. Maybe even in a comatose state in which a person's consciousness would stop experiencing events his or her's soul or that unseen force that is imbued in all living things keeps processing some type of data even if we're not aware of it. Seeing as how our senses our only limited to 3 dimensions maybe our soul (sorry to keep using that word) is always processing data or events it's just that our conscious mind isn't aware of it. Just a thought.