Soul - Have you a soul?

Have you a Soul? –
The question, have you a soul is much easier to answer than what is a soul? The reason is that the former question is about a belief or a feeling while the latter is controversial and has umpteen answers depending on Religion, Philosophy, Opinion, and one’s perception.
We have all a superficial understanding that the soul is what we consider as ‘I’ less it’s physical component. That is to say that it is the spiritual part of ‘I’, including mind etc.; that is, with the corporeal body alone fully omitted.
According to the ancient Greeks, the soul is ‘aliveness’. This is somewhat similar to the Buddhist view that the soul dies along with the body. But in Buddhism some residue (Anatta) continues to live to reincarnate. In ancient Egyptian religion, soul is the mental processes of a human being and is continuously changing. On rebirth the individuality continues very much changed.
Aristotle said that the soul is the living essence and dies on death of the body. But Socrates and Plato considered this essence to be spiritual and continues to be reborn eternally. The Persian Muslim philosophers (Ibn-al-Nafis and others) said that while the soul died there is some thing else that is spirit which is having the quality of immortality.
In Hindism the soul is translated as Athma but the word does not convey the same meaning as soul correctly. Athma is part(or even the whole) of the Absolute known as Brahman. All Hindu gods are other names for this absolute reality. Individual soul or individual itself is not real. They are illusions(Maya) and feelings of continuity created by the ignorance of the individual. This illusory spirit or soul disappears when the individual realizes that he is none other than the Absolute itself. For this realization it takes so many rebirths in which one progressively proceeds with good deeds and meditation. There are other schools of thought also in Hindism that says the individual soul has separate identity but still merges with Brahman ultimately.
Taoism has ten souls for each individual. Seven are YIN and three are YANG. Some may reincarnate and others may not. In Judaism The soul is breathed into an individual by God at the time of birth and returns to God on death. In Jainism every living being including insects and plants have a soul. The soul in Sikhism is similar to the soul in Advaitha Vedanta of Hindus. It is part of God or God itself and merges with God on the death of the body. But there are different opinions as to what immediately happens after death before the merger.
According to most of the branches of Christianity the soul is given to Man at the time of conception or birth and returns to God on death. But each individual’s soul is sent to either hell or heaven for an eternity by God till final judgment on resurrection. Jesus Christ saves people’s souls on the basis of good deeds and repentance. There are variations in the beliefs as to how this happens in different branches of Cristianity. Some of them believe that hell is nothing but the grave where the soul is till resurrection. Some others believe that soul progresses even after death till resurrection.
According to the Hadith of Islam the soul is put into the embryo 40 days after conception. In some different interpretation an angel is sent to breathe spirit into a human being after 120 days of conception. At that time itself his future is written down in detail. Like in Christianity on death the soul is sent to hell or heaven on final judgment.
According to Bahai faith the individual soul does not exist before a person is born. After birth the soul is immortal. After death the soul goes to God. Nearness to God is said to be heaven and distant from God is said to be hell.
From about more than twelve view points on soul described above one can make out how difficult it is to decide what a soul is or to answer the question as to whether one has a soul. Therefore people are inclined to say, yes, I have a soul, or no, I don’t have a soul, according to their notion gathered from what they have been taught or told in their childhood. Most people believe blindly what they have been told. There has been no other way.
Now, what is the remedy? To accept one of the views? Or to say there is no soul or no God, like atheists or Karl Marx.? That will be escapism. And I refuse to be satisfied. So, I decided to find out for myself whether I have a soul within me by searching inside. It was difficult and I am not sure I will ever get any result. But I will at least know that there is no soul or it is not possible to know. I tried.
I sat down and started looking inside. First I noticed my body, my body as a whole. Then I felt the breath going in and out. Then I noticed comforts and discomforts of the body. These have some connection with my thoughts and emotions. The thoughts seem to come from the discomforts and comforts- bad and disturbing thoughts and bad emotions from bad discomforts and pleasant ones from comforts and happiness. Of course reasoning thoughts are neutral and arises from memory- by correlations of memory with sense experiences. And thoughts are controlled and directed by intellect unless the emotions hijack them. Then comes the ego, which, whatever Freud might have said, is seen to have two elements. First is the pure ‘I’ feeling, and the second, the structure constructed or put up by thought. I have no quarrel with the first. But the second, staying glued to the first does all the havoc giving one the miseries, troubles and agonies of the world. Beyond the thoughts, memories, emotions, and intellect, I could find nothing. It is empty, nothingness, but alert, fully attentive (because I am on the look out for something or anything that may pop up at any moment!) and pleasantly vibrant with energy, the energy that drives the system and that remains in the whole system. I could not find any soul unless you call the empty vibrant space with the possibility of the pure ‘I’ lurking somewhere in that space, as The Soul.
Anybody may think that my idea is a summary of what I have read in books. True, I might have been influenced by what I have read and heard; but nothing in what I said is what I have not verified from my observation of my own mind.
Regarding rebirth of the soul or any life after death, no indication at all could be got and I have a suspicion that nothing ever can be found out unless one is able to die and come back. Any claim to the contrary could be the play, trick of the mind or some vivid hallucination. Mind cannot fathom what is before or after this life. I would like to keep it open for the present so that we are not accused of blind denial.

Belief and Reality

THATHATHAN --- Belief and Reality.

When we hear the words higher consciousness what come our mind is thoughts of God almighty. High consciousness and high thoughts are not the same thing. So far we are concerned, thinking about God is only a belief principle. That belief may be because of some culture of a particular place, the knowledge acquired by reading, or what is heard from some one else. That belief has not turned into our experience. High awareness or higher consciousness is not a belief or theory. That is one’s own experience of Truth.
There is a lot of distance between belief and experience. God-belief is creation of society. Society maintains this in order to utilize the good aspects of belief. For example, the priest appears in this world as the authorized representative or spokesman of god. Maintenance of belief is their requirement. Religious leaders and politicians take advantage of belief systems based on their narrow interests. On the other side the atheists say that there is no God. Is it after really experiencing or understanding the truth that they say so? Never! Atheists need to deny god in order to justify their belief in their systems. They deny God only for that purpose.
Thathathan is not saying that belief in god is not necessary. It is, of course, necessary. That our belief today goes or obstructs the experience of god is the contradiction, because, the actual presence of god is waiting to sprout and grow within us. It remains within us as butter in milk. It is our mind of to-day that hinders the consciousness from waking up. The mind which expresses outside today is not our real mind. That is merely the society’s mind. Society’s mind does not need the experience of God. Only belief in god is necessary for it. Actually the social mind opposes God-experience. The life of Thathathan itself is an example of that. It is to uproot and destroy the God-consciousness in me that my father, family and the society tried.
Where does our mind stand today? If you think a little deeper you find that our consciousness is at the level of the body only. It is that we call also as Animal Awareness. That is the un-awakened state. Getting agitated suddenly, becoming emotional without control, mindless indulgence in desires etc. are signs of blind awareness. Adamancy, thoughts of vengeance, desire of domination, conquest, enslavement of others, are also signs of body level awareness. To raise it and experience the awareness that lies beyond and behind the body level, to higher a level, is the core of spiritual life.

conscious awareness and unconscious awareness

Body and mind are both such a complicated mechanism that no ordinary intelligence, or for that matter any super- intelligence of man could have envisaged. There is clearly an ultimate superior energy or intelligenbe that is functioning in all of us, which make every complicated organ in us work with utmost unison. But we are not aware of the working of the vast majority of the organs. They work at the bidding of the unconscious part of the ultimate intelligence in us. I find that we all have in us a conscious part of the awareness or Intelligence, and an unconscious part. The conscious part can be seen with some effort while in meditation. A deeper and much more deeper meditation is perhaps necessay to bring the areas controlled by the unconscious part to the conscious domain. Is it impossible to do so? Do we require some better specialized equipment than the existing faculties provide to do so?

Sandananda Gori 5

Sandananda Giri 5
Know Experiences as waves. – We see sights. But the images that strike the eye-balls do not remain in the eye. The eye is clear there. But if a particle of dust falls in the eye it makes the eye disturbed. Likewise objects do not remain in the mind’s eye. They do not stay; they only come and go. But if anything stays there, like the dust in the eye it disturbs the mind. Meditation is broken then.
Like objects coming to the eye and going without remaining in the eye, the meditator should be able to keep his mind clear with equanimity without the matters impinging on the mind remaining there. For this there is no need to practice any posture (Asana) or hand-symbol. While engaged in daily activities also one can remain in balanced equanimity. Science has already proved that Sound, Shape and light travel in waves. Different lengths and combinations of the waves make us distinguish the waves as sound, shape, light etc. There are ultraviolet, infrared, gamma rays and so many other types. In short, objects/matter functions as waves.
It is in the form of waves that objects reach the mind. None of the objects reach the mind in the form of matter. Only images reach. But the mind, giving them colours differentiates them and distinguishes each from others. Life force or energy is lost in modifying the shapes or objects sighted to distinguish and retain them. If one is able to avoid the conceptual images of objects without thus losing the energy, then life can be in equanimity. This is the state of meditation. The life that reaches this state is the Reality itself. If one proceeds in this perspective and is able to avoid names and shapes from getting retained, his experience will be something beyond words that cannot be described to others. Absolute peace is felt. He becomes quiet and silent.

Am I not my body?

Am I not my body?
Every Spiritualist, seer, and Guru tells that I am not my body. They say that I am some fictitious soul or Athma lying deep within my body and existing eternally. How can I believe it? Should I, just because they just said it? For all that, they may be absolutely wrong. First of all I do not know whether there is something called a soul(Athma) at all.
If I am pinched I feel the pain. It is I who am feeling the pain; not the soul. Here, by ‘I’, I mean the body which includes the brain and the mind that are exclusively that of mine. At present while continuing to be alive I have no reason, need or feeling to believe that when the body and brain are no more, any mind or anything behind the mind remains back.
I do of course feel that there is some great force or energy that is inside me kicking all the time and pulsating, making the whole system work continuously from birth to death. Not even from birth, but from the very beginning of time when life started. But the pushing and wriggling will stop the moment I am dead. It is such a great wonder to think that the energy, the core within me started from the very beginning of time and to this day it has lasted all through in a continuous chain, all the time living through my forefathers and foremothers, escaping termination! But I cannot identify myself with any of the past existence in my mother, father or ancestors, and therefore so far as I am concerned, I have existed as ‘me’ only ever since I was born here.
Now tell me, am I the energy that is within me illuminating my body-mind system and pushing it grow, repair and survive? Can electricity be the motor that it runs? So far as the motor is concerned, electricity is the energy, power that runs it; that is all. The same energy that pulsates within me, moves also within the tree before my house making it grow up and up bursting into branches leaves, and flowers.
There is that great power, intelligence that creates the network of neurons, the brain and the tremendous force of the tiny atom, all within my body also.
But all that does not mean that I am not my body!
Well, I can of course pretend, imagine, or visualize within myself that I am not the body but am the great force at the core about which I mentioned and sit pretty in ‘meditation’. My capacity for imagination is very efficient. i can imagine whatever i want. When I imagine, it almost feels true! There's also a euphoria engulfing me because when you identify yourself with the energy within, there is no other thought present, and therefore everything is quiet and peaceful.
Yet, I don’t see how I am not my body, the perishable body that I feel that I am right now. Can anybody clarify, explain, elaborate, answer, this?

dualism swami sandananda giri

The Suffering seeker, the Knowledge Seeker, and the Wealth Seeker and such other categorizations are all in Dualism. Those who think that God is different from one’s own Self do not know the principle or reality. If one thinks of God as separate from oneself then only one can pray to God. What is created by addressing somebody for a need is a sense of division. Without dividing oneself and God how can one put forward his wants? That is not merger It is division that is not proper. It is cutting instead of knowing what is indivisible as a whole. Any process which cuts the whole with wants and desires, is ignorance. To merge with the sea, the river joins with the sea. That is the usual process. After that it does not separate. One cloud joins with another cloud and becomes one; after that it does not again split. When the separation becomes non-existent, then only one is aware of the omnipresence. Any knowledge is incomplete until one knows the omnipresent as it is, as a whole. If the knowledge is incomplete, it is only like seeing worldly sights. Then, for the minds habituated to seeing things of the world divided, it is easy to treat the awareness of divinity also the same way, divided. Therefore the majority of the people are those that seek God in the dark path of untruth, quickly discarding the right path. It seems one man prayed, ’Oh, God! Please save me from the clutches of Gods’.
It is as a result of thoughts based on reasoning that the Sages (Rishis) of India (Bharath) accepted an omnipresent existence of Oneness (Adwaitha). Ordinary people are not able to understand the Awareness of Self shining bright gloriously in the Upanishads. Awareness of God is not something like the knowledge obtained by comparing and selecting one out of two comparable objects. Think deep discriminating among the mind that camouflages the Self, its decisions, and the ever-changing sense imageries. ‘Inside is emotionless’. Thoughts of sense objects are coming from outside. Inside there are no such thoughts. Don’t enquire why. Search or enquiry is movement. It can be intellectual, mental, or connected with senses. But God is not an object that can be known by such enquiry. When the mental processes that create forms or objects subside, then whatever remains, that is God.