Living In The Cosmos: Vignette (4): Soul Concepts-A

-THE SOUL IN HINDUISM-

In this vignette I'll focus mainly on the concept of "soul" as it is presented in Vedantic philosophy, which essentially represents mainstream Hindu thought.

From their earliest history, Hindus believed that the soul survived the body and went to either a place of pleasure or one of torment. Eventually the idea of reincarnation emerged, in which the soul (after surviving death) was reborn into this world in a continuous cycle of reincarnations until it had achieved "enlightenment."

For the soul is eternal and indestructible. It can exist in any living form, whether human beings, animals, plants, or even in gods. Basically all souls in all different life forms are alike. "Souls are souls." They do not differ in nature, regardless the life form they possess. [John A. Sanford, SOUL JOURNEY, Crossroad, 1991, p. 64.]

Perceived as an individual entity, that which can be described as an embodied soul is called the "jiva." The jiva is the manifestation of Atman-Brahman in Creation. And "ego-consciousness also partakes of the nature of "ahamkara"--[which refers to any individualized form]--for it is an individualized expression or form of something that is in its essence impersonal and supra-individual..." [Ibid, pp. 64-65.]

The Atman alone is the real, immortal Self. And it is the Atman that stands behind the jiva. The Atman is Universal, and the jiva is an individualized particular. [Ibid, p. 65.]

Consequently, the soul as an "individual entity has only a tenuous existence" and of itself is of little importance. Thus "an individual's personal identity in any particular reincarnation is ephemeral and without substantial meaning." It is the Atman--the Impersonal Soul--which is significant, because it, alone, is the underlying reality! [Ibid, p. 65.]

To quote Sri Aurobindo:

[The soul] "is not a definite psychic entity getting into a new case of flesh; there is a metempsychosis, a resouling, a rebirth of a new psychic personality as well as a birth of a new body. And behind this is the Person (Atman), the unchanging entity, the Master who manipulates the complex material, the Artificer of this wondrous artifice." [Sri Aurobindo, THE PROBLEM OF REBIRTH, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1952, p. 17.]

-THE SOUL IN BUDDHISM-

The idea of soul in Buddhism becomes complicated, because the Buddha...referred to such as "no-soul." The soul (or the self) is not real. [Sanford, SOUL JOURNEY, p. 67.]

To quote the Buddhist scholar Walpola Rahula: "Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of such a Soul, Self, or Atman. According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief that has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine'...It is the source of all the troubles in the world..." [Walpola Rahula, WHAT THE BUDDHA TAUGHT, Grove Press, 1959, p. 51.]

For the Buddhist there is no "individual enduring personality that is reincarnated, nor even an individual soul in anything like the Western sense." [Sanford, SOUL JOURNEY, p. 68.]

Rather, there is a constant reformulation of "personality in new bodies." This Personality is a Force at work, streaming through time and "never for a moment the same..." [Sri Aurobindo, THE PROBLEM OF REBIRTH, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1952, p. 14.]

As Sanford puts it:

"Individual souls are 'no-self', to be likened to the flames of fire that are never the same from one watch of the night to another." [Sanford, SOUL JOURNEY, p. 69.]

-THE SOUL IN ANCIENT GREECE-

In Greek the word for soul is "psyche." In ancient times this word meant "breath." A sign of life for the ancient Greek, soul dwelled literally within everything that was alive. Soul was the vital force that "enlivened anything that showed the quality of life, whether it was animal, vegetable, or human" [John A. Sanford, SOUL JOURNEY, Crossroad, 1991, p. 70.]

The concept of soul slowly evolved over time. In the Homeric Age there were beginning to be different shades of meaning. Other Greek words, such as "thumos," "ker," and "menos" began to represent the idea of soul. Indeed, with these new words, the connection of spirit with soul began to form. These new words are "rendered as spirit, courage, heart, or wrath, depending on the context." [Ibid, p. 71.]

During the Homeric Age cremation was practiced. It was thought that at death the soul departed the body. Though the soul was supposedly to go to Hades, the ancient Greeks thought some souls might linger around the body--"reluctant to depart or unable to make the transition." Hence the reason for cremation. If there was no body, the soul would depart and not be a threat to the living. [Ibid, p. 72.]

When the soul did go to Hades, it was neither rewarded nor punished for the previous life it had led. There were only a few exceptions. Mainly, the soul lived on "gloomily as a mere shade...of its former self." [Ibid, p. 72.]

A few centuries after the Homeric Age, there followed the Eleusinian mysteries. Though much is still hidden about these mysteries, scholars have been able to determine that there was a reenactment of the myth of Demeter and Kore and the eating of a kind of communion meal (a ceremonial cake). The ceremony focused around bringing about a union with the above goddesses, supposedly bestowing a kind of immortality on its adherents. This was a more clear next step, moving from the soul being simply the life force of the body, from the soul in death simply being a shade of itself, to the idea of an individual soul deriving a new meaningful life and continued existence under the aegis of these goddesses of the Underworld. [Ibid, p. 73.]

"Another important advance in the idea of the soul emerged...with Orphism...What was new about the beliefs of the Orphics was the special relationship they believed could be established between the soul and God." Orphism centered around the god Dionysus, "whom they believed to have died and been reborn in somewhat the same manner as Christ." By following the rituals and living a pure life Orphic devotees believed they could "unite their souls with the immortal Dionysus." They worked to accomplish this through communion meals, in which they ate the god and thus united themselves to him. By partaking of the nature of Dionysus, their soul ultimately could become immortal. [Ibid, p. 74.]

Later the Ionic philosophers, such as Anaximander (611-549 b.c.e.) considered that God was the universal element "from which everything in the created order was derived." Some philosophers considered that air constituted this universal element; thus, the "human soul was fashioned from air, being like a bit of the air enfolded within a human body." Heraclitus (c. 500 b.c.e.) differed, in that he believed this universal element was fire. Hence the human soul "was like a small portion of this fire." These early Greek philosophers believed that upon death the soul returned to God. However, "for these philosophers...God was impersonal, and the human soul, while it was immortal in the sense that it partook of the essence of God, was not immortal in any personal sense." [Ibid, pp. 74-75.]

The big jump in Greek thought about the soul came with Pythagoras and continued through with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras believed that souls "reincarnated into other forms of existence"; and, thus, presupposed a continuity of a soul's experience from "one incarnation to another." [Ibid, p. 75.]

Plato believed that the soul was a "self-moving power" and that it existed before being born into a particular body. So it naturally followed that soul could survive the death of the body, too. For Plato the soul was the "carrier of individual personality." [Ibid, p. 75.]

Plato extended his theory, believing that "the whole world has a soul because the world moves itself." And beyond this, God is "of the nature of soul because God is the Self-mover par excellence." As the author and psychologist, John Sanford, said: "From this it is only a small step to the inference that the human soul is essentially divine." [Ibid, p. 76.]

Sanford, especially, makes note that there is an extremely important aspect of Plato's teaching which should be remembered--something called "the care of the soul." This means "paying careful and diligent attention to the inner source of one's being." [Ibid, pp. 76-77.]

Further we have the concept of the soul as expressed by the ancient Stoics. Returning to the universal element, regarded by some early Greek philosophers as fire, the Stoics likened this concept of God as seed that having in itself the "reasons of all things and the causes of what was, is, and shall be." This energy was the vital principle from which all the flora and fauna springs The ancient Stoics considered that through any stage of development, it was God (as a living force) who molded and dominated passive matter in terms of "progress."

The Stoics believed in soul--even for the animals, though not a rational soul. In rational creatures, however, they considered the 'Pneuma" (fiery breath) to be manifested at a higher degree of intensity as an "emanation from the world-soul." This Pneuma was a spark of the celestial fire.

Essentially the Stoics believed that what God is for the world, the soul is for man. They declared that the cosmos must be viewed as a single whole--with its "variety being referred to varying stages of condensation in Pneuma." Therefore, for the ancient Stoics, the actual nature of a human person is the universal on a small scale--a *microcosm.*

There is a parallel between the macrocosm and the microcosm. God, the Soul of the World, fills and penetrates it. Similarly, the human soul pervades and breathes through all the body-- informing and guiding it. In both the macrocosm and the microcosm, there is a ruling part.

The ancient Stoics considered each human soul a "fragment of the universal divine force, yet not completely sundered from the parent-stock." They were talking about *family.* They declared that "We are thy offspring!"