A TREATISE ON THE SOUL
Once the Soul Awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.John O’ Donahue
To provide a proper explanation of the Soul is difficult. Utilizing words to describe a manifestation that cannot be wholly captured by them can easily lead to misinterpretation. To start, it is best said that the Soul doesn’t dwell within your body; your body exists in accord with the infiniteness of your Soul.
Knowledge of the Soul can be traced back for thousands of years to the earliest stages of recorded history. It has been predominantly known as a supernatural element that inhabits a living human body until physical expiration; after which time it transcends the flesh and moves to another state of being. Due to the relatively rapid atrophy and ultimate termination of human life the Soul is recognized, because of its perceived immortality, as the more precious aspect of the two entities. The human vehicle is observed as just a temporary vessel with limited use by comparison. This overall view has been the most ubiquitous over the generations, barring the few theological variances regarding reincarnation or regeneration.
To argue against the Soul’s existence you contest the majority of the world’s populace from time immemorial. Individuals, up to present day, will adamantly give witness to their Soul’s presence, often with stories of personal evidence or revelations that have occurred to them along their journey.
In modern religious practice, the Soul is a cornerstone of the vast majority of beliefs from Christianity and Islam to Jainism, Sikhism, the Baha’i faith and even the practices of South American shamans and more. In antiquity, the Egyptians discussed the Soul, which permeated their belief system, Zoroastrians call it the urvan, the Hindu have atma, and Tao has hun and po. Whether or not each religious body is correct in its definition of the Soul’s role and relevance, the evidence is obvious that they firmly observe its existence.
The Soul itself is an incorporeal entity dwelling in the same space as your corporeal flesh. It is the direct conduit of spiritual activity and the primary control unit for the human’s biological center of response; its brain. Atop all of the brain’s neuro-circuitry, chemical involvement, and synapses, is the mind, a reasoning intangible phenomenon whose principal cohort is the Soul.
A normal person may think with a sense of passive consciousness and be affected by the complications of the subconscious as well, but the higher consciousness of the mind is that which is consistent with the Soul and the type of thought which must be most sought after. The Soul is also, arguably, the chief center of relevant memory, not the brain, which is the terrestrial processing unit that filters information and plays a role in memory recovery while the body lives.
Another imperative observation is that emotional responses which are products of depressive states are not of the Soul. The brain, along with its tempest of chemical cocktails, is the producer of these erratic behavior responses. Yet, the Soul does react to a stimulus that exceeds the pedestrian. Such things as wholesomeness of expression, authenticity, pure truth, and raw beauty are spiritual instigators.
Many wholly artistic creations do this, inducing a movement that exceeds the standard human offering. From gorgeous works of art, breathtaking landscapes, and creative dance routines, to vocal feats, deep meditative sessions, and astounding musical compositions, the Soul responds on a broader level than what is processed by the brain. This results in what is said to be a “religious experience”. These responses transcend the senses, are experiences of a more spiritual constituency, and have the ability to affect the individual in a way that is often nothing less than life changing.
Despite science’s attempt to relegate the entirety of our experiences to measurable components, the reality and relevance of the Soul still cannot be so easily refuted. The primary logically fallacious action they commit to is using the brain to reject the reactions and reality of said brain.
To use the brain to refute responses of the brain is frivolous due to a lack of ability to examine the approach from an outside non-bias perspective with tools separate from the object being observed. In doing this, any purported objectivity is dissolved in lieu of self-deceit and fraud. Yet the general public is overall ignorant of these methods, holding scientists in high regard. They lack enough perspective to scrutinize a scientist’s techniques, therefore making them unable to demand a standard necessary for objective observation.
It’s regrettable that in such an advanced civilization our most prominent intellects are foregoing logic in quite the same manner as the church did in early Christian society. Similar to the church’s execution of Giordano Bruno or the torture and arrest of Galileo, science is, albeit in a less heinous manner, scoffing at spiritual truths and vehemently disregarding any possibility of their existence.
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.Nikola Tesla
If a scientist implements spiritual hypothesis or even admits to belief in supernatural intervention upon natural components, their view can be enough to instill disrepute, disregard, condescension, and negative provocation. Soon enough though, science may be forced to bend. Just as the weight of fact bore down on the church, finally forcing it to concede to scientific realities, now science itself must exceed the boundaries of its compartmentalized system of observation and accept spiritual realities, entities, and explanations as well.
This treatise is not a call to forfeit the realities unearthed by science or to supplant its inarguable facts. It is a proposal that hubris be removed from the field of inquiry so that alternate hypothesis can be more openly postulated. It is true that the church could not use doctrine to deny scientific proofs, but now science cannot refute the reality that the human experience is material AND immaterial. It is body and brain, yes, but also mind and Soul, both of which are yet indescribable phenomena that are not of the material world.
Those of us that have incorporeal experiences know that the Soul, or our true self, exists as much or more so than the things we immediately perceive with our biological senses. Spiritual enrichment and Illumination are not figments of the imagination or apparatus clung to by the ignorant, but evidence of a well-rounded and wise individual that experiences the stimuli of both realities.
To rebuff this is to be the one catering to fantasy, blinding and forcing yourself into a less virtuous life: A life in pursuit of a chimera that will never reveal itself; if only because you deny the real answer in lieu of your search for a non-existent one that better suits a narrow-minded existential demand.
The Soul exists, and through that confession, realities beyond what is humanly perceivable exist as well. If we as a species do not recognize this certainty, then our overall growth will remain arrested and we will lay stagnant in the darkness of denial, self-absorption, inept explanations, and unsound doctrine. It is time to rise above the prejudice of terrestrialism and involve the legitimacy of both realities. Only then can we achieve the next stage in the evolution of our society.