ETERNAL DRAMA OF SOUL, MATTER AND GOD 

·         Life is the name given to the state of physical being when the soul is there in a physical system and its consciousness is at work even though it may be at a low degree. Or, in other words, ‘Life’ is the name given to the state of the functioning body, especially when a soul is ensconced in it, whereas ‘Soul’ is a non-physical entity which may have existence and state of being even after leaving its gross body. Consciousness is one of the essential attributes of the soul; it may be manifest or may remain dormant. In this sense, ‘life’ and consciousness though closely related in a physical system, have two different meanings.

·         The existence of Thoughts, Ideas and Consciousness is an indubitable fact of human experience. Every human being thinks and every living being has consciousness and, therefore, the existence of Consciousness and Thought is a well-established and irrefutable fact of life. Every human being has at least some knowledge and knowledge can be stated, in simple terms, as a system of ideas, concepts, thoughts and experience. So, the existence of knowledge implies and proves the existence of ideas, concepts, thoughts and experience.

·         Thoughts, Ideas, Concepts, Perceptions and Experiences manifest through the medium of the brain, the nervous system and the body but their source is the metaphysical soul.

·         All our Thoughts and Ideas are not the result of stimulation of sensory messages or sensations. No doubts, sensations provide, in most cases, the raw material for thinking. But Mind, Consciousness or Soul has the power as well as the ability to reconstitute them into ideas. Or, Ideas may even suddenly flash on our Mind. Or, as we say, our mind may hit upon an idea, formulate a concept, think deeply upon a sensation and may interpret a sensory message and yet decide to defer action on it. Thus, Thoughts and Ideas are a different order of existence; they are metaphysical in nature and even though they are connected with sensations, they are not another name for sensations.

·         It is really a power a wonder that Hume should have failed to experience the presence of self. He Himself states that when he looks into himself, he finds thoughts coming and going, but the conveniently forgets that this ‘himself ’constitutes the self, the thinker the perceiver, the knower of the one who remembers and recollects.

·         The term ‘I’ is not used for the shifting scenes or perceptions that present themselves before, or impinge on, the consciousness, it is used for one who is aware or is influenced by those perceptions. The perceptions or conceptions are his; he himself is not a perception or a bundle of them.

·         Memory is generally considered to be the preservation, recall and recognition of the past events or experiences.

·         Scientific investigation of the physical state of a hypnotised person, who shows exaltation of mental abilities substantiate the truth that the conscient being is non-physical and is different from the brain.

·         Thoughts and ideas are like seeds which, when sown, grow into action and bear fruit of achievements- good or bad.

·         Mind intellect is the invisible functioning abilities of the soul. They are the soul’s faculties which work through the brain, the nervous and the organs of the body.

·         Any human action, whether it be seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears, eating by using the mouth or any other organ employed to do the action appropriate to the organ is accompanied by its relevant experience.

·         Thinking things and feeling pleasure or plan is not the job of the eye, but is the nature of that conscient the thing which thinks and feels- the thing that is known as the soul.

·         The non-material entity that connects and collates is called ‘the soul’. In the soul are to be found the abilities of recognition, recollection, etc. and through the organ and the brain does this soul know, recognise, feel and act.

·         There is an entity which can have extra-sensory perceptions and which, after leaving one body, and, on entering into another, can reveal the events of its past life.

·         When the spiritual energy that the soul is, i.e. when the power of consciousness that the soul is express itself in the form of a wish, volition, will, attention, feeling or thought, we say that our Mind is working. When it expresses itself in the form of understanding, reasoning or judgement, we say that our Intellect is working, and when it appears in the form of memory, we say that our Chitta is at work. So, they are only different manifestations of consciousness’ of the soul.

·         The mind and the intellect are not entities separate from the soul nor are these material adjuncts of the soul nor another name for any physical and subtle sheath but they are the soul’s abilities to perceive, to experience, to attend, to be aware and to think. And the brain, the nervous system and the biochemical changes and the only instrumental in the manifestation of these.

·         The soul- all the thoughts, feelings, and impressions of all the existence of the soul so far, comprehended to become, as it were, a part of it, and yet invisible and unmanifest.

·         The state of Meditation shows that there is a conscient being, call it Mind or soul, which may think and be active and yet not use the cerebrum or the reticular activating system for the sense perception so that we get waves which represent relaxation, coupled with the state of high thought-activity.

·         The practice of Spiritual Meditation, which consists in the contemplation of self as a soul, peaceful and pure in its original nature, etc., brings changes which, in fact, cannot be explained on the stimulus-response basis as is usually done in psychology and physiology. Morden Chemistry and Physics also cannot explain this phenomenon. How physiological changes occur simply by contemplating that “I am a soul, different from the body…... I love God fondly” etc. etc. is yet an inexplicable wonder to the neuro-scientists. The reason for this is that the person who practises contemplation is not a material entity and, while practising Meditation, it lays at rest most of the usual activity of the senses and is let us say, dis-engaged from the body.

·         Meditation eliminates stress and brings about a state of deep relaxation and quiescence, and takes one into high bliss and lasting peace, one should find time to meditate, for when the soul is linked to God, the Ocean of Peace and Bliss, it experiences a great ecstasy and the joy which cannot be had from sense- objects.

·         Knowing the self to be an entity different from the body and the brain, we should give up the slumber of ignorance in the form of body-consciousness. We should now become soul-conscious, for it is now the time to wake up, drink the nectar of Godly knowledge and the march towards our goal.

·         Our perceptions are not merely interpretation or understanding of the sensory data but that there is another side to this all. There are certain sensory data for our aesthetic appreciation and enjoyment and this is not for the millions of neurons of which the brain is constituted of but for someone else sitting over there. Again, our reaction to the sensory data is not always in terms of learning skills or recording our perception in memory-circuits but also in terms of appreciation and enjoyment- enjoyment of the soul.

·         There is an eternal entity, called soul which does not die when the body dies. This entity is not physical or material in its nature but is super physical, metaphysical or spiritual. We cannot understand the order of the universe and the purpose of life unless and until we understand and believe that the soul exists.

·         There is a self besides the brain which carries or bears these influences because the synaptic connectives cannot explain the ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’ influences. Protein synthesis of new macromolecules and growth of synapses and the death of some brain cells does not give the brain a continuity which, in fact, is an experience because of these ‘unconscious’ or ‘implicit memories’ which are the result of previous actions are called ‘Sanskars’. It is these which give unity of the self. The self it is that co-ordinates the information received from various senses into various parts of the brain and gives to it an experimental unity without which the encoded memory would be meaningless.

·         The brain acts as a physical record of the memory- traces and that there is permanent memory in the soul wherefore the soul acts as a judge and as an assessor of the memory stored in the brain and either accepts it as correct or doubts its correctness and tries other sources for its confirmation, or considers it as incorrect and rejects it as incorrect, or even modifies it in the light of new facts.

·         The soul has the conscient memory and that the memory stored in the brain is only as films or cassettes are, or a diary is to a man who is the thinker. Now we will consider his faculty of Memory further.

·         Memory of the ‘forgotten’ events is revived by means of Hypnotism also which shows that what we believe to have been forgotten is, in reality, not lost forever because nothing in this world is, in reality, ‘lost’. It merely sinks into the subconscious or the unconscious. In fact, everything that impinges on our consciousness leaves thereon its ineradicable trace. Only some impressions are above the ‘threshold of consciousness’ and can, therefore, be easily recalled whereas others are below the ‘threshold of consciousness’ and are given the label ‘forgotten’ though these can be ‘gotten’ again. To use the language of physics, they go into ‘potential form’ instead of being in the ‘kinetic form’ but they are definitely there.

·         Memory is retained by a man at subliminal or intraluminal level and is an ability of consciousness; it is not a faculty of the brain-tissue, for the previous body and brain having been cremated, the person is now able to relate, through the medium of the new brain, which is not yet even fully developed, events of early life with emotion, feelings and cognition of relationship as in that life.

·         Thus, memory is, decidedly, the faculty of a metaphysical personality which survives the death and can remember the events of an earlier life. A clincher proof this is that even amoeba and other unicellular living beings, who have no brain, do have the faculty of memory. However, in a dim stage, and it is because of their faculty of memory that they can learn certain kinds of behaviour by repetition and remember to avoid situations, harmful to their existence.

·         Memory is not a function of a physical entity, governed by laws of physics and chemistry, because the memory of the events of a lifetime appears so rapidly as if it is emancipated from Time. To have a review of all the events or of life of, say, fifty years of physical existence in a matter of only two minutes or less does not only show that memory is ineradicably permanent but that it is a metaphysical function, for, not only is it associated with consciousness but is unimaginably fast and is collateral with the awareness of whether what was done was morally right or wrong. Awareness, judgement and ethical consideration cannot be attributes and acts of a material or physical entity but of a spiritual person who has had continuity of existence and has been all through a witness to what he(or it) has been doing and is a conscious Energy which is not only indestructible, as all other forms of material energies are but are also non-transformable and is thus unlike other forms of energy, such as Heat, Light, etc., which can be transformed from one to the other kind. Being energy, which has consciousness and is non-transformable and has also moral sense: it cannot be epiphenomenon of the brain because the two are utterly incompatible in their very nature.

·         Now those who say that consciousness is a product of the brain, have to answer how the consciousness remains when the cells go on dying? How would one retain permanent or lasting memory of the past if there is no eternal soul ensconced in the brain?

·         “He who neither rejoices nor hates nor gives nor grieves nor desires, who renounces both good and evil and is full of devotion to Me, is dear to Me.” (Geeta, ch-12. V-17)

·         “He who is alike to friend and foe, and likewise to honour and ignonimity, who is alike to heat and cold, pleasure and pain, etc., and is free from attachment and takes praise and reproach alike, who is given to contemplation and is content with whatever comes unasked for, attachment, that man is dear to Me.”(Geeta, ch-12. V-18-19)

·         Nothing happens without a cause. As is the cause so being the effect. The effect corresponds to the cause.

·         The Self or Mind, which is the receptacles or vehicles of aptitudes, interests and mental abilities is different from the biophysical entity and has been in existence even before the union of the gametes or the sperm and the ovum.

·         The souls are eternal. The Gita explains that the manifestation or descent of a soul in a particular body, family and environment depends upon the soul’s earlier impressions or predispositions, resulting from its, past births. According to the Gita, the next life of a being is determined by what resolves he has at the time of its death. Thus, each birth can be explained on the basis of the understanding that the same soul has taken several births in the past. Therefore, if we go on considering births in continual regression, the series will extend to infinity. For, this birth is due to certain predispositions resulting from past births which again are each due to certain predispositions and so on ad infinitum. Our consideration of the cause, underlying each birth, will lead us, at last, to the time when the soul first descended from its unmanifest abode(Brahm), called the Soul World.

·         But the Gita points out that even the first birth also was according to the soul’s nature or swa-bhava (Propensities, peculiar to the self). For, though at the end of one world cycle(Kalpa), the souls get emancipation from their past vicious actions and abide in the Soul-World, in a state characterised by ‘stillness’ or the tranquillity of mind, yet the Swa-bhava(nature) of each individual soul persists to be, however in the latent form.

·         Therefore, it should be remembered that the individual nature, impressions, inclinations, tendencies, etc., are the eternal ‘bearing’ of the soul. From the time, a soul descends on this World Drama Stage, its latent thoughts or desires and ideas or idola being manifesting. Since then, there continues to be a constant trans flux of thoughts or volition so that, by the end of the World Cycle or Kalpa the whole chain of the merged Sankalpas (thoughts) having been completed or fully transmitted and manifested in the creative play on this Field-of-Action, the soul starts again, in the next Kalpa, from where the chain of its merged thoughts began manifesting in the previous Kalpa-the World Cycle. Thus, this repetition goes on endlessly in cycles.

·         As such, the thoughts or volition(Sankalpas) and inclinations are eternally the part and parcel of every soul and, in this sense, every thought or act of the soul is reflexive. This also shows that the souls are eternal so that they do not start learning from a zero levels.

·         Beyond that World of Angles or deities is the Worlds of Souls, also called ‘The Soul World’ or ‘Bramhaloka.’ There, the souls dwell in the incorporeal state. They are outside the domain of terrestrial laws, as we know them, and they are in perfect silence over there in ‘rest’ and ‘relaxation’ in a unique sense. It is in this world that the Supreme Being, the Incorporeal Supreme Soul, Shiva, also abides. Knowing this, we should forge a link with Him, for He is the greatest of extra-terrestrials kins and is also the source of true knowledge. He is the source of spiritual power, purity, peace and Bliss. Through Him, we can have eternal happiness.

·         Meditation or yoga is a process of conscious withdrawal from the body into the core of one’s own being. When a person engages his mind with the thought that he is a soul, a conscient being, he indirectly becomes withdrawn from the gross awareness of the gender, age, nationality, etc of his body and, instead, has an experience of the reality of the self.

·         Rajyoga Meditation is the method and the practice which enables one to transcend body-consciousness and to stabilise in the self. This is aimed at the realisation of the true nature of the soul and attainment of bliss and peace. It is based on truthful suggestiveness whereby one may now get rid of the perverted knowledge and may realise that he is not the body nor the senses nor anything of matter but a self-aware, conscient being, called the soul.

·         Thus, the practice of mediation enables man to educate himself about the true nature of the self and the world. It is a metaphysical incarnation of being which enables the soul to withdraw from the world of senses into the world of soul. This frees the soul of all morbid thoughts and psychopathological states and gives it purity and lasting peace. It frees the mind from the wrong notion that peace and happiness lie in gross things of the world and, instead gives it an experience of spiritual peace and solace.

·         Mediation enables the soul to shine in its original lustre and glory and to reach the climax of its noble qualities and be free from all worries all troubles.

·         In order to understand how man suffers due to negative thoughts and how he can maintain happiness and better health through positive thinking, it would be profitable to understand the mechanism through which Thoughts affects the body and vice-versa. By understanding the mechanism of Mind-Body interaction, the truth in the saying: As you think so shall you become” can be better understood and the concept of ‘Vice’ and ‘Virtue’, or ‘demoniac’ and ‘divine’, or ‘evil’ and ‘holy’, become partly clear.