THE NATURE OF THE SOUL By RUTH RENDELY "Man is a soul, and he has a body." -- Paramahansa Yogananda In the more than 6,000 years of known history there has been little agreement about the nature of the soul. In attempting to define the soul, most widely miss the mark. Materialists confuse the soul with matter, wishing to place the soul in some part of the body, usually the brain. Spiritualists confuse the soul with God, eliminating the soul as a separate entity altogether. In Western history the ancient Greeks initiated this confusion when Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras agreed that the soul (psyche) was immortal and distinct from the body, while Aristotle placed the soul firmly in the body. Although the Platonists generally agreed upon the immortality of the soul, they still spent much of their time discussing its corporeal seat in the body. Christianity adopted the Platonic mind-body dualism with its emphasis on an immortal soul, but less on principle and more on a practical need to console adherents who were concerned about survival after death. As I wrote elsewhere the Church constrained discussion of the "soul" during the many centuries of its hegemony in Europe. Unlike the Western world, which would only become evermore materialist in its outlook, the Eastern world, represented here by the Hindu tradition, tended to fall into the spiritualist, non dual camp. In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 18 we see some evidence of this: "These bodies are known to have an end; the dweller in the body is eternal, imperishable, infinite. Therefore, O Bharata, fight!" And referring to the soul as "he" in Verse 20: "He is never born, nor does he ever die; nor once having been, does he cease to be. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient, he is not slain when the body is slain." This conception breaks the ties with materiality via a negative path. The soul is not the body, not the mind, not the ego, not the heart. By following this path, all becomes the one, eternal Brahman, or Godhead. Rather than being many souls, there is only one soul. Although unity is appealing, the problem with this conception is that it may describe the universe initiating out of God, but it fails to describe the diversity that God chose to create, or what some have called the play (lila in Sanskrit) of God as it exists in our reality. Coming back to our Western roots, since 1600 with the ascendancy of scientific materialism, and its replacement of the Church, the subject of "soul," became relegated to a dusty back closet. Even now this inattention prevents the development of the science of soul, for researchers have to spend time simply establishing the existence of the soul. But things are beginning to change. Many recent thinkers have seen the chink in the armor of physics because of Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, in which it appears that the "observer" -- that awfully subjective aspect -- is central to the outcome of experiments of advanced particle physics. Given this opportunity, some scientists and spiritualists have hurried to create new theories bridging the chasm that exists between science and religion. While science is regrouping its forces, those that have been thinking about the subject of soul have come forth to take a stand -- myself included. I see the soul as an energetic envelope, separate from the body, and distinct from God. It is physically larger than the body of any sentient being. Energy implies materiality, and thus I take a middle position between those who reduce the soul to matter and those who inflate the soul to God. This energy envelope surrounds the body like a cloud, or mist, which in some points is attached to the body -- indicative of more complete absorption in those locations. The materialists are partly correct when they try to place the soul inside of the body. The soul is attached to parts of the body, but which parts may vary from person to person. This localized connection may explain why particular attributes of an individual, i.e. "brilliant mind," "beautiful heart," may actually have their foundation in soul energy highlighting these particular areas. Furthermore, the soul likely has an interdimensional, and timeless nature that is not limited by our planetary clock, or the third dimension. Flashes of precognition and fears lingering from distant eons, and other intergalactic locales, are no doubt impinging upon our subconscious at all times. [Learn about Ruthe and her unique healing work HERE]

METAPHYSICS -- AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

Metaphysics is that area of philosophy which concerns itself with the nature and structure of reality. It deals with such questions as: Are the objects we perceive real or illusory? Does the external world exist apart from our consciousness of it? Is reality ultimately reducible to a single underlying substance? If so, is it essentially spiritual or material? Is the universe intelligible and orderly or incomprehensible and chaotic? In its traditional meaning metaphysics is almost synonymous with ontology, the study of being as such, but it also includes cosmology, the study of the organization and origin of the universe. At times during the history of philosophy THEOLOGY (the study of the nature and existence of God) has been included in metaphysics, but modern philosophers tend to treat it as a separate subject. In addition to ontology and cosmology, modern metaphysical inquiry includes the philosophy of mind or self (sometimes called rational psychology), which deals with such issues as the mind-body problem, free will and determinism, and personal identity. The term metaphysics itself was introduced by early editors of the works of ARISTOTLE to describe those writings that came after (and thus carried analysis beyond) his studies on physics. Metaphysics began with the pre-Socratic philosophers who were concerned with whether reality was reducible to a single underlying substance. The MILESIAN SCHOOL took a monist position (see MONISM) on this question, as did HERACLITUS and PARMENIDES, although their ideas about what constituted this basic substance varied from water to fire to "the One." PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS posited a dualistic or two-substance theory about the world, and ANAXAGORAS and EMPEDOCLES took a pluralistic position, holding that reality was made up of many discrete particles. In the subsequent development of philosophy monism is represented by such philosophers as Baruch SPINOZA and G.W.F. HEGEL; dualism by PLATO, Rene DESCARTES, and Immanuel KANT; and pluralism by Gottfried von LEIBNIZ and some pragmatists. Beyond the question of whether or not reality is composed of one or more than one basic substance lies the question, What kind of substance is it? On this issue metaphysics traditionally has been divided between materialists who believe that all reality is basically material or physical and idealists who believe that reality is spiritual or nonmaterial. Important materialists have been the pre-Socratic atomists, Thomas HOBBES, and Karl MARX. Among contemporary materialist theories, especially with respect to the nature of humanity, are analytical behaviorism and the neural identity theory of mind. Major idealists have included Parmenides, Plato, George BERKELEY, Johann Gottlieb FICHTE, and Hegel. A third major metaphysical issue centers around the problem of permanence and change. Except for some philosophers, like Parmenides, who have denied the reality of change, and others, like Heraclitus, who have denied the possibility of permanence, most philosophers have attempted to explain change in terms of either mechanism or TELEOLOGY. Materialists have tended to take a mechanistic view, explaining change as the action and reaction of physical particles with one another. Both idealists and theologians have taken a teleologic approach, appealing to a spiritual (usually supernatural) principle as the ultimate source and cause of all change. Plato's ideal "Forms," Spinoza's pantheistic "God," Hegel's "Absolute," and the Judeo-Christian God are examples of such principles. Aristotle worked out a naturalistic teleology, holding that every individual thing in the universe moves toward a goal inherent in its nature. The modern attack on metaphysics began with the skeptical EMPIRICISM of David HUME, who argued that ideas like "substance," "reality," "mind," and "causality" were undemonstrable. Kant, too, questioned the possibility of metaphysical knowledge in the traditional sense. In his view the ultimate nature of reality (things as they really are) is unknowable, for the human mind is limited to knowledge of phenomena or appearances. His several "critiques" of the speculative and practical functions of reason significantly altered the course of philosophy. After Kant, philosophers such as Fichte and Hegel became more interested in the creative activity of the ego or reason itself than in the natural world. It was not long, however, before these newer systems came under severe attack from both Marx and the positivists -- an attack from which idealism and metaphysics in general have never fully recovered. In recent years many philosophers have come to believe that only the natural sciences can legitimately investigate the nature of reality. Hence, for many contemporary philosophers the proper philosophical endeavor is the analysis of language Among the major metaphysicians remaining are phenomenologists and existentialists, whose concern with the unique existing self and the world of which it is immediately conscious stands in sharp contrast to the traditional concern with the nature of total or ultimate reality as it exists within or beyond experience itself.