What is the Soul?
What is the Soul?
By
Roland Matthews
Fall 2015
At some point in one’s life, it is not unusual to question the purpose of their existence. For some this may happen sooner than later. The reasons and circumstances that lead up to this inquiry are as various as the people who are asking, but what is important is that it takes place. Because as soon as the question is asked is when the journey of self-discovery begins. This journey eventually leads us to ask: “What is the soul?”
Plato is often quoting Socrates who was attributed to have said: “An unexamined life is not worth living.” But what part of our life are we to examine? We are born, but we do not know where we come from. Thanks to modern science, we do know about the miracle of how the sperm fertilizes the egg and eventually develops into a body, but we do not know where the origin of consciousness or personality lies. To anyone who is a parent, it is amazingly evident that our children come into this world already possessing their own personalities. Likewise, we all die, but we do not know where we go. For some, life is but a fleeting moment of existence, circumambulating around the Sun for a few decades and then ending as abruptly as it began. For them, the body then decays and the materials borrowed from the earth, from which it was made, are returned. But for the majority of humans, the body is viewed as a vehicle for the consciousness that dwells within, and after the body dies the consciousness continues. This happens to be in agreement with the first law of thermodynamics, also called the Law of Conservation of Energy. Even as far back as Empedocles (490–430 BCE), who wrote about how in his cosmology the four roots: fire, water, air, and earth "nothing comes to be or perishes"; [1] instead, these elements suffer continual rearrangement. [2] The Old Testament, or Hebrew Tanakh, uses three words to describe a tripartite division of humanity. These are G’uph, the body; Nephesh, the soul; and Ruach, the spirit. We already know what the body is, so what is the difference between the soul and the spirit? Paracelsus (1493-1541 CE) was the first, at least in writing, to use a tripartite symbolism of alchemy. In addition to Sulphur and Mercury, he added Salt. In alchemical traditions Salt correlates to the body because of its solid, fixed and unalterable qualities. Sulphur is related to the soul because it is the volatile constituent that holds the unique, identifying qualities of the substance it was taken from. And finally Mercury is the reconciling factor that unites the other two and is the same for all creatures of the same kingdom no matter the source. For example, all plants have the same spirit, which we call ethanol. So what are we to understand from this? The spirit is the one thing that we all have in common: the spark of life itself! This is thought to be the animating force that permeates the entire universe. If the body decays after death, and the spirit is the same for everyone, then the part we must examine is the soul. The soul is that which makes us unique.
Gary Zukav tells us that our soul lives on for all eternity, but he makes the distinction that the personality does not because it does not have the love, compassion, or wisdom that resides in the soul. Iamblichus, through the words of Gregory Shaw’s Theurgy and the Soul, also recognizes a lower self and a higher self. The lower self or personality is concerned with the day-to-day routine of meeting the survival needs of the body, whereas the higher self is concerned with theurgy. Theurgy is the process of perfecting one’s self by eventually achieving apotheosis, becoming a god, or henosis which is union with the divine. This process is one of the reasons why people like Giordani Bruno were burned alive and accused of heresy. They both also agree that the mundane world is similar to a school that is co-created by the students that inhabit it for the purpose of education and evolution. Zukav suggests that the soul is the higher self and yet more. Part of the confusion that results from this interpretation is that he does not mention the spirit as a separate portion. If we think of the spirit as a fraction of the divine imparted to each of us, and the soul as that part that connects us to the divine, then what he is saying becomes clearer. On an initial glance, it would appear that they disagree on the importance of the body, but upon closer inspection there is a subtle concurrence. Iamblichus implies that not only does the physical realm serve as a place of learning, but it too may be purified and raised to perfection, much as the alchemists say that the salts can be volatized. Zukav relates that whatever is inside one soul, is in all of them, which affects the entire globe. He continues telling us that with each improvement, the entire group progresses together. This is akin the Kabbalistic concept of Tikkun Olam, which are acts of kindness done in order to repair the world. This explains why Zukav states that as our souls mature, we take on greater responsibilities that go with that level of advancement.
While Zukav compares his ideas to an upside-down pyramid, it was very similar to an inverted version of Jung’s collective unconscious, although he denies the similarity. I would like to think of it not as the soul getting larger, but as our soul’s connection to the divine spirit within us deepens, we are more in touch with the vast expanse of the omnipresent divine spirit and therefore contacting more and understanding more of what it is in contact with as well. In conclusion, answering what the soul may be is much like the Tao; the closer we are to giving it a description, the further we are from its true essence. Zukav says that the point between energy and matter is the location of the soul, and love is the source of its vitality. This doesn’t say what it is. The closest I can arrive is that it has something to do with choice, or the will power to be able to make a choice. Regardless of whether or not one believes in reincarnation as Zukav obviously does, our choices are what influence the epigenetics of our bodies, this in turn has an affect upon everything around us, and this aids in the evolution of our soul. It is this evolution through the choices we make and the experiences caused by the actions of our individual lives that gives us the unique character of a “soul”.
References
Shaw, G. (2014) Theurgy and the soul: The neoplatonism of Iamblichus (2nd ed.). Kettering, OH:
Angelico Press.
Zukav, G. (2014) The seat of the soul (25th anniversary ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
[1] Kittel, C. Kroemer, H. (1980). Thermal Physics, second edition, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, ISBN 0-7167-1088-9.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics.
