[world-vedic] History on Soul's Origin/Western World

[Guest guest]

"A. Neilli" <theos

 

 

A BRIEF HISTORY ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL, AS AN IMMORTAL SUBSTANCE, IN

THE WESTERN WORLD

 

 

Once, I was walking with an old monk in the fields surrounding his

monastery when he got stunned by what he saw; a stump of a tree, cut on

both sides by a chainsaw, was giving new buds. "Oh, it is alive!" he

exclaimed. I replied: "anima". "Yes", he approved, "life or air, it is

the Latin word for the soul. In Greek, it is psyche.Why do you say

therefore that animals have no soul?"

He did not answer.

 

 

A little latter, he said: "You see, it depends what

you mean and from which language the word comes. Ultimately, it rest on

you. And he laughed. Do you know that "animal" comes from "anima"?

Animal and soul are the same word. Ha! ha! ha! What do you know about

the soul? Does a pendulum needs a soul to function? Similarly, that tree

was wound up by God just like a machine. That tree cannot think, it has

no soul." He ended his sentence just when we arrived at destination; we

were on our way to collect honey from beehives. It was better to stop

arguing and keep silent.

 

 

 

While working, I was reflecting on the word soul. Its ontology sounds

like science-fiction. Since it has to do with what they call

"mythology", the word got a bad connotation. Not at ease, people prefer

to call him spirit, life air, vital force, etc. They cannot ignore its

concept otherwise difficulties will arise when it is time to accept

notions like immortality, another world, God or morality. The problem

with the soul is that it is not just a thing you can grasp with the

intelligence to be analyzed and labeled. His reality is most mysterious.

 

 

 

To define the soul, -out of Indian context-, the intellect was the main

tool. There are no original scriptures with detailed information. It is

not like the Bhagavad-gita where a whole chapter is written about him.

In Judaism, Moise is silent on this point. So much so that the

Sadduceans rejected the idea of an eternity for the soul. Their

opponents, the Pharisians, professed the resurrection of the dead

bodies. Words like nefech, rouah, usually translated as "soul" or

"spirit" are rarely employed in the Bible in reference to a disincarnate

or "spiritual" part distinct from the body. Their sense of eternity was

in regard of the body. It is later on only, under the influence of the

Greeks, that they began to write about a spiritual soul which gives life

to the body.

 

 

 

The kabbala, which emerged after the first millennium, went

up to talk about reincarnation. From where its teachings come from all

together is obscure. Traces of Indian influence are often mentioned.

Nowadays, the modern Jews don't believe anymore in the resurrection of

the dead but privilege the idea of an eternal and separate soul.

Egyptians, an advanced civilization, also believed in the soul; some say

in reincarnation. If so, we don't find clear formulation on their

conception of the soul, neither the source of their knowledge. For the

various civilizations surrounding it, religion had always a great deal

of syncretism. Scholars speculate that Egyptians may have got their idea

from the Zoroastrians who were Persians and believed in the resurrection

of the body. Just like Jews and Sumerians. In that part of the world,

they thought the human being as one, avoiding the sharp distinction

between soul and body.

 

 

 

The Mazdeans, for whom Zoroastre or Zarathustra became later on the

prophet, had a different understanding; the soul could fall in hell,

but not for eternity; he reincarnates and reaches the heaven at one

point. Zoroastre made quite some changes to this religion. For example,

he eliminated all the gods who became asuras, demons, and kept only one,

a supreme Male. We could say without creating to many waves, that the

God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, was Iranian from His origin. We

should point out right away here, in short, the particularity of old

Mazdeism: VEDIC CULTURE WAS ITS FOUNDATION.

 

 

 

On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Greeks were debating

seriously the question of the soul. Socrates died by drinking poison,

convinced that his soul will not be affected. His disciple, Platoon,

promulgated this idea to the whole world. For the first time in the

western countries, some kind of serious philosophy about the soul and

its immortality was being accepted widely. Platoon believed in and

professed reincarnation and vegetarianism.

 

 

 

His disciple, Aristotle, later on rejected most of his teaching. He did

not accept the famous Forms or Idea (that everything has its original

archetype, a spiritual form, on the transcendental plane); he rejected

also the duality of the body and soul, what to speak of reincarnation.

For him, the soul is intimately related to the body and cannot be

absolutely differentiated. There cannot be any existence without the

"living" body. The way he uses the words bewilders. "Anima" and "animal"

come from the same word, do you remember? Evolution of the soul and

evolution of the body are the same thing therefore. He is a naturalist

and the first darwinist, we can say.

 

 

The whole Christian tradition will be devided on who to choose:

Aristotle or Platoon? (Of course, the idea of reincarnation and

vegetarianism will be abandoned.)

 

 

 

The question may be asked about the ancient Greeks, those much before

Socrates, the Argonotes, or Ulysses and the like. Did they believe in

the soul? Not in a divine one. For them, a human being dies and goes to

the kingdom of death; there, he shall live as a shadow. Sumerians and

Babylonians shared this belief. There was no paradise for the pious. A

human could never become a god or live in their company. The

sophisticated idea of the soul, reincarnation, vegetarianism, was

promoted later on by a current of thought called Orphism. From there

came Pythagore, one of the greatest philosopher who made his these ideas

and brought a most important contribution for the evolution of the

notion of the soul. He was well-known and became so much of a

disturbance for the establishment that his opponents burnt his school

and killed all his disciples. THE SOURCE OF HIS KNOWLEDGE WAS SAID TO

BE INDIA.

 

Germans, Scandinavians, Gallics, the whole Europe was more or less

under the celtic influence. The role they played on Christianity was

similar to the Zoroastrians on the Midle-East population. Celts believed

in reincarnation. Their origin is linked to an area close to India and

their religious culture is full of vedic elements; scholars call them

Aryans. They may as well as been connected with the Mazdeans.

When we objectively look for an original and sophisticated understanding

of the soul, the road leads always to the Upanishad, Puranas and the

Bhagavad-gita. There, abundant details are found. We should remark also

that those Scriptures never make allusion to a foreign source of any

kind. The Vedas manifested in India.

 

 

 

The next important debate will occur in the fifteen century with

Descartes. He argues that the soul and the body are two separate things.

Again. The question of a separate and eternal entity is preoccupying.

How the soul, who is radically different, can inhabit a material body

and act on it? Descartes failed to explain the mechanism. Of course,

there is no rational explanation, still this was not acceptable. Since

Aristotle, demonstration has to be. No more myths please. Gods and

legends were from an other age. Rational thoughts and science were

superseding philosophy and metaphysics. Anyway, Descartes speculations

did not diverge from his religious tradition; it was a mixture of

platoonism and judeo-christianism. For him, only humans have souls;

animals are only machines. But the singularity of his theory was that a

human body also can function without the soul, just like a mechanic. The

soul brings only the faculty to think.

 

 

 

Pascal, a faithful catholic, attacked with virulence this theory. He

reunites the soul and the body as one and the same thing.

Mystics like Theresa of Avila, among others, could have shed some light.

Unfortunately her descriptions are quite (personel). Also a doctor -a

title given by the Church-, she doesn't tell us for example, why animals

don't have a soul, what is the soul. She sticks to her traditional

exoterism in this regard. An other famous saintly personality was

Francis of Assisi. Some say he thought that animals have a soul, that he

was vegetarian. If that was the case, he never expressed it

significantly and no doctrine emerges from this perspective. To find out

about onthological answers you must to go to the roots of the tradition.

In the case of the soul, only God or revealed Scriptures can inform us.

We did not mention muslims since they did not develop a different view

on the subject than the Judaic tradition they come from. In the case of

souffism (the mystical side of Islam) however, we are confronted with

the same problem than the Kabbala; some indian influence is also

recognized.

Getting back to the monastery, the old monk said: "There was a worker

who came to pass by the morgue and got the chance to watch a dissection

of a cadaver. When the teacher explained to his students that he never

found the soul, he protested: 'Excuse-me Sir, if you did not see it it's

because it was not there anymore'. Isn't it a question of faith?"

"Sure", I said, "but little intelligence can help. Isn't it?"

"Yes", he agreed, "the doctrine of immortality of the soul had a simple

and clear meaning with Pythagore. He is divine from the beginning, and

therefore he will be also in the future. In the Hebraic perspective,

things are more complicated. The soul is not divine, he'll become by the

grace. The western concept -the soul and the body being the same-, thus

formulated by Aristotle is very difficult to comprehend. Dualism in this

regard is more easy. Nevertheless" he concluded, "since the soul is

invisible, the discussion can go for ever".

 

 

"That's what Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita" I thought: "Some look on the

soul as amazing, some describe him as amazing, and some hear of him as

amazing, while others, even after hearing about him, cannot understand

him at all."

AN ESSAY BY A. NEILLI AKHILESHVAR

 

 

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