Maha Yoga, by Who - The Soul #1

February 8, 2006

The Soul

from Maha Yoga, by Who

We have picked up in the course of life certain notions about the soul. We need to see how far these notions are based on evidence. Most of us believe that there is a soul, the perceiver of the sense-objects, which make up the outside world, and the thinker of the thoughts that arise in the mind.We also take it for granted that there is a distinct soul inhabiting every single body. It is this ‘soul’ that we regard as the self. And as this self is limited to a single body and the associated mind, we take it to be finite. When we say ‘I’ we mean this little self. We also believe that ‘we’ — namely these little selves — are in bondage, being subject to the laws of space,time and causality. Some of us believe also that this little self can become free, though we do not all mean the same thing by the word ‘freedom’. Most of us believe that this self takes up a succession of bodies, not by its own will, but by the compulsion of the effects of actions. Further there is the almost universal dogma of the believers that the souls are distinct from God; a few believe that this distinction will vanish on the attainment of freedom; but all others believe that the distinction is eternal — that the soul will remain distinct from for ever and ever.

These believers do not question the reality of time and space and of this and other worlds. All these believers assume that the mind is the self. But this assumption is often sub-conscious. Quite a large number of them profess to know that there is a self other than the mind; but subconsciously they believe that the self is a mind of some sort, attributing to their ‘self ’ many of the properties of mind. If these believers be substantially right, then it would follow that the self is a person, that is, an individual. All the questions that arise about the self are thus reducible to the one question, ‘Is the self an individual or person?’ If he be not a person, then there is no soul — no perceiver of the world, enjoying and suffering the consequences of actions. Whether personality is real or not will appear from what the Sage tells us in his writings. It is as follows:

“The body, which by itself is inert, does not say ‘I’; the real Consciousness has no rising nor setting. But between these two there arises a spurious being, an I, which assumes the size and shape oft he body; this itself is the mind, (serving as) a knot between consciousness and the inert (body); this is conditioned existence, the ego, bondage and the subtle body; this is the real nature of the (so-called) soul."

The Sage tells us here that the real Consciousness is beyond time and therefore neither rises nor sets. It is like the sun, which — relative to the earth — does not move; the sunrise and sunset we speak of are due to the movements of the earth. So too the Reality shines constantly; the rising and setting of the ego are ascribed to it. The ego-sense is discontinuous; it rises and sets. Apart from the ego-sense there is no individual soul. It shines during waking and in dream, and sets in sleep. This little self is therefore not to be identified with the Reality.

Nor can it be identified with the inert body. What then is this little self? The Sage tells us here that it is a hypothetical being, a chimera of the mind, compounded of the light of Consciousness and the body. These two utterly unlike things are confused together; the result is this incongruous being called the individual soul, which says, ‘I am so-and-so’. Because of the light of Consciousness associated with it, it appears conscious; but at the same time it is indistinguishable from the body, which has no consciousness of its own. Because of the two incongruous elements of which it is composed, it is described as the knot between the Reality — the Self — and the body. That is why the little self is manifest as the ego-sense, which has the form of the thought ‘I am this body’. The body thus identified as the self is not always the physical body; sometimes the mind,which is only a subtler kind of body, takes its place and then the sense of selfhood is restricted to the mind for a time. Now, the thought ‘I am this body’ is the primary thought. It is like a thread on which all the other thoughts are strung.Hence the ego is indistinguishable from the mind. In fact the mind is but an expanded form of the ego. Hence the Sage tells us that the mind and the subtle body are the same as this hypothetical little self, which is no other than the ego.Conversely we can say that the little self is not other than these.We thus learn that the so-called soul is nothing but the ego, which is due to a confusion of two elements which are distinct and can never mix, because one of them — the body— is non-existent, being a mere mental image. There can be a real mixture only if both the elements be real. The mixing up of the two, explains the Sage, is like a marriage contracted by a bachelor in a dream, where the bridegroom is real, but the bride is not; when the dreamer awakes, he finds himself as much a bachelor as before. Hence the real Self who is the Reality

— did not really become limited; He never really became the soul or little self; He was not really married to the body. Thus it is made clear that the individual soul has no real existence. All those questions that relate to that soul are meaningless, because they assume the existence of a soul.There is only one real Self, the Pure Consciousness, which is beyond time.

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to be continued