The Soul As the True Central Being

In the West, the existence of the soul has been mainly perceived either as a matter of religious belief or scientific skepticism, neither necessarily based in actual experience. At one point, scientists decided that if the belief that the soul departs at the time of death is to be considered as factual, then they should be able to weigh the body at the moment before death, and the moment after death and thereby know the weight of the soul that has now departed! This is the ultimate attempt by the external, physical mind to try to grapple with the reality of a more subtle aspect of existence. Of course, when they could not ascertain the weight in this manner, they felt justified in denying the existence of the soul. The idea that we are a soul that occupies and uses the body, life and mind for its cumulative experience, rather than being a body that happens to have, or acquire a soul, never dawns on them. The fact that they could not, with the limitations of their instruments, measure the weight of thought, or measure the weight of a photon, did not deter them from coming up with any excuse to justify their lack of personal experience, or at least a recognition, of the soul and its action in their own lives.

From the side of Western religion, followers are simply asked to believe in the existence of the soul, despite having no personal experience of it that they can recognise. The reliance on dogmatic demands, rather than developing a path for personal experience has caused many people to leave the mainstream religious organisations over the last 50-75 years and embrace the quest for spiritual experience through a variety of ways.

The failure of both the secular and religious approaches in Western society have also led many people to simply try to deny the deeper truth that underlies all existence and leads to lives that are restricted within the walls of a materialistic, hedonistic, or intellectual framework, without any deeper significance or meaning. Many who follow these directions wind up depressed, disillusioned or with a feeling of meaninglessness or emptiness about their lives.

There are a number of aspects of our existence that do not appear to exist, until they come forward and take a visibly active role in our lives. The higher reasoning intellect, for instance, does not generally become highly active for years after a person is born. For some people it is difficult to discern its action throughout most of their lives. Yet, we can observe humanity and see that there is, indeed, a power of mental activity that exists but cannot be weighed, seen, dissected or otherwise discerned other than by its actual activity and the patterns it develops in the life of the individual who has experienced the activation of that power.

In a somewhat similar way, the action of the soul is not immediately apparent in most people, but when the experience comes, those who have that experience cannot deny its existence, nor can they deny the influence it has in their lives. Sometimes the experience comes in a very traumatic manner, such as the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, or through some kind of near-death or other traumatic event in the life, such as that recounted by Danion Brinkley in his book Saved by the Light.. At other times, it takes the form of a gradual and natural process of maturation, development and change as the life experience accumulates. In rare individuals, the light of the soul can be seen virtually from the time of taking physical birth, the result of the maturity of the soul carried forward from prior incarnations. [For discussion about the necessity and action of rebirth, see earlier blog posts on the subject in our review of The Life Divine and Rebirth and Karma.] Some traditions formulate the soul with varying names or definitions, including, in a way that is the least ‘personified’, the concepts of dependent origination and cause and effect, which embraces a stream of consciousness which continues, changes, evolves, grows, matures, beyond any individual life and death experience.

One of the powers of the soul is to bring harmony to the disparate elements of the nature by an innate sense of balance and right placement for each part of the being. We may use the analogy of the symphony orchestra with numerous diverse instruments that make widely different sounds. Without a conductor, the sound can be discordant. When the conductor takes charge of the orchestra, the music can be beautiful, harmonious and sublime.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “… the true central being is the soul, but this being stands back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say, a constitutional ruler who allows his ministers to rule for him, delegates to them his empire, silently assents to their decisions and only now and then puts in a word which they can at any moment override and act otherwise. But this is so long as the soul-personality put forward by the psychic entity is not yet sufficiently developed; when this is strong enough for the inner entity to impose itself through it, then the soul can come forward and control the nature. It is by the coming forward of this true monarch and his taking up of the reins of government that there can take place a real harmonisation of our being and our life.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XX The Psychic, pg. 153