Miriam Malati Saha: Soul Confusion: What do we really mean?
The term soul is very commonly used in our daily dealings. We like to do something for a
soul and the advertising industry is fond of using this term to create a feeling of wellness
and care. There is music for the soul, poetry and literature for the soul. We have feelings
that are nurturing our soul and others are detrimental for its wellbeing. So from our
common parlance we distinguish between our body, our mind and our soul. But then, who
are we? Are we a combination of all three? If so, what exactly is the soul and what do we
mean by it. If we dig a little deeper, we find that people have various and sometimes even
contradictory explanations and ideas about it. A common understanding of psyche is
thought processes and emotions.
For Plato used the term psyche meant what is often understood as soul.
Some people believe that the soul consists of subtle matter, which will decay with the
body. Beyond the soul there is the eternal spirit. Other people understand that the soul is
eternal and that is has an invisible subtle form. Most people believe that the soul develops
and that there are “old” souls, who are already very high developed. Thus when we
communicate with others, we don’t realize that they may a completely different concept of
the soul than we do. When we speak about our self or our soul, we need to be aware what
exactly we refer to.
To get some clarity, let us explore the Sanskrit term ātmā. We can find that it is often
translated as soul or self, but we also find occurrences where it refers to the mind or even
the body. So when we analyze a text, first we have to be clear about the context.
For our purpose, let us focus on what we loosely translate as soul. The Western notion of
the soul a network conglomeration of feelings, emotions and subtle awareness is foreign to
the Vedic or Hindu understanding. While the various Hindu darshana or philosophies like
Nyaya and Vedanta do have different understanding, they all agree that ātmā’s main
qualities are ….
Jiva Gosvami, one of the main proponents of Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, has
enumerated the qualities of the ātmā in Paramatma Sandarbha.
The main point here is that the ātmā, unlike the soul in Western understanding, has no
feelings, does not change or grow and is not old or young. It can be compared to a battery
that gives us the power to exist and is the deepest core of our being. So we cannot be
separated from our soul or self, which has its own I-consciousness, independent of the
material I of the body. It is the fusion of these two which constitutes what we call our
personality, and we are only able to live and experience with both of them. Our ātmā
without a body is not able to experience and our body needs the ātmā to function. So the I
of the ātmā and the I of the body merge into the I that we know. Thus the body, which
includes our mind with all its emotions, and the ātmā are an inseparable unit.
So who am I? The feeling of I-ness is not a conscious thought or mental process but rather
a state of being. It is easier for us to tell what we are not than what we are unless we are in a
deep state of transcognitive awareness. We know that we are not our convictions or our
thoughts because we can observe them and whatever we can observe it outside of our
I/ness or in other words, it is non-i. The notion of who we are will change over time but the
notion of I am will not. This is the notion of the soul in the Indian schools of thought.
When we look at ourselves and notice how we have changed over the years, we can analyze
the different aspects of our being that have changed – not only our gross body, but also our
attitudes, emotions, understanding, and knowledge. All that changes because it is not part
of ourselves. We can only notice these changes because we, the innermost core of our
being, the feeling of I, never changes. And this is also the reason why often we don’t really
feel that we are getting old, because ātmā is beyond change. If we can understand that and
instead of identifying with our gross or mental body connect with this essence of our being
through meditation or the practices of bhakti-yoga, we can lose the fear of bodily decay and
death.
