I'M A SOUL MAN: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BODY, SOUL & SPIRIT: PART TWO

"It is the Soul, the Spirit, the Self that must be seen and be heard and have our thoughts and meditation, O Maitreya! When the Soul is seen and heard, is thought upon and is known, then all that is becomes known." - Upanishads

The Greeks identified the heart as being the seat of the Psyche/Soul and the head as that of the Pneuma/Spirit (see image in last post). This idea of the Nous, or Mind being the connection each of us has with the universal Pneuma continued into Eastern Christianity ie Greek, Russian, Byzantine etc which believes that each of us carries within him or her a spark of the Divine Nous or Consciousness. Unlike Western Christianity which holds to doctrines of Original Sin and, even worse, Utter Depravity (thank you Augustine and Calvin for those), Orthodox Christians hold that the Divine Consciousness within each of us, like a mirror, not only reflects God's light but can only be obscured, never destroyed. Thus for the Greeks the inherent dignity of humanity and its indestructible connection with the Eternal survived Plato and Constantine into the present day...

In fact the Greeks were a major source of thought on the Soul. From early on Radiant Bodies, Astral Bodies and Spirit Bodies were identified as being part of its make-up, some able to detach themselves from their physical forms and travel between worlds. Pythagoras, Plato and the later neo-Platonists all also explored the nature of the Soul, its relationship to the One and its existence in many lives through transmigration and reincarnation. Pythagoras was said to be able to recognise places and objects that had played a role in previous incarnations. Plato wrote in great detail about what the Buddhists would call the Bardo state, or intermediary state between death and rebirth. But it was the great neo-Platonist Plotinus who devoted his entire life to a study of the Soul, his monumental ENNEADS providing inspiration for all mystical writing in the West from Origen to Ibn Arabi to Isaac Luria. It was Plato and his successors who developed the idea of the Soul emanating from the One, the Godhead, incarnating in this body and seeking a return to its origin, an idea familiar to all the great traditions mentioned above. Indeed in Sufism this notion of the Descent and Ascent of the Soul is central to the whole idea of the Way. Here, the Soul incarnates and descends from the Godhead and exists in the flesh until the moment when it suddenly becomes aware of itself. At this moment of awakening, its situation becomes intolerable and, aware of its celestial origins, it begins to seek the means to return. It is at this moment that the Soul becomes suitable for embarking upon the Sufi Way, at which time the quest begins to be reunited with the Divine. I am sure most people reading this can remember the moment which 'woke' them up and began them on their own journey. Perhaps the Burning Bush before Moses or Paul's experience on the road to Damascus are dramatic images of this moment of self-discovery. Paul's awakening to the possibilities of the Soul is interesting in this context as it was from him that we derive the term 'Out of Body Experience', a concept found in the Merkavah Mystics of ancient Israel and the Prophet's Night Journey in Jerusalem:

"I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell, whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell; God knoweth) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful to utter." - 2 Corinthians 12: 2-4


It is this unity and origin with the One, the Over-Soul as the Theosophists put it, which makes the idea or existence of the Soul so important - the idea that there is a Cosmic Oneness of which all human Souls are part. In fact, once again, the idea is universal. In India, there is the Atman, or World Soul and in the West, the Anima Mundi, of which each of us possesses the Scintillans, or Divine Spark within us. In all instances, the World Soul is synonymous with the Cosmic Man, be it Purusha in India or Adam Kadmon and Christ in the West. And in all instances the World Soul and the Cosmic Man are united with whatever term the culture wants to call God - Brahma, the Father, the Ain Sof. In our inner selves, if not in our physical selves, everything is One.

By far the most comprehensive analysis of this connection in the West is found in Kabbalah. Here the three levels of the Soul already mentioned give way to two more, Chayyah and Yechidah. These are said to be operating on such a high level that they barely impact on our conscious lives. Nevertheless it is at this level that we connect to the Godhead in the most profound way. It is here that we find what I mean by our having 'never being severed from the Divine'.

We saw how in Kabbalah the threefold nature of the Soul consisted of the Nefesh, the Ruach and the Neshemah. Above this are the fourth and fifth levels, Chayyah and Yechidah. Chayyah is linked etymologucally to the word for 'Life' in Hebrew: Chaim (as in 'L'chaim'). Chayyah is, in sense, the Cosmic Life Force emanating from God, pouring down and suffusing everything. Even higher than this is Yechidah, which means 'the Only One' or 'the Singular One'. Yechidah is so intimately interwoven with God that it is almost indistinguishable. Isaac Luria explained this fivefold nature of the Soul by taking a Glassblower as an analogy. If Nefesh is the part of the Soul which, like the breath of the Glassblower, forms the shape of the glass object being created, Chayyah is the breath emerging from the lungs through the mouth while Yechidah is the idea of the breath in the mind. Thus on the most profound level (or the highest, depending on your perspective), we are at One with God. Needless to say, awareness of this can only usually be conceptual. Its almost impossible to actually directly experience this condition. And yet for the Kabbalist it is absolutely true. We are 100% one with God, even as we move in this world under the impression that we are an isolated part of Creation. Hence we are in a real sense 'never severed from the Divine'. This, presumably, is what Christ meant when he said 'I and the Father are One', suggesting that in this relationship lies the secret of what John says is our 'power to become all the Sons of God'.

And this is where the revolutionary aspect of the Soul comes in, for what is it that causes the most pain in this world we live? The sense of loneliness, of isolation, of meaninglessness, of being in a chaotic, fragmented universe in which at any moment someone or something could be out to get you? Fear, the belief that one is utterly alone, that the planet is a jungle where death and pain is just around the corner, where you cannot trust anyone - these are the causes of so much of our suffering and conflict. The Gnostics believed that this world of Matter was ruled over by a mad and blind God who sought to keep us from an awareness of the Soul. I have always thought that this was a perfect metaphor for life in which all access to the Spirit was snuffed out. A condition of fearful darkness in which even our material existence cannot be enjoyed. In the rediscovery of the Soul, that thing in us which connects us to everything - ourselves, each other, the Cosmos - is perhaps the means out of the situation we are in now.


So how do we begin to do this? Well to start with we have to believe in the existence of the Soul again. Easier said than done, as some people simply do not acknowledge such a thing, whether as a 'phsyical' reality or even a metaphorical one. This is a problem, as inherent in the idea of the Soul however one defines it is the dignity of the individual and his or her inner life. If this isn't acknowledged we don't have a chance. We will go on seeing each other as lumps of meat, economic units, expendable assets, things to be exploited and not sentient beings with an inherent value connected to each other. The only way of believing in the Soul's existence is to experience it.

Secondly, we have to rescue the Soul from religions and give it back to humanity. This is also tricky, as traditionally the world's religions have been how we have understood the Soul. All the wisdom I have cited here came from the very faith systems we are now so keen to reject. Outside them, discourse on the Soul is pretty hard to find, particularly in the market place where Matter is king. But if there is something to be learnt about the way the different religions speak about the Soul it is that the reality of the Soul is not only Universal, but NOT religion-dependent. The Soul came first, religious discussion of the Soul came second. Indeed all faiths came OUT of a new understanding of the Soul and its relationship with God or the One. If the problem with religion today can be defined it would be in terms of a reversal of this relationship. Instead of being a means to put people in touch with the Soul and set it free, religion has too often in our modern world been a way of binding it, obsessing more about what we do with our Bodies and with whom than how we might make contact with our own deeper selves. Intolerance, jihads, crusades, Inquisitions, suppression of women and destruction of cultures are not good ways of helping people discover their inner lives, although ironically the tyranny of religion is an inverse proof of the power of that inner life. If we didn't have one, it wouldn't be such a potent means of control.

The Soul, although an expression of the One, is not a herd animal. It needs to tread an individual path and it needs an environment to do so. When religion has facilitated the Soul, when it has served as a seed-bed for the Soul to flourish, when it has been Soul-inspired as it were, we have prospered. Historically, this has been the function of religion, to explore en masse what the Soul might mean. Every piece of information I have used in these posts has come from Christian, Muslim, Judaic or Hellenic sources - ie religious ones. The exoteric expressions of these religions enabled this esoteric discovery to happen. But religion, like everything else, is cyclic. What was once liberating is now largely lagging behind. The Soul needs to be freed. But as I mentioned earlier, how do we do so when all the terminology stemmed from those religions we need to move beyond? The answer is simple - we need to know where we came from. We owe a massive debt to these religions, they gave us a crucial framework for discussion of our spiritual natures. Like it or not, they are like our parents. However, if they are to survive, children need to leave their parents and become adults themselves which must inevitably involve rebellion and rejection. But perhaps once those parents cease to have power over us we can come to some terms with them, recognise what they have given us, pay hommage but move on into our own lives with that wisdom understood in a new way. Thus to reject the last 2000 years of spiritual development out of hand is foolish. This is why I refuse to take the fashionable 'all religion is crap' POV. We need to release the divinely-inspired beauty of what they have to offer from the man-made ugliness that has sought to subject us and find a way of speaking of the Soul without the connotations of guilt, punishment and misery that have made it such an undesirable thing to have for so long. The Soul needs rehabilitation! But if the environment is not given for it to thrive it will have to make its own. Thus religions - along with a few other things most likely! - will have to decide whether they will reembrace the Soul and nourish it or face going to the wall.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have to understand the relationship between the Body and the Soul in a new way. If there is one thing all the different 'systems' of the Soul I have mentioned have in common it is that Body and Soul on all its levels are inescapably One. For too long we have allowed them to war with each other. The Soul gives us a gateway onto Eternity, but the ecstasy of that is entirely dependent upon us having a Body to experience it. The Finite defines the Infinite and vice versa. We need to stop seeing the Body as a prison for the Soul (a mistake even some of the greatest Mystics made) and instead see it as a tremendous OPPORTUNITY for its expression. We are here to experience life in the flesh in every way. There are things that the Soul cannot do without a Body. We are incarnate because the Soul wants it. Without it, it cannot experience Love, it cannot make love or properly understand its place in the Universe. What distinguishes us from the Angels is our combination of a physical body with a divine essence. That should be a joy rather than a curse. At the same time, the Body can become deeply impoverished without the Soul. Without it, the Body becomes utterly subject to the illusions of Time and Space and begins to fear for its own safety, becoming subject to the blind and mad God at which point the suffering of the Soul becomes so intense. Most importantly, sexuality must be restored to its rightful place at the heart of our experience of our Divine Nature. The greatest Mystics of all the ages knew this and couched their highest experiences in terms which were as much erotic as spiritual...

Greek Christianity speaks of the 'ensouled body' and the 'embodied soul', suggesting, perhaps, the real relationship between the two. Perhaps this is what we need to learn anew, setting the Soul free to fly again and allowing it kiss and be kissed by the Body once more. We have spent a long time going outwards with our behaviour. Its time to go inwards again and once we have discovered the treasure within, to inform everything we do without with that gold... It is a liberation and offers the possibility of a connection not only with the deepest things within us but the whole human race and, potentially, the Universe... Perhaps such a hope is naive. Perhaps the time is not available to us. But what more exciting horizon of opportunity could there be? A true understanding of the phrase 'the Kingdom of God is within you' each in our own individual way...

"Nothing under heaven can arrest the progress of the human soul on its long pilgrimage from darkness to light, from the unreal to the real, from death to immortality, and from ignorance to wisdom." Djwhal Khul, the Tibetan

I'M A SOUL MAN: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BODY, SOUL & SPIRIT: PART ONE

"There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another" - 1st Corinthians 15:40

Pretty much a bottom line with any interest in spirituality/ mysticism/ esotericism is the belief in the Soul. Fascinatingly, every culture in the world has a word for the Soul but not every culture has a word for war or money. I find that interesting as it suggests that, since anyone can remember, human beings have felt the need to invent a word for something we can't touch, smell, taste, hear or see with our physical bodies, but not for two things (war and money) that we nowadays think of as integral to human existence. Of course, Dawkinsians would say the word 'unicorn' exists but that doesn't mean there were ever unicorns. That's very true, but unicorns are a concept pretty much localised in European culture and its offshoots. There are no African or Aboriginal unicorns, for instance, but the Soul seems to be everywhere. It is universal in nature.

Of course, this still doesn't mean that we have Souls, only that all cultures have or have had a sense that there is something within us which is more than physical and which operates in a different way to the mind or any other part of our organism. The Soul is somewhere where we feel and experience things differently. It is a place of intense feeling. It doesn't grow old and seems to exist outside Time and Space as well as within them. Often it feels like a repository of wisdom of a kind we don't always have access to. When we refer to someone speaking 'from the bottom of their Soul' we mean they are speaking from the very depths of their being, from somewhere very profound. Even if we don't believe in the literal existence of the Soul we all know what it means as a metaphor. It is the deepest part of who we are. When one is in touch with one's Soul, as most people who are interested in the kind of thing this Blog is all about are or have been in some way, the experience is deeply beautiful, very moving and utterly fulfilling. Any sensation of feeling deracinated, alienated, unsettled vanishes and one feels connected to who one really is. This, universally, is how Mystics describe oneness with the Soul. It is Gnosis, Satori, Moksha, the Yichud, Union, whatever one wants to call it. Its what T S Eliot said when he spoke of the point of intersection 'between Time and the Timeless'. Once you have experienced it, you want to know more, you want the connection to BE more until it informs one's whole being on this planet. Its what Djwhal Khul called 'the Soul-Infused Personality' and the Medieval Beguine Mystic Hadewijch, 'Fruition'. I am sure anyone reading this will know what I mean...


Of course, the idea of the Soul has gone out of fashion in our well-adjusted, non-materialistic, unneurotic West. Apart from the scientific view argued by people like Senor Dawkins that if you can't see it it ain't there and if it can't be 'proven' in the lab it doesn't exist, there is the obvious reason that until recently a Soul wasn't a very desirable thing to have. After all, haven't we been told for centuries by different (but not all) Churches that in all likelihood our Souls are going to go to Hell? Who would want one if such were its fate? And who would want one if to avoid that fate you had to pay obedience to a lot of hideous and anti-life rules and regulations made up by men in funny hats who didn't follow them themselves? The existence of the Soul should enable one to experience Eternity. It should be a source of joy, 'like a sun in splendour' as the UPANISHADS say. How can it be if for the majority that Eternity was probably going to be spent burning in firey damnation? No wonder we have rebelled and identified purely with our material forms... The Soul has a lot of catching up to do! If we are to get it back, we perhaps need to look at what it REALLY is, not what we have been told.

The Greek word for the Soul was 'Psyche'. Right away we have something interesting there, for we have borrowed that word for our modern concept of Mind or Consciousness. For the Greeks, the Psyche was part of the threefold nature of Man in his earthly state, the other two being 'Soma' (Body) and 'Pneuma' (Spirit). Interestingly, the Pneuma was the highest part of the three, connecting us with the Eternal while the Soma was the most material, being the vehicle with which we operated in this world. The Psyche was the mediating principle which united the two. Thus the three elements of the Self became one. Soma was suffused by Psyche and connected to Pneuma and vice versa. Without the Psyche, the Pneuma could never experience the world through the Soma etc etc.

In the design of their theatres the Greeks reflected this threefold idea of humanity by the layout of their stages. The Chorus, representing the Soma, was by far the largest part, fanning out into the audience in a semi-circle. The Psyche was just above this and was the area of the stage in which the Heroes (ie Oedipus, Heracles, Antigone etc) operated. Above this again was the area known as 'the Gods', representing the Pneuma. It was here that the Olympian Deities appeared (eg Dionysus, Athena, Apollo etc). Thus the Greek stage constituted not only a complete vision of their view of the Cosmos (or Kosmos) but also a complete vision of the human organism. The Mystical meaning of this, of course, was that the Soma was as much part of the Psyche and the Pneuma as anything else. There was no dualism here. Equally important, though, was that the Gods were manifest in the Pneuma of humanity or that the Pneuma of the individual was part of the overall Pneuma of the Universe. This is something it is easy to forget. Thus the Greek Drama, which was a form of religious worship in itself, recognised the holistic relationship between Gods and Men. It is not Apollo who screws up Oedipus but the Apollo IN Oedipus, or the Apollo that IS Oedipus - ie his Higher Self that simply wants to be known at all costs. At the end of Oedipus' story he is taken up to Olympus by the Gods. In other words he moves from 'Psychic' knowledge to 'Pneumatic' knowledge having emerged from 'Somatic' knowledge when he answered the Sphinx's riddle. Thus the Oedipus Plays are not cruel dramas of the blind injustice of the Gods but an Initiatic Ritual into Higher Knowledge as Oedipus moves up the scale to the highest Insight, even though he suffers horribly in the process (largely because he resists it, interestingly).

Kabbalah has a similar threefold vision of the Soul. For the Kabbalists, we operate on three primary levels, all of which are poured into the human form, the 'Tzelem'. The lowest part of the Soul, that which compares to the Soma, is known as the Nefesh. This is sometimes called 'the Animal Soul' or 'the Vegetable Soul'. This is the part of the Soul which is intimately interwoven with every cell of our physical form. It experiences the passions, the emotions, the desires of earthly life with most vividness. It feels pleasure and pain. Kabbalists say that, at death, the Nefesh takes the longest of the three parts of the Soul to return to the Godhead. Stories speak of cemetaries full of the Nefeshes of the dead standing over their graves, mourning the beauty and intensity of what they have lost (the most powerful and convincing explanation of what we call 'ghosts' I have heard). The next level of the Soul is called the 'Ruach' and corresponds to the Psyche. It performs a similar function of mediating between the Nefesh and the third level, the Neshemah which is the highest level and the equivalent of the Pneuma. Interestingly, both Ruach and Neshemah are words with similar meanings: 'Breath' or 'Wind'. Pneuma, by no coincidence, means the same. All refer to the idea of the Breath of God or Spirit. If we remember, the book of Genesis speaks of God breathing his essence into clay to make Adam. In Christianity the original Greek word for the Holy Spirit was the Haghia Pneuma or Holy Breath. 'Spirit' itself is based on the Latin word 'Spiritus' which also means breath, so the meaning is the same everywhere. Somehow, Greek, Hebrew and Latin all identify the Spiritual aspect of humanity with the Divine Breath which is everywhere and passes through everything. It is exactly the same idea as Prana in Hinduism and indeed in all cultures. The Spirit and Soul partake of the very Divinity that is everywhere. As Meister Eckhardt, the greatest of all the Rhineland Medieval Christian Mystics, said:

"Know that God loves the soul so powerfully that it staggers the mind. If one were to deprive God of this so that he did not love the soul, one would deprive him of his life and being, or one would kill God if we may say such a thing. For that same love by which God loves the soul is his life, and in this same love the Holy Spirit blossoms forth; and this same love IS the Holy Spirit. Since God loves the soul so powerfully, the soul must be something very great." - Sermon 69


I've spoken of the threefold nature of the Soul/Human Organism as espoused here in Kabbalah and Greek cultures. Again, keen Jungians will be reminded of the Threefold Form of Buddhism in which the Buddhist experiences his connectedness to the Greater Consciousness which is everywhere and of which he is part through his own Lesser Consciousness and Body. In Christianity the same threefold nature is present in Body, Soul and Spirit (doesn't sound as good in English, does it?), although you wouldn't know it when you hear most Christians talk about it. Nor are they brilliant at seeing them as a whole. If the Body is as much part of the Spirit as the Soul or at least partakes of it most Christians, in the West at least (less so in the East) tend to want to cut the Body out of the equation. As we can see, if the Body contains the Breath of God, this is a fatal error. People need to read their Scriptures more. Here, surprisingly, is Paul on the subject:

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth within you?" - 1st Corinthians 3:17

"So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nouriseth it and cheriseth it, even as the Lord the church... This is a great Mystery." - Ephesians 5:28-29

In fact the threefold nature of the Soul/Human Organism is only part of the world's thinking on this. The Triune idea of Being actually only really deals with our existence in this world, which is suffused with Divinity enough in its Body/Soul/Spiritual dimensions. In reality, all the above mentioned cultures go much further, connecting us all to the Godhead/Cosmos/One in a much more profound way. When these other levels of the Soul are explored one realises that we have, in fact, never been severed from the Divine. In truth we are walking with it now. This is the most revolutionary aspect of the Soul I can think of and why, perhaps, we need to be thinking about it more...