For thousands of years, the Soul has continued to remain a mystery. While most of us are conscious of its existence, we don't know what the Soul is, where it came from and where it will eventually go. All this continues to baffle humanity.
Does the Soul really exist? Has anybody seen the Soul? Does the Soul take birth and does it die? These questions have many speculations, but till date, they have not been demystified. Some people believe that the Soul is purely human – it is exclusive to those who are blessed to be human beings. There are others who think that even animals have Souls. What about insects, birds, fish, plants, and trees? The mystery deepens because we have not uncovered the truth about the Soul.
What exactly is the Soul? What is the difference between the Soul and the Spirit? Is the Soul what the Hindus call the “Atman” and parts of the Orient call “Chi” or “Prana”? The mystery grows deeper as more and more theories of the Soul are floated.
The modern world has further complicated the subject with the growth of technology. Anybody can upload their own definition of the Soul on the internet and keep the seekers of truth shrouded in darkness.
Some people add to the confusion by saying that there is no Soul. Is it because it is a fact that there is no Soul or is it just because we have not understood what the Soul actually is? We human beings are alive but one day we will die. What happens at death when there is no breath? How is this phenomenon called death connected with the Soul? What about the Soul and the human birth? Is the gift of human life a gift from the Divine or from the Soul? Who knows? It is anybody's guess!
“Our Soul will go to heaven one day,” say some. Nobody wishes their Soul to go to hell. But where is heaven and how will the Soul get there? When we die, does the Soul leave the body or is it buried or cremated together with the one who dies? These questions have remained with humanity for ages but we have not pondered on the answers. We are busy solving the secrets of the material world. We are more concerned about the puzzling cosmos, just as we go deep within the oceans to uncover the mystery of the underwater world. But what about the Soul?
Some scriptures talk of 'good' Souls and 'bad' Souls and how our Souls are so different. Then comes the theory that since our Souls are independent creatures, we must look for our Soulmate. The mystery only deepens as we sink deeper into ignorance without realizing the truth about the Soul.
Today, more people than ever before have started asking questions about the Soul. They say that the Soul is the manifestation of the Divine. But what does this mean? With the Eastern civilization believing that the Soul, Spirit and the Divine are one, and the Western world believing that our Soul will go to heaven or hell, the whole concept of the Soul remains an enigma.
Instead of demystifying the myth of the Soul, we get carried away by rituals and superstitions and even believe in them. For instance, some people believe that the Soul is most active on a full moon night, or that the Soul resides in a secret receptacle of the body and can be touched through meditation; that stretching the body in a particular manner will make us more Soulful, that the mind and the Soul are deeply connected and by certain breathing techniques, we can access the depth of our Soul.
Even the most famous concept of Yoga has been mystified with the Soul. Yoga is marketed in the world today as the union of body, mind, and Soul. But in reality, Yoga is Union of the Soul with the Supreme Soul. But, like any other theory about the Soul, the theory of Yoga has also become diluted. True Yoga is very profound. It is the union of a living human being with the Divine. It is realizing and being conscious of the Divine and then always being connected with the Divine. Instead of trying to realize the truth about the Soul, we get carried away by fantasies.
Recently, some people were discussing what they called ‘Soul-hunting', a contemporary Shamanic integration ritual. By doing this, they believed that they would create a new energy in their life. Instructors would help them go on a Soulful journey, and they would experience a Shamanic trance making it possible to reunite with the damaged pieces of the Soul. While there are exercises that can resolve difficulties and illnesses and create wellbeing, how is this connected to the Soul? By making the Soul another identifiable domain of our life, like the body or mind, we only add to the confusion of our understanding of the Soul.
While it may not be necessary to read the next few pages which carry several mythological and philosophical beliefs about the Soul, for those who are interested in knowing what our ancestors thought about the Soul, the following pages will be interesting to read.
Historically, all around the world, people have believed in various theories about the Soul. The early Greeks believed that the Soul was separated from a person's dead body. The Greeks called the Soul, 'psyche' and the body, 'soma'. After death and after burying the body, the Soul was freed from the body and began its journey to the world of the dead. A barrier, usually a river, separated the worlds of the living and the dead. The Greeks believed that the Soul was guided during its journey to the world of the dead by the God Hermes or his assistant, the ferryman Charon, who would assist Souls, helping them cross the river.
For the Greeks, the world of the dead was rather bleak – it was a place of darkness beneath the surface of the earth ruled by Hades. Here, the dead were judged—a judge would examine their past deeds and accordingly give punishments. The punishments varied. Those who had committed minor wrongs could be sentenced to eternally wander about the underworld in a mindless state, knowing neither great suffering nor great joy. But serious sins or wickedness was harshly punished with severe beatings, starvation, and torture. In the earliest Greek thought, all Souls—both good and bad—lived in Hades. However, some Greeks believed that good people, like heroes and other virtuous individuals, would not need to wander through the darkness of the underworld. Instead, they would be mysteriously transported to the Isles of the Blessed, also known as Elysium or the Elysian Fields.
The Epicureans, who followed the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, considered the Soul to be made up of atoms like the rest of the body. Epicurus believed that both body and Soul ended at death.
Another Greek philosopher, Plato, saw the world as a spiritual being, and the concept of the World-Soul was named 'Anima Mundi'. Anima Mundi was a spiritual essence that enveloped everything in the world and all of nature. For the followers of Plato, the Soul was an incorporeal substance having no material existence, similar to the Gods, yet was a part of the world. Plato and Socrates accepted the immortality of the Soul.
Aristotle, however, considered only a part of the Soul, the Nous, or intellect, to be immortal. He also identified three hierarchical levels of living beings - plants, animals, and people, having three different degrees of Soul: Bios or life, Zoe or animate life, and Psuche or self-conscious life. For these groups, he identified three corresponding levels of Soul-growth, sustenance and reproduction which all life shares called Bios; the self-willed motive activity and sensory faculties, which only animals and people have in common called Zoe; and finally ‘reason,’ of which people alone are capable. It is called Pseuche.
Like the Greeks, the Romans also believed that Souls travelled to another place after death. They believed that the Soul would go underground to the river Styx. They also believed that virtuous Souls returned to a heavenly place after death to experience eternal joy. Wicked Souls, on the other hand, suffered great punishments and tortures. Later, many Romans also believed in the immortality, or everlasting life, of the Soul. They also believed, to some extent, in the idea of reincarnation—the rebirth of the Soul in a new body.
Among ancient people, the Chinese, like the Egyptians, believed in the idea of a dual Soul. The Chinese distinguished between a lower, sensitive Soul which disappears with death, and a rational principle, the Hun—a spiritual and a more heavenly aspect of the Soul that survives the grave and is the object of ancestor worship.
Confucians conceived of the Soul as constituted by anima 'Hun' which animated the body in life, and corporeal Soul, 'Po' which constituted the physical senses. As a Yang entity, anima was released from the body upon death and floated upward, whereas the Yin corporeal Soul decomposed into the earth.
In ancient Egypt, the Soul was not only one's character but a composite being of different entities. The Egyptian culture carefully observed mortuary rituals because each aspect of the Soul had to be addressed for the person to continue on their way to eternity. We have heard about the process of mummification in the ancient civilization of Egypt. The Egyptians believed that the mummified body was the home for this Soul or Spirit. If the body was destroyed, the Spirit might be lost. The idea of ‘Spirit’ was complex involving three spirits: the Ka, Ba, and Akh. The Ka, a ‘Double’ or the ‘Life Force’ of the person, would remain in the tomb and needed the offerings and objects there. The Ba, or ‘Soul’, was free to fly out of the tomb and return to it.
And it was the Akh, perhaps translated as ‘Spirit’, which had to travel through the Underworld to the Final Judgement and entrance to the afterlife. To the Egyptians, all three were essential.
Mention of such beliefs is only being made to record how ancient civilizations thought of the Soul as a very enigmatic thing. All around the world, innumerable mysteries of the Soul have emerged from ancient times. Certain tribes used to do head-hunting as they believed the head contained a Soul substance. In Indonesia, the head of the enemies was highly valued, not because they were trophies, but because the heads were said to contain the Soul. It was believed that this Soul substance would make villages more fertile and crops healthier.
People who lived in Turkey centuries ago, believed that when a man died, the Soul of the man would leave the body and reside in a stone slab. Thereafter, people worshipped the stone as it contained the Soul!
Ancient civilizations performed a Viking funeral that connected the Soul to where the dead went in their afterlife. In ancient Scandinavia, ancestors were worshipped as though after death the Soul had departed on a voyage inside the mountain on th