As we move forward in the search for the Soul, we should by now realize that the Soul is a power, an intelligent power. It gives us life, just as it gives life to everything else on earth. If the Soul Power leaves us, there would be nothing. Imagine the world without human beings, without animals, birds, fish, and insects. Now take away the plants and the trees. What would be left? Those who contemplate realize that the entire earth comes alive with the power of the Soul. Where did the Soul come from?
We human beings find it very difficult to put together the mystery of the Soul. It is because it is too vast a subject to fit into our tiny human mind. It is like emptying the ocean into a bucket. However, the wise men of the past, saints and sages of our ancient civilizations had revealed the truth centuries ago.
The Soul that creates everything alive on earth is nothing but a manifestation of the Divine. The Soul is God. It is the Divine that appears as everything alive on earth.
It becomes necessary to immediately clarify that the God we are talking of is not a statue or a saint – the God, the Creator is a Power. It is the Creator that is beyond our comprehension, a power that no human brain can paint. Somehow, our tiny human brain defines God as a person with name and form. This is a myth, an illusion. It is only those who go on a quest and who achieve a state of self- realization, they are blessed to reach the blissful state of God-realization. They experience God, the Divine in everything alive on earth. Realized Souls do not see human beings as 'you' and 'I'. They see each person as a Divine Soul, appearing in a human form. They see the beautiful birds and butterflies, exotic fish and dolphins; they see everything beautiful as a manifestation of God. This is the truth. But how do we realize this?
While we will go into a detailed understanding of our ignorance and realization of the truth, let us not lose the grasp on understanding how the Soul is the essential cause of a human being. We human beings look like we are 8 billion different entities. But in reality, we are one Soul. We may appear as Indians and Americans, French and Chinese, but that is just the outer appearance. In reality, we are the Soul. The Soul is the cause, we are just effects, just like a ring, a bracelet and a chain look like 3 different pieces of jewellery, but they are made of gold. Gold is the cause, the ornaments are just the effects. Without gold, they are nothing! The jewellery appears to be various forms and pieces of jewels, but it is not. If you take out the gold, there will be no jewellery. So also, we human beings appear to be male and female, black and white, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, but in reality, we are all the Soul. If the Soul departs, we die. At death, we become nothing. We return to dust. Therefore, what are we essentially? Just like the ring, the bracelet and the chain are nothing but gold, we too are nothing but the Soul. Just like gold is the cause, the Soul is our cause. Just like ornaments are effects, we too are mere effects. If we remove the cause, there is nothing left.
For thousands of years, spirituality and science were at loggerheads. The spiritual saints always believed that human beings are a manifestation of the Divine. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience on earth, but rather Souls having a human experience. Science would accept none of that. Science is all about proof. Science prides itself on the intellectual and practical study of the physical world through observation and experiment. It does not accept the presence of a subtle body or something that the saints call the Soul.
Over the centuries, science is coming to terms with the reality of our existence. It was only in the early part of the 20th century when Einstein proposed the formula E = MC2 and science coined a new principle on energy and mass equivalence. The principle stated that anything that has mass, has an equal amount of energy and vice versa. This principle was known to the world in the 19th-century itself.
The scientists then coined the laws of thermodynamics. A famous scientific principle known to us is – energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. What does this mean? It means that the energy in a human being cannot be destroyed. It is not mortal. The immortal energy in us is the Divine Soul that comes at birth and departs at death. For the first time, science and spirituality are saying the same thing, but still, scientists around the world do not want to accept their recent discoveries to be interpreted as the Divine Soul in human beings.
Although the work of famous scientists Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and others started centuries ago, it was only Louis de Broglie, a French physicist who in 1923 proposed a hypothesis explaining the theory of the 'Wave-Particle Duality'. This went on to become a scientific principle. This concept in quantum mechanics states that every particle may be described as either a particle or a wave. What is said to have brought about this discovery?
It was when scientists were trying to study the smallest part of a cell, not just molecules or atoms, but even smaller particles than electrons, protons, and neutrons—the properties of a quark under sophisticated microscopes, that they noticed that the particle of matter suddenly disappeared. Based on the scientists' knowledge, they described it as a particle of mass getting converted into an energy wave. As they were recording their observations, they were flabbergasted to see that the energy returned as the particle. This made them coin a new theory called the Wave-Particle Duality.
In 2012, scientists at CERN, the European centre for Nuclear Research, Geneva, announced that they almost nabbed the Higgs boson, and dubbed it as the 'God Particle'. This was theorized 48 years ago by Peter Higgs and now, practically validated at the Large Hadron Collider. The discovery of this particle explains why everything in this universe has mass. To explain it in common terms, atoms are not just made up of neutrons, electrons, and protons, and the tiniest of them, quark, but rather, all of these are energy. You and me, may look like mass of molecules, but in reality, we are essentially energy. This is what Higgs boson or God particle does. It is a field where energy takes the form of mass. The Higgs boson is the new elementary particle discovered by the scientists at CERN. Their theory was that all of space, everywhere in the universe, everything is filled with the Quantum field of energy and this field came to be known as the 'Higgs field'. Photons or light particles pass through this field, without resistance. But other particles, end up appearing as mass when they pass through the energy field or the Higgs boson field. Since 1964, this was just a theory, but in 2012, scientists proved the theory in the laboratory in CERN. It took thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world to build this machine–the Large Hadron Collider or LHC. The LHC is one of the most sophisticated machines that humans have ever built. In the LHC, scientists discovered that the tiniest of particles was a collection of these tiniest quarks that were held together by gluons and they actually appeared as they do because of the 'God particle'. This dates back to 1907 or earlier when Einstein and Max Planck spoke of the equation E=MC2. This principle states that anything having mass has an equal amount of energy. It also states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only be transformed from one form to another.
What does this mean? It means that even as per scientists, you and I are not the trillions of cells that we appear to be. In reality, we are energy!
Keeping all the above in mind, the truth that appears out of it all is that the Soul or Life Energy manifests as everything in this world. The Soul is nothing but energy – Divine Energy. How will we human beings ever realize this truth? It is only possible if we overcome our ignorance.
