THAT WHICH IS ALIVE OR CONSCIOUS IN US AND THE SOUL, OR GOD
According to the authorities on the subject: “The soul is a part of God, the breath of life animating the flesh, the essence of man, but not the man himself as a corporeal, psychosomatic being (not the body itself).”
“It is a unity of all mental activities and, as such, it is autonomous and independent in its work.”
“Soul is defined as one person. An example of your soul is the part of you that makes you who you are and that will live on after your death. An example of soul is the part of you that will go to heaven or hell and is immortal...”
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When a Christian is asked what the purpose of his religion is, or rather, what he hopes to achieve by being a member of a Christian church, he will readily answer: salvation of the soul and eternal life in heaven (after rejoining God).
Every Muslim believes in the one God and his message (Islam) so that he may receive salvation of the soul.
A Hindu will reveal that his final goal is liberation of the soul from samsara (cycle of rebirth).
Buddhists officially do not believe in “the soul”, but they have paths toward enlightenment or liberation of “something” from samsara. …
So the question is: What does the soul (or whatever) have to be saved or liberated from?
Apparently, these are the problems which, again according to religious authorities, have everything to do with life but appear after death: Christians and Muslims want to prevent the damnation of the soul and its eternal torment in hell, while Hindus and Buddhists want to break free from the cycle of rebirth(s).
Now, we have seen that for most people and religions the soul is a broad term which encompasses living processes, energy, consciousness…, but it is (more than) clear that individual, personal consciousness is in the centre of attention both in life and after death.
Furthermore, most religions agree that the soul, i.e. conscious- ness, is “given by God and returns to God”, or is “a separated part of God”.
And, as you “know”, God is, among other things, omniscient. There are many people today who describe him as cosmic or universal consciousness which comprises “all past and future knowledge and experience of this and all other worlds.”
???
God = a kind of cosmic “container”, a gigantic information storage unit!?
God = …A person who knows everything about everything and everyone?!
Seriously?! (The right expression would be “WTF?!”)
God’s knowledge should not be about quantity but about quality. The highest (or, is it the lowest?) level of conscious- ness should be the one with the ultimate, supreme knowledge. And, correspondingly, this consciousness is identical to the original state of the soul – the state of god.
Therefore, a few questions arise: What is the consciousness of the highest level – god – the one who knows everything like? What is the supreme knowledge?
In order to get the answers to these questions people start from the following “facts” and assumptions:
- They are “the spitting image” of God;
- Consciousness develops fastest in the human body;
- Human consciousness is the most complex on the planet, or even of the highest level, so it must be close to God’s consciousness.
But, here is the catch: The (right) answers cannot be obtained if we assume that human personal consciousness is important or significant cosmic category. Why? …Because it is nothing but a lengthy poem about silence – it describes something that cannot be described. It rises from ignorance, develops from ignorance, and consists of ignorance.
If we want to “catch a glimpse” of godlike consciousness, or first-class knowledge, a different approach is needed – some astonishingly simple and enlightening insights will arise in the mind.
Let’s start from the generally accepted notions: “God” is free, omniscient, omnipresent, bodiless, invisible…
Now, consider this: What are thoughts of the one who knows everything like? What does he think about? Well, the answer is: about nothing – the one who knows everything has no thoughts, because “he” has nothing to think about.
“He” does not reason. “He” does not have anything to reason out – what is unknown to him?!
Likewise, the one who knows everything has no body, and if there is no body, there are no feelings.
“He” is also in the eternal state of freedom and, naturally, has no need to accumulate experience or satisfy needs and desires.
If God is omniscient, omnipresent and free, then “he” can be observed as an initiator (since constant movement is in his nature) and perhaps even as a creator, but certainly not as a manager, director, or supervisor! Management involves commitment and concern, and those things exclude freedom. A supervising God is neither free, nor omniscient, and it can hardly be omnipresent too.
What does all this mean? Well, it means that if something has no body, thoughts, desires, emotions, needs… identity, then it does not satisfy any requirement to be a person! “He” is not he at all!
And, the belief that God is a person is the corner stone of most contemporary religions!! The opposite learning changes everything on such a large scale that it is hardly imaginable.
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But, wait, this sounds so familiar, doesn’t it? Yes, we have already established that that which is alive or conscious in us is not a person too. |
Now let’s go further.
If the soul is a part of god, of the same quality or nature, and as such “lives” in every life form, then we mustn’t ever relate it to the body, personality or identity of a human being – to the consciousness “wrapped” around that body. And yet, that is exactly what people do by saying that “the soul loses its freedom and knowledge of its real nature after “entering” the (human) body”.
And here is where this fallacy comes from: It is the conviction which says that the “Self” we have built or “discovered” in the course of our life is identical to the elementary (DNA) consciousness we were given at conception. It originates from the fact that religious authorities could not (or did not want to) understand that the essence of our being (“the soul”, “god”) has absolutely no problems at all and has no need to learn anything – it is us, as individuals, who have the problem which arises out of the ignorance of what the essence of our being is!
That which is alive or conscious in us “cannot be influenced by anything” and that is exactly why it cannot be judged, and why it does not need to be liberated or saved.
The thing which can be judged is the idea of what we think we are – the “Self”. But, as we have already seen earlier, there is no point to that, because the idea of “Self” is just that – an idea.
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False knowledge is the only reason why most humans are so keen that their “personal being(s)” or soul(s) survive death of their bodies!