Soul and her Vehicles

The picture up there

a perfect metaphor

a poetic symbolic way to say

how i see the ways in which Spirit

and Soul and Person

and the Body

work together in Oneness

to be what we call:

a Human.

Hu-Man

You know, thats us, man, woman, child, so called Crown of Creation, born from Earth and Matter and bestowed with the ability of Complex Creative Thinking and Free Will.

And Self-Reflection, Self-Awareness, Self-Consciousness.

It is almost as if we Humans would be quite finite Earthlings, yet infinite Spirits all the same.

Feet firmly al the ground and head in the clouds, the sky.

Roots and Wings.

hu-man

hu – in ancient Egypt, was the deification of the first word, the word of Creation

man – from the word Manu (Sanskrit: मनु) – the archetype of man, the first man

(obviously, thats just my own playful Etymology (origin of the word) to make my point ;  )

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But anyway, this – us, a being with roots and wings – how on earth can this work?

Its a paradox, an oxymoron, a contradiction in itself.

This is where the Soul enters the picture in my visual allegory;  )

The Mother, the woman in the photo.

Soul, the Intermediary between Spirit – not pictured in the picture because Spirit is beyond form – and the Person – the Child lovingly guarded by the Mother, but free to play with the toy car, free to explore its world more or less clumsily.

The Child moving the car around, imagining all kinds of scenarios in his developing mind.

And the Toy Car – you may have guessed already …..

Well, thats our Body :  )

Thats all it is, really!

Our body, the Vehicle for the Soul to be able to move in the world, to act and learn and master Free Will and Creative Thought.

Obviously more often than not the body is not much more than a highly sophisticated organism directed by a Person of limited self-awareness and self-mastery but rather driven by conditioned reflexes and self-centered interests.

Donald Trumps or Hannibal (Lecters) in the worst case ;  )

But the Person could as well be Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King or Sri Aurobindo. Or a loving mother and wife dedicated to her family.

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We – Humans – represent an endless array of possibilities.
A whole Spectrum of Potentials functioning in – more or less – similar bodies.

How is that so, how is that possible?

What makes this possible?

The word Person, which means the “Gestalt” or form of a personality that we call “thats ME” is actually a word coming from the Latin persōna (“mask used by actor; role, part, character”), also from older Etruscan/Greek 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu, “mask”).

Person – the “Gestalt” that we identify ourself with out of habit – makes us a Individual, a Personality distinguished from all others.

Male, female, age of the body, our looks, how we dress, status, nationality, wealthy or not, our interests, qualities of character, our flaws and tics and neuroses ….. all of that makes our persona and we say:

“Thats ME!”

But is it really???

Spies (at least in novels ;  )  sometimes assume a totally different person, refugees and emigrants must often adopt to a completely different cultural identity in order to survive.

Persona = the mask, what is presented to the outside.

But what is that that is inside the mask, that will stay the same somehow even while the person changes?

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Well, this is all metaphoric language, maybe a little bit of Linguistic and philosophy.

But in reality, i love this picture, the family and what it represents for me.

The Father, probably out making money to provide this cosy home – Spirit, The Formless Source.

The Mother, bringing the life and warmth to the home – Soul with its two faces, the formless – married with Spirit – and the ever evolving form – extending itself into Incarnation.

The Mother lovingly watches over the Child, nurturing, educating and conditioning it to be able to live in the world.

The Child – the Person, the evolving Ego, the ever growing individual identity in the World.

It is not independent from the Mother but it already has a free will that is going to become more dominant while the child grows. And later will go out into the World and maybe even forget the Mother. But never totally. And she will never forget the Child.

The Toy Car ;  ) – the Body that grows along with the abilities of the Person to inhabit it.
I guess thats whats called Incarnation.
Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh.

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And so, here we go!

Some of us drive fast and fancy cars, some even Rolls-Royce, some of us practical pickups of 4x4s. Some even drive old trashcans that break down every now and then :  )

In the end thats our choice, even if that is not always so obvious.

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Now, about the SOUL!

People often say: “I am this body and maybe i have a soul.”

I say: “I am Soul and i have a Body”

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In my heart i know that to be true without a shadow of a doubt and i need no rational/intellectual proof to back up my knowing.

And i know as well with the same certainty that All Is One in Consciousness, that Soul, Spirit, Person, Body and the rest are mere words we use because we also have a mind, a mental intelligence.

Our extraordinary ability to distinguish things, to differentiate in specific ways, to recognize patterns and connect the dots so to understand the things of life.

And also use words in order to formalize our understandings and communicate about it.

Now we know from the study of Linguistics that our languages and language as such developed slowly over Millennia from sounds, articulations that our ancient forbearers used to identify objects, just as baby child learns to name things: Mama, Papa, Car, Mobile Phone ; )

Words are “things” or identifiers of things, distinguishable objects of the world around us, born of our history in this space/time existence we live in. Some people call it the 3D/4D (D stands for dimension), 3D the space and 4D the time dimension.

So, everything beyond this, everything unseen by human eyes everything Higher or Divine is really hard to grasp and define in words in any specific terms.

Personally I am totally with Lao Tse who did put it this way:

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things …”

So then, why do i even try to make rational sense of something so insubstantial as Soul, Spirit, Mind or even the Oneness of It All???

Well, – actually again without any rational proof – i know from all that i know that we human beings, humanity as a whole we are approaching a kind of threshold on our journey in consciousness.

That our collective spectrum of awareness is extending upwards, from 3D/4D into 5D so to say.

Which means that from an awareness of individual separated objects moving thru time we are moving into a level of awareness where oneness can be perceived and experienced.

Some visionary and prophetic people have called this the “Noosphere”, the Soul Level, the Age of the Soul, the coming Aquarius Age or the Satya Yuga, amongst other labels.

It is said that this is a inevitable and due to the natural development of the cosmos and the consciousness that underlays all of it.

So we Human Beings are simply an implicit part of that development into higher/finer frequencies of consciousness.

But it is also stated that we are a crucial part because we have self-awareness and the ability to act with free will and creative intent.

I freely confess that i really understand only half of all of that ; )

But i feel deeply that I/We can help this process along with our conscious participation.

Or we can delay it, even hinder its progress in our part of the universe.

Depending on where we – as a species – place our aspirations and intentions and practical life choices.

I mean, for eons we humans have been busying ourselves with matters of survival, wars, power, sex, material wealth and progress, money, technology and science and the rest.

Religions have mainly served as organized ritual and rigid moral codes (also some good things : ) instead of being re-ligio (bind/connect – again)

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So, in light of all of this, it makes sense to me to set my – inner – sight to the higher regions of my perception, extend my ability to grasp whats actually going on there with “ME”.

Also i wish to have a clearer conceptual understanding of the “highest realms”.

Experiences have to go hand in hand with conceptual understanding, otherwise it ends up in mere metaphysical concepts, words, words, words missing the substance.

Well, bear with me, i will try : )

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I say: “I am a Soul and i have this Body”

I say: “I am the eternal Soul and for the duration of this lifetime i dwell in this astonishing body as the person called Cris”

When we say “I”, “ME”, “myself”, “my Self”, we usually use that in a very causal and unconscious way.

But when we ask deeply what this “I” actually is, we come up short for answers, or we get all kind of diverging answers.

When i talk about the “I”, i should rather call it “SELF”.

And I mean with it the whole of “ME”.

From my bones and toenails to my heart, my glands, my brain – the whole organism of my physical body – my mind, my personality, my etheric body, astral body, mental and causal body – the whole of my aura – to my chakras and my soul.

Thats a lot of “my”s, right?. My body, my soul …

Who is this “I” that has all those “my”s belonging to “it”???

I hesitate here to go further on and say “my spirit”

Is Spirit the I?

Anyway, i don’t want to become all philosophical here!

I just want to say that THE SELF for me is the oneness of “me, myself and I” from the densest form of teeth and bones to the subtlest of formless Spirit.

The indivisible spectrum of frequencies in consciousness manifesting itself in all those levels in a perfect way.

Why this is so … i don’t know.

And by whose will or purpose this came about is a mystery and i don’t even want to make another theory about that.

~~~

What i will try ( for the sake of my own mind’s sanity ;  ) is to lay out “all those parts of ME” in a kind of linear map, pretending that they are separate parts.

Which they are not.

I will use terms that resonate with my knowledge and my own perception of things.
Drawing both from language of Eastern Mystics (Sanskrit of the Vedic Rishis, Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo) as well as Western philosophers (Aristotele, Plato, Hegel).

 I will also include some links to material outside of this website in case you are interested in deeper study of those subjects.

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SPIRIT – the Ultimate Reality and Origin.

Formless, yet breathing life into everything that exists on all levels. Into you and me too ;  ).

I don’t actually like to use the word “God” too much, too many religious dogmas and all-to-human projections are connected to it.

But yes, we are talking about God here, with a capital G.

When i pray, i say “God/Goddess/All There Is”.

Also called Brahman in Sanskrit.

The Upanishads are talking extensively and very specific about it. (If you want to read them, please don’t get too confused!!! ;  )

In my “map” of the Self, Spirit is the Origin, my ultimate reality. Giving life and existence to any of “my parts” and transcending all of them as well.

I am painfully aware how words fall short here, but it is possible to experience this reality directly, beyond the mind, beyond metaphysical concept and abstract words

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SOUL – the intermediary sphere between “heaven” and “earth”, Spirit and Matter.

Soul is a word only vaguely defined in Western thinking, different varying interpretations are available from various philosophies and religions and even mystics.

I perceive Soul as the sphere where all possible qualities “live”, as a potentiality.

From the “highest”, most spiritual ones – like unconditional love, equanimity, peace, pure consciousness, light – to the more earthbound and practical ones like endurance, perseverance and so on.

The whole spectrum of what i would call Soul Qualities.

Somebody once said to me that:

“Soul has two sides, one side is formless and contemplates Spirit/God without interruption and the other side, which is engaging itself with the many forms of the world.”

And although Soul certainly does not have two sides just like a coin, this intuitively makes perfect sense to me.

And again, the Vedic wisdom of Ancient India explains this in great detail.

In Sanskrit the Soul is called jiva-atman. Although it has two words, it is meant as one.

The Atman, meaning the Spark of Brahman, is of the same undifferentiated unity as Brahman.

And the jiva, the dynamic side of the same Soul substance that engages itself in manifestations, ultimately in incarnation into a biological body.

Don’t ask me please, what has been the plan for that, in the beginning (Adam & Eve? ;  ). I have not figured this out.

Anyway, once incarnation happened a process starts that i call forgetfulness of one’s origin.
In Sanskrit terminology it is called the Veil of Maya, Illusion happens.

In the words of the Vedas, the Soul enters Samsara, the Valley of Forgetfulness.

Described as the sphere where we are wandering aimlessly in circles of mundane existence.

Sometimes called the Valley of the shadow of death, of impermanence.

Buddha called it the Place of suffering.

I know, i know, it sounds pretty crass!

But i guess Buddha and those old Rishis, they knew pretty well what they are talking about.

And now, look around the world and into history …

Does this look like paradise to you?

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Now, when i closely look into the eyes of a very young child, i see Soul. I can see a purity of being, still one with the mother emotionally, still one with pure consciousness.

The older the child gets, objects become distinguished and identified, thoughts form in its brain, words and concepts later on. Intellect develops.

A “Gestalt” starts to appear and form itself in the interaction with parents, siblings, the environment, the surrounding culture.

A Personality  – a person with a characteristic set of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that evolve from karmic, biological and environmental influences.

A Individual develops, distinctly different from all others, the person that will go on to find his/her way into the world.

By that time usually, all real remembrance of its origin and true identity as a Soul has been forgotten and the Person(a) is full entangled with the world.

It is still the Jiva/Soul on its Journey, now clothed in the distinctive Person(a) of an – obviously – individualized Body.

No more Unity there, now its all Objects and Subjects, Duality.

Experiences and choices and actions that have consequences.

Causes and effects.

This is what is called: the Wheel of Karma is set in motion ;  )

As we age we become more and more entangled with our personal life and identified and crystallized in our Personality.

On our free-will journey thru life – now as a distinct and individualized Person – we constantly make choices, we react to situations, we develop skills, we draw on basic given qualities from our Soul potential or maybe work consciously to develop new ones.

And choose values.

Maybe we learn and grow in self awareness and wisdom.

And our biologic body gets older and expires its lifespan.

The Soul retreats from it and leaves the material world, the sphere of Maya.

The veil lifts while jiva-atman is back on the Soul level, aware of its unity with Spirit/Brahma.

Since the jiva has brought with it now the total sum of the experiences of this particular lifetime as the person in the body, there are unfinished businesses still waiting, actions that have laid the seeds for effects in some new incarnation.

This is how i – probably a little bit naively and simplistic – imagine Reincarnation is working its way thru countless incarnations, deaths and rebirths.

Even if we don’t know it consciously while we are reincarnated again, clothed in another Persona – man, woman, bricklayer, neurosurgeon, victim, perpetrator, murder, saint or common man from next door – there is always the “Higher Self”, Soul there in the background, inside and around us, “closer” actually than our breath.

Setting up the stage, collection experiences, giving impulses for spiritual growth, inspiring, extracting wisdom.

With growing self awareness we are drawing from higher and finer levels of Soul-potential.

The more we wake up from our ego identification with the Persona, the more aware we become to the “still small voice of our heart/soul”, the more Soul shines thru our given personality and Soul influence becomes dominant in our life.

In the end probably – if there will ever be an end to that – we will still have a distinct personality in a body, but the person will be completely transparent and non-identified, non-egoic, egoless.

Only Soul will be there.

Drawing from the highest levels of Atman.

Pure Consciousness, Truth, Bliss.

If we will still need to be in a physical body then, i have no idea. Really not! ;  )

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I am trying to lay out here as short as possible some of the mysteries of life that we face as human beings.

Working hard ;  ) to summarize a lifetime of curiosity in search for more clarity about the fundamental things.

In my own words and according to the best of my understanding.

I hope that until now i could do it in a way that inspires you, the reader, to find your own truth in that.

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Still, a big chapter is waiting to be tackled:

How does the Soul, immaterial and eternal, how does this jiva-atman form, direct and interact with the body.

What are the functions of the different bodies that make up the Aura and how do subtle-energy Chakras and physical Glads work together to regulate and activate the body into action.
How does our senses, the nervous system and the both hemispheres of our brain process experiences and which aspect of us extracts wisdom from those experiences.

And so on …

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But honestly, i am exhausted now from all this writing ;  )

I think, this will be my work for another day

See you soon

114!

Really?

I always thought that i have 7 (chakras) or so 

;  )

More specifics:  The soul and her “vehicles” / Auras, Chakras, Glands and the rest …. (Part 2)