Frame of Human Existence- Soul

We begin now with defining the basics of the "Frames of Human Existence". The next few blogs will be dedicated to defining and explaining the underlying fundamental terms which though you may have heard countless times, but never sought to be explained to you. It is essential to understand these terms because unless we understand the basics, we can’t go ahead to the advanced concepts.

We. are.an.infinite.being 

When I use the word infinite, it is not in the sense of numbers. Rather, I mean that we are beings that have no finiteness to us. Humans are having infinite capacity and capability to experience. We are restricted only by our thoughts and actions in exercising this infiniteness.Across time and space, we always were, always will be. And the reason that we are infinite is that we possess SOUL. It is that link between us and the universe which ensures our infiniteness.

What are Souls?

A Soul is a conscious, intelligent energy that is indestructible and is the  basis of all humans on earth. Every person has a unique individual soul assigned to him or her. This assignment isn’t something done by any external authority. It is the soul which chooses to be linked to a particular human body. It chooses this human body based on the lessons it wants to learn or give (to other souls) at that particular juncture.

Fundamental Fact: 1. Souls don’t take birth only to learn lessons but also to give lessons.

Now this could be confusing to you. Most people think  that a soul is only something which ensures that we keep breathing. This is because we often hear that when somebody dies, their soul leaves their body. In fact, experiments have been done in which dying people were kept in sealed Glass chambers. At the point of their death, a crack has been observed in the glass chamber along with noticeable weight loss in the body of deceased. Such experiments lend credence to the fact that Soul is an independent mass carrying entity which also carries some kind of substance(air?) inside itself, as it needs to break glass to move out of the sealed chamber. However, soul is not something which is residing inside your body. It is loosely connected to you. The accepted seat of connection between the human body and soul is the Hypothalamus. Just as the student needs to come back home after a grueling session at school to rest and recuperate for the next day’s learning, a soul too yearns to get rejuvenated periodically by reconnecting fully with it’s home- the Super-consciousness. According to Pranic healing traditions, this is done naturally by the soul when the human mind i.e., our consciousness goes to sleep. My sister who is a pranic healer tells me that right when we fall into a deep sleep, our soul leaves our physical body, often accompanied with a lurch. Presumably, it is going away to get recharged and recuperate by connecting with the Universal Energy- the Super-consciousness. Same thing happens when we go into a deep meditation. In fact, scientists have measured that our brain emits Alpha waves both while sleeping and while under meditation. So, technically, meditation and sleeping activate or work on the same areas of brain- essentially our hypothalamus. Hypothalamus has always been considered the seat of sub-conscious mind.

Soul decides key Life lessons : Soul is a conscious, intelligent energy which is just doing it’s job i.e., keeping you and your life experiences on a path of pre-programmed broad contours. In these contours are well-thought out preplanned life turning points, which have been decided in conjunction with other souls that share the same time and space. Thus, learning takes place for all the souls together. This is very much like the role-playing sessions enacted in modern day management classes for case study. It helps the souls(students) to appreciate the nuances of their mutually dependent and independent aspects of relationships and learning takes place for each twist and turn in the journey called life  that they go through together.  Each soul learns from it’s interaction with other souls, in this journey.

You might be interested to know when the soul enters the human body. Well, the soul makes the choice of a particular human experience for a particular incarnation and after searching for the right parents, enters human body just at the time of conception . Some might turn skeptical and ask that what will explain that abortions or miscarriages take place even before the human body has come out from the womb. What was the purpose of those souls by entering such fetuses? Well, the answer lies in my Fundamental Fact 1. Souls entered such to-be-aborted fetuses not for themselves but for the souls of their parents and other related souls. They wanted to give lessons of coping with grief and pain to the other souls. Have you heard the story of Ganga and King Shantanu? One-by-one she killed all her newborn infants by drowning them in river until the last one ,whom King Shantanu saved by intervening just before she was throwing him into river. She revealed to him that she was in fact saving them from living the curse of Sage Vashishta . The story goes like this- Once the eight Vasus ("Ashtavasus") visited Vashishta's ashram accompanied by their wives. One of the wives took a fancy to Nandini, Vashishta's wish-bearing cow and asked her husband Prabhasa to steal it from Vashishta. Prabhasa then stole the cow with the help of the others who were all consequently cursed by Vashishta to be born in the world of men. Upon the Vasus appealing to Vashishta's mercy, the seven Vasus who had assisted in stealing Nandini had their curse mitigated such that they would be liberated from their human birth as soon as they were born; however, Prabhasa being chief protagonist of the theft, was cursed to endure a longer life on the earth. It was this Prabhasa who took birth as Devavrata (Bhishma). So, her infants were all in fact Vasus who had been accursed to be born as humans on earth and they had requested Ganga to be their mother and save them from the accursed life on Earth. This infant who was saved by Shantanu  went onto become the great Bhishma. This is a classic story that explains very nicely the concept of the soul deciding to enter a particular life to fulfill it’s karma, even if for a short span.

Origin of the soul: As Lord Krishna very clearly told Arjuna in Geeta:
Nainaë chidhanti éàstràni nainaë dahati pàvakaã
Na chainaë kledayantyàpo na éoçayati màrutaã.
Translation: Weapons do not cut It, fire does not burn It, water does not moisten It, and air does not dry It.’
The soul is immortal. It has no end nor any beginning. The reason is -it emanates from the Super-consciousness, goes through it’s cycles of incarnations and eventually becomes a part of the Supreme souls known as Masters. A Soul always exists. Period. Thus, the soul is a  consciousness which is a fragment of  the Super- consciousness (also  known as God, Source, Creator )  and was, is and will be for eternity linked across space and time with the Super-consciousness.
In next blog, I will talk about Super-consciousness.