The soul is said to exist because it is in the language and repertoire of the everyday person. In so many different languages, there is this word for Soul; in Old English, we have sawel/sawol as found in the Vespasian Psalter and Beowulf. And then, for our Sun, we call it Sol, it has solar energy, and we can reap renewable solar energy from the Sun, our Sol, which suggests properties of our Soul.
Souls – when they emerge from the Source – are given a free choice. They may journey with the knowledge and awareness of the Source; and they may journey without the knowledge and awareness of the Source. Both journeys are valid, and both journeys have the same end. It is just that those who embark on many different kinds of life experiences without the Source awareness take longer to achieve this return. It is said that without the Source, it is 22 million births to achieve that return, that oneness with Source.
Time is a great obfuscator. It befuddles our self-awareness, and perceptions of life, and lifetimes. All choices of the Soul, all lifetimes, are happening now. The Soul (in its completeness) we might call the oversoul. This remains in touch with Source at all times. Yet, it hives off sparks of this wholeness, this completeness, to have experiences, to participate in Soul Groups, to have certain experiences and to enable other to have these experiences. Hence, we can have soul groups taking birth, we can have soul-families, where souls take birth together again and again in order to achieve their goals, their experiences, with love.
Plato on the Soul
The Greek term used in ancient philosophical texts and commonly translated as soul is psyche, a noun derived from the verb psychein, which meant to breathe. For philosophers, psyche came to stand, not for breath, but for the life of a being or that which generates and constitutes the essential life of a being. Some philosophers have pointed out that psyche can involve consciousness, and others – in the 17th Century – went on to say that it may constitute awareness.
Plato, in his writings, claims that the soul is that which imparts life to its body (Phraedo 105D-E). Moreover, because the soul is that which gives life to its body and cannot acquire a property that is contrary to its life-giving nature, the soul itself can never perish. Plato thought that the soul is essentially and fundamentally alive; he did not think this was the case with the body.
When a person dies, the body may perish, but the soul lives. Plato taught that the Soul had three qualities – it was indestructible, imperishable and indissoluble. It must have come from the realm of the dead and returned there after completing its life in this world.
From the early Greek philosophers we get a notion, some definitions, some clarity about the soul and the body. The philosophers are beginning their exploration into the senses, perception, and what is it in the body that perceives things, that touches, smells, tastes, and recognises things? What part of the body does this? Early assertions that certain properties of the soul were responsible for this. We shall see that the idea of mind and the senses being separate from the soul began to develop.
Earlier we mentioned the Oversoul and its many sparks hived off to have experiences in varied life-forms and circumstances. Circumstances of family, environment, gender, colour, intellectual capacity – or lack thereof – or even, disability, autism, blindness. What is it that nourishes the soul? How do we feed our souls? We feed the body (usually) three times a day, morning, noon and night. How then, do we nourish and feed our souls?
What are the experiences the soul has come to have? How do we know that we have had our certain experiences and fulfilled our soul contracts, the soul’s blueprint in this life? These – and other questions – we will delve into as we continue on the Journey of the Soul.
