The Omnipresent Soul 

Every religion has a different theory of “soul” and what happens after death of the physical body.  Christians believe the soul goes to Heaven or Hell depending on one’s faithfulness and actions during life.  Buddhists believe that the soul reincarnates until it resolves its karma and attains Enlightenment through the Eightfold Path.  Hindus believe the soul is the eternal self and that there are different levels of consciousness. 

Without reducing all present meanings and usages of the word “soul” to a supposedly “true” version, it makes sense to consult a dictionary to provide a definition that puts everyone on the same page.  The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary contains eight meanings for the word “soul,” one of which is “the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life.”   Given this definition, it is an illusion that the soul is something that exists only in certain contexts or people.  An “essence” is something forever present no matter where we are, who we are, or what we are doing.  The realization that the soul is ever-present requires one to derive a new morality through three steps:

Step 1 - Ask, ‘would you want your “essence” to be involved in all the unholy and unnecessary things people do everyday?’  Should your soul tell a lie?  Should your soul be involved in a fist fight?  Should your soul use profanity?  Should your soul be involved in crime?  Should your soul use illegal drugs to get high? 

Step 2 - Think of all the unholy people you know of and the evil things they may have done.  They, too, have souls – all the time.  Do not deny the actuality of their soul even if you disagree with their choices. 

Step 3 - Ask, 'where do we find our soul?'  The answer should be 'within.'   Religion and spirituality can guide you but you have to take the journey yourself.

This exercise reveals how your mind creates distinctions that can rob some of their humanity or excuse behavior we should know better than to commit.  The only way to justify the soul’s participation in anything unholy or to maintain a consistent idea of what “soul” means is to maintain an illusion of when the soul is present and when it is not.  Normal minds compartmentalize “soul” to places of worship, spiritual practices, or special people.  But the soul is not a t-shirt that one can take off whenever one pleases and it is not a special designation to bestow on some but not others.  There are no temporal limitations on the soul.  It is always present in all who are alive and in all who have passed on – all the time.   

We should take better care of the soul (read “The Quotidian Soul” for suggestions on how to properly treat the soul on a daily basis) by reminding ourselves on a daily basis of its omnipresence and being more careful about what we are involved in.