On The Soul

1/12/23 – On The Soul

One major philosophical concept: that of the Soul. Or rather, what has been described by some as the soul, the self, the “I that I am”: a singular, indivisible, atomic center of every human being which is the only requirement for them to be considered as such.

Consider that one is not one’s job, one’s clothing, one’s skin, one’s body. The parts of an individual that allow for labels to be attached to them are not truly a part of their self, in the sense that whenever one is alone and does not make an effort to identify with those things, one is simply “self”, a human soul.

Eckhart Tolle points to Buddhism in his description of this concept, which he calls, simply, The Self. It is distinct from The Ego which is the thinking mind. It is the Ghost in the Shell, unobtainable by anyone except yourself. The concept of this perfect barrier between Self and reality was employed literally by Hideaki Anno as “Absolute Territory”, the barrier between human hearts.

Consider a few logical arguments as to why “The Soul” exists, or rather, how the concept can be simplified sufficiently to accept that summarizing it in a single word, Soul, is effective enough to work with, practically, for purposes of further conjecture on the mechanics of phenomenology. First, you are unique and privy only to yourself. Unless the future has other plans, you are contained entirely within a “space” that has never before been grasped completely by the consciousness of something else. One must, for now, avoid any supernatural implications of that description; for other reasons we are assuming a perfectly secular universe.

Within that space there is only yourself, and you have available to you tools to communicate out of that space and unto others. Specifically, spoken language, body language, writing, song, art, and so on. Now consider that even if you began, at this moment, to perfectly and without any possible misinterpretation, relay the entire contents of your life, including the details of everything you have seen and heard, the depths of their effects upon your “heart”, your interpretation of those moments, applications of them toward your outlook on the future and their effects on your perspective on the past, that probably you would not be able to catch all the way up to where you are now. And in fact, you may die near the end of recounting your earliest, fuzziest memories of childhood.

By this logic, you can be considered as an island of perception, containing a single unique and unparalleled pathway through life which will always be, mostly, your secret. This is “The Self”, “The Ghost in the Machine”, the “you which is”. For convenience, then, the concept of this island-self I will call The Soul, and can assert that one exists within every human being. Or, more correctly, every human being is one. The attributes later piled on top of this Soul make up the aspects of one’s individuality.

From out of that silent planet, beyond the veil of ‘Absolute Territory’, rests everything else. You are as a pilot trapped within a machine: the machine of your body, which is a small sub-assembly of the machine which is the universe, which is a sub-assembly of the machine which is Reality. Before continuing I want to clarify that this premise is not a subscription to dualism – only a description of the concept of “Soul” as a packet of ideas which can be referred to for practical purposes.

Hideaki Anno is not the first by any stretch, but famously explores this concept as the forefront of his magnum opus, Neon Genesis Evangelion. He posits a few simple questions: Is this the way it should be? Is there anything to do about the chasm between two Souls? How can I find peace with the understanding of how utterly, truly alone I am? How can I ever be understood when there is no way out from myself?

How can I find peace with the understanding of how utterly, truly alone I am?

Anno posits these questions, and then dashes them. For the answer to all of them is the same: What does it matter? There is nothing you can do about it.

So what am I, this little island, to do? Trapped, and forever submerged in the metaphysical depths, separate from the world in totality? Camus described this as living in the original sin without God. We are abandoned, and there is nothing to return to. Even above your physical self: all that can be achieved by your efforts exists within a realm beyond you. You can only catch the faint glimpses of it, through your senses and your mind. (All of this is an extension of the Phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger.)

But I am a great thing, I hope you might say, there is nothing so unique and beautiful as me. No thing in all of Creation has performed an existence such as I have. That life is within me now, in this moment. I can feel what I am… This is also true. None of the above is intended to convey a worthlessness of your “Soul”, nor to set the foundation for a philosophy of hopelessness. We are simply setting a stage.

From here, a second assertion: that there exists such a thing within all human beings. Perhaps even all sentient beings, if you like. (Future writings will deal more directly with the nature of consciousness). What then is the truth? The truth is that out there in the world are (at least) 8 billion indivisible, pure and singular temples of consciousness, just like you. And so, whether you consider yourself worthless, or the torch-bearer of the Great Kingdom, you speak as well for everyone else.

Consider another exercise from that point: the idea of personal worth. Keeping in mind that this is the worth of the final, infinite self, and not of you the job, you the skin, you the child. Keeping also in mind that this exercise is dictating the worth of all souls, for at this atomic level there is no distinction between two people. 

Consider this:

What say did you (we) have in all of this?

When do you (we) recall having asked to be born?

When were you (we) sat down and told about all of this, and then told what to do about it?

If one has an answer to the last question, it is simple enough to see here that they were lied to, though very likely from a place of well-meaning.

The point here is to illustrate the conditions of reality placed upon all of us, which we all share in common. We are born, and slowly gain consciousness as though from a dream. Very few people can recall memories or a sense of the “Self” until long into actually existing. Furthermore, there is no calling given to us as to what the point of it is. Do not mistake the career, parenthood, hobbies or art to be an answer to that question. Those are questions of what to do with your body. 

What we mean is Why? Why are we like this?

The answer is: no reason. And that is the answer for you, and so it is the answer for everyone.

A particular image would often comfort me in my youth, and became bolstered by existentialist readings thereafter, to describe our situation:

We are as insects, trapped inside an endless, infinitely complex machine. All within it are gears, trains, shaft, pistons, cams, wires, oil and steel. Which parts move, which parts don’t, we as insects have no way of knowing. We buzz around, tend to ourselves, and sometimes when the effort is too much, we perch. We hope that where we have chosen to rest is not the inner face of a gear-tooth, but what do we know of gears and how they look?

Then, every once in a while, the machine continues to do whatever it is doing, and some new part of it cycles up for its purpose: new pieces begin to move that weren’t moving before. And every once in a while, it nabs a few flies and they go between the belt and driver, smashed to pieces. One day, the machine will shift gears and it’ll be you. You might recall others who had nested in the inducted-draft chambers, or rested their head between the coils of a spring. Some of them lived, with fewer legs to show for it.

What angst-filled, youthful metaphor fails to capture are two things: one is that, really, the machine ought to be built partially out of bugs. The actions of others and their effect toward you can be considered cog-play within the machine of reality. (Further reading from here in materialistic determinism and free will, Sam Harris being a well-known contemporary author.)

Secondly, this metaphor paints an image that rests far from another truth: That the machine is, all of it, beautiful. Lucky are we mere things to behold such extravagance as this machine.

-Sam

Last night I had a dream.

I floated in darkness, immense, squamous. My mind flowed like my body, slowly and sinuously, tremendous wheels both too slow and too fast for me to describe to you now.

I was perfect, and titanic, and serene. But then, as I moved through the cold abyss, I saw a light. And as I came near, I saw something… wonderful.

Above me was an alien world. Strange orbs floated there, and there was something special about them. Something I had never seen before.

I fell in love with the majesty of colors.

The Majesty of Colors, Gregory Avery-Weir