Modern Man
in Search of a Soul
From Divine Life Society
Publication by Swami Krishnananda
What is it that we are seeking
in this life; what is it that anyone is searching for through the vicissitudes,
the works and enterprises in various walks of life. We hear only the noise of
human activity and desire, and a moment required for considering the motive
behind human enterprise does not seem to be available.
A machine works very hard and
works continuously in a very systematic, precise, mathematically operated
manner, without being conscious as to the very nature of the output. The stuff ejected
out of the machine is as unconscious of itself as is the operating mechanism
behind it. We say that a machine has not a soul, in the sense that we
understand a soul to be operating within ourselves.
Is man searching for a soul,
or is he searching for anything at all? We cannot say that we are searching for
money and status merely, though it may be one of the things that we are
searching for. There is something that everyone is missing, whatever be the
acquisition of a person – physically, materially, economically, politically. So,
one would like to search for an answer to this insecurity and this restlessness.
No one seems to have got what he wanted in this life. When the time comes for
us to leave this world, it appears very few will go with the satisfaction that they
have got what they wanted. We are a hollow, a vacuum, empty inside in some
mysterious way in spite of our material possessions and social status.
What man misses in life seems
to be something which keeps him in unison, harmony, and in a state of cohesion
- the invisible unified force defined as the soul, without which the organization
cannot function. "My soul, my conscience, my Atma speaks," we go on
touching the chest. This Atma, we are indicating within the location of this
physical body, is not what we are seeking – though it is present there also –
because it is an influence, it is a force. Our life is an abstraction; it is
not a concrete thing. For instance, when we touch money, we are not touching a
substance but are touching a value, a conceptual evaluation which is in the
head and not in the hands.
When a person has lost his
power – he has resigned or retired from a very powerful position – he has lost
something. The retired man is the same man that he was while in position. This position
that he has lost is not physical but a concept, which he cannot see with his
eyes, but it can make him utterly restless and put him out of gear.
So are we living in a physical
world, or are we living in a world of concepts, ideas, notions, evaluations and
aspirations? We will slowly open our eyes and find there is some truth in what Sankaracharaya and others have said - the world is Maya (illusion). We are seeing a table, we are
seeing trees, this building and this beach, and the world is there so hard and
solid – how do we call it, Maya or an unreal thing?
The people that are around us
are not our people. The things that we seem to possess, we have really not
possessed, and we have not been searching for them. These friends of ours,
these associations, these family members, this money, this status, this power,
this authority, this land, this building – these are not the things we are
asking for. We will realise one day that the world is unreal and it is only an
idea in our heads – it does not exist physically, if we go deep into the
matter.
Is man in search of a soul or the soul?
Is there such a thing called
'soul' independent of the body and yet existing within the body, illuminating,
vitalising, energising this body which we sometimes mistake for what we really
are?
The soul is a force, not a
thing, that is keeping in cohesion the limbs of our body, and in that sense we
may call it a soul. The soul may be one, but it
does not always reveal itself as one in our lives. So there is a larger soul
than our own soul, yet we are searching for our own meaning.
Occasionally we think in terms
of the welfare of many other people, and we are serviceful, which tendency in
us cannot be explained if the soul is only inside our body. There is a necessity to keep in cohesion the organization,
we call the entire humanity. We can extend this concept of the meaning of life,
the spirit of existence – into wider circles until it reaches the furthest
limits of infinitude itself. That one meaning that we discover in the whole
creation, may be said to be the soul.
When we reach a larger
dimension, it appears as if it comprehends the lower levels, so it absorbs the
existence of the lower categories of soul in the higher one; yet the lower ones
exist in their own capacity, notwithstanding the fact they are subsumed by the
operation of a higher soul. So there is a soul, and there
is also the soul.
The soul is not a person,
because one person cannot control so many other people. It is a pervasive
influence, a larger immanence of an invisible something – call it meaning, call
it authority, call it soul, call it intelligence, consciousness, whatever we
like. When we search for a soul in our lives, we are searching for a meaning in
our existence - the soul of life.
Continue to read:
“Modern Man in
Search of a Soul” by Swami Krishnananda
“Where is the Soul” from
your questions answered by Swami Krishnananda
“Discrimination of
Reality” from Chap1 -The Philosophy of Panchadasi by Swami Krishnananda
“The
Heart and Soul of Spiritual Practice” by Swami Krishnananda
No comments:
Post a Comment