The Book of Life

Consider the optical illusion where we could spot a figure or a vase depending on what we are looking at. In other words we choose to see what we want to see. (see note)
Can there be an island without the sea or a doughnut without the hole in the middle? We may be talking about the island but sea is ever in the background as a reality. Man has a body to which spirit is conjugated. Our physical reality has its counterpart in spirit world and so on. Soul is that aspect which is common to both worlds. On the pinions of soul suppose we could reverse our shapes as in the face-vase illustration mentioned above.
2.
Hereafter denotes the period in which we have spiritual bodies reverse with physical realities here and now. What we experienced in the body in such a case remains in terms of energy or any other mode that is clear as day. As though written down in a book. The book of life which is mentioned in Revelation 20:15
The light of the body is eye… if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness”(Mt.6:22-23)The eye here would stand for the soul of man.
Note:‘To make sense of the world it is necessary to organize incoming sensations into information which is meaningful. Gestalt psychologists believe one way this is done is by perceiving individual sensory stimuli as a meaningful whole. Gestalt organization can be used to explain many illusions including the Duck-Rabbit illusion where the image as a whole switches back and forth from being a duck then being a rabbit and why in the figure-ground illusion the figure and ground are reversible’(wikipedia).
benny

God The Son

Soul like a mirror shows us Truth by which Jesus serves every Christian as a symbol.
Soul says ‘amen’ to Truth however weak and ill-equipped we are (may be because of circumstances and natural inclination) to resist temptation.
A New Birth is an example pure and simple. We hold Jesus as a symbol and as an example. It is in so many ways an unlearning process where we learn weakness as a kind of strength and love more enduring that hatred. ‘ Practice maketh perfect’, so goes the old saw. It is here the example of Jesus becomes much more defined. Jesus for us has become by faith the Redeemer. As babes in Christ we grow mature when we learn to depend on his life for guidance. What is that we hope to achieve? Love shown while in his body is all-sufficient to overcome the world. Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered (Heb 5:8). In his life He reconciled Truth and love. Thereby he has become a Representational Man for all.
benny

My Essence

Essence of man can neither be in his corporeal form that is finite or in its abstract aspect as his mind.
What is mind?
It is something that his body can make use of. Mind is an accretion of many past influences, experiences and ideas that he can access to. Only in the way he uses them he puts his own stamp. No two persons see an event the same way. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans one preacher saw it as divine retribution as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah. When his wife and daughter died in a tragic auto-crash he said, “ It was God teaching him to love Him more than anyone else on the earth’. .
One would ask,” Does God achieve His ends with you and me by dancing on the misery of others?"
2.
Man interprets his visible world with a logic peculiar to him. His actions also show his rational standpoint. He is not master of the consequences of his actions. His logic also falls apart as a rope of sand.
Coming back to my main point man’s essence cannot be in his body or its abstract shadows but in the way he acts. Soul therefore becomes the single most vital tool that he has in order to carve his name for all time.
Trying to please a world that is constantly changing with what is your essence is like writing your name on water. If you try to make an idea bear your essence, it shall be unfaithful in any other. Fine idea it was to found a new Canaan in the New World. When it has come at the cost of placing the Native Americans into reservations, squalor and degradation, the Acts passed by the Nation has killed the soul of the idea.
I shall end this post with my definition for soul as the quintessence or identity of the being. Many strands of Truth of nature, of experience and of action, all plaited into one. While the body is corporeal soul is timeless.
benny

The Stranger Among Us

The Man in Red and Blue Robe©
The Man from En-Gedi was among the elders and while they discussed the day’s events a strange figure in red and blue robe also entered the tent and sat among them. The Chaldean saw how he put himself at ease among those bearded wights. He again saw him in the palace of the king who wanted to honor those who were strangers in his realm. The Chaldean being curious asked in whisper to another, “ That man in red and blue, who he might be, a foreigner? ” The man couldn’t answer him. Later he saw him again at a banquet. Strangely he was set down next to him. The Chaldean asked before he downed the last cup of friendship,” The party is about to break up. Each of us shall soon wend his own ways. I am curious. Who you might be?”
The stranger in red and blue robe didn’t answer. The Chaldean asked,” I see you wherever I turn. It seems by fate decreed that you and I have certain business to settle.”
“ You said it,” the stranger replied,” I am Truth.”
My soul is like the stranger. So close and yet I do not care to know what it really is. Instead of relying on Truth that it represents I would rather settle for the opinions of others and pay lip-service to customs that have by repetition lost its meaning.
benny

Soul And Conscience

What is crucial for our understanding the concept of God is to fix on His Absolute value. God is Truth. Did that value become any the less because He breathed into the nostrils of Adam? From our rational point of view He can only retain that Absoluteness if the ‘living soul’ has also an absolute value. Truth cannot be halved and yet retain its purity. It is like a flame. A candle whenever it is lit has the same value as the flame that went before. Truth is that light radiating from the candle.
Soul is Absolute in terms of Truth. Conscience of man every time attests to the fact. We read how King David spared the life of the one who had chased him to the wilderness. He took a few items from the bolster of King Saul while he lay in deep sleep. (1 Sam.26:23) The fact that his implacable foe was still the Lord’s anointed deterred David from killing him. He could have succumbed to the truth of nature and made his way to the throne secure. No he didn’t yield to the temptation. He was not Saul.
David could rise above the truth his nature held out. He indeed waited for a higher Truth that God held out.
He had respect unto his soul.
benny

Life Prepares Us

“So God created man in his own image.’(Gen 1:27)
God breathed into Adam and made him a living soul.
It is plain that we cannot claim our image resembles Him in a physical sense since no man has seen Him. Soul serves as a mirror but it doesn’t fully explain. Soul is a catalyst for the body with all its infirmities to grow unto perfection even as it is. As St. Peter writes we are called ‘to be partakers of the divine nature.’(2Pe1:4). Our carnal body shall stumble and let us down more times than we care to count them but soul’s hold on us is relentless and it never tires itself from its office.
Perfection can only come through our experience, or knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. Since we do not have a physical model as such the Word helps us to some extent. Our life on the Earth must largely prepare us while living among so many. Life on this vale of tears is but a preparatory school.
benny

Mirror Mirror, on the wall...

Cont'd from the previous post.
From Christian perspective the Spirit of God has a restrictive meaning to indicate the nature of soul in terms of an anthropomorphic God.
In the opening chapters of Genesis we read that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. Imagine the pure breath of God! One might ask ‘Why should He pour His Spirit into a lowly vessel?
It seems to me that He equipped man with a soul so he may meet whatever challenges he faced whether he obeyed him or not. Because he fell would not mean God compromised the sanctity of His breath.
From that breath of God the man had plumbed in essentials of His Godhead. What does St. Paul say about this? Rom1:19 reads as thus, “ That which may be known… God hath shown it…”
Having a living soul how Adam responded to the wiles of the serpent was as if he had none. God didn’t take back his soul but death has since that time laid its hands on mankind as a matter of right.
Soul is like a mirror from which we take the measure of eternal things. Mirror on the wall of eternity gives us a reading to which how we respond is often different to each as with we make sense of our external world.
benny

Breath Of Life

I shall in the following posts try to put down my thoughts on the breath of life (or spirit) and soul and what these mean to me. In the Old Testament the Hebrew noun rûah stands for breath, wind or spirit. The same idea in terms of man is denoted by the word nephesh. There is a telling reason,- and very valid too, for the point under consideration: the latter word signifies the individual while the other has often to do with the animating principle. So ‘soul’ deals with the individual and rûah the spirit drives individuals to act in a certain manner. Spirit of the times as an expression explains it sufficiently well.
* In a dog-eat-dog world spirit of the times makes morals of some wiggle like the tail of a lapdog.
How we perceive the temper of our age and respond do color the spirit.
Soul of a man is at every turn is assailed by winds of change.
Suppose I need to pick up some life-saving medicine for my child who is in a touch and go situation. So I set out with the doctor’s prescription to the drugstore. If a blustery wind suddenly sweeps across do I say, ‘ OK I shall let the wind take me where it will. Joe’s Bar ought to give me a time for respite. Then I shall see.’ Will any right thinking person with an iota of concern for his child let a wind however contrary, swerve him from his purpose?
Soul of man is like the right thinking person who will brave the times however contrary rather than live with the guilt of having let down his child at the most critical point.
My soul is set there whether I willed it or not to express my quintessence. Spirit of the times is like a wind and often changes. But my soul I cannot deny. Instead I can adorn it with the fairest colors in the way I respond to the times.
benny

The Moral Imperative

Pragmatism as I stated in the previous post is a compromise to succeed. Any one who wants to succeed at whatever cost it is a seductive proposition. The classic example of it is the keystone of Bolshevik ideology: the end justifies the means. From the fate of Soviet bloc we know that even such a method cannot guarantee success for long. Let us turn our attention from movements on a large scale to the individual. If I cannot succeed without turning opportunities to my advantage what use is my moral sense?
Am I not justified to let adrift my moral imperatives to succeed in a cutthroat world?
Alas, I have no such luxury to escape Truth no matter what value I may attach to it for all intents and purpose.
Truth is the bulwark that keeps all life forms secure for all time to come. It is the only touchstone for my life to separate my identity or soul from those of others. Truth of nature, of experience and that of action are building blocks for all time.
I may fail here and now as St. Thomas in the apocryphal story. But I can always vindicate my life in supplying some other in another time and place. So do I take the easy way out and lose my soul or strive to save it from every contamination of this world?
There is no time out from my soul imperative: my character
benny

A Point To Ponder

The problem of being earthy is in the way our perspective is altered: things of soul, me-factor somewhat tend to vanish to the point as in the case of a perspective drawing. The result? Our appetites and creature comforts loom larger and obfuscate the vista beyond: Truth is less than what we can grasp being in body.
According to St.Paul we shall be spiritual beings in the hereafter. Will it not then indicate a reverse process? Truth cannot be diminished or added to. Since we shall never be outside our bodies, spiritual or otherwise, hereafter must be a slow learning process. Like the many cycles of birth as Hinduism expound. Our avatars must bear less and less of the previous manifestation and each serve a purpose: where we test our pet theories spliced out of experience and nature and actions till we have reached the end point.
Truth: for a Christian it shall be seeing God as He is. Oneness of Things in terms of soul must mean that we shall be of the same essence as He is.”
The biggest misconception of a Christian must be to think heaven is where he will simply do nothing and be at rest. As long as Truth remains incomplete or less clear you and I shall have things to do.
benny

Week 13-Summary-2

How does our body compare with soul? All comparisons are odious. What life touches transforms body as Jesus was transfigured in front of his disciples. (St.Matt.17: 1-13) All that they could understand of it was so little whereas Jesus knew of the path that lay ahead. The body merely makes you adequate for certain functions here and now, while soul maps out hereafter as well. Soul takes over the burden of proof that the body cannot supply. Jesus knew his way ahead where Golgotha was merely another name to the glory of being elevated to the right hand of his Father.
Let us consider the life of an artist like Vincent van Gogh. What gave him wherewithal or the inner resources to continue as a painter while the world jeered and his peers ridiculed at his works? Shame and honor of this world in the final analysis do not matter since soul is outside every circumstance that a body is privy to. The artist was lonely; he was poor and a sponge and a madman to boot. But his soul was none of these.
The body allows an artist to squeeze the paints or mix them but the colors that make up the canvas are all from the soul. Similarly shall Shakespeare stage his plays for the rowdy, and dandies of his times. But poetry of his soul shall make his lines, even when taken out of context, sing and continue to set us on fire.
benny

W13-Summary

Our essence cannot be in our body, which is corporeal; nor can it be in our intellect, which is merely a vehicle for taking our cues from Idea, an absolute value. Let us for argument sake call it Truth. It is Absolute but it is not our essence. My identity is Truth given a human face and it bears the name given by my parents.
The name: did I choose my own? No! How could I in my dependent state?
Similarly the soul is under the bondage of my flesh, under truth of my experience, of nature and of action. Soul as yet takes reading from Truth because of Me-factor. Remember the story of the House of Joy? (vide W2 D6)
No two persons shall draw same conclusion, matching in every point though they would have witnessed the same scene. How each one employs Me-factor has its own specific characteristics. Hence the identity.
Soul tends to Truth as our reality to Ultimate Reality. This is a relative direction. At no point of our journey to it are we totally freed from Truth Imperative. We may not consciously seek out Truth as Bunyan’s Pilgrim. Whether before Delectable Mountains or in that Slough of Despond, loss of truth was never his problem. Only that seeking out a higher state of Truth gave him sustaining power. Each of us in varying fashion tests the reality of Truth in our daily lives. This process shall go on till we are subsumed in Truth incarnate.
Are you a Christian? Are you a Jew? or a Hindu? Grow in the knowledge till you and and every other become (like) diamonds of the first water.
(2b cont'd)
benny

W13 D7- My Mentor

Because I have a soul a Me-factor is necessary for me to cut through every confusion that cause and effect may create or when us and them degenerate into haves and haves-not over dollars and cents. “I was one among them,” and as Lord Byron says,” but not one of them.”
Whether we live or die we have something ineffable within ourselves that still bears witness to us. Me- factor is the mentor with regards to my Soul. Because I trust in my own identity, I do not need another to show how I may attain excellence in my life here and beyond.
How good is a spiritual mentor?
It was said of Alcibiades that his faults were held in check as long as Socrates was at hand. Socrates who realized that he had a natural inclination for virtue checked his perverse and impetuous traits to some extent. But removed from his restraining influence Alcibiades took up a course of action that was doomed. It is impossible for any one to live another one’s life. Even the greatest teacher must allow his pupils only what is patently their own. If their naturalness still can come through despite of corrections of experience and wisdom of others it both reflects the teacher and the pupil. Me- factor allows me to keep my wits about and keep focus of my soul.(2 B Cont'd)
benny

The Soul Thing

(Cont'd from the previous-W13 D6)
According to the matter that may have come from anywhere our form cannot be tied to anything other than to First Cause (vide Premise #1) and consequently whether we live or die material aspects of our being must be linked to it.
Have you wondered law of entropy only explains dissipation of complex molecules into simple atoms. How come then we have made a kick-start from our simple arboreal existence into the present level of civilization? In other words while material nature of mankind is subject to dissolution, their works broaden out into a royal highway. This is anomaly of matter in action and I can only speak for my kind.( If other species do build on the past in a concerted manner as to pass on to the future for good or bad I cannot say.) While time erodes us to a trickle, Time also is at work.
That leads us to the question of soul. Soul is the indication of finite and the Infinite making contact.
benny