The "Soul Hypothesis" (Part 3)

Most people, one imagines, would be fascinated to set out in search of their souls. But they would be held back by two immediate obstacles. First, we use the word "soul" very loosely, with no specific ways to validate what we mean. Second, the tools for exploring the spiritual domain are limited. Most people only know about faith and prayer, with the recent addition of meditation that still applies to a relative few. Both of these obstacles need to be overcome before one can intelligently experience the soul.

Instead of speaking vaguely about the soul, applying the word to soul music and soul food as easily as to the Holy Spirit, we can bypass semantics. In most traditions east and west, there are three categories of experiences -- or levels if you will -- that demarcate the spiritual domain:

Material or gross experience: This includes the physical world and the five senses, which guide us through that world. Gross experiences are analyzed by the mind in its ordinary operation of thinking, wishing, supposing, etc. The soul barely infringes on the material world, as we well know by the countless hours and days we all spend not even thinking about our souls. What we are concerned with is centered on the ego personality and its agenda. The gains and losses of "I, me, and mine" occupy center stage in everyone's personal life at this level of experience.

Subtle experience: This level of life is accessed through intuition and insight. Here we meet our "better nature," where thinking and feeling expands beyond ego concerns. Subtle experiences often defy logic, and they are scorned by strict rationalists. Yet art being just as real as science, love just as real as selfishness, there's no doubt that subtle experiences are real. Once the mind takes notice and begins to explore its own nature, the journey into the subtle domain begins to be more than incidental. There are intimations of an even deeper reality that is actually organized, intelligent, and powerful. The self we begin to encounter shows itself as being the soul.

Transcendent experience: As experience becomes more subtle, the mind finds itself standing at the boundary of thought, a silent place apparently devoid of activity. To cross over the boundary requires an act of transcendence, or "going beyond," that leaves behind the ego. As long as you have a stake in the material world, transcendent experience remains separate and apart. But an inner impulse wants to transcend, because the mind senses that it is about to find its source. The soul has come into close view, which is one of the most powerful and transformative of all experiences. The starting-point of mind is also the most concentrated location of love, truth, power, and creativity.

In sketch form we now have a map of experience leading from gross to transcendent. Even if nothing more were added -- and there is much, much more to add -- a person now knows how to categorize the bewildering stream of experiences that we are bombarded with every day. In general, people categorize their experiences second hand. Someone else (parent, priest, teacher, friend) has told them in advance what is spiritual and what isn't. But whatever else it is, experiencing the soul happens first hand. You have to notice and give value to something that only you have experienced. Being able to tell that you are in the subtle domain or have crossed over into the transcendent is enormously important. The next thing to ask is "What do I do once I get there?"

(to be cont.)

Click: www.intentblog.com

www.deepakchopra.com

Comments

[Dap]

Dear Dr. Chopra,

While I've tried to keep an open mind, I have to go with Jean-Paul Sartre' on this one, first existence then essence, (not to be conflated with nature and nurture.) Agape.

[moderationsmuse]

Am I the only Christian posting on this one? I've noticed that everybody seems to be a former something -- mostly Catholic. I can't help thinking that the assumption of atheism is chiefly in reaction against Christianity rather than purely in favor of scientific reason -- though I don't see reason and Christianity as hostile, indeed I approach Christianity as a rational faith.
Well, anyway, just thought I'd toss out something about my own history. When I grew up it was Baptists. They decamped in the living room because an important family member was Baptist. They used to ask my parents their famous question about "have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior," and imply that eternity in the inferno was inevitable for most of homo sapiens. Thankfully, I became a Christian really despite my early exposure to these particular Baptists, who really had personal agendas of which they seemed to be quite unaware.
I accepted Christianity through a process that began -- rather like science -- as curiosity. And while I have little information about other faiths, I am comfortable being a Christian. Yet I see no particular purpose in critiquing other religions. One lacks the "insider awareness" first off to even know what the other religions are to their adherents. And such criticism has little relevance to one's own faith. And there are just too many other religions. It would be to approach them as items at a buffet table. You deal in fragments and never see the entirety of any of them.
As to the inferno, I do think there has to be some kind of divine justice. At least in light of so much human injustice, one hopes that there is. But the particulars of such a thing, its meaning, its manifestation are not things I think much about. Perhaps that makes me a milktoaste Christian. Who knows? I don't particularly judge myself either. I am a Humanist too. Perhaps these two ideas are in conflict? If so, I'm not aware of it.

[Crowhaul]

"Most people, one imagines, would be fascinated to set out in search of their souls."

I wrestled with this for awhile, then realized that Deep's very premise is wrong; most people, of their own volition, will not go off in search of a soul. Rather, they live life happily in the moment.

[lungfish]

Its interesting watching people pull the mantle of "skeptic" around them when, in fact, they are as subjective about their opinions as the opinions themselves. I call this "scientism" not science and it has a dogma and rhetoric all its own.

Since the begining of the Scientific revolution the tendency has been to throw out or discredit work or research that tried to address subtle aspects of life. Dreams, so-called UFO experiences, ESP, nonordinary realities, altered states of consciousness, etc.

It has sought to belittle, deny, disclaim, debunk and otherwise ignore those things that are more difficult or impossible to apply the method to. If the logic of science couldn't unlock it, it didn't exist. Sagan and Shermer and co are definitely Scientistic in their perspectives.

This is the "safe ground" in science. Far back from the risk taking going on at the leading edge by people who are bringing their education and creativity to bear on topics that "establishment science" won't engage.

It has been this way all along. Think of every major achievement that was new - the drag on the effort by the scientific community itself was always present. Trains exceeding 30mph, flight, gorillas, you name it, there was a loud crowd of naysayers claiming that such efforts, ideas, animals, etc were "prepostorous
and unlikely, and ridiculous...

Science is an undisciplined mob led by a few brilliant minds.

[HeevenSteven]

I have returned from my journey to a parallel universe. It the most surreal experience I've ever had here at HuffPo, and it has shaken my soul (Now don't think I've converted; I don't mean that literally, I'm just being poetic) Michael Shermer's "9/11 truther" blog was just really strange. Someone needs to explain denial, and conspiracy paranoia to me. Sheesh!

I don't often get to play expert at anything I actually know alot about here, so I had to go for it. Thanks for your help over there muse, but I'm afraid we both wasted our time. It'll be good to get back here and talk about things I'm relatively ignorant about.

I learned a lesson. It's far easier to argue with an expert about something that with someone who has no idea what they're talking about. I have a book titled "Don't believe everything you think" about ways our brains trick us. I have to start that one.

I can't catch up here 'till later.

[mbaty]

The proof of God is subjective unless you realize that everything is (God.) And like emotions, like transcendant experiences, no 'objective' 'scientific' proof will ever change your subjective perspective. We will not agree on What Is So until we know what that is, and we won't know what that is until we stop thinking we already know.

[Dave24]

*
We will return to the state of pre-birth, which, as everyone remembers, seems to be nothing.

Conscious life is not about "finding" the soul; it is about creating it.

God, an afterlife, the supernatural: these are all manmade ideas, expressed through language and art, which are, of course, manmade.

It's possible for God to exist, but without evidence, there is nothing to believe in or follow except the mandates of preceding men, our ancestors.

Science is our only objective path to truth thus far; whereas religion, in all its self-proclaimed glory, has done nothing but fight against it.

[curiousasheck]

The "code-codes" can only be broken with sincere and humble dedication and love.

Not the "ego".

Once your search for the truth of who and what you really are sets you on the path, there is no turning back.

Once you arrive, you will understand that your purpose is to serve humanity. In whatever form it may be.

None of us are free until the last "slave" is set free.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

the Buddhist argument for the soul (as the stream of the mind and the continuation of karmic patterns) is that awareness cannot arise from material substance because material substance is unaware and tangible, whereas the substance of awareness is aware and intangible. (corn cannot grow from a tomato seed.)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=151412719255066043

Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences

Google TechTalks

August 8, 2006

B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

[americaforme]

The thing that gets me, on the journey to the soul, is overawareness in the passage way, my passage ways get clogged with entidys pushing through on my trip...the hall way gets spooky and I dont go there (meditate) like I need to, for balance.../just curious?

[nypoet22]

I take back what i wrote in response to doubts about part two. This is a very standard-sounding explanation, and there is nothing major to distinguish it from any other doctrine of faith. the major fault is it doesn't address the question of a priori assumptions, which are stated here as facts. while i may choose to suspend disbelief and take whatever spiritual path moves me, there is certainly no evidence that this series of categories is any closer to a person's experience of their soul, such as it is, than any of the other gazillion explanations out there. now i appreciate the need for operational definitions, but it seems like these particular categories skipped a few very important steps.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

sensations are attributes of the body, yet there is no body. there is no body in the body.

past present and future are attributes of time, yet there is no time. there is no time in time.

every object of emptiness is the same. a mind whose object is emptiness is liberated. everything is empty in its own being. everything contains its own liberation. free of stress. free of trouble.

[bethinCary]

But what comes after Transcendent Deepak?
Once ego is gone-what's next then?-just waiting for subtle experience to go about living?
Or does it go deeper than that?-like learning even more of what your mind can do/recieve­/release/a­ttract?
What do you mean by "a stake in the material world"? Just ego-or more? Becasue I feel it's more of like a brain flipping back and forth between conscious/­subconscio­us throughout the day-but yet to get through the day of course requires more focus on CONSCIOUS things that a person may be doing.IOW-you can't stay in the transcendent.
Hope you could answer these things in future postings.