O God – if there is a God, save my soul – if I have a soul !
Called the agnostic’s prayer, the above is attributed to Ernest Renan (1823-1892). It poignantly conveys the estrangement of the modern and materialist mind from the consciousness and discourse of spiritual things.
The soul – much has been conjectured concerning this mysterious numen, and yet the matter has remained elusive. It is something of a mystery even among the religiously minded, and the secular verdict is that it does not exist. The problem, I suggest, is due to confusion concerning spiritual categories in general – that they are considered otherworldly and ephemeral rather than tangible. The soul, according to this view, is the subtle, rarefied, immaterial essence of personhood, perhaps intuitively placed in the region of the heart – for Descartes it was the pineal gland – and deemed to survive the death of the physical body. If it exists, it does so as an article of faith – not as an entity directly experienced.
My purpose is not to contradict this conventional notion, but to suggest that it misses the point in significant part – that the soul is indeed the most obvious fact of existence. While it may be viewed as a kind of spiritual singularity – and I think the simile is singularly apt – in manifestation that singularity unfolds into a world of experience. It is not, therefore, an entity within the ambit of experience which may be objectively distinguished; it is experience as such – the whole of it. And thus the soul is ‘it’ – it is all. The soul – and only the soul – is the sole and singular fact of human experience. It is the point of view, the subjective nature of the self within the realm of experience. Waking or sleeping, from the cradle to the grave, it is the soul which is the singular fact of human awareness.
Conventionally then, the soul is psyche or mind – the magical theatre of human experience which illuminates the worlds. While we might consider the soul the vessel of experience, the distinction is essentially a formal one. We do not observe a vessel as distinct from content, a ‘mind’ as distinct from thought and sensation. Yet it seems appropriate to speak of an entity – a whole – which comprises the subjective, and therefore the essential, nature of human individuality. Souls, therefore, are rightly deemed precious insofar as each soul is unique, and that comprehended within each soul is a world or universe of experience. Indeed we may speak in this context of worlds, of innumerable universes as the portent of the soul. And yet, while the whole may be considered one from the standpoint of the individual self, there is nevertheless a twofold aspect – a dual nature – to the soul. In manifestation there is the ‘tangible’ stream of human experience, such that the individual self or soul is comprised of that stream. It is identified with the world of its experience. Yet there is also that which beholds, and in this regard the soul partakes of the transcendent nature of spirit or consciousness.
Genesis 2:7 states: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. From this I conclude: A soul is the intersection of spirit or consciousness with the material realm. (We note that the breath of life, the Hebrew ruah, also means spirit.) Indeed the principle may be observed in the creation of the world, where it is stated: (Genesis 1:2) The Spirit of God (ruah) moved upon the face of the waters. And again (Job 38:7) When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy – in other words, where the world was sung into existence. Here it is spoken of Christ, the universal or great soul, which is ruah elohim, the breath or Word of God – he who is called the beginning of the creation of God, in whom all lesser souls have their being. The transcendent Spirit moves upon the primordial waters, which is the manifest Word and mind of God. And as the Word is mixed with faith – which is the substance, according to Paul, the primordial substance of which all things are made – when God said, let there be light ... there was light. Christ Jesus, who is also called the faithful witness – he who bears witness of the light – further said of himself (John 5:19): The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing, that does the Son likewise. The soul of Christ is the dwelling of God.
The same indeed holds for the adopted, or redeemed, son – or daughter – of God – in accord with the biblical principle that man is created in the image of God. Spirit or consciousness moves upon the primordial waters and conjures a reality, a world of experience, in accord with individual faith. As the scripture aptly states, be it unto you according to your faith (Mathew 9: 29). We see in effect that the act of universal creation is re-enacted in the life of the soul. Insofar as there are two creation accounts – Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 – we notice concerning the second that it is centred upon the human experience. The first, by contrast, appears Platonic or abstract in being seen through the eyes of God. Yet the soul partakes experientially of both events or phases of creation. The spiritual soul, as created in the image of the elohim, the transcendent self-existent being that is God, bears within it the knowledge of universal creation, which knowledge constitutes the ground of apriori apprehension, whereupon is added, in the course of a life, the knowledge of human experience. This indeed is the mysterious part, and what distinguishes the human from the sentience of animal life. Whereas animal consciousness is comprised of the natural given in space and time, the human soul apprehends from a transcendent vantage. It views the actual and given through implicitly all-knowing eyes, whence the God-like faculty of abstraction – of imagination and reason – as the universal human aspiration to regain the divine image. The so-called unconscious, accordingly, is not limited to elements of Freudian repression, nor is it altogether explained in terms of Jungian archetypes – ideas and images which inform the human soul and are independent of experience. More essentially, what the soul has forgotten, but for the occasional spark of genius – artistic, scientific, or prophetic – is its function as primordial image-maker and as the very fount of language – as the creative vessel or ark of God.
Devine creation, accordingly, should not be considered entirely an event in the remote past, but also an a-temporal or timeless process in the eternal present of divine apprehension. While indeed it is spoken in Genesis of a beginning – in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth – it is a metaphysical contradiction to assert that time was created at some moment in time, albeit the ostensible first moment. Time, rather, is the concrescence of eternity, just as space is the instantiation of the infinite. Of these concepts – the infinite and the eternal – neither is found in nature. They are characteristic rather of the transcendent, of the creative Spirit of God which intersects and informs the space-time matrix at every point. The soul, as we have seen, is the focus of that intersection – the Spirit of God moving upon the primeval waters – such that the soul partakes equally of the immanent and transcendent. The soul is indeed one with the Creator, as it is one with all creation, insofar as consciousness and mind – or mind and thought – comprise the unity which is God and the creation of God. As states John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And thus within the human soul resides the power to create worlds. Space and time, as indeed the entire universe of human experience, is the unfolding of the mind of God in the context of the human soul.
In that boundless creative capacity, however, also lies the potential for evil. We recall, concerning the soul in primordial Eden, that placed before Adam was the tree of life and the tree of knowledge – the knowledge of good and evil – and of death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die, states Ezekiel 18:20, where sin is that knowledge, which separates the soul from the tree of life, which is life, and the source of life, which also is Christ, the empowered Word of God. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, admonishes Jesus in Mathew 5:48. Indeed, given such unbounded creative potential, when projected upon eternity, it is apparent that even a slight deviation from the perfection of God would inevitably result in atrocity. For the evil of a mere six thousand years has weighed upon many souls to doubt the very existence of God. And thus God determined that sin shall have an end, and that end is death.
It is for this reason, finally, that the soul requires a redeemer. And we understand that God, in his mercy, has provided the perfect redeemer. We saw above that Christ is the embodied Word of God, and it is Christ himself who became the sacrifice for sin, so that confession of the blood of Christ restores the soul to its primordial purity in the original creation of God. Indeed the blood of Christ not only vanquishes sin – which is unbelief in the Word of God – but the very effects and consequences of sin. This, in effect, is what we mean repentance – the soul in faith turning to Christ, understanding that Christ, the Word of God, atones for sin, restoring the soul to oneness with God. And although it does not yet appear what we shall be, given the gradual unfolding of the spiritual seed, the soul indeed bears the image of eternity. It goes all the way back, and all the way forward – past and future – transcending time while yet partaking of time. Transcending space while inhabiting space. And partaking of knowledge, while established in the creative fount of omniscience – in the Alpha and Omega, the mystical singularity, the ark of God.
Oh, how wonderful! How mysterious and profound! And, oh, what a life – what a magnificent life of the soul!