 What is a soul? And do you have one? Or are you some kind of soulless monster? In previous episodes discussing the soul, we've explored the shamanist conception along with the Greco-Egyptian one. Today, it's time we brought things into the modern world a bit more and look at how the idea of the soul has changed since the New Age movement arose and see what kind of theory we might need to even think about studying the non-physical aspect of our existence scientifically. But regarding all of this, we must remember that even if we scientifically prove that the soul exists and can measure it in everything, that's only half the picture. The other half is taking the time to make sure that your soul is nurtured and cared for inside and out. You see, nurturing the soul is important. I mean really important. If we don't, we can actually become those soulless monsters intent on only fulfilling our ego's desires. There's seriously so much of that in the world today and a wave of that kind of craziness is about to hit us because we are approaching the holiday season. So in the spirit of nurturing our souls, instead of the chaotic soulless rush of people plowing down each other for the latest specials and deals this year, we're going to be hosting Season of the Centaur for all of Sagittarius season between November 22nd and December 21st. We'll tell you all about it next week, but if you want to attend the live event as we shift from Scorpio season to Sagittarius on the 22nd, please use the link below to sign up for Spirit Mysteries for only a dollar. We'd love to see you there. We're in for an absolutely magical holiday season as long as we know how to prepare with the fullness of our heart. As the challenge persists, the main problem that always comes up is that a soul is more of a question of philosophy than science. Like the fundamental forces of nature studied by physics, if the soul exists objectively, it's surely got to be one of the most elementary and fundamental aspects of the universe, that is, the first principle of creation. Soul, God, consciousness, spirit, whatever you call it, it lies at the heart of reality itself, and by understanding its nature, we can understand our own nature and place in the tapestry of creation. Describing what a non-physical soul would be like is really freaking hard. Mostly because our main sense of existence is physical. We interact with the world largely through our physical bodies, and the brain is designed to interpret electrical signals into physical sensations. Even if you have a transcendent experience, this is still deciphered by the brain and the body, and there's always a part of the experience that's lost to memory. It can be difficult to conceptualize non-physical things in a practical way, but that's not to say non-physical stuff doesn't exist, just that it exists in an abstract sense that's a little difficult to grasp. Where physical things can be clearly defined, touched, or measured, non-physical things tend to be more like concepts and make up everything from numbers, mathematical functions, and philosophical relations. Something like the color red is an abstract concept, and while we all mostly know what the color red is, trying to describe redness to a blind person is easier said than done. In the same way, an emotion isn't exactly physical. Sure, we have physical responses to emotions like raised blood pressure when stressed, but the actual emotion itself is non-physical, and yet it is felt on a physical level to such an extent that no one denies it exists. Perhaps then, it could be useful to think of our soul as akin to our awareness, or maybe even our awareness of our awareness. Could it be that our soul is that space in between emotions that allows us to perceive them? A common thread we've been seeing so far in ancient philosophies is that the soul comprises the truest essence of who and what we are, including our logical reasoning, personality, hopes, dreams, fears, as well as our approach and philosophy on life, and how we interact with the world. All of that really does sound like our awareness, perception, or consciousness. Maybe we can think of the soul then as the resting neutral state of the self that is uncolored by stimuli, whether they are internal or external. Maybe the soul is that space of awareness that allows us to perceive at all. In this way, it would be pretty similar to consciousness. In fact, one could argue that they're one and the same. In this, we reveal what may be the biggest problem that atheists or mechanists have when talking about the soul, which is the concept of divinity. What does it even mean for something to be divine? Following the definitions, divine essentially means a quality of a deity, and deity is defined as the essential nature or essence of a god or goddess. And so, of course, then looking up the definition of God, we find a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator, and ruler of the universe. So there's a question here. If the soul exists and it comes directly from the essence of God, then it's a part of divinity that exists within us. And there's a counter-thought to this. Perhaps there's nothing inherently divine about it. Maybe it's simply another part of the universe we haven't found yet. So when physicists say things like, for a soul to exist, not only is a new physics required, but dramatically new physics, they might want to be a bit more careful. If the soul exists, then it does so irrespective of whether we can scientifically find it or not. Not to mention, there are breakthroughs happening all the time that are shifting our understanding of everything. The whole idea of how we constitute divine is what I like to call the divinity paradox. If everything is a manifestation of a source or unified whole, then isn't everything divine in some way? And if everything is divine, then surely nothing is, because what do you compare it to? Sure, we can throw our ego into the mix and try and argue that there's something that's more or less divine, like comparing an immortal ascended master to a lowly mortal chipmunk. But at the end of the day, no one can make a definitive statement like that if everything hangs off the tree of life as one complete, unified, and energetic whole. Perhaps then the only difference is whether or not we're aware of our divinity. There's nothing wrong with that, though. It just goes to show that our human labels for stuff are so small in comparison to this amazingly vast universe that we live in. What if the very soul of the universe itself is consciousness? What if, just as the Hermetica describes, the universe itself is a living being and is able to guide its own creations through natural laws, such as Pi or the Golden Ratio? There are even spiritual philosophies that suggest the universe itself is God or the source of our collective over-soul. And what would that mean for us, if true? Of course, not comprehending the soul hasn't stopped people in the past from trying to measure it scientifically. The most famous of the soul experiments was the 21 Grams experiment by Duncan McDougall in 1901. In it, he made weight measurements of patients as they died and claimed that there was a weight loss at the time of death, concluding that the human soul weighed about 21 grams. The problem was, he was wildly unscientific. For his famous number, he based his measurements on a single patient in discarded conflicting results. Not only that, but none of his findings were repeatable. So as far as we're all concerned, his stuff doesn't count and his patient could have just as easily been gassy. Equally, tons of parapsychologists throughout the years have tried to conduct experiments to determine whether a soul exists independent of the brain. But none have ever succeeded. But again, maybe the reason for that is that everyone is trying to separate things out. Like, here's where the body ends, the brain begins, and the soul starts. But much like the universe itself, being interconnected and intricate, I think we should be taking a more holistic viewpoint and looking at what it is that unifies all of these experiences together. After all, if we look to the emerald tablet with that hole, as above so below, shtick, if the universe is unified on a foundational level, we gotta be as well. We can't hope to comprehend the nature of the soul if we try to divide it into manageable parts because the soul only exists in unity. The idea of a unified whole is at the center of most New Age religious movements. While beings such as angels or ascended masters are generally thought to exist, the main principle divinity is largely holistic. It's never really defined and differs depending on who you talk to, but this concept of a universal soul, or ocean of oneness, is, well, almost universal. While both the soul and the source are often described as energy, most often all things are said to consist of love. This can kind of get confusing as it isn't just the concept of love, but just like the word energy, sometimes love takes on the role of a noun and is thought to be an active binding force in the universe that is just as vital as the other fundamental forces. Maybe then the best way to say this is that the universal energy that binds all things together is experienced as love. Since the New Age movement grew through the Theosophy movement of the 19th century, it adapted a lot of its original beliefs about the soul from there, which in turn came from Buddhist and Hindu beliefs brought to the west by people like Helen Oblavatsky and Alexandra David Neal. So there's a pretty common belief that our soul reincarnates through a succession of lives as it evolves from a lower state of spiritual awareness towards a higher one. Where things get different, though, is that the New Age movement adds in this idea that our soul somehow subconsciously determines our own rebirth in accordance with our spiritual needs, which necessitates some kind of awareness or independent existence from the mind and body and also an awareness of possibilities or potential futures. Generally, the New Age view of reincarnation assumes a learning purpose to rebirth. Our soul incarnates as needed then in order to learn from the world and develop itself to the highest possible extent where then we can help others do the same and facilitate the evolution of consciousness. What form the soul would take on other planes is an entire video on its own, but there is a common belief that incarnation as a human on Earth is only one option for the reincarnating soul. Generally speaking, there's a belief that your level of awareness will permit your rebirth and merely being aware of the possibility of incarnating into other realities offers the chance of doing so. Dibs on Saturn next time, you guys! Our challenge is that because of Hollywood and popular media, when most people think about what their soul looks like, they immediately default to that faded astrobotty like out of Doctor Strange. That is, a condensed body that looks, talks, and wa- I guess floats, maybe? Either way, it moves around like you or I do in normal day-to-day life. When you actually examine the concept of an astrobotty though, this kind of falls apart. I'm not gonna try and explain what a soul is made of because even we don't know. We don't know if it exists in some other aspect or level of the physical world, it is arguably as much a part of the world around it as it is independent. In other words, if it exists as a form or field of energy or idealistic material, it doesn't have a defined shape or position of awareness. Why would you need eyes that can only look in one direction when you are a being of pure energy connected to your environment all 360 degrees simultaneously? Do you see what I'm saying? Like, why do you need ears if everything around you is already vibrating and you're a part of that field? Here's the real kicker. The concept of an astrobotty could be holding you back because it's confining your awareness to one location. If the soul exists, it's a part of the universe around you, so you just need to become aware of it and direct it. Think of it like an electrical current just a live wire into a pool of water the entire thing would become electrically charged. The electricity plugs into the wider hole and becomes a part of the whole pool rather than being confined to one location. And it might be the same idea with the soul. Once our awareness exists independent of our body, it loses that sense of a definite position and merges with the wider universal pool around it. This raises a big question. Is there a point where our soul isn't us in the universe instead? And what if we're already both? If we were to follow some of the other traditions we've talked about, maybe the core part of our soul the metaphorical heart is simply some aspect of the universe that has been ejected from the whole temporarily. Then some of the other parts like Aristotle's plants and animal souls are acquired upon incarnation and add different levels of personality. The core parts and sub parts of the soul then all work together to make up who we are. New-ageers tend not to talk about the concept of salvation that much mostly because it's more of a Jewish or Christian thing yet ironically in stressing self-development and spiritual advancement New-age practitioners do actually accept a form of salvation predicated on the evolution of the individual soul in the current and future lives. Though this evolution may take many lifetimes, New-age philosophy looks at it as the ultimate goal of human existence. When it comes down to it asking what makes a soul is like asking what makes red red until we get a better understanding and vocabulary about awareness and consciousness we won't be able to define it as fully as we'd like. Perhaps though, by studying the nature of awareness and seeing how and why it arises we will also unknowingly be studying the evolution of the soul. Maybe in the end it really is just a matter of people using different words for the same experience. Toodles!