Soul and Oversoul

 

1.        soul is the reality and the essence. It is one as well as a totality. In one there is always the delusion of many, and the totality does signify the existence therein of so many parts. The ideas of a part and of the whole go check by jowl, and both the part as well as the whole are characterized by the similarity of the essential Nature in them.

 

2.        the essence of a thing has it's own attribute Nature and the two cannot be separated from each other. Just as the essence is both one and many, so is the case with it's attributive Nature.

 

3.        the essence of a thing is it's very life breath. It is the only primal principle that pervades everywhere and is the reality behind all forms and colors. This active life principle is the very source of creation and goes variously by the names of prakriti in the subtle, pradhan in the casual, and maya or matter in the physical world.

 

4.        the attributive Nature of a thing is it's integrated part and parcel in which it's Nature inheres. Just take the case of light. can light be conceived of as apart from the sun, or radiant vitality apart from a gloriously healthy personality? One does not exit without the other as the two are inseparable and fully embedded in each other.

 

5.        any attempt to consider the two –Nature and it's science as separate, even if only in imagination, is bound to bring in the idea of duality. It is only in terms of this duality that one can conceive of the creation as distinct from the creative principle as being the result of the outer play of the twin forces of spirit, called matter and soul. The scientific investigations too have now come to the irresistible conclusion that all life is one continuous existence at different levels and what we call inherit matter is nothing but energy at it's lowest and what we call inherit matter is nothing but energy at it's lowest stage.

 

In Nature itself, both in the subtle and casual planes, these two principles are always at work: God and prakriti in the subtle, God and pradhan in the casual, and soul and matter in the physical universe. The creation everywhere is but the outcome of the impact of the one the other.

 

6.        soul then is the life principle and the root cause at the core of everything, for nothing can come into manifestation without it. it has a quickening effect, and impart it's life impulse to the seemingly inert matter by contact with it. it is by the life and light of the quickening impulse of the soul that matter assumes so many and colors with their variety of patterns and designs which we see in the universe.

 

7.        this life current or soul is extremely subtle, a self, effulgent spark of divine light, a drop from the ocean of consciousness, with no beginning and no end, and eternally the same, an unchangeable permanence, boundless, complete in itself, an ever existent and all sentient entity, immanent in every form, visible and invisible, for all things manifested themselves because of it. nothing is made that is not made by it.

 

the one remains, the many change and pass,

life like a dome of many colored glass,

Saints the white radiance of eternity.

 

8.        just as the sun spreads out it's rays in the world, as an ocean carries on it's surface bubbles, ripples,

waves, tides and currents and as a forest is made up of innumerable trees, so does oversoul or God, when looked at through his creation, appear to be split into so many forms, exhibiting and reflecting the light and life of God in a rich panorama of variegated colors. Yet his spirit into so many beads, while he, unconcerned, remains apart from all in his own fullness.

 

9.        the first downwards projection of the spiritual current, as it emanated from God, brought into manifestation  ether (akash), which is the most subtle of the elements and spreads everywhere in space. This has two aspects. One is that of the spirit or soul remaining unmanifest in the ether, and the other that of the manifested ether, wherein the two forces, positive and negative, which are inherent in it, further combined and brought into manifest air gave birth to fire (agni) and the manifest fire produced water(jal) and the Manifest water led to the formation of earth (prithvi), while the spirit of each element which is essencially the same remained unmanifest thought.

  

In the same way as above, what we call has an essential godhood, absolute and imageless, the life and spirit of the universe, and at the same time the universe itself with it's varied creation full of and manifesting so many forms and colors, appearing and disappearing like ripples in the sea of life. the unmanifest and impersonal God is free from all attributes while his individualized rays, as manifested in countless forms and colors by constant contact with maya, prakriti and pradhan (physical, subtle and causal) feel themselves, through ignorance of their true Nature, as limited and separated from each other and are thereby drawn into the ambit of the inexhorable Karmic law or the Law of cause and effect, which entails a consequence of every deed, every word and every thought. What is unfulfilled in one life is fulfilled in another, and thus the giant wheel of life and death once set in motion goes on perpetually by the force of it's own inexhaustible momentum. Herein lies the difference between the individualized soul on the one hand, and the great soul of the universe (called God) on the other, the one being bound and limited, the other being without bounds or limits.

 



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