Soul
… at all events the soul must
contain in itself the faculty of relationship to
God, i.e., a correspondence,
otherwise a connection could never come about.
This correspondence is,
in psychological terms, the archetype of
the God-image.
An
exclusively religious projection may rob the soul of its values so that through
sheer inanition it becomes incapable of further development and gets stuck in an
unconscious state. At the same time it falls victim to the
delusion that that cause of all disaster lies outside, and people no longer stop
to ask themselves how far it is their own doing. So
insignificant does the soul seem that it is regarded as hardly capable of evil,
much less of good. But if the soul no longer has any part to
play, religious life congeals into externals and formalities.
However we may picture the relationship between God and soul, one thing is
certain: that the soul cannot be “nothing but.” On the
contrary it has the dignity of an entity endowed with, and conscious of, a
relationship to Deity. (Psychology & Alchemy –
Intro).
In speaking of the importance of the soul, Jung then naturally uses the
word soul in its Christian sense and does not make a distinction between
ego-consciousness and the unconscious; what he refers to is naturally that soul
which we would call the objective psyche, the deeper layers of the unconscious.
Jung then approaches another
problem, the one problem that Christianity discouraged at a certain point of its
development (as it partly still does): any inner personal life and any attempt
to rely on one’s personal inner psychological knowledge, on anything that one’s
objective soul might tell them. People are taught that they
should just believe what is ordered by the Church, as though the Church
expresses the truth of the soul. This propagation goes on in
the form of a projection. AAI 28
It may easily happen,
therefore, that a Christian who believes in all the sacred figures is still
undeveloped and unchanged in his inmost soul because he has “all God outside”
and does not experience him in the soul. His deciding motives, his ruling
interests and impulses, do not spring from the sphere of
Christianity but from
the unconscious and undeveloped
psyche, which is as pagan and archaic as ever. BW 459
So long as
religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not
experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened.
BW
460
Yet when I
point out that the soul possesses by nature a religious function, and when I
stipulate that it is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the
archetype of
God-image, or its emanations and effects, to the
conscious mind,
then it is precisely the theologian who seizes me by the arm and accuses me of
"psychologism." BW 461
“Souls don’t have races or sexes or religions. They are beyond artificial divisions.” -- Brian Weiss
The soul is the creative medium of the spirit to the body. It is the Holy Ghost or third person of the trinity[1]. They are not separate and the soul is subjective to the spirit. It cannot choose what to do anymore than soil can choose what plants will come of it, regardless of who plants the seeds. Soul is the reflection of spirit. Soul is immaterial. Although the mind may dwell unconsciously the soul is never unconscious.
“The soul has been called the universal feminine or the holy womb of nature, because it is receptive and creative.”[2]
“It is Karmic Law because It is the law of cause and effect, of all race suggestion.”[3]
“Virtually everything depends on the human soul and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it”[4]
Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation.”
-- Paramahansa Yoganda
For Heraclitus the soul at the highest level is fiery and dry.
“If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing. The Eastern attitude (more particularly the Indian) is the other way about: everything, highest and lowest, is in the (transcendental) Subject. Accordingly the significance of the Atman, the Self, is heightened beyond all bounds. But with Western man the value of the self sinks to zero. Hence the universal depreciation of the soul in the West.” (BW – page 456 – And Psychological Problems of Alchemy par 9).
"The individual soul is the vessel of life, and the thing of greatest importance." - C.G.Jung
A scientist who weighed people immediately before and after death concluded that the human soul weighs 21g.
Only through the vitality of life can the soul be developed to its fullest. JViJP 28
The entity that psychology and religion have in common is the soul. JViJP 88
Art
calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the
soul.
Babies
Until recently babies weren't admitted anesthesia, but it turned out that they need more, because they are more aware of their external world and their inner lives than adults are.
In adults consciousness is very connected to focused attention. You're most conscious when you're really focusing in on a specific event. Babies pay attention, but they have lantern consciousness, and are conscious of everything internally and externally. Everything would be like going on vacation to a new place with new things all of the time.
Tests have shown that adult brains only light up when we are trying to learn something new and even then only in certain areas. Similar tests have shown that a babies brain is lit up most of the time. (Science of the Soul-PBS)
"For children; every day is first love in Paris, every step is sky-diving, every peek-a-boo game is Einstein discovering the theory. In fact I think one of the interesting things about us as adults is that we're unconscious most of the time."
Does this shift from lantern to singular focus of adulthood make us lose sight of our soul? Does it slip into the blindspot of our consciousness?
Awareness and self-consciousness begins around 3-5 years of age, when you start developing autobiographical memories - constructing a narrative saying "I am the same person that I was in the past and I am going to be the same person in the future."
Is the soul from birth til the discovery of the ego (I) still connected to the parm-atma?
The quality of personal immortality so fondly attributed to the soul by religion is, for science, no more than a psychological indicium which is already included in the idea of autonomy. BW 165
