Soul, the "Inward Dweller"

If you explore the true nature of reality, all pain will eventually come to an end. In some form or other, religious teachings state this truth over and over. There is no way around the fact that it sounds abstract, yet this is the reality of how the soul operates. Your soul deals in abstractions like eternity and infinity so that you won’t have to. It converts an inconceivable world into one that we can grasp and understand.

Like a car’s transmission, which takes the whirling motion of the engine and transforms it into the forward velocity that gets you where you want to go, the soul makes it possible for your life to move forward. Eternity doesn’t need to breathe; infinity doesn’t need to find a job. But you need those things and more – you need to eat, work, love, and raise children – and these are made possible through the soul. Without it, there would only be quantum soup, a formless swirl of energy and particles.

Even though we are accustomed to using religious language about the soul, its duties are useful, not poetic. This fact has been hard to realize because the word soul has been used loosely to mean a person’s deepest emotions, his heart, his highest aspirations, as well as more arcane things like the Holy Ghost.

I would venture that the sacred masters, whatever religion they are associated with, were trying to be quite specific. In their awareness the soul meant something much like a connection between the world of the five senses and a world of inconceivable things like eternity, infinity, omniscience, grace, and every other quality of the unmanifest.

If you try to do without the soul, you wind up with a handful of nothing. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot make it wet, wind cannot blow it away, and a sword cannot cut it in two. For all the poetry in that expression, the fact of the soul appears to be undeniable, for stripped of all its religious connotations, the essence of each person cannot be reduced to matter or thoughts or any fixed quality.

Adapted from How To Know God, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2000).

Read more: Deepak Chopra's Tips, Spirit, reality, soul

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Janet B.

1:39PM PDT on Sep 1, 2012

Boundless awaits all of us!

September 1
send a green star

1:38PM PDT on Sep 1, 2012

When I die and I feel this way! Will busy helping others who are still here on Earth.

Past Member .

12:51AM PDT on Sep 1, 2012

Perfectly said Carrie S! We are spiritual beings having a human experience!

12:49AM PDT on Sep 1, 2012

Pain ends when we live with God in bliss, as a reward for a righteous life. All animals are sinless, and are there waiting for us...

KS G.

5:28AM PDT on Oct 5, 2011

Thanks for the article.

October 5
send a green star

Leanne B.

11:42PM PST on Mar 10, 2010

Thank you and peace to all

March 10
send a green star

8:09AM PST on Jan 11, 2010

Intresting.Thanks for sharing .

January 11
send a green star

carrie s.

8:00AM PST on Jan 11, 2010

I believe that is because the body is human. Our soul is not. Our soul is spirit and we are not accustomed to thinking or acting in spirit. It seems a bizarre concept at first but to become truly enlightened one must see themselves as they truly are. Soul first, only wearing and not being a human body.The physical is a vapor that lasts for a time and then passes away. It is the soul that remains to live another day.

Kristin T.

2:24AM PST on Jan 11, 2010

I love you Deepak. However, you lost me for a sec at "his". "His heart" and "his highest aspirations" can be "your heart" and "your aspirations". I'm still totally in but we have to point out the lingo as we see it rear it's easy to miss, head. xoxo

Alicia N.

1:17AM PST on Jan 10, 2010

Interesting article. Love the comments, thanks for sharing.