Episode 8 – The Soul in the Modern Age 

In the mid 1800s, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote, 

"This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness...they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away (like dust), and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die."

Welcome to The Soul Podcast…

This is the last episode in the introduction. This gives the background, which shows the relationship humanity has had with the Soul, as far back as 70,000 years. If you’re starting here, go back seven episodes. Start from the beginning. I think you’ll enjoy the ride-and I know you’ll learn something you didn’t know. 

These first eight episodes set the stage for everything else we’ll talk about. When we see how long we’ve been aware of the Soul spirit, we understand that this thing we’re feeling isn’t unique to ourselves, or to a small group of meditators, or chanters. The Soul is in all of us. If you’ve had you’re Soul reunion, you already understand. If you haven’t… keep setting aside silent moments with yourself. It will come. 

There was a change happening in Europe. Religious freedom was becoming something more than a rallying cry. New churches based on Christianity were being formed, as people broke away from the Catholic church. But for many (if not most), the Soul was still seen as a fixture of religion. But some philosophers were looking at it from a more universal perspective. 

In the opening quote, Kierkegaard speaks of the disconnection with the Soul and how that disconnection leaves us feeling alone, though that immortal part of us is always with us. Other voices will emerge as well. And, you know… something wonderful happens. Scientists and scholars began to find themselves drawn to the question of the Soul. I love this part of the story, because it was a reminder that the Soul isn’t simply a religious or spiritual question -but a universal matter. You’ll see what I mean when we look at a few great scientific minds.  

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung, was a young protégé of Sigmund Freud. He was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Through studying psychology, he continued to run into something in the human spirit he could not offer a scientific explanation for. For a while he sometimes called it Consciousness. And -at times- ‘consciousness’ and ‘the Soul’ became interchangeable in his writing. Jung saw that there was a part of all of us that was scientifically undeniable… yet unexplainable through the scientific method. This was The Soul. 

After much work with patients, he also saw that when patients are able to lean into the truth of their Soul, there was great opportunity for growth and expansion. And he acknowledged this work was not easy -and that people are avoidant when led to it. 

Jung said,                                                                                                                                                                                     “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

And Jung understood that a Soul reunion required difficult work. He wrote,

“There's no coming to consciousness without pain.”

This was the early 20th century, and we see intellectuals again start to connect with the topic of the Soul. Jung was primarily interested in studying behavior quirks, much of it associated with the ego. Since the ego is the developed outer self and the Soul is the inner self, it’s not possible to look deeply at one without encountering the other. Jung didn't start with the intention of studying the Soul. But in studying the nature of the human psyche, he could not avoid it. There it was -on the other side of the ego.

We are at the time of our birth, a perfect Soul; untouched by our world. As time goes on, we learn to do what needs to be done to get along in the world. 

Jung understood that the Ego was a veil, obscuring the Soul. The Ego is a coping mechanism, which helps us get by in this world. So, it’s useful and needed for survival. Let’s look at how the ego works against the Soul Connection. 

A simplified way of looking at how the ego is formed goes like this… As babies, we let our parents know when we need to be held, fed, or changed through the only language we know -crying. At times we feel abandoned when our cries go unheard. Adaptations begin to form. As we grow, we’re enculturated as we learned to fit in and act in a way society and our parents feel is “normal.” We set our expectations and behaviors based on our experiences. Our experiences cause us to change the way we relate to the world. The ego becomes more solidified. 

Through each of these changes we become less and less connected to our core beings, as we draw a curtain between the true light of our Souls and the world, we had to learn to live in. Eventually we forget our Soul is there. We begin to believe that we are, in fact our personality. Or what Jung called our ‘ego construct’. 

In The Red Book, Liber Primus when Jung wrote, 

"So, I had to speak to my Soul as to something remote and unknown that does not exist by me but by whom I exist.” he’s speaking about recognizing that he’s not his ego. And in seeing this he’s able to come back to his core self. This is the journey we must all make to have a Soul Reunion. We must retrieve our birthright, which is pure joy, found only in connecting with our Soul. 

As time goes on, we see other great thinkers of the 20th Century continue this trend. Intellectuals, academics and scientists will draw conclusions about the nature of the Soul. In many cases, this is not where their research began, but where it led. The Soul is universal, so it’s natural that any study of the psyche, nature, or the universe would eventually lead a researcher (of any nationality or culture) to ponder the Soul. And some of the great intellectuals of the 20th century found themselves colliding with the idea of the Soul while exploring questions they felt were unrelated to it.

… as a personal note I have to say, I love this! We think of scientists as being all logic. They want to see the evidence. They want to prove things or disprove them. The Soul is so universal that great scientific minds found their way back to the idea of the Soul with no intention of doing so. And many of them found it scientifically unexplainable -yet -none the less- undeniable.  And you'll see... Some of them aren't so surprised by this. The Soul is truly part of all of us, even great scientific minds find their way back to it.

One example is Einstein…. At some point the great physicist started to embrace the idea that there is more to us than just the body… and more to spiritualism than god.. 

Einstein wrote about this. He said,

“It is very difficult to elucidate this [cosmic religious] feeling to anyone who is entirely without it. . . The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it ... In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

You will also notice the word “Consciousness” starts to take place of the word “Soul” in many of these discussions. This is likely because “Soul” had become synonymous with religion. Consciousness became a convenient word for scientist to use to approach the topic and avoid sounding religious.

Max Planck won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. He said, "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."

In case you’re not familiar with the word ‘postulate’… it means to suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of something. So, what Planck was saying was that ‘Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing (within science), suggests the existence of consciousness.’

And it seems Planck was starting to see this consciousness inside us as being outside of us as well.  

When speaking about the atom, it was clear he felt intelligent design must be involved in the creation of matter. he wrote, 

“… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.” 

Jung also felt there was a component related to our Soul that projects to our outer self, which leads us to doubt our own mortality. Though we know on a logical level that we’re wrong… there’s something in all of us that somehow feels we will not die. Logical minds might suggest that this is an adaptation to deal with our fear of death and our inability to know for sure what happens after we die. But is it?

Jung concluded, “Of course it is quite obvious that we're all going to die, and this is the sad finale of everything, but never-the-less, there is something in us that doesn't believe it, apparently, but this is merely a fact, a psychological fact.” 

That’s three men of science who embrace the mystical Soul. Do you think that’s odd? Well, they weren’t alone.

Erwin Schrödinger, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, found unexplainable things in his research. He was drawn to eastern religions to understand The Soul… or the sense of the God Inside... He wrote,

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins [wise men or priests in the Vedic tradition] express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.” 

In case you're not familiar with the word Brahmins, these are wise men or priests in the Vedic tradition. 

The Buddhist and Hindu religions have been examining and theorizing on the Soul longer than any other religion that currently exist. And -of course- they put a great emphasis on connecting to it through meditation. 

And Werner Heisenberg, the German Physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the year before Schrödinger also saw many things in science that were baffling. And he found answers in unexpected places. He said,

"After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.” 

The Soul was coming into view for Heisenberg. 

The list of great thinkers who championed the idea of The Soul or found answers in the Eastern religions goes on and on. I could do three more episodes on this. But I think you can see what I’m getting at.

You can’t look at the deepest parts of science without seeing that there is something mystical and unexplainable, which leads well-educated people to suggest there’s more there to us than just the body and the ego. 

Around the same time, men of deep religious faith were finding the same answers.

Gandhi – saw a personal god in us all. Was he talking about The Soul when he said, 

"I am endeavoring to see God through service to humanity, for I know that God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone" 

At the beginning of the 20th century, we were fortunate enough to have great thinkers both on the religious side and scientific side questioning ideas that led them to look at the possibility of the Soul, or champion the idea of the Soul. Their words and thoughts opened the gate to the spiritual rebirth that has begun in the world. People now are starting to again discover this thing that has been re-discovered throughout the ages.

When I began this eight-part series on the history of the Soul I told you it was important to go through all this to understand the Soul, at least our personal relationship with it. The Soul is something that has been here in our consciousness for more than 70,000 years. At the beginning of these eight episodes, we went way-way back and we saw how people burying their dead understood the idea of the immortality of us all. That even though the body was gone, that the person would live on. There is something very deep in us, or maybe it's at the surface and we ignore it... but we all seem to understand and have always understood that we are a perfect Soul. 

It seems all we have to do is get ourselves out of the way to see it- and if history has shown us anything it's the most consistent way of doing that. We can sit silently we can pray, we can meditate, we can chant, we can be in nature,... But the key to it is being silent with ourselves and allowing that deeper part of us to come to the surface. When it does, don't be surprised if it brings tears to your eyes.

Today

In looking at history, it’s clear that many religions have tried to connect themselves to the idea of the Soul, yet the Soul is not the possession of any religion. It has a long history of being personal and sacred to each person. Thousands of religions have come and gone, yet the human connection to the Soul remains. It has drawn poets, philosophers, scientists and religious scholars to the same activity; the pondering of the nature of the Soul. Though there has been much disagreement about what the Soul is and what happens to it after death, there is much less argument over whether it exists. 

From Paleolithic times to the modern world, we all seem to understand a simple truth: we’re not alone in here. Beneath our ego construct is our eternal Soul.  

Thousands of religions and gods have come and gone but the idea of the Soul appears universal and eternal. Have you spent time with your Soul today? 

Well, you hung in there, through eight whole episodes about the history of the Soul. Thank you. We've laid the groundwork for your understanding, and I hope you've learned something you didn't know when we began. From episode nine - moving forward- you will see that the podcast will change a little. We're going to focus more on how to connect with your Soul and look at tools you can use to stay in that good spiritual space that gives you joy.

If you’ve listened to all 8 episodes you can see how far back this all goes. You saw how we’ve always known there is an immortal part of us. You saw how it was so important to stone-age people that they carved into stone pillars, the idea that we survive the death of the body. You saw how the earliest written languages had stories about the Soul and immortality. You witnessed how people for thousands of years before the modern age have connected to the deeper part of themselves through practices that involved sitting silently.

And you witnessed the dark ages -where the church tried to claim to be the lone protector of the Soul -and literally killed people who challenged them. 

And now -into the modern age…  we went from priests and mystics of ancient time that believed in the Soul…. And that led to some of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century agreeing that there is something more to us than just the body. This is where it all takes off. Now I’m going to show you ways to nurture the spirit inside -to live a better, happier, more joyful life!

Something is shifting in the world. We’re coming into a new awakening -after hundreds of years…. We’re rediscovering this deep, sacred part of ourselves. And we’re seeing that when we reunite with the inner spirit -it becomes undeniable. And what a feeling the reunion leaves us with. The sensation is a combination of beauty, bliss, love, empathy…. And so much more. Moving forward from this episode we’ll look at ways to connect to the Soul-self -or strengthen the connection… to that mystic passenger that is you. 

So, what do you say? Are you in? 

Join me for the next episode -will ya?!