Atman: The Soul Eternal

[Doc Stier]

Atman: The Soul Eternal

http://hinduwebsite.com/atman.asp

Doc

[TaichiMantis]

A New Way to Be Human
A Christian materialist alternative to the soul.
by Kevin J. Corcoran

[Doc Stier]

Hi Kevin!

Great article, and nicely written. The pivotal point of disagreement with and departure from your eloquently expressed views for me personally is your statement "We are animals in the sense that we are wholly constituted by our bodies; every material part of me is a part of the biological body that constitutes me and I have no immaterial parts". I believe that we are all certainly a composite of our anatomical and physiological parts, of our acquired knowledge and experience, and of the intellectual perspectives and emotional patterns which we impose upon our lives accordingly. Nonetheless, however, I believe that we are also inherently something more than our physical identity, something more than our intellectual capabilities, something more than our academic achievements, something more than our professional credentials, something more than our amassed knowledge and experience, and something more than the embodied self-identity that we build on the foundation of such influences.

But the question of the Ages of Ages has always been to effectively and correctly identify what this "something more" really is that embraces all of these aspects of our Being, yet is not adequately represented in whole by any one of them, or even by all of them! Whether a particular person believes in an 'after-life' of some kind for their 'soul' following their physical death, or believes in re-incarnation or the transmigration of the 'soul' at that time, or they simply believe that this lifetime in this body is all there is, with no continuation of personal 'soul' existence following their death, the dilemma remains as an unresolved paradox common to us all.

If there truly is no existence after death, no continuation of 'soul' or 'consciousness', how do we account for the living memories of our deceased loved ones long after their physical demise? They continue to exist in our thoughts, our memories, our dreams, and in the emotions accompanying these phenomenon, do they not? Even though they no longer inhabit a physical body, no longer amass new knowledge or fresh experiences as a 'living' person, and no longer continue to do or to be any of the things which identified them as a unique individual, they still live on in a sense, don't they?

So perhaps the "something more" is fundamentally a spiritual phenomenon rather than a physical phenomenon, which many religious and spiritual traditions have chosen to refer to as the 'Soul' for want of a better term.

Doc

[Doc Stier]

Excerpts from Universal Spirit, Universal Soul by Richard Hooker
Abridged and Edited by Doc Stier

Interspersed throughout the hymns collected in the Rig Veda are references to a single god or single principle which is the source or the totality of all other divinities and phenomenon in the universe. These originary divinities can be concrete, such as the World Maker (Vishvakarman), or highly abstract, such as Rita, or cosmic order, an idea similar to the Chinese concept of the Tao< or the Great Ultimate. Upanishadic literature tended to talk about this unitary or single divinity, power, or principle to the exclusion of most other gods, so that philosophically Indian thought during the Vedantic period moved towards the One in the dichotomy of the one and the many, approaching in many instances some of the same conclusions Parmenides and the Eleatic philosophers did in ancient Greece.

This single, unitary divinity had several aspects and names in the Upanishads, one of the most important of which is Atman, a word that originally meant "breath" or "soul" or "vital principle" (as the word "Atmen" does in German). As a cosmological principle or deity, Atman seems to be something like "universal soul" or "universal spirit." In the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad , Atman is explicitly called a Person that created the universe by first splitting himself into male and female halves. In the Chandogya Upanishad, this single god is called Brahman, and is "the One without a second"; this Brahman is not only the principle and creator of all there is, but is also fully present within each individual.


This dual conception, Brahman and Atman, gets worked out in the following way. Brahman can be located both in the physical, external world and also in the spiritual and inner world where it is present as Atman, or "Universal Spirit." Now every human being has an undying soul (atman) which lasts through eternity from life to life. This undying atman is a microcosm of Atman, the Universal Spirit. By understanding yourself, by coming to know one's own soul, one then arrives at the knowledge of Atman itself; the key to understanding the nature of the one unitary principle of the universe is to see one's (undying) self as identical with that principle: "tat svam asi": That (Atman) is what you are, Svetaketu. (Chandogya Upanishad VI.8.4ff.)

Here's the equation: Brahman=Atman=atman.

Brahman is the totality of the universe as it is present outside of you; Atman is the totality of the universe as it is present within you; Brahman is the totality of the world known objectively, atman is the totality of the world known subjectively.

[Doc Stier]

Excerpts from The Atman by Swami Vivekananda

http://www.geocities.com/parasu41/5sheaths.gif

There is but one Existence, the Infinite, the Ever-blessed One. In that Existence we dream all these various dreams. It is the Atman, beyond all, the Infinite, beyond the known, beyond the knowable; in and through That we see the universe. It is the only Reality. It is this table; It is the audience before me; It is the wall; It is everything, minus the name and form. Take away the form of the table, take away the name; what remains is It. The Vedantist does not call It either He or She--these are fictions, delusions of the human brain--there is no sex in the soul. People who are under illusion, who have become like animals, see a woman or a man; living gods do not see men or women. How can they who are beyond everything have any sex idea? Everyone and everything is the Atman--the Self--the sexless, the pure, the ever-blessed. It is the name, the form, the body, which are material, and they make all this difference. If you take away these two differences of name and form, the whole universe is one; there are no two, but one everywhere. You and I are one. There is neither nature, nor God, nor the universe, only that one Infinite Existence, out of which, through name and form, all these are manufactured. How to know the Knower? It cannot be known. How can you see your own Self? You can only reflect yourself. So all this universe is the reflection of that One Eternal Being, the Atman, and as the reflection falls upon good or bad reflectors, so good or bad images are cast up. Thus in the murderer, the reflector is bad and not the Self. In the saint the reflector is pure. The Self--the Atman--is by Its own nature pure. It is the same, the one Existence of the universe that is reflecting Itself from the lowest worm to the highest and most perfect being. The whole of this universe is one Unity, one Existence, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. We are looking upon this one Existence in different forms and creating all these images upon It. To the being who has limited himself to the condition of man, It appears as the world of man. To the being who is on a higher plane of existence, It may seem like heaven. There is but one Soul in the universe, not two. It neither comes nor goes. It is neither born, nor dies, nor reincarnates. How can It die? Where can It go? All these heavens, all these earths, and all these places are vain imaginations of the mind. They do not exist, never existed in the past, and never will exist in the future.

Abridged and edited by Doc Stier

[Doc Stier]

Atman in Advaita Vedanta Philosophy

http://luthar.files.wordpress.com/20...cimage0121.png

According to Advaita, only the innermost part of you is aware or conscious. No other part of you can feel or see or know anything. The name in Sanskrit for this awareness is atman. It's the part of you that's really you, and it corresponds to the soul in Western philosophy. Only the Atman is aware.

Now here's where it gets interesting. According to Advaita, your atman (and mine and everybody's) is the same as the underlying absolute reality of the whole universe, which is called Brahman. Brahman corresponds to the Western idea of God, except that it isn't a a super-powerful person. It's impersonal; it's the source of everything; it's what the universe really is.

In short, your inner self — the true "me" — is God. Brahman is what really is.

This idea, which is the fundamental idea of the Upanishads on which Advaita is based, can be expressed in the form of an equation:
Atman = Brahman

Or, in Western terms:

Soul = God
Atman = Brahman

What distinguishes Advaita from other interpretations of the Upanishads is this: Advaita asserts that since there is only one Brahman, there is only one Atman. There's only one "me" and we all share it. We're all one "thing" — Brahman. There is only one awareness, Brahman.

Moreover, only Brahman is real. The other things in the universe, like bicycles and umbrellas and our bodies, are maya. Maya is illusory because it seems to be different from Brahman but it's not. Since maya misleads us in this way, and because it's impermanent, Advaita says that maya is unreal. The other things are maya, illusions

The most important way that maya fools us is with regard to our selves. We think we are our bodies, our thoughts, our desires, and so forth. But those things are maya. They seem to be "me" but this is an illusion. Actually, our awareness (the part that is really "me") is something else: Brahman.

This is an enormously strange and radical idea. It means that you aren't you; you aren't any kind of person, really. You are the supreme reality that underlies the entire universe. The person who seems to be in your head, the person you believe yourself to be, is merely a psychological illusion. Maya tricks us with regard to our selves.

Edited by Doc Stier

[mantis108]

A New Way to Be Human
A Christian materialist alternative to the soul.
by Kevin J. Corcoran

Well, it's interesting that he used Buddhist view in explaining his position on materialistic view of the "soul". The Buddhis version is the gold lion, in which the gold symbolize the budhha nature that's in everyone and the lion is the symbol of intelligent form of human being. I would say Mr. Corcoran practically ripped a page out of the Buddhist sutra. Also the "here and now" is also right out of Buddhism.

Unfortunately, he couldn't cover the strong dominionist/evanglist stench with all the effort. Beware of wolf in sheep clothing, my friends.

Mantis108

[Doc Stier]

Beware of wolf in sheep clothing, my friends.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/198/5...6fd55540_o.jpg

http://www.cuttingedge.org/wolves-sheeps-clothing.jpg

Doc