Journey of the Soul

The Soul in Itself Alone

The Chinese use the simile of a bee when describing the soul. It is symbolical, and really denotes the eye, the pupil of which is like a bee; in other words the nature of the soul may be studied in the nature of the eye. All things exposed to the eye are reflected in it for the moment, and when the eye is turned away the reflection is in it no more. It had received it for the moment only.

Such is the nature of the soul. Youth, age, beauty, ugliness, sin, or virtue, all these are before the soul when they are exposed to it during the physical or mental existence; and the soul, interested in the reflection, may be for the time attracted and bound by the object reflected; but as soon as the soul turns away it is free from it. 

Amir Minai, the Hindustani poet, says, “However fast I am bound by earthly ties, it will not take a moment to break them. I shall break them by changing sides.”

Every experience on the physical or astral plane is just a dream before the soul. It is ignorance when it takes this experience to be real. It does so because it cannot see itself; as the eye sees all things, but not itself. Therefore the soul identifies itself with all things that it sees, and changes its own identity with the change of its constantly changing vision.

The soul has no birth, no death, no beginning, no end. Sin cannot touch it, nor can virtue exalt it. Wisdom cannot open it up, nor can ignorance darken it. It has been always and always it will be. This is the very being of man, and all else is its cover, like a globe on the light.

The soul’s unfoldment comes from its own power, which ends in its breaking through the ties of the lower planes. It is free by nature, and looks for freedom during its captivity. All the holy beings of the world have become so by freeing the soul, its freedom being the only object there is in life.

The Soul with Mind

The soul with mind is as water with salt. Mind comes from soul as salt from water; and there comes a time when mind is absorbed in soul, as salt dissolves in water. Mind is the outcome of soul, as salt is the outcome of water. Soul can exist without mind, but mind cannot exist without soul. But the soul is purer without mind, and is covered by the mind.

The soul becomes happy when there is happiness in the heart; it becomes miserable when there is misery in thought. The soul rises high with the height of imagination; the soul probes the depths with the depth of thought. The soul is restless with the restlessness of the mind, and it attains peace when the mind is peaceful. None of the above conditions of mind changes the soul in its real nature, but for the time being it seems to be so. The soul is a bird of paradise, a free dweller in the heavens. Its first prison is the mind, then the body. In these it becomes not only limited, but captive. The whole endeavor of a Sufi in life is to liberate the soul from its captivity, which he does by conquering both mind and body.

 The Soul with Mind and Body

The body is the vehicle of the mind, formed by the mind; as the mind, which is the vehicle of the soul, is formed by the soul. The body, in other words, may be called a vehicle of the vehicle. The soul is the life and personality in both. The mind seems alive, not by its own life, but by the life of the soul. So it is with the body, which appears alive by the contact of the mind and the soul; when both are separated from it, it becomes a corpse.

The question whether the mind works upon the body or the body works upon the mind may be answered thus: it is natural that the mind should work upon the, body, but usually the body works upon the mind. This happens when a person is drunk or when he is delirious with fever. In the same way the relation of the soul and the mind may be understood: it is natural that the soul must work on the mind, but usually the mind works upon the soul.

The mind cannot do more than create an illusion of joy or sorrow or knowledge or ignorance before the soul; and what the body can do to the mind is only to cause a slight confusion for the moment, to accomplish its own desire without the control of the mind. Therefore all sin, evil, and wrong is what is forced from the body on the mind and from the mind on the soul; and all that is virtuous, good, and right is that which comes from the soul to the mind and from the mind to the body. This is the real meaning of the words in Christ’s prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It means, in other words, “What Thou thinkest in the soul the mind should obey, and what Thou thinkest in the mind the body should obey”; so that the body may not become the commander of the mind, and the mind may not become the leader of the soul. .

The soul is our real being, through which we realize and are conscious of our life. When the body, owing to loss of strength and magnetism, has lost its grip upon the mind, the seeming death comes: that which everybody calls death. Then the soul’s experience of life remains only with one vehicle, that is the mind, which contains within itself a world of its own, photographed from one’s experience on earth on the physical plane. This is heaven if it is full of joy, and it is hell if it is filled with sorrow. Feebleness of mind, when it loses its grip on the soul, is purgatory. When the mind has lost its grip, that is the end of the world for that soul. But the soul is alive; it is the spirit of the eternal Being, and it has no death. It is everlasting.