The Concept of the Soul
Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra
Journal of The Yoga Institute, Vol. VIII, January 1963
To the majority of mankind, the soul - bereft of the body and mind - remains as an indestructible entity associated with every being. It was even conceived as the essential reality in man which did not get destroyed with the disintegration of the body-mind machine. This essential and immortal reality in man has been accepted as the soul by the philosophers both ancient and modern. This concept of the soul further guided the life of man while on this earth and even beyond.
Although science has tried to deal with the body and mind through the laboratories, it has so far not been possible to investigate the soul in a like manner. Obviously, how can the seer see itself, when and where? Because of this paradoxical futility, doubts have arisen in the mind of the modern man about the very existence of such an entity as the soul.
Therefore, while the soul is not demonstrable, its presence has well been suspected in the absence of any other explanation. Certain traditions of religion and schools of philosophy do not admit of all living beings having the soul except the human beings. Again, like the Cärväkas, modern science hopes to get along without the soul, e.g., modern psychology which tried to find it, got lost into its hypothetical absurdities and finally left out its consideration altogether.
In Yoga, however, the study begins with the body, it does not matter whether one believes in the soul to start with. Having known and disciplined the body, the yoga student begins to explore the mind so as to discipline it. When he thus reaches a certain stage, he gets the feel of the soul and need not be told to believe in one. As he progresses, he actually enters into the realm of experience wherein his study culminates into the absoluteness (kaivalya) of the soul (puruşa) itself. In fact, the body-mind-soul complex in Yoga is so closely interrelated that the students who follow merely its mechanistic routine - both physical and mental - fail to realize the higher goals set out for them. These physical and mental rituals, as it were, remain meaningless and unfruitful in the absence of the basic realization of the soul.
For this reason, wherever Yoga is taught devoid of spiritual perspective, the entire mechanistic process and ritualism related to the body-mind machine has usually failed in the achievement of the ultimate. It is because what is to be realized is not realized, in spite of all the physical and mental preparation. The concept of the soul, therefore, while not imposed in Yoga certainly becomes a reality as the study of Yoga progresses.
The general characteristics of the soul may be summed up by the word "saccidānanda", i.e., (i) be-ness, (ii) absolute consciousness, and (iii) blissfulness. What Yoga proposes to do is to remove all identifications of the soul (puruşa) with all that it is not (prakrti), and thus retain the soul in its own true nature (svarūpa).
Dr. Indra Sen, M.A., PH.D. is a worthy associate of Sri Aurobindo. A philosopher by temperament, he is engaged in many things which are contributive to human good. He is one of the members of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate and also to evaluate the economic needs of the pioneer national institutes of higher learning now revised as a small Sub-committee for report on institutions of higher education. He has thus been in touch with this Institute.
In his brief survey - THE SOUL IN ANCIENT AND MODERN THOUGHT - he has shown how the philosophers of all ages have accepted the concept of the soul. He also incidentally deplores the modern study of Yoga divorced from this basic perspective.