You don't have a soul. Nobody has || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: This one fundamental point must be deeply understood: The Aatma is not in us, the Self is not in us, we are in the Self.
But it is hardly ever put this way. It is the height of arrogance of the ego to say ‘my soul’. The soul is neither amenable to possession nor it is personal or individualistic. You cannot ‘have’ a soul. Yours is a personal mind, yours is a personality, yours is everything that is divided, fragmented, personalized, dualistic. But we talk of the soul as our property, as something that belongs to us. Not only does it belongs to us, we also pretend and speak and assume that we know a lot about it.
The Self or the Soul or the Truth is not an object exposed to knowledge. The Self cannot be known. When only the Self is there, what is there to know it? The Self is the absolute witness. If you are knowing the Self, then you are claiming to witness the Self; in other words, you are claiming to witness the witness. So neither it is appropriate to think in terms of having a Soul nor is it appropriate to talk in terms of knowing the Soul. Do we very frequently say, “This is the voice of ‘my soul’ or ‘my spirits’ are soaring?
The Self neither soars nor declines. It displays no movement whatsoever, though all movement is within it.
We have a great interest in talking in terms of a ‘personalized’ Soul because if the Soul, the Truth, the Spirit, the Self, Aatma is personal, then it is your’s, then it belongs to the ego. And if the Truth belongs to the ego, then the ego is bigger than the Truth, and that is the biggest dream of the ego—to be bigger than everything, to be bigger than even the Truth.
Let’s go into this a little more closely. What we perceive as the universe, is perceived only through the sensory mechanism. There is no other proof of the universe. Remove the senses and there is no universe. And when I say the senses, I include the mind as well in that. There is no independent proof of what is perceived. Also, remove the universe and there is no proof of the senses. The universe and the senses, which means the world and the ego, the world and the person, they exist only in relationship with each other. They exist only as two ends of duality. And that is why they are not taken as the Truth. They are not taken as the Truth because if the senses change, if the move changes, if the state of consciousness changes, then the world too changes.
The world has no objective reality of its own. The state of the universe depends so much on the state of the perceiver, the state of the subject. And at the same time, the state of the subject depends so much on the state of the universe. If what is around us changes, then the mind too changes. In fact, the mind is a product of all that which is around us, which has been around us.
Whatever ‘changes’, brings grief and suffering; hence, those who have known, they have said that the one test of Truth is that it is totally dependable, that it is never going to betray you or let you down, that it is never going to exhaust or pass away. And if it passes away, then just call it a phenomenon, don’t call it a Truth because if it is passing away then you will always live in fear.
You would not know when the thing might slip out of your hands. You can relax, you can enjoy only if there is something that is never in danger of going away, only if there is something that would never be exhausted, only if something that does not depend on any other thing for its being. That something, obviously, cannot belong to the province of mind, because the mind only knows divisions, limitations and small things. All that is there in the mind, comes and goes.
Is there anything in the mind which has always been there and would always be there?
In fact, time itself means change, and the mind lives in time—past, future, memories, hopes. So nothing that can be thought of by the mind is taken as the Truth. Nothing that can be even faintly conceptualised, even vaguely imagined, is taken to be the Truth. Nothing about which even one word can be said is taken to be the Truth.
If you can catch hold of it, if you can touch it, if you can express it, it is not Real.
The Real by definition is that which lies outside the province of the thinking mind. And that Real is the only dependable unit, the only thing if we may call it so, that you can absolutely rely upon.
The mind, when it is quiet, then it descends into a certain peace. It relaxes. That relaxation is not something of the mind. It is something that the mind dissolves into, and hence in relaxation, it is not present at all. It is gone, it is dissolved. That relaxation has utmost value because if it is not there, you cannot live, you’ll lose your sanity. That relaxation is your deepest desire. Hence, that relaxation, hence that Truth, was given the highest priority, worshipped and termed as God.
It would be a tragedy then to contain that Highest within ourselves. Then we would have to
let go of the only hope that is available to us. Now we are saying that there is nothing bigger than me and when there is nothing bigger than you, who is going to hold you? If the Soul is contained in you, then who is going to support you? What is contained inside you cannot be more powerful than you. What is contained inside you cannot be bigger than you. What is contained inside you cannot outlast you.
We have said two things:
Nobody has a Soul.
There are no different kinds of Souls.
There are different kinds of personalities. Persons are different; appearances are different; names are different; phenomenon are different. There is diversity only there.
The Aatma is one. One and only one. In fact, it would be prudent to not even call it one because the moment you call it one, you bring a finite boundary to it. The moment the boundary comes into picture, one gives rise to two. There is something outside the boundary as well, and then the probation starts—one, two, three, four… ten! So when it comes to the Aatma, it pays to say, “Well, it’s nothing, can’t say much about it, silence!”
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/when-you-can-see-your-entire-universe-in-the-parted-lips-of-the-belovedit-is-atmanacharyaprashant-1_795d7aa
