You’re a Soul, Man

“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.” Sufi poet, Rumi

There is zero evidence that we are more intelligent than our ancestors were a couple hundred thousand years ago. Only our technology has multiplied, not our brain-power. Clever, adaptable, practical and creative, our ancestors succeeded-which is why you and I are alive today.

The No-Soul Brothers yammer on about how we are just animals, or just machines (or now) just computers-whatever the material world offers up as a metaphor to denigrate us. But they are wrong and the song is right: I’m a Soul Man. (1) Spirituality is part of human consciousness and is not going away. Humans have always believed, with very rare exceptions, that they had a soul, and that their soul continues to live on after the body dies. (2)

From Mircea Elaide, a brilliant scholar on the history of religions:

“It is difficult to imagine how the human mind could function without the conviction that there is something irreducibly real in the world; and it is impossible to imagine how consciousness could appear without conferring a meaning on man’s impulses and experiences. Consciousness of a real and meaningful world is intimately connected with the discovery of the sacred.

Through experience of the sacred, the human mind has perceived the differences between what reveals itself as real, powerful, rich, and meaningful and what lacks these qualities; that is, the chaotic and dangerous flux of things, their fortuitous and senseless appearances and disappearances.

In short, the “sacred” is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness. …”

To be a human is to be spiritual. You’re a soul, man.

1. man as in “mankind”

2. As evidence by burials with personal objects from 70,000 years ago.