"Where is my soul" Or, disecting the BS often pondered by common fools

“Where is my soul” is the most common question in reply by the ignorant and profane when discussing metaphysics, Buddhism, or other forms of Monism; being the abbreviated version of “I don’t know where my soul is”. Within this simple sentence can be found four grand errors of egregious presumption and one axis of truth upon which these four satellites of error go round.

Taking the first error “I”, or the empirical person so-and-so (Bob, Sue etc.) this compounded and material self of which there are “two selves” within us, the Person (spirit, Purishha) and persona (psychophysical, temporal); “two within us” (Plato Republic 604b, Phaedo 79, Timaeus 89d), or Philo’s “Soul of the soul”, or the Buddha’s “atta hi attano nathi” (Self is Lord of the self [persona]). This “I” of which cannot be, in metaphysics, the Knower of knowing, but rather the conscious (vinnana) living being whose conceptions and ideations are “dead when he dies”, that “I” is not the Person but the “self of which the Self is Lord”. This “I”, the objective and compounded self cannot ever come to know the Knower, which is the posterior and uncompounded Subject. The objective and temporal “I” cannot know the Subject which precedes it any moreso than a puppet can know That which pulls its strings. This “I” has ‘within’ (superficially so) it no means possible by which to have Knowledge (gnosis) of the soul, since its very principle, this compounded “I” lacks the Witness and Knower by which it can or could be known. There is no “I” whereby which it could be said of anyone that it, “I”, could Know (gnosis as opposed to the empirical knowledge of the mere material “I”, which is persona) the soul.

Taking now the second error “where”, or asking of how the soul is IN TIME, the magnitude and measure of which ‘where’ is but a delineation of things compounded and ‘taking up space’ (where is this soul? It is no-where). The quest for the uncompounded in spacio-temporal existence, and the objective cosmos of becoming, flux and reflux, could not be more illogical. Anything (quite literally ‘thing’ in the true sense of objectivity) which partakes of a topos (place), a locus in space and time which is syn. with magnitude and materiality cannot be the point of any metaphysical search, in this case the soul. Would we go hunting for fish in the desert? “Where” is syn. with space-time materiality of which something might be said to have “its place”, or a “where”, whereby which it (objectivity) might be found. The soul cannot have any such correlation whereby we might ask or inquire how it is “where”; for the soul is no-where, not in space, nor in time either.

Further along this line we come to “my soul”, of stated implication this uncompounded principle of ones noetic being as illogically meant a possession or slave (“my”) to either another subject, or worse still implication an objective possession. This inverse and topsy-turvy statement is the upside-down illogical attempt to gather insight pertaining the soul thru conception that same is property and possession by something else, of which the common fool implies himself, or as meant the existential and bodily self. This cryptic materialistic line of reasoning is indicative of the perversity of understanding relevant to the fool in his “fools quest”- Plato.

Lastly stands as final error “is”, to wit the fool in his questioning seeks knowledge of the Subject as an object of anatomies to which the Greeks, Buddhists, and Vedantists declared to be a quest among compounded and conceptive antinomies “is it, is it not, is it both, it is neither”, to which the Buddha was apposite to answer such fallacious lines of questioning which involved the “pairs” of dualities, the antinomies of existential reasoning as employed by materialists in linear and objective thought on or about the soul. The Soul is tat tvam asi, as = Brahman, the Absolute, is not “is, is not..etc.”, but That, the uncompounded Absolute as opposite to all antinomies. [SN 2.17] Gotama Buddha: “This world is carried on by a duality (dvayanissito). Etc.”

The tie which binds these four errors together, and which is true in the statement “I don’t know where my soul is”, is “don’t know”. [AN 5.113] “Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it. Such that it should be discerned, followers, ‘ignorance is a condition’. “This avijja (agnosis, avidya, nescience, ignorance) or ‘uncaused principle’ for the “descent of Being”, is the ‘black-hole’ (again: privation) around which these four satellites of errors spin round. Avijja being in Greek ‘tolma’; as meaning Emanationism, or the extrinsic side of the Absolute, or the attribute (avijja) to the Principle (atman/Brahman/Hen) between which no distinction can be drawn in that both attribute and Principle are one (point and line are in the mathematical theology of Platonism both together = 1) thing only (will-willing, light-illumination, between which what the Absolute ‘is’ [principle] and what it ‘does’ [attribute] can have no distinction lest the premise of Monism itself be obliterated). In the case of our ‘black-hole’ analogy this privation was the source and creator of these ‘satellites’ by which the fool objectively struggles with in objective conceptualization of the immaterial soul not only in space and time, but also as possession to another and as regards his (mere) self which the Upanishads are apposite in stating “for the mortal, there is no soul”.