Here’s an excerpt from a book that I read that should define “The Soul” for you.
Theorem #1
THE REASON FOR THE CREATION
OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
C ompassion. That is the ONE word that can sum it all up. Creating the world was an act of compassion on God’s part, for compassion is definitely a Godly trait. God wanted to “share” the beauty of the emotions of compassion, righteousness, justice, mercy, etc., with other “beings” EVEN if it meant beings that He Himself had created. One must realize that the feeling of compassion could not have simply been given. Emotions are worthless if simply given. Compassion is an emotion, a feeling that can only be learned through the hardships of Trials and Tribulations one experiences throughout life on this earth. God, in His infinite wisdom, has created this earth with all of it’s beauty, splendor, mysteriousness, happiness, sadness, even apparent cruelties and sufferings of life. Only through man’s experiences in life, can he acquire the true understanding and feelings of compassion as God intended.
- “The purpose of all that was created was therefore to bring into existence a creature who could derive pleasure from God’s own good, in a way that would be possible for it. God’s wisdom, however, decreed that for such good to be perfect, the one enjoying it must be it’s master. He must be one who has earned it for himself, and not one associated with it accidentally.” (The Way of God, 1:2:1-3, p.39)
- “Man must earn this perfection, however, through his own free will and desire. If he were compelled to choose perfection, then he would not actually be its master, and God’s purpose would not be fulfilled.” (ibid. 1:3:1 p. 45)
- "The purpose of the creation of the human species is that man should become worthy of attaining true good, namely, being drawn close to Him in the World to Come. Hence, the ultimate end of all his evolvements is the tranquility in the World to Come. The Highest Wisdom decreed, however, that this would best be attained if man would first exist in the present world, bound and limited by it’s natural laws. This is actually the true and proper preparation necessary for the desired goal, and everything in this world was therefore arranged so that it should serve as a means of preparing and readying man for his ultimate purpose. (ibid. 2:2:1 p.95)
True compassion can be defined as one being capable of honestly feeling that: “The other person’s feelings are exactly equal to his own.” To further complicate the matter, try to imagine, you, the reader, that you should have enough compassion to teach others to have the same amount of compassion, without hurting their feelings.
For a person to be capable of arriving at that level, one must constantly put other people’s feelings over his own. You must not arrive at this on a level of prejudice - where one person means more to you than another, but strictly an unbiased person. In other words, all other people’s emotions take precedence over your own. Consider and respect other feelings before your own.
This is NOT God’s intention, but rather my own personal conclusion on the learning process that is necessary in order to be capable of regarding the other person’s feelings as exactly equal to your own. One must always strive to be better that the best, in order to be capable of becoming the best.
Once a person is capable of consistently putting someone else’s feelings before his own, and doing so with all sincerity, then, and only then, has he reached the level of compassionate understanding that God had intended for mankind.
To summarize,: “Love your neighbor as you do yourself.” That is the “message” that the Bible is trying to relate to man, if only we would have the courage and knowledge to understand that.
When God created the Bible, He created it to fit man’s capabilities and vice versa. All things were created to help man throughout his struggles.
- “The primary , essential creature is man. All other created things, whether above or below man, only exist for his sake, to complete his environment through their various different qualities, appropriate for each of them.” (The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides, 1:2:5 p.43)
- “Let him dominate the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock animals, and all the earth - and every land animal that walks the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)
I cannot adequately emphasize the importance of even what man considers to be futile in our eyes. Everything was created with a purpose. The ultimate purpose being that of helping man to achieve that level of compassion.
Theorem #2
REINCARNATION
To begin to understand the concept of reincarnation, one must accept a few basic principles of which can be derived at through deductive reasoning.
Assuming that Theorem #1 is fully understood, one can begin to theorize that God carried out one of the three following concepts:
Concept #1
At the onset of creation, God created a fixed number of souls to develop and learn compassion through the aforementioned discussion of life. He then created bodies as "tools" with which to place the souls into.
Before continuing this discussion, let me elaborate on the definition of a "soul". A soul is the accumulated knowledge that man acquires throughout a lifetime or lifetimes. Without such tools as eyes, ears, hands, etc., the soul cannot possibly learn. For example, if you close your eyes and imagine an apple, you can see the shape of the apple in your mind. You can even see the color; green, red or yellow. You can even imagine the taste if you think about it long enough. However, without the aforementioned "tools", one would be incapable of seeing or tasting the apple. Additionally, the mind coupled with the heart, learns to comprehend emotions such as compassion, kindness, mercy, etc. The mind of man accumulates all this knowledge throughout a man's lifetime. That "mind " - is what the soul can be described as being; the result of man's knowledge and emotions, accumulated throughout his or her lifetime.
Now, to continue the previous discussion. God created bodies as tools with which to place the souls into, Soul #1, for example was placed into the body of Adam, and soul #2 into the body of Eve, and so on. Each soul had the task of learning compassion up to the level that God had pre-determined. This process of "soul allocation" continued up until all of the fixed number of souls were used up. If any particular soul happened to complete it's task, then that soul is brought into what I have chosen to refer to as the Congregation of G-d (to be explained in Theorem #4). If a soul did not accomplish this tremendous task within an acceptable amount of time (1,000 years, 500 years, 100 years, or whatever) and after giving the soul a chance to prove itself worthy, and it had not proven itself worthy, God would then remove the soul from that body, thereby bringing on what we refer to as death, and place the soul into another body.
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“God’s goodness decreed that there be a limit to man’s effort required to attain perfection… G-d therefore created two distinct periods, one as a time of earning, and the other as a time of receiving reward… The period of earning is limited, and lasts no longer than God’s wisdom decreed suitable for his purpose.” (The Way of God, 1:3:3, p. 47)
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“The Highest Wisdom determined the length of time best suited for such an effort… Every individual has a limited lifetime and it is during this period of time that he must attain both perfection and his level in the community of the Future World. The reason is that everything that involves effort must be limited in time.” (Ibid. 2:4:2, p. 133)
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“A single soul can be reincarnated a number of times in different bodies, and In this manner, it can rectify the damage done in previous incarnations. Similarly it can also achieve perfection that was not attained in it’s previous incarnations. The soul is then ultimately judged at the end of all these incarnations. It’s judgement will depend on everything that took place in all it’s incarnations, as well as it’s status as an individual in each one.” (ibid. 2:3:10, p. 125)
That the cause of death seems natural, accidental, or violent, is only it’s external appearance; that is determined by God’s judgement. However, one must accept the logic behind accepting that the aforementioned soul did not die. It was merely removed from a body that could no longer serve the purpose of helping to further educate the mind into understanding compassion. So through God’s judgement and/or mercy, death is brought on.
As King Solomon, the wisest human being to have lived, said: “It is better not to have been born, than to have been born.” Life is hard! At a certain point in time, it is preferable to die; and that time is when the soul can no longer benefit with additional understanding of compassion from the body it is in.
To further elaborate on this subject, a simple example can be given: A man is born and goes through life’s hardships, and for any number of reasons, he becomes a murderer. Is it better to let the man continue living or not? If the man is executed, as God tells us to do, then firstly, he can no longer do harm to another human being. Secondly, “he”, his soul, is free to enjoy a fresh start in a new body without suffering the consequences of his actions through persecution and hatred from others, and is now free to “further his education”. By this I mean to say, that any and all of the good that was learned in his previous lifetime, is not forgotten. (See Note 3 above). Life - through reincarnation - is an accumulative process of learning. Each and every lifetime adds to the previous life additional compassionate understanding. Thirdly, the execution of such an individual also teaches another valuable lesson to the rest of mankind about compassion. And a fourth reason, is that it will serve to instill fear into the minds of others as to the consequences of such behavior, as is simply put in the Bible: “When all the people hear about it, they will fear.” (Deuteronomy 13:12, 17:13, 19:20, 21:21)
I also believe that originally God let man live longer years than we now live, letting man live to 500 or even 1,000 years, with the merciful gesture of giving another chance, and another chance to a non-compassionate soul. After approximately 1,000 or 1,500 years, He observed that it would be better to have a series of shorter lifetimes, thereby giving a fresh start to "bad" souls and a glorious end to superb souls, than to have one extremely long life span.
Let me deviate from this particular subject for a moment, to display an interesting development of mankind’s level of compassionate understanding throughout the course of history.
Civilization. This is the term given and accepted linguistically by man to describe the development of compassionate comprehension. In the early years of man’s development, the majority of human beings were cruel and sadistic people. Sodom and Gomorrah is a good example. The Roman Amphitheater is another good example of man’s lack of compassion, where thousands of people would gather for a “good time” to watch people being eaten alive by lions, the way nowadays we would enjoy a baseball game.
The majority of people nowadays would be appalled and disgusted by such a display of lack of compassion. Who knows; in 100 years, or maybe less, the majority of people might also look back and be appalled and disgusted at the way people nowadays enjoy wrestling and boxing matches, which would also be an advancement in compassionate understanding.
I therefore submit that the cause for the above development of compassion is due to the centuries of the same souls learning lifetime after lifetime, a little bit more each time, about compassion.
Concept #2
A second concept can be that it was not a fixed number of souls that God created, but rather a combination of the following:
The first soul was placed into Adam. Another placed into Eve. A third, fourth, and so on, into their offspring. The first person to die either completed its task or was reincarnated into another body as previously stated. All further generations were either new souls or reincarnations. The difference between this concept and concept #1, is the proposal of the possibility that there is an infinite number of souls that were and will be created with each additional birth.
Concept #2
A third concept for reincarnation can be proposed as well. That is that God created one soul and divided it into many sections. Each part is vital for the existence of the whole one soul. Each part has a specific facet of the many facets of compassionate understanding to learn.