What is Soul?


When scientists disintegrated the atom for the first time, the magnitude and intensity of the liberated atomic energy left the world amazed. When bombed by highly loaded subatomic particles, in great speed, the minuscule atom liberated energies inconcebivly powerful. Similar conditions exist in the tiny spiritual soul, the vital force and the true me of all the beings, exhibits the energies of his original nature. Under ordinary material conditions, however, this true nature of the soul is invisible and ignored by us.

Described in Bhagavad-gita Like Him is as atomic particle, antimaterial, the soul known in sanscrit as atma, is much subtler than the material energy. The soul, that is atomic in size, is the vital force in all the alive beings and it is the source of energy that maintains all of the alive entities. The energy of the atma disperses for the whole alive body, and it is the cause of we feel several pains and pleasures everywhere of the body. This current of the soul is known as conscience. Although we cannot see the soul, its presence can simply be understood by the conscience.

We cannot sometimes see the sun in the sky due to presence of clouds, but the sunshine is still visible. In the same way, we can accept the presence of the soul in all of the alive bodies - Human, animal, plants, fish or bird - because we noticed life in them.

Inversely, we can feel the absence of the soul after the death because we see that the conscience ceased in the dead body. In the death, the soul leaves the material body, but it suffers the experience of the death without being affected. Therefore in Bhagavad-gita we found the soul described as "unalterable", "indestructible", "insoluble", "existing in the whole part" and "invisible" (Bg 2.24).

Each minuscule soul, we learned in Bhagavad-gita, it is a fragmentary "part, eternal" of Krishna, or God. The energy of the soul flows of his relationship with God, the Supreme Soul. The soul is constitutionally related with Krishna, as well as the parts of our body they link with our whole body. Because the soul is part of Krishna, its nature is to serve him as well as our hand it serves the whole body supplying food to mouth when we eat. When the soul executes his original function gradually their natural characteristics become obvious.

The soul is described in Vedas as "marginal energy", endowed with choice freedom to serve or not Krishna, or God. When the soul manifests desire not to serve God and he acts independently of God, the inherent spiritual qualities to it are temporarily blocked due to the forgetfulness of Krishna. When this happens, the soul leaves the field of pure spiritual energy (the spiritual world) and under influence of the material energy, enters in a physical body.

In his transcendental original state, the soul is characterized by three qualities. The first is the eternity, for makes part of the Supreme Lord and it is, according to Bhagavad-gita, "non born" and "immortal". Second is that the soul full of knowledge, being part of Krishna, that is the source of the whole intelligence and that it is fully conscious. And third, the soul is very adventurous, because of his connection with Krishna, the sum total of all the happiness and bliss.

As soon as understand the nature of the soul, we can begin to understand the nature of God. Gradually accomplishing the soul through the knowledge in Bhagavad-gita, we wake up the original qualities of the soul: eternity, knowledge and bliss. Our relationship will only then be able to be reestablished with Krishna, or God.