The Neglected Soul
The following allegory is an abridged version taken from The Mystic Philosophy of Sant Mat, in which the author recounts a tale of two brothers: the older, a rich and powerful merchant who lives in a multilevel mansion, and the younger who is a hapless little person, very thin, with two large frightened eyes filled with pain and grief. He constantly sings a haunting song.
Many years earlier, ashamed of his younger sibling in front of his influential friends, the rich merchant had instructed his servants to banish his brother from his mansion. The servants, unwilling to do this, hid him in the mansion.
Eventually the haunting singing of the younger sibling arouses the older brother’s curiosity. On investigation he discovers that the source of the soulful singing is his younger brother, who has been kept as a prisoner in the attic.
Distraught at the realization of what he has done to his brother, he runs from the mansion. Weeping and distressed, he rests in a nearby forest where a wandering beggar asks him what is troubling him. He relates the story to the beggar, who advises him to befriend his brother by visiting him every day and feeding him little portions of his love. He gives the merchant his tattered clothes, telling him to wear them when he visits his brother, so that the younger is not overwhelmed by his brother’s wealth.
And so the brothers once again unite, and together they leave the mansion for a beautiful country called Sach Khand.
This story is an allegorical representation of the relationship between our mind and our soul. The rich and powerful merchant represents the mind while the younger brother symbolizes the soul. It undergoes cruel imprisonment in the mansion of the body, where it is held captive by the powerful mind, which is heavily influenced by the senses and their insatiable desires. This story portrays the mind’s control of the soul.
This mind-soul relationship is the nature of every living creature in creation. Both are tangled together in the body, like the two brothers living in the same house. They are aware of each other’s presence but pull in opposite directions – one outwards, the other inwards.
It’s like the story of the two wolves: the one that you feed flourishes at the expense of the other. Sadly, we feed the mind and not the soul. Our relationships, worldly desires and pleasure-seeking activities pull our attention outwards, as we focus on their fulfilment. By doing this we neglect the call of our soul.
In all religious and spiritual beliefs, the soul is the immortal essence of every living thing. It is the life-giving force and exists without form. Without the soul the body is like a computer without software or a light bulb without electricity. Introduce the soul, and the body acquires life; the soul brings the entire living organism into being.
Although the soul is a spark of divinity, we often overlook it – we fail to acknowledge it. Yet it is a spark of godliness that imbues every living thing with a sense of existence and significance. As the Scottish author George MacDonald suggested: “You don’t have a soul, you are a soul – you have a body!”
Every soul is the expression of God himself. As such it possesses the same qualities as God: it is immortal and loves unconditionally. It is that part of us that is aware of, and intuitively knows, the spiritual subtleties within us. Our soul is deathless – only our body experiences death.
But, God has played the ultimate hide-and-seek game with us. He has hidden the soul throughout the creation, in myriad forms.
In those who are drawn to unite with him he creates a yearning and longing to seek him that entails discovering our soul. This is no easy task. It’s like trying to fit the pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle together to reveal the hidden picture.
What makes the puzzle of detecting our soul so difficult is that we don’t relate to our soul. Why? First, because it is so elusive and well concealed we are not familiar with it, and second, because we are so immersed in the noise of the world our perceptions are limited, so the spiritual essence of the soul evades us. Consequently, the task of fitting the puzzle pieces together to realize the soul seems impossible.
The story of the two brothers depicts our soul as a hapless little wimp. But in fact, it is not a passive entity that occupies space in the attic of our body – the forehead. It is a positive, purposeful force at the core of our being. It is pure consciousness, a drop of the essence of God. It is this power on which we need to focus, directing our attention inwards towards our soul and the radiant form of the Master.
When the world absorbs our attention and we miss our daily simran and bhajan, we neglect our soul. When our focus is on the world we identify totally with the objects of our thinking, becoming worldly. When we focus on our soul we become spiritual.
Simran is the vital process of replacing worldly repetition with spiritual repetition, and its action leaves an indelible imprint deeply engrained in the mind. We can choose to make that imprint either worldly or spiritual. But which impressions do we continually entrench in our mind? Which wolf are we feeding, the mind or the soul? The choice between worldly thinking and simran is a no-brainer, yet it’s a choice we don’t regularly put into practice.
Everything points to the fact that our simran is an extraordinary spiritual gift imbued with the power of our Master. It is essentially the repetition of God’s name with the intention of fostering a closer relationship with him. It leads us to an awareness of the soul and heightens our receptivity to the Master’s grace. It is the clue to the Lord’s game of concealment.
We follow this spiritual path with the intention of realizing God, but first we have to solve the mystery of our soul. Our intention must therefore be that this life be used to free our soul from the attic of the body. This requires a different relationship with our mind.
Influenced by the mind, our focus is constantly on the physical, particularly the five senses and the ego, so that we don’t experience the mystical world within. To progress spiritually it is imperative that we switch our allegiance from the mind to the soul.
The beggar in the story represents a wise sage. To wear his tattered garment is to wear the garment of humility – a concept foreign to an egotistical mind. The sage knew that no reconciliation could take place until the merchant was able to let go of his arrogance and pride. This suggests that we must let go of our ego and associated attitudes before we have any hope of reaching our soul in the attic at the eye centre.
Our meditation is the daily visit whereby we store tiny portions of his love, so that one day we will have enough love to withdraw from the body mansion into the attic – the mystical realm of the soul. When this occurs, we will once again know our soul and release it from its great sadness.
One of our most challenging tasks is the shift from rest to reflection – from bed to meditation. These few steps we take every morning are crucial to our spiritual progress. Without this regular undertaking, how can we hope to advance spiritually?
It is meditation alone that can bring about the reconciliation between the mind and the soul. Our spiritual evolution requires that we let go of everything that obscures the light of our soul and free it from its bondage to the mind and the body.
It is our intention to complete the puzzle – to free our soul and return home to Sach Khand. By requesting and receiving initiation that intention has been put into motion, and it must come to fruition.