One of the most misunderstood words in modern science and philosophy as well as in the theology of the churches is the word "soul." Everyone talks about soul, yet different people use the word with different implications and meanings, and sometimes they are not at all sure of what they mean when they speak of soul. It is most essential for us to exercise care in our use of words, for much confusion arises when words are used indiscriminately or without proper understanding of their meaning.

To the psychologist, soul means one thing; but the theologian, surrounded as he is by concepts of theology, gives to the word an altogether different meaning. The man who has studied philosophy in the Western world has a different idea of soul from the man who has studied Eastern philosophy. Then again, Theosophy uses the word in a different sense. This has been the difficulty all through the ages. Even in India, where the higher branches of philosophy and psychology have been studied for thousands of years, the same words have been used by different people with different meanings. If we take, for instance, the word Atma, the Self, the Spirit, we find that it has been used by the authors of the Vedas, the Upanishads and their Commentaries, each in his own peculiar way. Hence it becomes the first duty of the student to get at the meaning of the word as it is used by a particular author or commentator.

Now what do we mean when we speak of soul? It is useless to speak of the advance, the progress or the growth of the soul unless we are clear in our own minds as to just what the soul is.

The Christian scriptures say that God made man in His own image; also, that God is a Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The Christian believes that man has a soul, even if he does not clearly perceive the teaching that man is a soul. But, in the West, the same logical conclusion is not drawn from this premise that is drawn in the East. Here they say that if God-consciousness is triune—Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Regenerator—and if man is made in the image of God, then also must man be triune. We must understand this trinity of human consciousness.

First, it is said that man is Atma, the Self, and that the great quality which he manifests as Atma is that of Will.

Then man in his second aspect is Buddhi, the discerner, he who has the faculty of acquiring that knowledge which will enable him to discriminate between the true and the false, the real and the unreal.

In his third aspect he is Manas, the thinker, whose special function is creative activity. It is this Manas which makes of man a creator.

So, by the power of Atma, we resolve, we will; by the power of Buddhi, we discern and know; and by the power of Manas, we create.

This triune being, with the capacity to will, to know, to create, is a spiritual entity, for he is made in the image and likeness of God; he is divine in his nature, because he is rooted in divine consciousness. The difference between God-consciousness and man-consciousness is that while the latter is a seed in which all divine powers are locked up, the former is the full-grown tree in which all the powers of the seed have become manifest. Hence we, as seeds, are latent Gods, Gods who have still to become patent; and the process by which this is to be accomplished consists in the bringing out of our powers of will, of discernment, of creative activity, so that human will can become divine will, human discernment divine discernment, and the creative activity which is human can become manifest as that creative activity which is divine.

These, then, are the threefold powers of the triune being that each of us is in his higher nature. By the power of our creative activity we create the instruments which would help us to know the universe in which we find ourselves. So, because we are thinkers, we create mind.

At this point we should note one fundamental difference between the philosophy of the East and that of the West. Mind, says the Asiatic Science, is not man; mind is the instrument of man. Mind is not the thinker; mind is the instrument in and through which the thinker works and carries on his activity as a creator. Mind is his creation, his instrument of knowledge.

Now sometimes this mind is spoken of as the soul; at other times it is the thinker, using the mind as his instrument, who is so spoken of; again it is the man who wills, discerns and thinks with the help of his mind who is referred to as soul. The soul, according to Theosophy, is that which has been described as the creative aspect, the third aspect of triune man. The soul, in other words, is the creative actor who creates as his first instrument the mind, in and through which he begins to think.

What does he think? He thinks naturally about those subjects in which he is interested, subjects which pertain to the universe in the midst of which he finds himself. Having created his mind, he begins to perceive the universe of mind. As soon as he perceives it, he wants to know it, because the nature of the soul is knowledge. Energized by the power of his second aspect, discernment, he creates the instrument by which he can know. The senses come into existence in order that the inner man may contact the outside world and gain impressions. But now he finds that, although he can get impressions, still he cannot make response. Hence he creates something else, the instruments of action or response, spoken of as the sense-organs and the organs of action.

There is a distinction between what is called the sense of sight and the organ which is spoken of as the eye; between the sense of hearing and ear; between the power to act and the organ of action, the hands. These organs are often spoken of as the instruments through which Karma operates.

Now the mind, the senses and the organs work on each other, and in their interplay they give birth to a fourth factor. We find certain impressions coming through the senses, taken up by the mind, and given back through the organs of action, and this interplay produces that which we speak of as the desire nature.

So man has these four instruments in and through which he works: the senses, the sense-organs, the desire nature and the mind. This fourfold nature assumes an independent activity of its own, and forms what is spoken of as the lower self, the animal soul. Man is both an individuality and the reflection of the individuality, sometimes called the personality. Let us ponder on this point for a moment, for it has become the cause of great confusion in the world today. In all the processes of psychoanalysis, in the so-called "going down deep into the soul," what "soul" is meant? It is into this animal soul that people are digging deep down, the animal soul of the senses, the sense-organs, the desire nature and the lower mind, which often exhibits its own independent powers, its own activities. It is the arousing into activity of this animal soul which people often mistake for the birth of the soul. This animal soul is what is sometimes called "subconsciousness."

What is normal consciousness? That which we have called the soul, the third aspect of the man, working through the mind. He speaks of "my senses, my body, my likes and dislikes, loves and hates," and has a faculty of his own, ordinarily spoken of as the voice of conscience. This is the voice of the human creator who works in and through the mind when the mind is set free from the slavery which the senses, the sense-organs and the desire nature impose upon it. When the mind is thus enslaved, it becomes the lower mind; once freed of its fetters, it becomes the higher mind. When it is the higher mind, it becomes the instrument of the creative actor, the man himself; when it is the lower mind, the creative actor sits imprisoned, as it were, because all the faculties of the mind are warped by the desire nature.

What, then, is the difference between the life of this lower or animal soul and the life of the higher or real Soul? The life of the lower soul is complex; it is guided by the desire for possessions. Therefore it is a life of struggle and of distress. The activity of the senses energized by the desire nature, enables us to desire things; our sense of possession grows strong, we continually want more things, and life becomes more and more complex. The complex life then grows into the life of struggle. But are those who struggle for possessions, and even succeed in gaining them, necessarily happy? Time and again we see that the complex life, leading to the life of struggle, ends eventually, not in happiness, but in distress.

What, then, is the spiritual life? It is the way of the soul, and the reverse of the life of the lower, animal soul. It is the simple life instead of the complex life; the strenuous life instead of the life of struggle; the life in which all activities produce happiness instead of distress. It is not the life of idleness, of withdrawing from the world, but the contrary. Let us examine this threefold life which is the threefold way of the soul.

First, it is the simple life. All of us think we live, but do we really do so? When we begin to examine ourselves, to analyse our minds, thoughts, activities and processes of everyday life, we find that we are continually passing from life to death, not from life to life. For what is death but change?

The simple life, then, is the life with a single purpose, with an ideal where all other considerations and complexities are removed, because our mind's eye is fixed on our ideal. But our purpose must not be of the nature of the world of complexities; it must not be desire for wealth, or for power, or for fame, or for human affection, for these are the purposes of the lower world. Man seeks wealth first of all; then, having gained wealth, he seeks fame; having achieved fame he wants power over the minds of other men; when he has that, he seeks human affection, so that he may find his own image in kin and friends. If we love all people in an ever expanding way, without caring for the return of love, life becomes simple. As long as we love in this way, it is not our concern whether we are loved in return or not. If we love our neighbour as ourselves, it means that we see all our own qualities manifesting themselves in him.

Then we come to the question of the strenuous life. To go on pouring out love on all people, all things, every month of the year, every day of the month, every hour of the day, every minute of the hour, that is the strenuous life. To see the power of our love energizing other people does not mean running about here and there; it means the power to give steadily and persistently, at every point of space, at every moment of time. We cannot attempt to achieve all this in a short time. Just as it takes years of practice to become a good musician or a good mathematician, so also to acquire the power to love steadily requires time and effort; it is hard, plodding work. How shall we go about it? Krishna answered this question: "By constant practice and absence of desire, or dispassion."

The moment we begin to live like that, then and there we begin to get knowledge; because as we begin to pour ourselves out into others, we begin really to understand all things, all people. When we begin to love in this manner, we find that we need that quality of discernment which knows how to give love. And so we see that the strenuous life becomes discriminative activity; we see all things as aspect of the divine. In other words, it becomes a sacramental life.

There is a wonderful definition of the word sacrament—"an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Therefore we need not consider as sacraments only those rites instituted by the churches. Our very getting up in the morning, refreshed, might be considered a sacred thing. Our work at the office, in the home, behind the counter; our every gesture or word, every line that we write, becomes an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace if it comes from the man who has resolved rightly. And so our outer life becomes the expression of our soul life; the two blend into one. The man who works with his hands need not stop working with his hands in order to lead the soul life. He begins to live on a different plane because his inner resolution has become different. And from that point of view it does not matter much what we do, but it matters very much how we do it.

The threefold way of the soul is, then: first, the simple life, with one purpose, to love; second, the strenuous life, with the purpose of discerning and loving with that discernment; and third, the sacramental life, in which all actions are made sacred, because each has been valued at its own worth, with discrimination.

Then we begin to see what comes out of it: union with the divine—Yoga. It means the perception of divinity in all things around us. And so everywhere we see one great consciousness manifesting and acting. "The Universe grows I"; and that is Yoga.

Then comes the practical application of our knowledge. We love our neighbour as ourselves, not differently, and the barriers of caste, creed, sect, race, or nation, fall. The entire universe becomes for us one universe. Everywhere we see the all-pervading Supreme Spirit.

The threefold way of the soul we can adopt here and now. We cannot expect to succeed all at once; the time it will take us will be determined by the degree of intensity with which we act now. The spiritual life must begin in the selfsame environment in which we now find ourselves. Every act must be made a sacrament, every sacrifice must bring us joy, not pain. And so we become one with Nature; we become fully cognizant of the universal consciousness working in and through us every moment of our lives.

Every microscopic cell has a consciousness and an intelligence of its own, and man thus consists of innumerable "lives." This is but physiological synthesis, logically deduced no less from the known facts in physiology and histology than the logical sequence of the philosophy of occultism. Health of the body as a whole depends on the integrity of all its parts, and more especially upon their harmonious association and co-operation. A diseased tissue is one in which a group of individual cells refuse to co-operate, and wherein is set up discordant action, using less or claiming more than their due share of food or energy. Disease of the very tissue of man's body is neither more nor less than the "sin of separateness."

—W. Q. Judge