THE SOUL

1. No inanimate matter has a soul. Only animate, sentient matter, including plants and animals.

2. Human beings have souls, but comparatively few human beings are regularly in touch with their soul, least of all in metaphysical terms.

3. For to be in touch with the soul-of-souls, the metaphysical soul, one has to be a genuinely religious person, not a scientific or a political or an economic type of person.

4. These others, on the contrary, are regularly in touch with their will, their spirit, their ego - each or all of which prevent them from developing soul to anything like a religious extent; though not, of course, to extents compatible with science, politics, or economics, as with regard to love, pride, and pleasure.

5. Doubtless more than a few animals and even some plants would have experienced something similar, even if not in relation to science, politics, or economics. But are there what may be called religious plants and animals, plants and animals, I mean, with a self-conscious capacity for joy, even bliss?

6. I shouldn't like to categorically deny such a possibility, particularly in relation to certain species of birds, whose song is - well, heavenly, and to certain species of trees which grow so tall that they seem to merge into the sky and blend with the surrounding air, providing a congenial habitat for the loftiest birds. Of how many human beings could such a thing be said?

7. One would like to think that, at the highest level, the best, most soulful human beings can outdo trees and birds in sublime accomplishments; that they would in effect be more religious than those other species of life, but that is not to deny to such species the capacity for religious or soulful experience, still less to overlook the millions of people whose capacity to cultivate anything remotely resembling genuine religious experience is virtually extinct or sadly non-existent.

8. In this respect, mankind are no more homogenous than any other kind of life on this planet, not excepting the plants.

9. A religious person will not be someone, you can rest assured, to shoot at birds (least of all singing birds) or to fell tall trees. On the contrary, he will feel a sympathy towards and empathy with certain trees and birds that would be completely lacking in a non-religious person - say, a scientist or a politician. But, more than that, he will feel sympathetic towards and be led to empathize with other religious persons to an extent that would be inconceivable in a non-religious person, even an economist.

10. But he must be careful, if truly wise, not to allow such feelings to cloud his judgement and draw him into collectivism, whether under cover of religion or otherwise.

11. For the genuinely religious experience is cultivated independently of the collectivity, by the Individual acting on and for himself or, more correctly, his self. No-one can meditate for you, and, at the end of the day, the cultivation of metaphysical soul is an intensely private experience, an experience as far removed from public show as the soul itself.

12. Like essence, the religious experience is neither seen nor heard, still less tasted or touched, but felt, felt in the soul as the peace that joyfully surpasses egocentric understanding, including the truth of God, which is for the godly individual but a means to that heavenly end.