What kind of eye "see" a soul? Of course humans can have some kind of experience of their "self", but I do not think anyone has proven duality and the existence of souls? - My "self" seems to be always co-located with my body, so it could just as well be a pattern in the material of me? How can mankind as a whole learn to see the spiritual side of creation in an objective and consistent way, jayceeii ?
AO: What kind of eye "see" a soul?
JC: There are no reports about the vision of the soul in history, only the signs that certain people are self-aware as spirit, meaning they have had this vision. One of the sure signs is a solid certainty that the external Creator exists. The rest hypothesize and go through periods of “doubt.” Once the soul is seen, you find it is too complex and profound to have appeared quickly, or to have made itself. Watching the Christian preachers carefully you can see some are in this class, but others are not. Billy Graham was certainly in the class.
AO: Of course humans can have some kind of experience of their "self", but I do not think anyone has proven duality and the existence of souls?
JC: The self-identity of a human is the one who experiences the senses. In the East this was called body-identification, but this has been misinterpreted by the gurus to mean an ability to see that the arm or leg is not the same as a thought in the mind. Instead the person feels they are the one who experiences the senses, in which the mind is trapped too. Even the highest gurus remain body-identified, unable to see beyond one lifetime or even to admit they must die. To see death coming, one must see the soul as separable.
The very fact you can use the word “soul” means that someone started a rumor about it, but there have been no solid or realistic descriptions of the soul given in any religion. If people think about it they’re trapped in physical analogies, thinking about something like a bag of gas. Unless there is experience of spirit or soul, words about it will mean nothing. I’ve given evidence for existence of souls in other posts, that have been ignored.
You appear to be using the word “duality” to mean “soul and body,” but I use that word very differently, to mean a mind that is locked in the senses, thinking reactively or relativistically. All impure souls are dualistic. I call a pure soul monistic. It has an independent morality and awareness of spirit above body, along with many other salutary properties. To truly see the soul is what Jesus called the born-again experience. In the East it is called sahaja or natural samadhi. No one has reported entering this state so far.
AO: - My "self" seems to be always co-located with my body, so it could just as well be a pattern in the material of me?
JC: While you are embodied it is co-located with your body. Thinking about it with your everyday mind, you turn naturally to physical analogies, and in truth we’re basically limited to that if we want to use words to describe the metaphysical. Rather than talk about spiritual experiences, I’d emphasize the critical traits that prove the soul has been seen. One is an ability to think in detachment about the large scale, to apply things learned locally to any scale. All humanity fails in thinking about the whole Earth in its total time frame, though the basic science is at hand to allow this. They only see the local.
AO: How can mankind as a whole learn to see the spiritual side of creation in an objective and consistent way, jayceeii ?
JC: God has a plan for this, but only parts of the plan have been revealed in the religions. In general it is an extremely slow process, but for religions to succeed the founders needed to pretend things could happen quickly, either praying for salvation in the West or a lifetime (or an afternoon) of hard sadhana in the East. Men would be truly daunted could they see the real task before them, and this is also the resolution of the conundrum from the West that men can do nothing about their sinfulness. They can, but not much.
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