Text: Soul Our correlation of intention and consciousness with light, it is important to add, was not a correlation with electromagnetism, which is a theory of light. Nor was it even a correlation with the photon as currently thought of as a particle, but with the cycle of action, which is implicit in both theories but emphasized in neither. If we are to say that consciousness is x, there must be something known about consciousness and something known about x that, when equated, cause more to be known about both. Thus to say that consciousness is a different dimension is meaningless. To say that it is light may be intuitively gratifying, but is still only a metaphor. But to find from science that the "vibration" of light is a rotation, a cycle of action that goes through opposing phases, makes the equation of the cycle of action with the learning cycle not only meaningful but regenerative, in that it causes the interpenetration of one discipline by another. But that equation is not enough. Perhaps the most difficult part still remains. How does this view of consciousness apply to the question of the continuity of the soul? The correlation just made enables us to see the following: First, behind the things, molecules, cells, organs, etc., there is some agent that changes the state of molecules, cells, organs, etc. Secondly, that agent is light, the photon or quantum of energy, which conveys a very small amount of energy that can trigger specific reactions and control their timing. Thirdly, longer-period quanta can control shorter-period quanta, because being longer they can "comprehend" or subsume what is shorter than their own period, and hence control the shorter-period and greater-energy activities of their environment. Fourthly, degradation of energy, or descent into matter, which produces atoms and then molecules, creates a great variety of molecular material with new combinations forming and dissolving. These combinations are sensitive to temperature. Finally, at this point the stage is set for life. The quanta with the longer period can begin to sort energy, create order, and build organisms. Something comparable to awareness has been present all along, but awareness of cause and effect, which requires a longer period than the cause to take effect, is only now possible. Life so construed implies evolution, whose higher stages follow. This I discussed in The Reflexive Universe, where I used the idea of the "great chain of being" to support the continuity of a single evolving entity, progressing through increasingly advanced stages of evolution. The learning cycle, which makes consciousness possible, stores the learning of previous cycles in a memory bank that ceases to be conscious. Thus we learn to spell, then to write, then to type, each stage, when it is learned, becoming automatic and no longer conscious. But we still face the problem of how a distillation of memory can carry over from one lifetime to another through the successive stages of evolution, and for that the soul is a necessary vehicle. For plants, the "soul memory" is not a factor. The learning cycle at that stage has to do with how cells are manufactured and reproduced. That is a function of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the prototype blueprint that replicates with each generation, and thus ensures continuity of form within the vegetable kingdom. There is thus no "soul" of the plant to survive; it is the pattern of the multicellular plant that survives in the genetic legacy of the species. In animals the learning cycle produces a program of behavior that survives, when it meets evolutionary requirements, as instinct, in the "group soul" of the species. Instinct thus depends on memory, a program of steps necessary to the successful solutions of problems. That is different from DNA, which is a plan for manufacture, much as the blueprint of an automobile differs from the experience and ability of the driver. The growth and persistence of the group soul makes instinct the evolving principle of the animal kingdom. There the individual animals, like the multicellular plants, are temporal manifestations and do not endure. Humans are different still. We use memory, but do not depend on it alone. We can operate by reasoning from premises, which is to say we can recognize laws and use them to increase our scope -- in other words, to think for ourselves. Such thinking is not dictated by instinct, but is acquired by personal effort, and the fruits of experience are stored in each individual soul. Recognition is essentially a spiritual activity, and it is spirit that moves and reforms the soul in humans. That makes it necessary to distinguish spirit from soul. Spirit is the highest function. It manifests in intuition, purpose, the higher self, and other ultimates. Soul is its first vehicle, its access to experience, feelings, and values. Compulsive at first, it learns, with intellect, to serve spirit. It is that principle of the interpenetration of soul and spirit that keeps the light or consciousness from evaporating after death. It is in the nature of light to radiate, and without the soul to retain the values of experience, it would be indeed the smile without the cat. With our limited understanding of ultimate reality, the correlation of consciousness with light via the cycle of action doesn't explain the after-death state. I once thought that since the photon was outside of time there was no problem with its endurance, but it could be said that because it is outside of time it does not endure. In any case the soul and the mind are necessary intermediate principles between spirit, the active site of consciousness, and body. Note that what endures is not mind in the sense of accumulated knowledge, that is, intellect or ego consciousness. Forty years ago I asked the question, "How does the soul grow?" The answer, if there is an answer, is that its growth consists of increased competence and increased profundity and sensitivity. That answer meets the objection that any other modification would narrow its scope. Competence can narrow its focus on some specialization, but it does so without the sacrifice of other abilities. The question of the growth of the soul is of course very important, and I will return to it. The problem of memory, which is essential to growth, may be even more difficult than the problem of consciousness. Some assume that the computer can store memory. What the computer in fact stores is information that one can retrieve. But the kind of memory that concerns us here draws on experience. It is memory of feeling, of evaluation. It has its basis in emotion and cannot be conveyed by information except insofar as the receiver is moved by the message. That soul language, or mythos, is the basis of poetry, drama, and other arts, and it draws on symbolism and metaphor, not information. The standard criticism of the computer is that it cannot feel. The computer enthusiast doesn't put much stock in that objection; he or she would say it is unimportant because feeling is not necessary, or can be encoded. While that is not an answer, the only way to prove that it's not an answer is to unplug the computer. Without a power source the computer cannot function. The power source, unlike the soul, does not evolve, but it does motivate the computer, and hence has for the computer the same role that the soul has for the person or the animal: it makes it go. So we can add motivation as another function of the soul in addition to memory. Related, and necessary to both, is the dimension of time, one definition being "that which promises to fulfill one's expectations." That implies value, and hence attraction and repulsion. Illusion, a feeling that something is real, is part of this syndrome, but not in the limited and pejorative sense of delusion. Delusion is a mistaken interpretation of reality, but illusion is a necessary ingredient for motivation. If you were to see a movie as a succession of colored photographs of Hollywood actors, without the illusion that makes it a good story, you would not be getting your money's worth. Illusion is maya in the Hindu tradition, the "cause of rebirth." For other reasons I have used the word "binding" as descriptive of the soul function. We have the term "spellbinding," which comes from the Anglo-Saxon speilen, to tell a story. In The Reflexive Universe, I found that the most difficult part to discuss, let alone prove, was the reality of the soul. Rather than introduce the notion of the soul in the chapter on humans, where other difficult points were to come up, I went into the issue in the chapter on the animal soul. That was where it belonged, to be sure, because the principle that emerges with animals, responsible for the animal power of mobility, is not so much the animal body, a cellular organism like the plant, but the group soul of a particular species. I mentioned Eugene Marais' work on termite colonies, where he found that even if a glass plate were used to separate a section of the colony from the queen, an injury to that section would evoke responses from the entire colony. On the other hand, if the queen were removed, the coordinated activity of the whole colony broke down. I also mentioned a series of experiments in which William McDougall trained successive generations of rats to go through a maze, and found that the later generations learned faster. But then it was found that rats in Australia, not descended from the trained rats, also learned faster. It was some years later that I read Rupert Sheldrake's work A New Science of Life, in which he devoted a chapter to McDougall's work on rats. Sheldrake used the concept of a "morphogenetic field" to describe how the impress of this learning is transmitted to other rats, but I prefer the idea of a group soul as used by the theosophist Annie Besant. Instinct and learning are programs of behavior, involving sequences of action, and so are not properly represented by a field, which, like a map, describes positions in space rather than in time. For mankind, the group soul is still a factor, but it becomes something to overcome. Bodies are "government issue." The group soul, which animates the body, is an inheritance from the animal kingdom. Our task or challenge is to learn to think for ourselves, and that requires individuation or ego, what Georg Hegel called "alienation." This means that each person "grows his own," an individual soul that not only survives the body, for the same reason the animal soul survives, but causes and prescribes the next life. What is not resolved in one lifetime continues to motivate the next. But soul and ego are vehicles: the ego temporary, the soul enduring; ego, the container, soul, the content. That content is distilled into spirit, which is the true focus of human evolution. The principal reason for my conviction of the reality of the soul and its persistence through time, its immortality, is that the theory of process requires that in any process there must be something that, like mass-energy in physics, is conserved. The word "substance" has been so tortured by the inquisition of the philosophers (Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried von Leibnitz, and others) that it says whatever they want it to say. Nevertheless I find it difficult to find another word. But permit me to make a brief reference to my theory of process. That model describes any process as taking place on four levels through which it descends, then turns and ascends to its goal. There are thus seven stages, beginning with purpose and ending with goal. The intermediate stages of this process provide the means necessary to the achievement of this goal. While a five- or even three-stage model might suffice for simplified processes such as elementary communication, the argument for seven stages is put forward in The Reflexive Universe. As indicated in Figure 1, the worldly physical objects we can see, touch, hear, and smell, found at Level IV, result from giving form (Level III) to substance (Level II) according to a purpose (Level I). There are a great many exemplifications of this scheme, one of the most fundamental being the kingdoms of nature: light, particles, atoms, molecules, plants, animals and mankind. Figure 1 Important in the present context is that there is a certain symmetry to the arc. The first and seventh stages are on Level I, but the first is goal as potential, and the seventh, goal achieved. The second and sixth stages share substance or value, the second enslaved by attraction, and the sixth able to employ it. For example, the electron, at the second stage, is forced to move by charge, whereas the animal, at the sixth, makes use of attraction, such as in mating rituals. The third stage is constrained by form, deprived of freedom in exchange for identity; the fifth uses form to organize and to reproduce identity, i.e., progeny. The soul is Level II. It is liquid in the sense of liquid assets, like money or energy, not coins or bills but value, something real but not a material object. It is also motivation, that which stimulates and drives us over and above necessity. That drive is compulsive at the second stage, and its compulsiveness is overcome at the sixth. Let us pause for a moment to get our bearings. What am I talking about? The four levels are categories or logical types. When Russell said that the class of elephants was not an elephant, he inaugurated the notion of logical types. Gregory Bateson said that the price of eggs not an object, and made an important contribution by pointing out instances of confusion caused by failure to distinguish logical types; but he rejected my suggestions of additional logical types. Willard Quine's response to me was that there were arbitrarily many logical types. Russell, by 1938, had lost interest in logical types, and so far as I know, that idea has not been pursued or further developed since he distinguished between a class and its members. The four levels are an extension of the notion of logical types. Level IV covers objects in the actual world: elephants, chairs, etc. Level III consists of concepts: the class or concept of "elephants" or "chairs." Level II is the value and need for something, for elephants or chairs. It is what motivates us with regard to a thing, but it also covers what motivates the thing itself, as well as the material, the substance of which the thing is made. If that correlation is difficult (and Level II, being nonconceptual, is difficult to grasp), note that ordinary language uses the word "matter" to indicate substance as well as value: "such and such does not matter." Level I is the purpose of an object, or the purpose we use it for. We could use a chair to stand on; the lion trainer uses it to keep the lion from attacking him. Because purpose is a free option, it cannot be defined or conceptualized. But therein lies its power: the value (Level II) of something is established by the purpose (Level I) for which it is used. Quine said that there were arbitrarily many logical types. He may have based that on the fact that elephants belong to a larger class of mammals, and mammals to a still larger class of vertebrates. But these larger classes are not different logical types; they are still classification. The contribution of the four levels to the question of the soul is that they enable us to get past the limits of conceptualization. We can admit the existence, or rather the importance, of aspects of reality that are not known through sense data or capable of definition. In fact, Levels I and II are both preconceptual, and both are nonobjective, that is, neither objects of sense experience (as in Level IV) nor concepts (as in Level III). I have already given the value of money as an example of Level II. We can draw from science a number of its most fundamental notions, such as force, charge, and energy, and show how those too share this projective, nonconceptual nature.

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