Who is the Supersoul?

[NikolaiI]

I've been studying the Bhagavad-Gita and other Vedic literatures, and I've come across the idea of the Supersoul. The essence or secret of the Vedas is to always meditate upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is Sri Bhagavan. God exists as Bhagavan, Paramatma (The localized Supersoul, which is in the heart of every living entity) and Brahman. We all exist in Brahman and so there are some philosophers such as impersonalists or mayavadis who think that the highest state is to merge with Brahman. But this is not what is taught in the Gita by Krishna, who is the source of the Vedas. There is variegatedness in the material universe and consciousness, and there is also variegatedness in the spiritual realm. We are all eternal parts and parcels of the Supreme. And our only function is to serve the Supreme, the Whole. Any other function is not correct; just as the hand or the foot only works to satsify the will of the self of the body. And in the same way, we get our life, existence, meaning, purpose and everything from the Supreme, just like the feet and hands of a body, which have no use if they are cut off from the body, and therefore from the will of the self in the body.

But my question is what is the existence and place of the Supersoul? As I meditate upon it I find it remains absolutely constant to me. The Supersoul is in every living entity, and all individual souls are eternally part and parcel of the Supreme. An individual soul is eternal because it is part of the eternal Whole. The material universe is a manifestation from the Bhagavan, therefore there is more shelter in the Supersoul than there is in the material world. What does this mean? For me it means that we should seek the Supersoul, and always meditate on the Supreme, and we should seek it out at all times, we should seek for it and be conscious of our relationship at all times, and seek to follow the will of the Supreme.

[blazeofglory]

Man is the super soul. For Man gave this title to God.

[NikolaiI]

The supersoul is like a great and heavy wind or rain, it is a feeling of bliss and the awakening of all people. The body of god is bliss, knowledge, and it is eternal. God is like the sun; inside the sun globe, the sun globe's surface, and the sunlight. The sunlight is the impersonal spiritual effulgence which is the creation of the material universe. The sun globe is like the supersoul, which all spirit spark souls make up as a whole, and the sun globe is the body of god, who is personal, supreme, the source and master of all forms in the universe.

[blazeofglory]

Man evolves and becomes a superman.

[NikolaiI]

Blaze, please listen to what I have to say.
I do not know why there is suffering in the world - I don't know the forces behind it. People suffer and they turn to escape routes such as intoxication. Intoxication is not a good thing, because as you take it, you become reliant on it. It's a very slippery slope because if you become seriously addicted, you enter into a battle on the platform of the mind, which is, as I said, slippery. You can lose yourself to addiction, and it isn't good.
This is one of the contributing factors of Maya.
You know this, for as you said, you are a teetoaller and a vegetarian.
I commend you for this so highly, my friend, for it shows that you are a great person, a deep thinker, and very strong in your resolve. You have a sober, a clear view of the world while a majority of the rest try to spend their time in intoxicated states of mind.

You are following the correct path - do not resort to losing oneself in intoxication to deal with one's stress. There is nothing which exists in the greatest of us which doesn't exist in the rest. An individual can deal with life without intoxication or drugs, and since they make you reliant, it's a very bad idea to ever start them in the first place.

Now there is something we must address first before we ever address the Supersoul.

What we must address is this, the belief that one is the body. More specifically, and instead of just repeating this over, I would like to address the ego of a person who watches 6 hours of television -- the standard or average American watches, or at least used to watch, about this much of television. So now, a portion of this person's life is made up of receiving information from the television, and this information is almost entirely along the lines of : I am this body. I must have gratification for this body. I must have glorification, prettiment, the perfection of this body. And all of these statements and suggestions, which become intentions on the part of the viewer, are completely fabricated, and they are based on the original assumption that "I am this body."

Now I can add so many names which would lend weight to the idea that I am not, in fact, merely "this body." Nietzsche, for instance, said, 'there is no "thing."' Einstein said we are part of a whole, called by us the universe, and experiencing ourselves as separate as sort of a delusion. In fact there were many authors, I can think of Ken Wilber, Alan Watts, these were writers which did various work in explaining Eastern ideas to Westerners.

Now I do not wish for anyone to be upset. Please don't hear any information which would upset you or give you an emotion. Er- I don't mean for that to sound sarcastic, really. There is reason enough to freak out in this life, or who knows who might be freaked out - it is okay to be freaked out. But actually the reasons for this are that we are taking measures to forget ourselves, and this enforces bad habits; and the reason we are taking these measures is because they are enforced by a system of media, peers, family, community, etc., and the whole system is simply propogating something that is not true (we are simply the body, and the most important thing is satisfication or glorification of the body.)

Anyway I agree with you that the best way of life is total abstinence. Actually I do not believe that partaking of alcohol in small amounts is very wrong. After all we are the administrator class more or less, rather than a priest class. We are traders, workers and administrators. But the best way to go is total sobriety, if one can go that way. I think that there is truth to be found if you life a life in that way.

"Man evolves and becomes a superman." I would just like you to think of Krishna, Govinda, Radhe; Krishna is alwyas thinking of Radha, and actually He is completely absorbed in Radha. Radha is the eternal consort of Krishna, and she is also always engaged in Him. Radhe is fully love of Krishna, and He is completely and entirely dependant on Her. So for Krishna, the name of Radha is exactly the same and non-different from Her. For Him, saying Radha is the same as speaking with her and seeing her. She can also just say Krishna and then it will be the same to her as if she were seeing him, hearing him, and was with him.

Blaze, if you simply live in the Vedas then I can assure you will be a completely pure devotee and you will never succomb to Maya. It says in the Gita, "he who passes in light doesn't return." This was similar to something Plato wrote, I don't know if you've ever read it, it was the allegory of the cave, in the Republic book 7 I think - something like that. He says that a soul who has emerged from the chains of the forms, and has seen the sunlight, would not like to go back inside and look at the dark forms, trying to squint. And his allegory makes sense, as far as I can tell. What you say about the Vedas is usually true, but I would just say that in my understanding Neti means No material Form.

[blp]

Nikolai, are you familiar with the idealism of Bishop Berkeley? It strikes me as being very close in certain respects to the Vedic scriptures that interest you and to be relevant to this idea of a super soul in particular. The essence of his system is laid out in the Three Dialogues, an imaginary debate between two figures who stand for Berkeley himself (who, naturally, wins the argument) and John Locke. It's very short (you can get through it in an afternoon), very clear and easy to understand and a generally good read. http://www.bartleby.com/37/2/

[NikolaiI]

Thank you a lot for your post, blp. I'll try to read the debate, it sounds very interesting. An imaginary debate with a real person - I wonder what that would be like if done today.

Emerson also wrote an essay called "Oversoul" which I found inspiring but I haven't finished yet.

[El Viejo]

"... what is the existence and place of the Supersoul?"

Station KOW. Goldfield, Nevada.

[NikolaiI]

The Supersoul is part of the way to God. God exists as Bhagavan, the Personality of Godhead, Paramatma, the supersoul, and Brahman, the impersonal effulgence. Now Brahman is in the Supersoul, which is in Bhagavan. We are in Brahman. Everything material came from Brahman, and simultaneously also came from the Supersoul and Godhead. The supersoul is with us because the supersoul is our active connection to God. Each of us exists as a soul, as some part of God. All souls are equal, infinitesimal parts and parcels of God. We are infinitesimal, but we are part of God, so God outweights the infinitesimal. We are simply souls and parts of God. And everything else we experience, our material body, life, sensations, emotions, thoughts, actions and reactions; all the rest of it is simply some participation of the divine scheme, which is ranging over all creation. So who are we and what are connected to? We are souls and we are connected to God. Everything we experience in pleasure from TV, video games, pornography, or even drugs; all of this can happen naturally simply through our relationship with God.

[subterranean]

For me, what really counts is when a 'common' soul do things, which are beyond what people could imagine. I mean, I wouldn't be amazed with the idea of superman lifting a giant machine hundred times heavier than his own weight. Afterall, he is the superman.

[NikolaiI]

Hm... what I meant really wasn't a super-man, so much.. here's a paragraph I think is very good, from Emerson's essay Over-soul. I read this several times and several parts of it more than once, I think it is a great description of the Oversoul or Supersoul, and I'd be interested to hear anyone's opinion. Such descriptions such as the universal beauty, the eternal ONE, these are statements which I agree with. In my understanding we are in that soul, and that Over-soul is also in our soul, etc. Please tell me what you think of Emerson's paragraph (an excerpt from his essay).

The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. Every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.

(http://www.emersoncentral.com/oversoul.htm)


This sentence especially rings true with me: "Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."

What do you think?

[NikolaiI]

The "Third Principle," of which he speaks, in this video, describes something very similar to the Vedic idea of Paramatma, or Over-Soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHqLrW4TOfA

[Judas130]

A notion of a super-soul is, empirically proven. The Supersoul, in your terms, is ''in every living entity, and all individual souls are eternally part and parcel of the Supreme.'' Atoms are the connecting factor for all that exists and has, and ever shall, it is the building blocks of life and the material. Atoms allow existence, atoms are the root of the natural order, and atoms in their abundance is the network of what we all share - existence. So I would understand the Supersoul as the natural order of things. God, in orthodox Christianity, can very much be seen as the natural order of things, and this idea is compatible with much science, and acts as a bridge between the spiritual and the physical.

peace.