Round 7 (Prelim.) Humans Have a Binary Soul

I am delighted to see so much buzz happening here. Hopefully something will get cooked,including me.

First of all, let me clear up the assumption that I am trying to pigeon hole all buddhists into little boxes.

There are as many different schools of Buddhism, if not more, as there are in Taoism. So I am not concerned about what school anyone belongs to – only about the underlying issue of soul completion involving both the yin “soul” and the yang “spirit” to use Peter Novak’s terms.

If some school cultivates both of those, i support it. The first book published on Taoist neidan in English – Taoist Yoga: alchemy & Immortality by Charles Luk – was by a buddhist. We know the practices are deeply entwined in China. But our purpose here is to unravel the underpinnings and get to some clarity about possible differences between enlightenment and immortality.

Fors starters, let’s stop pretending that all religions and paths are the same. No need to act miffed about your particular subsect or teacher in order to distract from the point being made. When I make a point about classical buddhism of the Pali original type adhered to by Max (vs. its tantric evolution in Tibet, or its subsequent variations) (for example) – they have particular beliefs which are printed in books for anyone to read. and they DO NOT ATTRIBUTE SOUL STATUS TO EMBODIMENT EQUAL TO EXISTENCE IN A BODHISATTA REALM.

You can site numerous exceptions, and waffle all your want, but it is a valid generalization in my opinion, i.e. valid for purposes of this discussion.

I don’t care what path anyone follows, including Taoist. I am just trying to get to underlying issues, and point how how the soul issue as it relates to the body has been blurred by ALL the major religions today, i.e. MOST Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians. And I think Peter Novak has done a service in pointing how how manyof them originally did use a binary soul concept that got lost.

But most Buddhists clearly do NOT have a binary soul concept. If I am mistaken, please educate me. Doing a practice that also deals with the body does not mean you are working with a binary soul concept OR the third immortal soul beyond it. You could be doing a body centered practice for other reasons.

My comments about Buddhists attributing reincarnation as a cause of suffering are not misleading. But I should have added the word “ongoing” cause of suffering – i.e. humans keep coming back and re-experiencing mental attachment as the immediate cause of suffering. But clearly there is an implication that there is some “attachment” that continues after death that is causing the next round of reincarnation and suffering.

Otherwise we would just die once, and the attachment would be ended forever. Peter Novak is saying that the Spirit can be perfectly Unattached and have no desire to reincarnate – but that the other half of its former self, the yin half of the soul, from which it is after death totally unaware – is still holding those memories and attachments and is suffering and stuck. And that some mechanism in the Cosmos (he lacks a theory of the life force) propels a resolution and re-incarnation of new binary soul.

But my whole point here – and Peter Novak’s – is that what the Buddhists are calling “mind” here, and what is generally discussed as ego here, is not sufficient to describe what is meant by the binary soul, both halves of which survive after death.

Mental activities that are described by psychologists as “egoic” are really a byproduct of the conflict that is happening between the two halves of the soul. The actual thoughts or feelings of attachment, the desires themselves – are not the problem in this model. The core problem is the lack of integration between the two halves of the soul. And that cannot really be solved at the level of ego/mind.

In the taoist alchemical model, the activity of the five shen are an extrapolation and expression of the these two primary bi-souls, which are identified in Kan and li practices as primal water and fire. You can re-arrange the activity of the five shen to be more harmonious and functional in the world (goal of psychological counseling), but that doesn’t mean they have integrated at the soul level. But a certain level of ego intregration is a prerequisite to realizing the deeper level of the binary soul as the source of left-righit brain ego activities.

It’s why, in my opinion (since I accept the binary soul reality), that merely releasing one’s mental attachments or simply “shifting the angle of perception of the mind” does NOT equal the marriage of the two halves of the binary soul into a third consciousness. Those releasing attachment practices may produce wonderful results, but I am simply saying they are not the same process.

And if one feels that those other practices lead to spontaneous union of the two halves of the binary soul, then I say it good to make that process conscious and use language that will encourage people to cultivate that binary soul marriage. There’s no need to pretend that it can’t be spoken of, because clearly it can and has been explored for thousands of years.

Cosmologically speaking, the binary souls of human is simply a stepped down expression of the union of Humanity’s parents, Heaven and Earth. So it’s perfectly natural that half our human soul would reflect an earthly nature, and half would reflect a heavenly nature.

If the binary soul halves marry and have an inner child/sage, that sage child can live eternally carrying the consciousness of both heaven and earth. If the two halves don’t marry, the soul experiment is over and the two halves get recycled back to the pool of earthly or heavenly consciousness.

It makes perfect intuitive sense to me, and feels harmonious and balanced.

michael