Things Written Randomly in Doubt by Allan Cameron

Author:Allan Cameron [Cameron, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908251374
Publisher: Vagabond Voices
Published: 2014-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

On the Soul

The soul is out of fashion, except amongst fanatical believers who have, no doubt, a different idea of what it is. For them it is a rigid, unchanging thing, and for some of them a thing ordained and controlled by a God who marks our behaviour in schoolmasterly fashion and has his favourites – his elect. But “soul” is an essential word and like many of the really important words, it defies definition. Significant words say significant things or, to put it more clearly, they assume premises on which most people have already made a judgement. If you reject the word, you reject the premise. The premise that the word “soul” shouts out so loudly that it offends materialists and utilitarians is “Man does not live by bread alone.” It is a word hated by both worshippers of the market and humanists. The latter, for whom I have a certain sympathy, are worshippers of humanity alone, and I wonder if it’s good for anything to worship itself.

“Ah but,” I hear some people say or sneer, “if the soul exists, where is it to be found? In your head, your heart or your big toe?” Consciousness must exist for everyone, and yet it has no place. We sense that it’s behind the eyes which are the windows through which we view the world.

The soul also has no place. It is where we transcend the self, and by doing so become more alive. It is a rash person who opines too much on the nature of the soul, but I suffer from rashness, which hopefully is moderated by doubts. Or shall we say, everything in the following paragraphs is a metaphor for an imprudent hypothesis. We all have a soul, but if we don’t nurture it, it shrinks to the size of a pea. If it is nurtured, however, it grows and grows and grows. I don’t know exactly what that feels like, because mine is only the size of two and a half peas, and wanders mournfully around the area of my belly. It is not easy to nurture the soul in this society, and few of us are going to follow the path of Saint Francis and start talking to the animals.

What evidence do I have for these ramblings? The evidence of more than sixty years on this planet and in that time I have frequented many more milieus than most people have. I have met sadists and friendly drunks, intellectuals and saints, the perennially enraged and the unshakably calm, the sad and the content, the selfish and the generous. Certainly, but aren’t all these behaviours the product of DNA, diet, education, culture, society and the list goes on? Of course, but wouldn’t all these people behave slightly differently – better perhaps – if they admitted another dimension to their being, if they engaged in some kind of moral exercise beyond all that jogging on the way to eternal youth, and sudoku, crossword puzzles and all that cerebral

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