Can A Soul Be Captured?
Soul: the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
Buddhism does not accept the word ‘soul’ because of the second interpretation: a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.
Confusing, isn’t it? Two opposite meanings. One interpretation is a continuity, and the other is not. Confusion is being captured by ambiguities – open to more than one interpretation; inexactness. It is a contradiction of uncertainties.
A soul is immaterial spirit, ie. the essence of consciousness – the life spark – the light of clarity.
But consciousness can be led to believe anything, and so it can be captured.
How can consciousness be captured?
By consent. We allow it because we allow our imagination to be captured, in the same way as when watching a film, computer, TV; we become hooked in the moment. This capturing of our attention has to be continuous as any gaps would allow space and light in, and we would awaken.
These distractions are ‘soul destroying’. They are confusing consciousness’s clear function. Of course, consciousness itself cannot be destroyed, but it can be continuously distracted. The evidence is all around us; people only talk about material things.
We are enslaved by believing what we are told, over and over again. We are addicted to ‘news’ noise’, while hoping for some new noise. The word ‘news‘ means information about recent events, in the sense of being a novelty, but there’s nothing new under the sun – it’s all just rearranged. We are captured by our senses and our imagination.
Capturing souls is easy; we capture and enslave ourselves. The evidence is all around us. As easy as it is to plug in, we can also pull the plug out! Meditation is pulling the plug. We are no longer seized by the noise of this vicious cycle of existence.
I wrote this because of discussions I had with those who believe that a soul can be captured by ‘other forces’.