To: LEARNING--INTERNET learning-org@world
*** Reply to note of 05/10/95 16:40 by Doug Seeley
By the way..doesn't SEELE in German mean Soul?...the same word Freud used
and was translated as PSYCHE? To be named is to be known, perhaps.
>From PLato/PLotinus to Thomas More (latter-day Jungian psychotherapist)
the word Soul has a long history and a wide range of meanings,
associations and elaborations. While we can be cognizant of these meanings
I feel I must do my own inquiry, guided by the past and my own intuitions,
to discover what soul (mine, first of all) is, and could mean,
subjectively, intersubjectively, and culturally/objectively.
Within my own working group ( a small community) investigating these ideas
we take Soul to be the experiencing medium. It is what is "impressed" by
experience. So when events happen or occasions occur,(putting aside for
now the issue of intent, or the locus of generation,) they happen "to" and
"within" the soul-medium and an impression (a kind of crinkle) is made;
this impression takes a form, persists for a time (maybe a long time). It
is these crinkles, which our attention and awareness become attached or
identified,that we take to be "I" (ie the whole of me, rather than just a
temporary "formation" in the dynamic flowing medium of the entire ocean of
soul). Question: Where does one soul end and another begin? Are boundaries
"real"?
In the history of this word/notion OUR definition is rather narrow, but I
believe it is fundamental. The other qualities associated with soul we
attribute to aspects and dimensions of Essence or Spirit ( more
technically, the ontological structures of Being and the being). Whew. I
hope you isn't toofar a field. I hope to indicate that soul practice and
inquiry is related to personal mastery and the other disciplines. Soul
practice/inquiry can be approached with the technical precision of a
scientific inquiry, though the praxis and exemplars of the practice may
differ from traditional science. At least IMHO.
Regards,
Tim J. Sullivan
Ministry of Health