Is the soul just the egoic self in disguise?

by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering
Paperback

You can say a lot of things to so-called spiritual people, but they often draw the line at two ideas: First is that there is no free will, and second is that there is no soul. Both ideas seem to attack the egoic mind like nothing else. And the egoic mind seeks to be all-important, so if you take away free will and say there is no soul, then you basically are telling it that it’s only an ephemeral and groundless reality. That’s about the size of it, because the egoic mind, the egoic self, the sense of “I,” or “me,” is just a belief comprised of ideas, thoughts, memories, attachments, and identities. It’s an accretion of such temporal stuff.

To say that the soul is connected to the idea of the egoic self may take a bit of explaining, because this are not so simply understood with the limited mind. As with all such discussions, unless you undergo persistent and sincere self-enquiry — observation of yourself, your thoughts, and so on — then all you are left with are other people’s opinions. So my first caveat is, let my words (as well as your favorite guru’s or teacher’s words) be a guide for you to find out on your own.

The dividing line between ego and soul is not clear. This is because the egoic self wants to believe that it is greater than it is and that it lives on after physical death. It fears death and change, and it fears not having control over its world.

It’s all about attention
The egoic self is a focus of consciousness that disallows itself from knowing itself. This focus is one of identification — consciousness places its attention upon the body, mind, memories, ideas, fears, experiences, and more, so that the sense of self becomes an encrustation blinding one from the reality that there is only a singular movement of consciousness and nothing else, without division.

When you divide consciousness into pieces then you create you and me, life and death, stopping and starting, darkness and light, hard and soft, heaven and earth, and so on. But if you were to look closely enough, would you actually find a dividing line between such things, or are their separations just an illusion? Have you ever tried to look closely enough?

Who has a soul? Do you have one?
We often hear the words, “I have a soul,” or “My soul…” If we take a close and careful look at this phraseology, we can see a fundamental problem. The idea is presented that there is a self that possesses a soul. There is an “I” who claims it “has” a “soul.” Can this be true? The only way of knowing for yourself is by intense observation of who, or what, you are NOT. You can never truly know who you are, because, devoid of all the identities and attachments, it becomes obvious that there is nothing there to call “me.” And certainly, there is no “me” to possess a soul. Further, consciousness does not possess anything, because it is a singular movement. It would be like saying that space possesses pieces of space.

The soul is an idea of the self
The soul, then, is an idea. Because it is spoken of as a thing, it cannot be anything but an illusion like the egoic self. This is because nothing exists outside of consciousness, and consciousness is indivisible, unbounded, and total. Soul, then, is an invention of the egoic self, for as long as there is the perception of an individual (an individual soul) then there is an illusion that consciousness is fragmented into people, animals, souls, nature, objects, experiences, and so on. The truth is that all such things are only apparent expressions out of consciousness that are beheld by the mind in order to think and act in a world of its own creation.

The egoic self invented the soul to ensure its perpetuation beyond physical death. It seeks to retain its illusion of importance, specialness, immortality, and individuality.