The Soul is not a well-defined thing. We shouldn't just believe we have a soul; if it is true, we must be able to affirm it by our own understandings. As it turns out, there is a clue that we don't have a soul, but the soul has us. In other words, there is only one soul, and we all share it.
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The first clue is that the word Adam is written as Aleph-Dallet-Mem Sophiyt in Hebrew (or ADm in shorthand, showing the small letter for an ending letter Mem).
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Aleph as the first principle, the source, the "soul" is attached to the word dam (Dm), which means blood. The Hebrew name Adam becomes the idea that Aleph needs "blood" to become alive, or that man becomes alive through the Aleph in his blood. Carlo Suares says that only when the Aleph is resurrected in us, do we live. And Aleph is not just the principle of life, but of life-death, life-death-life-death, a continuous-discontinuous pulsation.
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More than once, the Biblical account stresses the importance of blood. We have the following instances where it is stressed that the life is in the blood (and it is prohibited to eat it for that reason):
> Gen 9:4 - But flesh with its life, which is its blood, you shall not eat
> Lev 17:11, 14 - the life of every creature is in its blood.
> Deu 12:23 - Be sure not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life (nefesh) and you shall not eat the life (still) within the flesh.
Let's see what we can learn from these:
> Now in Gen 9:4, the word nefesh is used for "life", but in other places this word is also translated as "soul". In Hebrew, it does not say "with its life", but litterally it says: "but flesh in its soul, (which is) its blood" or alternatively, "flesh which is (still) within its soul, its blood you shall not eat".
> In Lev 17:11,14, we are told that the nefesh, the soul, is in the blood.
> In Deu 12:23, we learn that it is the blood itself which is (the soul's) life.
--
In the New Testament, we find similar references to the blood and life in the blood. They become so personalized that one needs to pay close attention; something of great value is communicated, but our understanding is lacking. The principle is of great importance to us, to know what is going on. We read that Jesus says:
Jhn 6:53,54 - Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man (i.e., Ben Adam), and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, he has eternal life, and I will raise him up the last day.
So these words seem to defy the two things that we learned from the Old Testament. First of all it defies the decree that one should not eat the blood of a creature (let alone a man), but Jesus is commanding to drink his blood. This then can only come through his death (and the death of a man is required at the hand of a man) The second thing is that Jesus's words defy that death is the end of things, but rather they stress that in Jesus's blood, there is not just life (as in the Old Testament passages above), but that this life is eternal.
--
Our minds can not comprehend this statement without knowledge of the Hebrew Alphabet. This causes us to generate religion after religion about what we believe.
However, the Aleph is an unchangeable (eternal) principle; the soul, the self, the spirit, they are all synonyms for this principle, which does not let itself trap within a word, yet within a self-expressing symbol as Aleph is. Its companions, the other letters, are the "angels", the messengers through which Aleph becomes known.
And when we see that the Hebrew names and words (such as "Adam") describe processes alive within us, we see at the same time that we participate in that life. The myth is trying to tell us that the Aleph (as a life giving principle) can become alive within us, as it supposedly did in Jesus, so that we also become a "Son of Adam", which means nothing more than that the process "Adam" has become reality within us, and thus that the Aleph is resurrected. We will thus take part in Aleph, in the soul.
--
A paradox of the Christian myth is that through the denial of the decrees in the Old Testament (of which the prophecies needed to be fulfilled), this life can be obtained. It is clear why Jesus is seen as a subversive element to the Jewish religion. Nevertheless, this paradox is part of the nature of Aleph. It is equally clear that through the principles of the Jewish faith, the Aleph can not come to life within a person, UNLESS those decrees are denied. (It is said that salvation comes through the Jews) This is what Jesus represents. It gives a clue to what the "great oppression" is that the Jewish and Christian religions both represent. They stage people from all over the world to move the story of life into the future, yet themselves not partaking in the life it harbors, by taking the myth too literally.
The "new" decree that Jesus gives, to "remember" him by "eating his body" and "drinking his blood", is not original either. See for instance Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough (Free Kindle edition with reader on Amazon, or a not free edition covering references to the Christian religion), describing pagan rituals not much different from the Christian rituals (e.g., chapter "Eating the God"). Taken too literal, the Jesus myth may spawn a religion as pagan as any other.
--
As tempting as it is to dismiss the Christian religion as false, based on these considerations, we nevertheless can not deny the continuation of the Jewish myth, which is instilled in the Hebrew Letters. And if only for this commonality, both myths give us a better understanding of who we are as a human being, if we ever can overcome our superstitions. This is the sacrifice we have to perform: to die to our (religious) beliefs and to discover what is alive within us, for that which lives within us can not be killed. Beyond the death of our bodies, our life is eternally influencing all other events as we are participating in them and those events participate within us.
--
The first clue is that the word Adam is written as Aleph-Dallet-Mem Sophiyt in Hebrew (or ADm in shorthand, showing the small letter for an ending letter Mem).
--
Aleph as the first principle, the source, the "soul" is attached to the word dam (Dm), which means blood. The Hebrew name Adam becomes the idea that Aleph needs "blood" to become alive, or that man becomes alive through the Aleph in his blood. Carlo Suares says that only when the Aleph is resurrected in us, do we live. And Aleph is not just the principle of life, but of life-death, life-death-life-death, a continuous-discontinuous pulsation.
--
More than once, the Biblical account stresses the importance of blood. We have the following instances where it is stressed that the life is in the blood (and it is prohibited to eat it for that reason):
> Gen 9:4 - But flesh with its life, which is its blood, you shall not eat
> Lev 17:11, 14 - the life of every creature is in its blood.
> Deu 12:23 - Be sure not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life (nefesh) and you shall not eat the life (still) within the flesh.
Let's see what we can learn from these:
> Now in Gen 9:4, the word nefesh is used for "life", but in other places this word is also translated as "soul". In Hebrew, it does not say "with its life", but litterally it says: "but flesh in its soul, (which is) its blood" or alternatively, "flesh which is (still) within its soul, its blood you shall not eat".
> In Lev 17:11,14, we are told that the nefesh, the soul, is in the blood.
> In Deu 12:23, we learn that it is the blood itself which is (the soul's) life.
--
In the New Testament, we find similar references to the blood and life in the blood. They become so personalized that one needs to pay close attention; something of great value is communicated, but our understanding is lacking. The principle is of great importance to us, to know what is going on. We read that Jesus says:
Jhn 6:53,54 - Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man (i.e., Ben Adam), and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, he has eternal life, and I will raise him up the last day.
So these words seem to defy the two things that we learned from the Old Testament. First of all it defies the decree that one should not eat the blood of a creature (let alone a man), but Jesus is commanding to drink his blood. This then can only come through his death (and the death of a man is required at the hand of a man) The second thing is that Jesus's words defy that death is the end of things, but rather they stress that in Jesus's blood, there is not just life (as in the Old Testament passages above), but that this life is eternal.
--
Our minds can not comprehend this statement without knowledge of the Hebrew Alphabet. This causes us to generate religion after religion about what we believe.
However, the Aleph is an unchangeable (eternal) principle; the soul, the self, the spirit, they are all synonyms for this principle, which does not let itself trap within a word, yet within a self-expressing symbol as Aleph is. Its companions, the other letters, are the "angels", the messengers through which Aleph becomes known.
And when we see that the Hebrew names and words (such as "Adam") describe processes alive within us, we see at the same time that we participate in that life. The myth is trying to tell us that the Aleph (as a life giving principle) can become alive within us, as it supposedly did in Jesus, so that we also become a "Son of Adam", which means nothing more than that the process "Adam" has become reality within us, and thus that the Aleph is resurrected. We will thus take part in Aleph, in the soul.
--
A paradox of the Christian myth is that through the denial of the decrees in the Old Testament (of which the prophecies needed to be fulfilled), this life can be obtained. It is clear why Jesus is seen as a subversive element to the Jewish religion. Nevertheless, this paradox is part of the nature of Aleph. It is equally clear that through the principles of the Jewish faith, the Aleph can not come to life within a person, UNLESS those decrees are denied. (It is said that salvation comes through the Jews) This is what Jesus represents. It gives a clue to what the "great oppression" is that the Jewish and Christian religions both represent. They stage people from all over the world to move the story of life into the future, yet themselves not partaking in the life it harbors, by taking the myth too literally.
The "new" decree that Jesus gives, to "remember" him by "eating his body" and "drinking his blood", is not original either. See for instance Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough (Free Kindle edition with reader on Amazon, or a not free edition covering references to the Christian religion), describing pagan rituals not much different from the Christian rituals (e.g., chapter "Eating the God"). Taken too literal, the Jesus myth may spawn a religion as pagan as any other.
--
As tempting as it is to dismiss the Christian religion as false, based on these considerations, we nevertheless can not deny the continuation of the Jewish myth, which is instilled in the Hebrew Letters. And if only for this commonality, both myths give us a better understanding of who we are as a human being, if we ever can overcome our superstitions. This is the sacrifice we have to perform: to die to our (religious) beliefs and to discover what is alive within us, for that which lives within us can not be killed. Beyond the death of our bodies, our life is eternally influencing all other events as we are participating in them and those events participate within us.