How to Find Your Soul
 

Eugene B. Shea

The Human Genome Project has shown human DNA to be 99+% identical to the DNA of the chimpanzee, and most of the remaining difference is related to hair, skin, bones, blood, muscle, etc. hardly significant differences.

Now if our DNA is to all intents and purposes identical to that of the chimpanzee, how come we’re so different?

 

Leading scientists of a half-dozen disciplines seem to be unanimous in their conviction that although our brains may be physiologically the same, we humans have a much larger cortex, and have concluded that herein must lie the explanation of all our differences.

 

(Bigger is better?  But see just one of what they admit to being their major problems with this theory: the “binding problem.”)

 

So let’s take another tack, and assume instead that since we are virtually physiologically and biologically identical to the chimpanzee, we humans must be endowed with a unique element not found in the chimpanzee, a non-physiological, non-biological component.

 

It is a component about which many writers have speculated, e.g.,   Horney’s “real self,” Assagioli’s “higher self.” Freud’s “I,” Jung’s “self” or “God within us.” Buber’s “I” and “Thou,” Becker's “proud, rich, lively, infinitely transcendent, free, inner spirit,”  Deikman’s nebulous “Observing Self,” Damasio’s nebulous “proto self,” Dossey's undefined soul, the unidentified creator of LeDoux’s “synaptic self,” and which thousands of mystics, saints and sages have claimed is the spiritual Soul.

 

But do we have a Soul—or as we shall suggest in this article—that what we call “I” is a Soul?  If it is spirit, non-physiological, non-biological, we can’t see it, touch it, etc.  So, how do we know we have a Soul?

 

Well, imagine a healthy hungry chimpanzee in a quiet room with a plate of food.  Will he not always devour it?  But we have the power to say, “I am hungry, but I am not going to eat, because I am fasting, on a diet, or looking forward to a big dinner.”  So we have a Faculty the chimp does not seem to have, the faculty of refusing to gratify one of our Social Animal Needs.  As William Law said,

 

“What could begin to deny self, if there were not

something in man different from self?”

 

Or as Descartes might have put it,

 

“I” fast, therefore “I” am.

 

Can anyone argue with that?  There must be some “element” peculiar to the human, not found in the chimpanzee, nor in any other animal, and since it is not in our DNA, it must be “spirit.”

 

So if I say I am hungry but I have decided not to eat, then I’ve brought two “I”’s into conflict—one who is hungry and one who decides to forego the meal.  Shouldn’t I say, “My stomach is signaling hunger pangs, but “I” am not going to eat”?

 

When we say “I,” we usually refer to our whole being, I, John Jones, Mary Smith, student, woman, salesperson, etc., etc.   For purposes of clarification, explained later, I'm going to suggest that we use the capital letter I as meaning the whole person, and that “I” refers to the Soul.  “I” am a Soul.   I am a person.

 

Now we know that we have both needs and faculties not shared with the chimpanzee.  We need things they don't show any signs of needing, and we certainly have faculties far exceeding theirs.  And if the Soul is the only difference between us, then the Soul must account for all our differences, all our Needs and Faculties not found in the chimpanzee.

 

What are they, those Needs and Faculties not shared with the chimpanzee?

 

Let's look first at the needs which, because of our similar DNA, we do share with the chimpanzee, the Social Animal Needs, or SA-Needs.

 

 

The Social-Animal Needs

The question mark after Dominance indicates the fact that dominance does not seem to be inherent in some human societies and animal species, e.g., the langur monkey, providing some evidence that the Need for Dominance either is not inherent in our natures, or that it can be readily attenuated through social learning.

 

And of course, chimpanzees do display some instinctive or evolutionary Needs, e,g., territorial needs, grooming, etc.

These are the Needs we share with all social animals.  And everything the chimpanzee does can be traced to having been done in response to one or more of these Needs, or to its social or operant  conditioning.  The animal is autonomically committed to responding to each of these needs as each of them prevails in his life.  If a chimpanzee is hungry, he looks for food, and when he finds it, eats it; if he's tired, he sleeps, etc. etc.

 

Now the question is, do we humans exhibit innate Needs not found in the chimpanzee?

 

Let's ask a few questions of ourselves, questions you might add to and improve upon:

 

Question Number One: Isn’t the most important “need” for humans the need to stay alive, to continue to exist?  Which of us faced with death would not sacrifice everything we own and most of what we hold dear to live? 

 

In his Pulitzer Prize book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker has presented compelling evidence that the universal human repression is a “denial of death.” The idea of death—of an end to our existence—is anathema to most of us, and so we repress our thoughts of it.  Franz Kafka said,

 

“Man cannot live without a continuous confidence

in something indestructible within himself.”

 

Do you think the chimpanzee lives with this need?  Animals have always been credited with an “instinct for survival,” but couldn’t that just be evidence of a desire to avoid pain?  Do you think they live in a fear or “denial” of their deaths?

 

If not, then we’ve discovered a Need the Soul adds to our being, the

Soul-Need to Exist.

 

Question Number Two: Have you ever had a question nagging at you, a question you felt was important to answer, and couldn’t stop thinking about it?  Suppose you awoke one morning and found a basket of nice fresh fruit on your doorstep and had no idea how it got there.  Might you not wonder for a couple of days who might have put the fruit there?  Of course the chimpanzee has a natural animal curiosity, and he might look in the same place the next day or two to see if the gift was repeated, but do you think he might worry about who put it there?  Or would he just enjoy the fruit and get on with attending to his other Needs?

 

If you agree, then we’ve discovered another Need of the Soul, the Need to Know, anything and everything we can Believe.  Aristotle said,

“All men by nature desire to know.”

 

The “Ah-ha! I understand!” is one of our most pleasant experiences: “education is ecstasy.”  People have spent millions of hours, billions of dollars, even risked their lives in trying to Know things unrelated to the SA-Needs.  And of course we come to eagerly accept facts or beliefs in thousands of things we’ve been told or have inferred, which the chimpanzee could never come to know.

 

But our greatest Need to Know—the most persistent, most important Need to Know is, “Who am I?”  “Why am I here?  What is the meaning of my life?”  Do you think the chimpanzee shares this Need?  Outside of normal animal curiosity, does the chimpanzee show any signs of willingness to ignore its SA-Needs simply to know something?

 

This then is a second need of the Soul, the Soul-Need to Know, to acquire unshakable Beliefs.  Thomas Goudge gives us an explanation of Soul-Knowing in his introduction to Bergson’s Introduction to Metaphysics.¹

 

Question Number Three: Have you ever fallen head over heels in a purely platonic love, almost worship, for someone—a friend, a cousin, an aunt or uncle, a teacher, or even a famous person you don't even hope to meet, someone in whose presence, in person or on TV or a show, you just lost yourself, just basked in their presence, enraptured; someone you felt you could love with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, or as they say today, “someone to die for?”

 

Think back. How did you feel at those moments?  Wasn't it wonderful?  Didn’t you “lose yourself” and all your concern for life’s meaning?

 

Do you see any signs of that in the chimpanzee?  Do we ever see a chimpanzee sit transfixed for five minutes, his eyes fixed on another animal it doesn’t think it might eat or be hurt by?  Or on anything not related to its SA-Needs?

 

If not, then we’ve discovered another Need of the Soul, the Need to Love.

 

But Soul-Love, though usually invoked with most occasions of SA-love, erotic Love, is very different.  Soul-Love is manifested by finding oneself in a state of anything from mild interest to worship, including curiosity, attraction, allurement, fascination, adoration, entrancement, enthrallment,  involvement, rapture, obsession, self-identification,  etc., in each of which, to some degree, we temporarily lose ourselves, all our self-concerns, and with it, the nagging question of life's meaning.  Abraham Maslow gives us a detailed analysis of Soul-Love, or what he calls B(for Being)-Love.²

 

(But of course most of us learn early in life to “put a cork in it;” that manifestations of wholehearted Soul-Love are most often spurned, exploited, misdirected or misunderstood.  Many mature people find it difficult to even recall such a feeling.)

 

So these seem to be the Needs which the Soul has added to our being: the Needs to Exist, to Know, and to Love wholeheartedly.

 

What about Faculties?  What Faculties does the Soul add to our beings?

 

Let's make some observations of ourselves—observations to which you might add better examples:

 

Observation Number One: Let's go back to not eating when we are hungry.  Doesn't this prove we have Free Will, the power to commit ourselves to things not associated with our SA-Needs?  To even restrain our SA-Needs?  Weren't we free to eat or not eat?

 

If you agree, then this is the primary faculty of the Soul, Free Will.

 

Here of course we lose all radical behaviorists―who have been defined as those who study people as though they were simply stimulus/ response organisms, then go home and spend five minutes trying to decide what they should have for dinner!

 

Well, adieu!  But later we'll see the neurological basis for their beliefs.

 

For those still with us:

 

 We have free will to decide what we will do, whereas the chimpanzee's “decisions” all seem to be autonomically made for him, and only in response to his Social Animal Needs or conditioned responses.  We can make an infinite number of decisions to do things not related to the SA-Needs, nor which we have been conditioned to do.

 

Free Will begs the question: Free to do what?  How does the Soul exercise Its Free Will?  What Faculties are available to the Soul?

 

Observation Number Two:  Can you imagine, see in your mind, a beautiful blue sky with fleecy white clouds?  Can you imagine it with a green sky?  Now create your own beautiful picture in your mind.

 

This is the power of Imagination; the power to fill our consciousness at will with pictures, memories, images of things we have seen, as well as things we have not seen.

 

Does s the chimpanzee show any signs of imagination?  Almost all philosophers agree that imagination is a uniquely human faculty. (Bergson gives the best explanation of how we differ from the animal in this respect in Creative Evolution, page 198.)³

 

So we have a Soul-Faculty of Imagination.

 

(And isn't it the Faculty of Imagination, the power to shift thoughts and pictures and memories in and out of our consciousness at will, which gives us our ability to think, to reason?)

 

Observation Number Three: Let’s suppose you see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post.  Don’t you immediately Know that someone  must have put it there?  Are you positive?

 

Now of course the chimpanzee “knows” things it has experienced, but do you think a chimpanzee would know that someone must have put the turtle there?
 

This is an example of both our Need to Know, and our Faculty of Imagination.  These give us the power to draw inferences―to derive unshakable beliefs based on things we have not witnessed and can't prove.  We can believe things the chimpanzee could never imagine.

 

And herein lies one of humanity's greatest problems―because of our avid Soul-Need to Know, we adopt thousands of beliefs as facts.  Later we'll see what the brain does with our beliefs and how profoundly they affect our lives.

So here we have a third faculty, the Soul-Faculty of Believing, of adopting unshakable Beliefs in things we don't know, haven't seen, and can't prove.

Observation Number Four:  Let’s go back again to not eating when we are hungry.  Didn’t I commit myself to abstaining from eating? Don’t I have the power to commit myself to an infinite number of things, purposes, or people?  Didn't I have the power to commit myself to eating or not eating?

 

Not only can I commit myself to foregoing a meal, I can commit myself to dozens of things not only outside the SA-Needs, but even contrary to them—to celibacy, to isolation, to wakefulness, etc.

 

How many other things can you devote yourself to―assign yourself to―which have nothing to do with your SA-Needs?  How many things have you already found yourself devoted to doing, or having, or seeing, or knowing, not related to the SA-Needs?

 

Many philosophers and mystics, saints, and sages agree that commitment of ourselves is the act of Soul-Love.  Soul-Loving―the verb―is not an emotion, it is a commitment of ourselves.  And the number of things to which humans can commit themselves is infinite, and includes commitment to even malicious or evil purposes.

 

If I commit myself to another's welfare that is an act of Soul-Love; but if I commit myself to seeing him disgraced, that is also an act of Soul-Love, but now I don't Love him, I Love the idea of his disgrace, failure, exposure―even of his death.

 

But commitments all have one thing in common―we lose ourselves in them.

 

Does the chimpanzee show any signs of commitment to a purpose not related to any SA-Need?  Don’t the chimpanzee’s
 “commitments” all seem to be made for it, based on its SA-Needs, instincts, and social learning; i.e., experiences which had positive or negative reinforcement?
 

If you agree, then we have a unique faculty, the Soul-Faculty of Love.   Hereafter we'll understand commitment to be the act of Soul-Love, to distinguish it from the Soul-Need to Love.

 

You may ask, what about mother love? Well, mother love has been attributed to hormones released in all Social Animal new mothers— hormones which it has been said would cause the wildest animal in the jungle to start “mothering” everything in sight, including a rock!

 

And the animal’s continuing mother love is a result of social conditioning, because females raised without mothers neglect their offspring when the hormones wear off.  And most animal mothers chase their offspring away or kick them out of the nest when they mature.  I think you’ll agree that isn’t our kind of Love.  If you don’t, just wait til you’re a grandparent!

 

So here we have three Needs and four Faculties of the Soul: Needs to Exist , to Love, and to Know; and Faculties of Free Will to Imagine, Believe, and Love—Needs and Faculties of which we can find no evidence in the chimpanzee.

These Faculties of the Soul constitute some of the most mysterious yet miraculous Faculties on the planet—Faculties which, together with the Soul’s Free Will, must account for all our seemingly infinite number of capabilities.
 

This is why we should make a distinction between I and “I”.  When I  say “I went to the store,” I mean I as a person went to the store.   But when I say I Believed, I Imagined, or I Loved―committed myself―that is the Soul speaking.

 

So now let's expand our diagram of Social Animal Needs to illustrate all of our human needs, both our Social Animal Needs and our Soul-

or “I”-Needs.

 

The caption reads:

Gatekeeper to consciousness, spark of 

the mind, the reticular formation

 connects with \major nerves in the

spinal column and brain. It sorts the

100 million impulses that assault

the brain each second, deflecting the

trivial, letting the vital through to

alert the mind.  The mind cannot

function without this catalytic bundle

of cells. Damage to them results in

coma--the loss of consciousness.

(emphasis added)

 

So all of our sensory stimuli, sights, sounds, words, etc., go first to the Reticular Formation and it decides which inputs are vital and which are trivial!  But "vital" and "trivial" are subjective terms, different for each person.  How does the RF know what is vital or trivial to you or me?

 

There seems to be no serious literature which even addresses this question, nor regarding any serious research being conducted on the  Reticular Formation.  Practically all research seems to be fixated on the cortex.

So let’s see if we can suggest a plausible theory which might explain how the RF could recognize and flag sensory stimuli which is vital or trivial to every individual.

 

First let's look at the well-known “cocktail party effect,” the instantaneous, involuntary shift of our attention to the sound of a loved one's name, even in a babble of sounds.  Or consider the mother who instantly comes awake on the faintest cry of her baby, while having slept soundly though the noise of an airplane passing over.  Both are reactions unique to the individual.

 

These “vital” sensory signals cannot have been forwarded to the cortex, the so-called “higher” faculties of the brain for evaluation and resolution, as virtually all scientists believe.  The cortex was also asleep when the baby cried, and it is known that it is the stimulated RF which awakened it.  Nor did the sensory signal of a loved one's name have time to be forwarded to the cortex “for processing” before the instantaneous, involuntary shift of our attention.

 

In both cases the RAS must have evaluated the sensory signals as “vital,” and initiated and executed the response, independently of the cortex.  These responses must have been initiated in the thalamus, the brain's "Command and Control Center," from which all human actions and reactions are generated.  See HowOurBrainsWork.com.

 

We have for example experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet at the University of California, experiments which showed that in the brains of subjects who had been instructed to move a hand at random intervals, before the movement, a pre-conscious readiness potential always appeared in their brais a half-second before the move; but that  the impulse to move came to the subjects' awareness three-tenths of a second later, in time for them to negate the move!

 

Isn't this a perfect example of a  RAS-generated preconscious Response Impulse monitored by the "I"?  Don't we all know “I” can on occasion Willfully negate a Response Impulse?  (Most of Libet's behaviorist colleagues don't.  He wouldn't publish his work until he was tenured.)

 

But how the RF “knows” what is vital or trivial to each individual, or how it selects and initiates “appropriate” Response Impulses, which if strong enough and unopposed by the “I”, are enacted, no one seems to know.

 

So we can only introduce a theory—a new theory, but one in which at least a dozen nationally- and internationally renowned scholars have found merit.

 

The theory is based on the findings of Dr. Gary Lynch of the University of California at Irvine, who proved that “learning involves a physical change in the circuitry of the brain,” changes which can occur in as little as ten minutes.  This should not surprise us, since every one of our millions of memories and “learnings” must have somehow modified our brains.

 

But if a new fact can change the circuitry of our brains, consider the possibility that when the Soul adopts a Love or significant Belief, it must somehow modify the circuitry of the Reticular Formation.

 

Our Loves and significant Beliefs are not facts or memories—they are not the data of the brain.  Along with our Social Animal Needs, they represent some of the most important principles or programs which determine how all the incoming data is handled and processed, and therefore must have modified the Reticular Formation, the centralized, indefatigable, quintessential Sentinel of the brain.

 

And it would then be this physiological modification, this hard-wiring of the Reticular Formation, which gives every one of our hundreds of significant conscious and subconscious Loves and Beliefs a life and a will of its own.

 

If this is correct, that our Loves and significant Beliefs do become wired in our Reticular Formations, then new “needs” are added to the RAS programs.  If “I” Love good food, then “I” need a well-stocked larder.  If “I” come to Love power over others, then “I” need to find people “I” can dominate.  If “I” am in “denial of death,” my subconscious knows my suppressed fear, and will still manifest a need to do everything possible to protect my life,  And etc., etc.
 

So depending on what “I” Love or Believe, “I” am adding Needs to my Reticular Formation additional to the SA-Needs already resident, and therefore to autonomic Response Impulses the RF deems appropriate to those Needs, switching my attention to the sound of a Loved one’s name, waking the Loving mother, etc.  And it is the RAS―programmed with my commitment to go to the store―which draws on neuronal motor memory sequences in the cortex and ran them sequentially through my prefrontal cortex RAM to the “action gate” to the premotor cortex, that takes me to the store, while I was free to think of other things!  (See HowOurBrainsWork.com)

Given a clear-cut purpose, either an operant SA-Need, a Need based on a Love or Belief, or a purpose of the “I”, the RAS manages the brain and body to fulfill it; and if it doesn’t have the “tools,” seeks them!  How often has a name you were trying to remember just popped into your head an hour or two later?  Or a solution to a problem you were concerned about just “presented itself?“  And wasn't I smart to think of that!

But that’s not all.  If our theory is correct, not only is all incoming data processed by the RAS, so is our outgoing data, all of our acts of Will, the images we create in willing an action.  As noted earlier, each of our images of intent is run through the RAS to determine its feasibility, where many of our best intentions are watered down into wishes―what psychologists call displaced.

 

Now it is known that the we start to acquire Beliefs certainly at birth, and according to some while we were still in the womb.  It's vitally important to all social animals that they learn as rapidly as possible from their experiences.  In the case of the child, it has been estimated that trillions of synapses are formed in the first few months of life.

 

So, particularly in infancy through adolescence, in our “I”-Need to Know we tend to adopt almost any beliefs which are not in conflict with other beliefs or facts we are holding.  Starting with a brain which is largely tabula rasa, we eagerly accept "facts” in the thousands, things we hear, read, or infer from our experiences—some of which are based on gross generalizations, false inferences, false premises, false syllogisms, downright falsehoods, or the acts and thoughts of flawed role models—any “facts” which don’t conflict with those already resident in our brains.

 

Current estimates are that each mature person has adopted as many as hundreds of thousands of Beliefs, many of them unarticulated, subconscious Beliefs which we would never consciously adopt as adults.  For example we see a significant-other doing something and we assume, believe that's the thing to do.  It's monkey see, monkey do.  It just slips into our brains subconsciously, and becomes part of the subconscious ground of our world.  

 

These are the childhood “tapes” in our brains which psychologists are talking about, tapes which keep playing and replaying in our heads all our lives, generating autonomic RAS Response Impulses to any circumstance relevant to our conscious and subconscious Loves and haphazardly adopted Beliefs.

 

And, it is the RAS then, which generates all of our emotions, all of which are involuntary—most based not only on our Social Animal Needs, but also on our hundreds of significant Self-adopted Loves and Beliefs.

 

The Soul, “I”, which except for overpowering SA-Needs, is the Governor of our lives, has naively delegated most of Its power to the RAS.  Because each of our Loves and Beliefs has modified the RF, they become “Deputy-Governors,” which act as eyes and ears and messengers and officers of the Governor, Deputy-Governors which, like real Deputy-Governors, exercise an enormous influence over what “I” see and hear (and what “I” don’t fully see and hear), in what form “I” see and hear it, what it means, and how “I” should respond.

 

And the RAS exercises a profound influence over many of our acts of Will, watering them down to mere wishes as they meet  contradictory Loves and Beliefs in the RAS. 

 

Of course the RF/RAS does serve many useful purposes.  In an emergency, such as an imminent threat of physical harm, it is the RAS which rings the alarm throughout our entire system, alerting the brain, pumping adrenalin, etc., mobilizing all the faculties for a fight, flight, or freeze response.

 

However, we are seldom operating in an emergency.  But the RAS also responds this way to a threat to any significant Love or Belief. When someone criticizes our church, or our children, or our integrity, for example, the same adrenalin starts to flow, and we involuntarily lose our temper.  We Love our church and our children, Believe we are honest, and the RAS generates the same Response Impulse that it would to a kick in the shins.

 

The shocking conclusion we must draw is that for most of us the RAS operates exactly like the U.S. government.  Like the government, it is a vast and incredibly complex and powerful bureaucracy, consisting of scores of open and secret bureaus, departments, and branches, staffed by hundreds of bureaucrats whose responsibilities often overlap or conflict, and with very imperfect communications between them—each competing for its Response Impulses to be enacted, each with some priority interrupt authority, each mindlessly trying to enact its own limited agenda, and to justify and expand its authority by encouraging the acceptance of data which validates its purposes and rejection of that which does not—an appalling, but unfortunately, a compellingly exact analogy.

 

Don’t most of us live to some degree in a state of anxiety, cognitive dissonance, a life in Thoreau’s words, of quiet desperation?

 

And our lives become automated.  Through the brain’s capacity of neural plasticity and habituation, our RAS-generated Response Impulses—Responses emanating from our Social Animal Needs and now from our conscious and subconscious Loves and Beliefs—Response Impulses which could be negated or changed by the Soul’s power of Will―are instead most often allowed to be enacted, “just doing what comes naturally; that’s me; that’s the way I am;” and the operant neural synapses become stronger and stronger, the Soul’s Faculties debilitated.

 

So we “mature” people become like inattentive pilots each flying on our own uniquely programmed autopilot.  As the brilliant psychiatrist R. D. Laing said, “We are all living in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy;” or what another writer describes as “the hypnosis of social conditioning.”

 

And how should we think of the RF, this “storage place” of our Loves and significant Beliefs?  Why, it is the Heart of course.  The Bible and all theological treatises are rife with references to the powers and importance of the heart.  Now we may finally Know from whence the mysterious “heart” they refer to derives its power.

 

We are all seeing and hearing, experiencing the world, and reacting to it, through our haphazardly wired Hearts.  And all of our acts of Will must be filtered through the bewildering maze of the Heart. 

 

So “I” do not live. “I” am being lived by my SA-Needs (some of which “I” may also come to Love—sex, dominance, etc. and are thereby greatly magnified—Loved because their gratifications momentarily, but with decreasing effectiveness, enable me to lose myself).  In addition “I” am also being lived by my hundreds of casually acquired conscious and subconscious Loves and significant Beliefs and their concomitant ‘Needs.’

 

And my Heart is waxed gross, my ears dull of hearing, and my eyes closed.  But there is hope: “Blessed are the pure in Heart, for they shall see God.”

 

So the Soul, through the power of Will, and the RAS through its generation of Response Impulses unopposed by the Soul, can both exercise control over our behavior, over every act and thought of our lives.

 

This “dual control system” is the major problem confronting the Soul of every human being and therefore the major problem confronting the human race.

 

 Each Soul finds Itself in a war for Its Faculties; a war between the incessant whispering Needs of the Soul, and the actuating power of Response Impulses generated by the haphazardly programmed
Reticular Activating System, or Heart.

 

The Soul is free, and to the degree that the Soul

accedes to RAS Response Impulses, allowing Its

Faculties to be applied to fulfillment of the RAS Needs—Needs whose gratifications either fail us

or enslave us—to that degree the Soul's Faculties are debilitated, the Soul's immutable Needs neglected, and the war goes on.

 

To the degree that the Soul's Faculties are

applied to dominion of the RAS—to a ruthless introspection of its programs, to a "spring-cleaning" of the Heart—to that degree the Soul's sovereignty is restored, becomes at last a royal Soul—free now to unite Its Faculties in seeking the Kingdom of God; in which the Soul finds Its pent-up, whole-hearted Love unleashed in torrents of overwhelming fulfillment; in an ever-growing

Love and Knowledge of God, a relationship

the Soul Knows is eternal.

 

The Heart subdued,

the Soul's Needs fulfilled beyond measure,

the Soul reborn—

“I” reign, in life and death, at Peace.

 

 

 ✝

 

 

 

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This article, Copyright © 2007 by The Shelton Group,*
is based on the book

The Immortal “I”
A Unified Theory of

Psychology, Neurology,

and the Kingdom of God

 

by Eugene B. Shea

Originally published by University Press of America

See theimmortali.com

 

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