Perhaps there is only ever one soul... one thing... one suchness whatsoever,,, and our impression of being an “individual soul” who is having a separate experience is like the impression a wave arising from the ocean has of itself.
The ocean endlessly generates infinite numbers of waves, and each one believes... for the brief duration of its appearance... that itself, and all the other waves, are not connected.
Each wave pretends that it is not the ocean making waves.
The waves even altogether forget they are also directly the ocean, each believing they inhabit an endless plane of separate waves.
But when the wave crest falls into its trough, it becomes the ocean again!
The analogy also applies to us: There is one ocean of consciousness that generates infinite points of attention.
You are a point of attention in the ocean of consciousness.
So am I.
But behind our masks of separate individual identities and experiences, we are one thing experiencing ourselves under the temporary arrangement of separateness.
Waves are the ocean’s way of playing at not being the ocean for a while.
Beings are God’s way of playing at not being God.
Ultimately, there are really no souls as such. (If by soul you mean a forever-separate, permanent self)
In other words, I am you, you are me, and we are everywhere.
If this idea sounds absurd to you because you have only ever known the Western ideas of spirituality, then know that what I've just described is the Zenith experience in Zen, Hindu, and Buddhist philosophy... the remembering of the oneness behind the temporary drama we variously call “life,” “reality,” or the “universe.”
Religions are institutions of group-think comfort and hierarchical, patriarchal control, and they are no better or more truthful today than they were 3,000 years ago.
What this planet’s 4,300 religions have to say about souls and death is a kind of game to prevent you from waking up to yourself and finding out who you really are.
They want your tithing, your allegiance, your unquestioning obedience, your silence when their priests molest your children, and they want special tax breaks while they implore legislators and voters to pass laws that injure people whose different sexualities they are uncomfortable with.
Religions feed on your fear of death, and they stoke outrage in you for others who are different than you.
They want to scorn or punish you if you reject their myths, and they want to convince you to believe they alone have the true story that you must believe if you want a happy experience after death.
They want you to believe life is a dress rehearsal, that the “real thing” is coming some future day, when their mythical gods return to Earth or maybe when you die and get to Heaven if you played by their rules.
They want you to believe life is just a practice, a dry-run for the real event yet to come, and that a cosmic boogeyman will burn you in a lake of fire forever and ever if you don't play along with their game.
Religion has no authentic information about what happens when we die, and yet, this is the central theme every religion is crafted around: a story about what happens when you die that is not directly verified through experience.
These 4,300 myths of what happens after death are each held up as the central reason for you to shut up... pay up... and obey the institution.
Either you figure your way out of it, or it traps you in the clutches of group-think forever!!!!!!
By Grant Eaton.
