People keep fighting bloody wars over religious issues, but the
problem is, all of the ancient world religions are wrong. The ancient
ideas about the evolution of the earth were obviously erroneous, so
why should we be surprised that the ancient existential ideas about
the inner structure of man himself are also incorrect. Don't look to
dusty old scriptures for truth, look to them for beautiful, poetic
myths that only contain fragments of truth and wisdom. For the whole
truth of reality you need to look inside yourself right here and now,
and read up on the science of the human body/brain. 'Brain' is not
separate from 'body,' and consciousness is not separate from brain.
Your consciousness is a physical phenomena, and that is one major area
of understanding where the ancients of East and West went wrong in
their assumption. See below:

http://home.att.net/~meditation/soul.html

Do you have a soul?

To know truth you must have a deep desire to see it, and a
willingness to let go of the old lies.

When I was a child, I was an atheist and only believed in what I
could see and touch. By age 19 I started to believe in the existence
of souls and reincarnation as a result of my exposure to a number of
famous Indian yogis and the majestic J. Krishnamurti, who once claimed
to have remembered all of his past lives. At age 21 my belief in soul
was dramatically reinforced by explosive experiences I had with
Acharya Rajneesh, later known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Osho. I
never believed in any "God," but for 35 years I lived under the shadow
of the great meditation masters and was fairly certain that we all
possessed souls that would survive our physical death. [see photo of
J. Krishnamurti * This essay was written in 2004]

Unlike Hindus, most Buddhists believe in some mysterious and
poorly defined soulless form of personal karma which survives death.
I never believed in the Buddhist concept of immortal personal karma
without soul, because when you reject the idea of a soul you lose the
only credible vehicle for the transference of karma from one lifetime
to the next. To my mind, if there is no soul then there is no
possibility of immortal personal karma and reincarnation.

When I met Acharya Rajneesh in 1970, he not only spoke of souls
and reincarnation, but also claimed to have the power of astral
projection. I believed his claim because of what I thought were
authentic experiences I had with this "master" astrally projecting
himself, not just into my room, but into my body while he was
physically several miles away. After reading Matthew Alper's book,
The "God" Part of the Brain, I wonder if those amazing experiences
were really what I thought they were. Alper summarizes the latest
scientific research into how the human brain functions while having
religious experiences. In this essay I have added additional
neurological data obtained from medical journals, and my own
observations and theories regarding several of the main points of
Alper's book.

Medical research has shown that if you stimulate certain areas of
the brain with a small electric current, you can give people the
experience of spiritual visitation. You may feel that Jesus is
touching your heart, or that the soul of a dead relative is near you.
There is no evidence to support a belief in authentic soul travel,
however, as all studies indicate that consciousness only exists in the
brain cells which create it. You cannot remove consciousness from the
physical body because consciousness is a physical phenomena created by
chemistry, just as a firefly's light is created by chemical
reactions. That is why you can turn consciousness on or off by
injecting a person with drugs to wake them up or to put them to
sleep. [see Scientists test out-of-body experiences]

Near death experiences and even certain drugs, such as ketamine
and sodium pentothal, can give you the feeling of being outside of
your body, but researchers say that is just an illusion of the
holographic nature of the human brain. When neural communications
between the body and brain are reduced, the brain is free to project
your sense of self anywhere it chooses, and this can happen while
under partial anesthesia, while partially asleep, or even during the
preliminary (and reversible) stages of death. Prolonged fasting and
isolation can also produce hallucinations and distortions of reality,
and such ascetic practices are a major source of the Asian myths of
astral projection.

While true astral projection may be impossible, there is credible
scientific evidence to suggest that telepathic communication is
possible between human beings. The human brain is an organic
electrochemical computer so complex that no existing silicon based
supercomputer can approach its capabilities. [see Mouse brain
simulated on computer ] Think of all the things your relatively
simple cell phone can do. There is plenty of computer power in the
human brain to imagine that some portion of its circuitry could be
allocated to broadcasting and receiving messages, or at least sensing
basic electromagnetic radiation from other human brains. Such an
ability would have obvious survival value for the species, and thus
would be understandable in terms of evolution and survival of the
fittest. A rudimentary telepathic communicative ability may be the
reason disciples feel the presence of their spiritual teachers so
strongly. [see scans prove meditation alters the brain]

The brain is the most metabolically active human organ, and
requires a steady supply of oxygen and glucose as fuel. Although the
brain represents less than 2% of the body's mass, it utilizes 20% of
the body's oxygen consumption and 15% of its cardiac output. Thus,
the brain produces an extraordinary amount of energy in relationship
to the rest of the body. The entire human body uses chemical
reactions to produce both mechanical movements and electrical currents
that flow through all of our living cells. The brain acts as both an
analog and a digital computer, and the DNA code which creates it is
digital. The average human brain contains approximately 100 billion
neurons connected by approximately 50 trillion synapses. It is
therefore not difficult to imagine that this fantastically complex
organic electrochemical device could have mysterious abilities beyond
our current level of understanding.

Perhaps what I thought was astral projection was simply Rajneesh
concentrating on me, sending me his supermental energy long distance.
That powerful jolt of energy may have caused my brain to supply the
added illusion of personal visitation on top of the strong telepathic
transmission. There is no doubt that Rajneesh had tremendous mental
powers, but was that power really supernatural or just a product of
his own unique brain structure and meditative skill?

If you inject any human being with enough sedative, enlightened
or not, they will become unconsciousness. If you damage certain areas
of the brain you can drastically alter human behavior. You can turn a
conservative bank president into a garbage eating bum just by killing
off some of the brain cells that contain the biocomputer program for
his personality. If you damage other areas of the brain, you can
erase all memory.

If consciousness, personality, and memory are all physical
phenomena of brain cells, then when your brain dies there is nothing
left of your individual identity. Your permanent identity of time-
energy-space (see The TES Hypothesis) continues unharmed, but there is
no soul, no reincarnation, and no Buddhist transference of personal
karma. If this is true, it means that all of the major world
religions are wrong. It also means that we all achieve
"moksha" (liberation) at the time of our death because there is no
personal cycle of birth and death to escape from, and no magical
afterlife. You are born once and you die once, and you will never
come back.

One theory states that we have souls and/or personal karma which
transmigrates from one life to the next, and another theory states
that nothing survives death and only DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and
the will of the living determines the future of our species. Which
theory is correct? I once believed in reincarnation with a high
level of certainty. After many years of seeing the rampant corruption
of gurus, "enlightened" or not, the idiocy of disciples, cults, and
organized religion, and with the new scientific evidence in hand, I
find the soul-reincarnation-karma theory far less plausible.

You do not have to believe in anything supernatural to believe in
cosmic consciousness (satori). Anyone can take the drug psilocybin
and get a dramatic imitation of the natural religious experience.
Clinical research shows that our brains are built to have religious
experiences. As time-energy-space is one singular phenomena, it is
only natural that we occasionally experience the grand cosmic unity.
I personally suspect that even animals have satoris, though they
apparently have no ability to give it a name or understand its
implications.

One of the most interesting concepts of Matthew Alper's book
concerns the rise of self-consciousness in human animals and how
knowledge of our impending death has affected our brains and even our
DNA code. If you put a dog in front of a mirror, he will never figure
out that he is looking at his own reflection. If you put a higher
primate in front of a mirror, such as a chimpanzee or human child, the
higher primate will eventually use the mirror for grooming purposes
because he recognizes himself in the reflection. Man's self-
consciousness is so highly developed that humans have come to realize
that our life expectancy is short and that our personal demise is
inevitable.

Other animals fear death, danger, and pain, but they have no real
understanding of time and the inevitability of their own destruction.
The time-death equation that adult human animals understand becomes a
constant source of anguish. A strong survival instinct is built into
our DNA code from our long evolutionary journey from bacteria to man.
When the survival instinct collides with the self-conscious knowledge
of our impending death, the human brain needs both a psychological and
a neurological barrier to block the conflict and tension. That
barrier we call religious belief and "the God part of the brain." The
theory states that man has invented myths of God, soul, reincarnation,
karma, and afterlife as a way to provide the brain with mental opium,
a buffer to the constant ticking clock inside our heads that tells us
that our inevitable doom is getting closer every day.

The psychological need for a feeling of immortality is so great
that our religious tendencies have become part of our DNA code.
Humans who believe in the supernatural religions tend to be calmer,
healthier, and thus live longer than the nonreligious. Believers also
tend to show more bravery when courage is needed to protect their
tribe. Genetic tendencies to have religious feelings are fortified
over thousands of years of evolution through survival of the
religiously fittest.

If your religious beliefs feel exactly right to you, it may be
because your subconscious mind wants you to believe them so that you
will have a better chance for health and a long lifespan. If you
intuitively sense that you have been alive on planet earth before,
perhaps that feeling of déja vu comes from your DNA code, not from a
reincarnating soul, because DNA has been active on planet earth for at
least 3.8 billion years, and we are all created and united by its
existence.

Scientists know that there is only one real life form on planet
earth, and that is DNA itself. DNA is like a giant vine that has
taken over the world. Through the never ending chain of DNA code, we
are not only closely related to other mammals, but also intimately
related to insects, plants, and even bacteria. Many times in earth
history the higher life forms have been wiped out by impacts of
asteroids and comets, and by massive volcanic eruptions which made our
atmosphere toxic, yet the surviving bacteria have always evolved
upward into more complex plants and animals. DNA is not just a
helpful chemical substance that resides inside us. DNA is our
biological level identity, our three dimensional physical
'soul.'

All over the world, wherever you find man, you will find
supernatural religions promising some form of life after death.
Moslem extremists gladly kill themselves in the name of their
religion. American war heroes have died fighting Japanese and Germans
in the name of Jesus, and no doubt many felt they were going to heaven
for their heroic efforts. God is a pretty handy device to have when
your tribe is in trouble. Almost all of us, atheist and theist alike,
instinctively call out to God for help when we are in grave personal
danger.

Man's philosophical beliefs have also been shaped by a survival
contest of world religions to see which religion can most completely
satisfy our emotional needs for a feeling of comfort and safety.
Organized religion is a business and must have money and public
support to survive. If your spouse or child dies, you want a priest,
rabbi, monk, or swami to tell you that your loved one's soul is going
to a better place. Can you imagine a funeral service where a holy man
bluntly states that the deceased has no soul and is gone forever?
That would seem cruel, and any religion that provided such a terse
death ritual would not last long in the religious marketplace.

Why do so many enlightened teachers believe in souls and karma?
It has been my observation that even the enlightened are affected by
cultural conditioning and have a tendency to pass on the religious
teachings of those who came before them with only minor
modifications. For example, the famous enlightened teachers from meat
eating societies in Tibet, China, and Japan also ate meat, while the
great sages from strictly vegetarian India believe that eating meat is
a horrible unspiritual practice. So I ask, did Rajneesh and J.
Krishnamurti believe in souls because of some direct experience, or
simply because they grew up in soul oriented India? Rajneesh once
stated that even plants have souls, and that if an enlightened man
(Rajneesh himself) sat next to a plant, that plant would be so graced
that in its next incarnation it might be born as a human being. I
find that grandiose and self-serving statement difficult to believe,
and I suspect a significant amount of the time Rajneesh was simply
shooting his mouth off without even thinking about what he was
saying.

On another occasion, Rajneesh stated that we are attracted to
beautiful people because their outer beauty represents the inner
beauty of their souls, as it is the soul which creates the physical
body and mind. Science has proven conclusively that DNA creates the
body and brain, not any mysterious and immaterial "soul." Outward
beauty does not always mean inward beauty, or even a sane mind. The
infamous serial killer Ted Bundy was quite handsome, yet he is
estimated to have murdered between 35 and 50 women just for the thrill
of it. If the great "enlightened" Rajneesh could be mistaken about
something this basic, then couldn't he be wrong about anything? [see
photographs of Ted Bundy]

The "master" Rajneesh presented many idiotic theories about life
right here and now, so why should anyone believe his theories about
souls and reincarnation? It is only because of his great psychic
presence that his disciples refrained from laughing out loud at some
of his ridiculous ideas. [see The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way
Rajneesh] Rajneesh was living proof that enlightenment, intelligence,
and honesty are separate phenomena. You can be a fool, a liar, and a
criminal, and also become a great energy channeler (enlightened) if
that is your predisposition and desire. Freedom means free choice to
be good or bad, and you have that choice no matter how powerful your
meditation skills have become. George Gurdjieff (see photo), the
famous Greek-Armenian mystic, was an alcoholic. Rajneesh (see photos)
became a drug addict, yet both men could channel great cosmic presence
that inspired thousands of spiritual seekers.

Rajneesh's use of drugs, especially Valium, nitrous oxide, and
LSD, also casts doubt on his soul theory of enlightenment. Rajneesh
once declared, that from his own personal experience, LSD can produce
the same consciousness as a Buddha. During his younger sober days,
Rajneesh stated that LSD produced a "false samadhi" and that
consciousness was the product of "soul," not just physical chemistry.
Rajneesh changed his teaching to rationalize his drug use by stating
that "You are nothing but chemistry." He thus implied that it is
acceptable to use chemicals to alter consciousness because you are
chemicals bonded together in an organic biological machine. One could
ask that if Rajneesh really had the power of astral projection as
claimed, wouldn't flying around the world in his soul body be more
entertaining than getting cheap thrills from taking LSD and nitrous
oxide?

Rajneesh claimed to be as enlightened as the historic Buddha, and
I believe that he was, but why does a Buddha need to take
hallucinogenic drugs? My answer is that Rajneesh became bored with
the Void because the Void can only provide peacefulness long term, but
not an eternal buzz of blissfulness. Judging from my own meditative
practice and reading of science, the buzz and bliss of meditation
comes from a buildup of excess neurotransmitters like serotonin and
dopamine in the brain. When you meditate in formal sessions, you are
conserving the chemical energy of your brain by not wasting it on
thoughts and sensory distraction. Thus, you become blissful and may
experience nonsexual orgasms during meditation sessions, but that
ecstasy gradually dissipates after you return to your normal work
routine. The feeling of spaciousness and peacefulness continue, but
the buzz settles down to a feeling of neutrality and quiet emptiness.
There is no eternal orgasm-ecstasy-buzz-bliss possible because any
human feeling that has a beginning must also have an end due to the
inherent chemical nature of the brain. [see "Increased dopamine tone
during meditation-induced change of consciousness"]

The Buddha is reported to have said that there is "no bliss."
Rajneesh at times admitted that he himself felt "no energy," though
those around him felt awash in his energy. U.G. Krishnamurti has
stated that there is "no bliss." When I meditate in formal sessions,
I experience bliss and nonsexual orgasms felt in the hara (belly
center), the heart center, the forehead center, and in the center of
the head directly behind the eyes. The problem is, the orgasmic
feelings never lasts. I have to go back to my meditation room and sit
to regain the neurochemical energy that dissipates during the daily
routine of work. Using my brain for utilitarian proposes eats up
those neurotransmitters rather quickly. It may also be that the brain
itself wants to bring us back to a state of neutrality, because a
neutral brain has the greatest ability to ensure our physical
survival. A man distracted with a blissed-out brain is likely to be
the first member of the tribe eaten by the lion, not the last.
Meditation and enlightenment may be a neuro-chemical experience, not a
magical soul experience outside the laws of chemistry and physics.

Rajneesh changed his name to "Osho" and ended his life in a state
of dementia due to illness and drug addiction. J. Krishnamurti
avoided major scandals, stayed sober, and is still highly revered long
after his death. But was J. Krishnamurti really a saint and somehow
better ethically than any normal human being? I know many people who
lead virtuous lives who don't meditate at all. What made J.
Krishnamurti different was not how he lived, which was ordinary, but
his tremendous presence of being. You stood next to him and felt
flooded in cosmic energy which pushed you high into the sky,
destroying all feelings of limitation. Was J. Krishnamurti's grand
presence the result of many past lifetimes of spiritual effort, or was
it the result of modest effort in meditation combined with a genetic
gift for cosmic consciousness?

Matthew Alper points out in his book that some forms of epilepsy
cause hyper-religiousness and mystical experiences. J. Krishnamurti's
mother was an epileptic, and we know epilepsy can be genetically
transferred. J. Krishnamurti never had fits, but he often
mysteriously passed out, giving those near him warning that he was
about to lose consciousness. [see pictures of an intense J.
Krishnamurti as a young boy] The Indian sage Ramakrishna was reported
to have had fits in which he thrashed on the ground uncontrollably.
The universally revered Ramana Maharshi claimed that his emotional
heart center was located in the "right side" of his chest, which I
suspect represents a brain abnormality. In normal human beings the
emotional heart center is located in the exact center of the chest.
[see article on temporal lobe epilepsy]

Is it possible that natural variations in our genetic code could
produce in each century a handful of people with brains perfectly
adapted for enlightenment, thus making meditative practice so easy
that they reached the goal with little effort? Ramana Maharshi is
reported to have achieved "God consciousness" at the tender age of
17! Rajneesh claims to have become enlightened at age 21. J.
Krishnamurti was in his early twenties when people around him started
to feel that he was fully enlightened. Ramakrishna was reported to
have been "born enlightened," as was the ancient Chinese mystic, Lao-
Tse.

Are the spiritually gifted among us the rare but naturally
occurring result of genetic variation? Of the 20,000 to 25,000 genes
that make up a human being, roughly half are suspected of being
devoted to blueprinting our central nervous system. Thus, with 10,000
to 12,500 individual genes controlling the formation of our brain and
spinal cord, the potential for major variations in the level of human
consciousness is enormous. For example, scientists have found that
changes in just a few human genes can have a dramatic effect on the
level of our intelligence. Is it therefore logical that human gene
combinations exist that control the amount of raw consciousness we
possess as well.

Few humans have the artistic talent of Michelangelo, or the
mathematical genius of Albert Einstein. If there is a natural genetic
"bell curve" for intelligence, then why not a natural genetically
driven bell curve for psychic power as well? [see The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, by Richard J.
Herrnstein and Charles Murray] Research has shown that identical
twins tend to have the same level of interest in religion and/or
mystical experience. This suggests that there is a strong genetic
component to our personal meditative potential. If DNA can explain
the vast differences between a mosquito and a man, then why can't
genetic variations also explain the mental differences between a
Hitler and a Buddha?

Are the enlightened simply those few individuals at the extreme
forward edge of the bell curve, with the masses of the world
population stuck near the middle? If there are child prodigy
pianists, artists, and even child prodigy golfers, then why not child
prodigy meditators as well? The Asian cultures may have simply
mistaken naturally occurring genetic variations in the human brain for
evidence of a romanticized past life history that does not exist in
fact. The group conditioning became so strong that the myths of
reincarnation fooled even the enlightened ones. History shows that
the easiest explanation for a phenomena that has the most supporting
evidence is usually correct. Grand claims require grand evidence to
justify a belief in them, and there is currently no scientifically
valid evidence of reincarnation or a magical transference of personal
karma.

If the spiritual bell curve theory is true, it could help explain
the obvious corruption of gurus. Rajneesh was a convicted felon and a
proven liar of historic proportions. George Gurdjieff was also a
chronic liar and a loud and often rude alcoholic. The genetics based
view of enlightenment helps explain why there are so few enlightened
ones at any given time. If every soul has multiple chances to improve
its meditation skills over lifetimes of effort, then surely the world
would produce more than the meager handful of enlightened sages that
are born each century. Since at least the dawn of Hinduism (about
1500 BC), long before the historic Buddha was born (about 563 BC),
millions of human beings have been making sincere effort at
meditation, yet where are the results of these lifetimes of effort?
The mathematical logistics of the soul-karma theory do not add up any
way you look at it.

The argument for souls and/or immortal karma is that
enlightenment is a process that takes many lifetimes of effort, and
the fruition of our long journey through time is the eventual payoff
of "moksha" (final spiritual freedom), infinite ecstasy, and
liberation from all suffering. This highly romantic idea appeals
because it brings a sense of warmth and justice into a cold and often
pointlessly cruel world. It intuitively seems fair that right action
is eventually rewarded with positive results, but this belief in
inevitable karma has also caused negative results. In Tibet it
produced a kind of fatalistic inaction which aided the Communist
Chinese in their military takeover in 1950. To quote Drupon Samten
Rinpoche, "They can be taking this life, but they cannot take the next
life." This feeling of immortality has brought Tibetan Buddhists a
great sense of peace and compassion in the face of invasion and
genocide, but is it based or real-world fact or just wishful
thinking?

Belief in souls and immortal karma has had many negative effects
in India, where the theory of reincarnation helped establish the
ancient Hindu caste system. The caste system was abolished by law in
1949, but lives on as an unfair social class structure which is
considerably worse than the traditional class snobbery practiced in
Europe. The lower caste, the Shudras, are considered inferior to the
higher castes of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. Even below the
Shudras are the outcasts, known as the "untouchables," who have no
caste at all. The untouchables are looked down upon as being
spiritually unworthy due to past life sins, and are limited to
performing the most unpleasant jobs, such as disposing of dead bodies
and cleaning toilets. The theory of reincarnation has been used in
India as a convenient rationalization to exploit those who are poor
and uneducated. Skin diseases, such as leprosy, are considered signs
of punishment for evil deeds committed in past lives. Medical science
has proven that leprosy is just an ordinary bacterial infection that
anyone can contract given sufficient exposure to the bacillus,
Mycobacterium leprae. Even the great Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh promoted
the inhumane karmic explanation for leprosy.

Reincarnation and immortal karma were a way ancient peoples could
explain the inherent inequities of life, death, disease, riches, and
poverty in religious terms that had no basis in fact. All of the
major world religions are relics of the prescientific era, and all
have negative biases woven into their teachings. I therefore suggest
that it is time to embrace a pro-science meditative attitude that does
not promote irrational belief in magic and the supernatural, things
which exist in our imagination, but which have no real existence in
fact.

Rejecting the soul theory negates any need to answer such
impossible questions as where do souls come from and why do they exist
at all. The rebellious sage U.G. Krishnamurti stated "There is no
such thing as enlightenment," and that his state of continuous cosmic
consciousness was without cause, or "acausal." Could it be that the
real cause of enlightenment is rarefied DNA combined with modest
effort? Perhaps the ancient Hindus and Buddhists invented myths of
souls and immortal karma simply because they were uneducated observers
of the natural phenomena around them and inside them. Siddhartha
Gautama never knew about neurons or DNA, so how could he be expected
come up with any explanations for life that were not based on
inherited cultural myths of the supernatural?

I dismiss claims of past life memories because of the projective
nature of the human brain. The brain can project any image or
feeling, and it is exactly the same neurological mechanism that
projects fantasies of the subconscious that also projects authentic
memories stored in brain cells. What comes out of that one singular
projector may be real memory or real fantasy, but no one can tell the
difference with certainty, not even the late J. Krishnamurti or the
Dalai Lama.

False memories are a common occurrence in courtrooms and have
sent many innocent men to their deaths for crimes they never
committed. Just imagine a monk walking into a courtroom claiming to
remember all of his past lives. Then imagine the monk being grilled
under cross-examination and he cannot even remember what he had for
lunch just a few days before. Even the enlightened sages have memory
problems and need to write down important dates and facts so they
won't forget.

If a high Tibetan lama or Hindu yogi enters a medical laboratory
full of skeptical scientists and proves through testing that he can
transfer his consciousness out of his body, then belief in souls and
reincarnation would be easier for everyone. To date that has not
happened, and hospital tests designed to prove out-of-body episodes
during near death experiences have yielded no positive results. As
far as scientifically valid evidence of soul is concerned, the well is
completely dry. Human beings exist as footprints in the sand. One
day the footprints will be erased and only the sand will be left
behind. There is no reincarnation and there is no personal continuity
of karma. [see Belief in reincarnation tied to memory errors]

I use to dismiss U.G. Krishnamurti's claim that there is no
enlightenment, no soul, and no reincarnation as just his negative way
of teaching. Perhaps, however, he is just trying to tell us the truth
no matter how shocking that truth may be. Instead of becoming
attached to the small personal identity of a mythical human soul, or
to the very real human body, it is apparent that we must identify with
nothing less than infinity itself to find authentic immortality. That
is a pretty tall order for a human brain that only weighs about 3
pounds (1,300 to 1,400 grams). All of the great religions of the
world may be wrong and just a product of our own fear of dying. That
possibility is electrically shocking to me, but it may well be true.

A summary of the main issues

1) There is no positive proof for the existence of souls, immortal
karma, reincarnation, or any spiritual afterlife. It is interesting
to note that in their last years even Rajneesh/Osho and J.
Krishnamurti reversed themselves and stated that there was no
reincarnation and thus, presumably, no soul. If there is no
reincarnation and no heaven or hell, then the question of soul is
moot.

2) There are legitimate science based alternate explanations for
phenomena attributed to souls and immortal karma. The enlightened
teachers seem to confuse the effects of DNA for the effects of soul.
For example, people with higher intelligence and a more finely
articulated DNA code are perceived by them as being older and higher
souls.

3) There are obvious profit and political power motives for those who
promote belief in the supernatural. How many gurus have made fortunes
off the idea of souls and reincarnation? How many monasteries,
ashrams, churches, mosques, and synagogues would go out of business if
people found out there is no soul or immortal karma? How can
governments and the religious hierarchies control the masses if word
leaks out that we all end up in the same state of eternal
unconsciousness after we die, no matter how we behave while we are
alive? Would there be a Vatican City or Tibetan Portola Palace
without a belief in souls and/or immortal karma? The idea of soul has
historically been as much a matter of politics as it has been an issue
of personal religious belief.

4) It is highly probable that human animals have a built-in genetic
predisposition to avoid the inevitable fact of our future death in
order to reduce fear and stress. Our brains create myths of God,
soul, immortal karma, reincarnation, and afterlife as a buffer against
the hurtful knowledge of the inevitable demise of ourselves and
everyone we love. By inventing myths of afterlife and/or
reincarnation, the brain can exist comfortably without the highly
charged survival instinct electrically connecting to the newfound
knowledge of the inevitability of our own death. The supernatural
myths thus act as a resistive electrical shunt, blocking a dangerous
short circuit between two parts of the brain.

5) The wild and colorful supernatural myths of Hinduism and Buddhism
were created by the human brain mixing up the very real phenomena of
cosmic consciousness with the romantic, fiction producing part of the
brain that makes us fall in love. Humans have an inbuilt biological
need for love so we can sexually reproduce the species. This urge for
romance becomes embedded in our DNA code through the evolutionary
process, just as our need for strong bones and sharp teeth. Love is a
survival requirement for the human species, and it is the very same
internal brain wiring and euphoric brain chemistry which also creates
fantastic myths of reincarnated religious superheroes. The flawless
Godly guru becomes our non-sexual, fantasy spiritual lover. Many
Asian and Western gurus have taken advantage of this brain phenomena,
and used their own females disciples as a personal harem. Sexual
scandals follow gurus almost as regularly as summer follows spring.

6) Life on earth was created through the nonhuman laws of chemistry,
physics, and probability. Strands of chemicals (DNA) were created by
sheer accident and replicated themselves faster than they could be
destroyed. By further accident, some DNA strands became encased in
protective shells which increased their survivability dramatically,
creating the first bacteria. From simple bacteria more complexity was
added until a myriad of multicelled creatures were produced. Through
this slow process of evolution over billions of years, there was never
any need for soul except as a myth to help human animals deal with
their growing consciousness of the inevitable time-death equation.
Scientists have produced active viruses from their base chemical
components, and they did so without concocting any "soul."

The logistical mathematics of the soul theory do not add up.
Does every new bacteria, seed, egg, spider, minnow, or cockroach that
appears in the world demand a soul to go along with its already
sufficient DNA code? We know that humans evolved from bacteria. When
did soul come into the picture and why? Is there a printing press
somewhere stamping out trillions of new souls every second to keep up
with the demand? The soul theory lacks logical credibility, and
science has shown us that the universe is extremely logical in its
structure, formation, and evolution.

7) The famous film director, Alfred Hitchcock, often added a
theatrical ploy to his movies called a "MacGuffin." The MacGuffin
distracted the audience long enough so that suspense could be created
and the plot could develop without giving away the true course of the
story. In the end, the MacGuffin has no meaning in itself. Likewise,
Hindus and Buddhists have invented complicated myths of reincarnation
and/or immortal karma, declaring that we are all trapped in a cycle of
birth and death and only our eventual enlightenment can set us free.
The Eastern traditions have created a highly sophisticated myth
structure, but the underlying function of their myths is identical to
the more childlike myths of Christianity, with its almighty God,
angels, and heaven. The belief in karma and reincarnation is the
MacGuffin that keeps our minds diverted from the inevitability and
finality of our own death.

No one can honestly say that it is impossible that human beings
have souls or immortal karma. You cannot prove an absolute negative
against such a big and complex issue. One can only say that given the
proven facts of life and nature, the possibility of soul is unlikely.
On one side of the scale you have an almost infinite preponderance of
evidence that the supernatural does not exist, and on the other side
of the scale you have rumors, myths, and wishful thinking. More
realistic and scientifically valid ways to view the big issues of life
and death are detailed in The TES Hypothesis.

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime
within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal
beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the
eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose
beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and
perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the
seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see
the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree;
but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

Excerpt from The Over-Soul, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in
1841.

Christopher Calder
http://home.att.net/~meditation/ - home page