The Role of the Soul

When we read in the Puranas of India, we find that there are a host of beings who are essentially non-evolutionary, static beings. They may be gods, demons or animals, or occupy any number of other positions in the scale of the manifested existence. An interesting note, however, is that if they want to participate in the evolutionary cycle for any reason, they have to take human birth. The human birth is considered to be the key to the dynamic development of consciousness, and that is why the human birth is treasured in virtually all religious and spiritual traditions. The soul is the unique element that sets the human birth apart from other beings.

For an extensive review of the existence of and role of the soul in human life, the text Rebirth and Karma by Sri Aurobindo is especially useful, as also extensive chapters in The Life Divine specifically focused on the issues of rebirth.

The Mother provides a brief, yet elegant description of the role of the soul and how one can differentiate it from the spirit.

The Mother writes: “The soul is a kind of individual concentration of this Grace, its individual representative in the human being. The soul is something particular to humanity, it exists only in man. The beings of the other worlds do not have a soul, but they can live in the spirit. One might say that the soul is a delegation of the spirit in mankind, a special help to lead it faster. It is the soul that makes individual progress possible. The spirit, in its original form, has a more general, more collective action.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XXII Spirit, pg. 164