On the soul

The impressions we weave and leave

In the blur of release, two souls re-impress each other: the child’s impression of itself and their mother, and the mother’s impression of herself and her child, are forever changed.

Introduction

What is the soul? Is it an immortal essence separate from the body, or is it the physical being itself? This is the central, ancient question. We've inherited a powerful answer: the soul as a private spark of divinity, a passenger within the body awaiting a final, heavenly destination. This vision has shaped millennia of art, worship, and law. But in our age of neuroscience and digital echoes, it faces profound challenges. If the mind is the brain, where does the soul reside? If a consciousness can be copied—a classic thought experiment on identity—which copy gets the soul? The traditional framework itself can feel like a relic.

But the human longing beneath it is not a relic. It's a longing for meaning that transcends our biological span, for a continuity that isn't erased by biological death. This article offers a different map. Here, the soul is not a 'substance' you have—in the philosophical sense of a standalone entity—but an impression you make and leave. It is a relational construct, woven through a lifetime of action and sustained in the shared memory of the community that holds you. It is a story written not on the heart, but between hearts. To explore this, we turn to the ontology of the Gospel of Being, which sees all existence as a conference of difference: a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'. From this ground, a startlingly coherent and deeply human vision of the soul emerges.

Classical visions: where do we locate our truest self?

The history of the soul is a story of where cultures have located a person's most essential, enduring identity. To understand the Western journey, we must first look East.

Eastern traditions often started from a relational premise. Buddhism’s doctrine of Anatta ('no-self') posits that what we call the soul is an illusion, a temporary aggregate of form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, all in constant flux and devoid of any permanent core. The goal is not to save an eternal soul, but to see through its illusion and attain liberation from the suffering its attachment causes. Ruism (Confucianism), less focused on metaphysics, saw the self as constituted by its roles and relationships—a son, a teacher, a citizen. One's legacy, or 'soul', was maintained through ritual remembrance and the ongoing performance of familial and social duty by descendants.

In the West, the search took a different turn. For Plato, the soul (psyche) was an immortal, pre-existent essence, the seat of reason temporarily imprisoned in the material body. Plato admitted this theory had logical problems and his student Aristotle directly challenged it. For Aristotle, the soul was simply the form of a living body—its organizing principle, as real as the shape of a statue is to the marble.^[1] It was the 'what-it-is-to-be' a human, inseparable from the body, and thus died with it.

Western theology fused and transformed these strands. In Christian Scholasticism, the soul became a unique creation of God, infused at conception, intrinsically immortal, and destined for individual judgment.^[2] This soul was considered a spiritual 'substance', making a person a composite of body and soul. René Descartes, seeking unshakable ground for knowledge, famously sliced reality in two: res extensa (extended matter) and res cogitans (thinking substance). For Descartes, the soul was purely the latter—a 'thinking thing' whose essence was consciousness, radically separate from the mechanical body.^[3] This Cartesian dualism created the enduring 'ghost in the machine' problem: how do these two separate substances interact?

The Enlightenment began to dismantle the ghost. Philosophers like David Hume argued the self was just a 'bundle of perceptions' with no underlying substance.^[4] The rise of materialism proposed that mind, and therefore any idea of soul, was entirely a product of brain states. From this vantage, the soul was an illusion—a story the brain tells itself. In our own time, narrative theory captures a more relational spirit: the self is the story we tell about ourselves, a story co-authored by our culture and relationships. In this light, the soul is the protagonist of that story.

These threads—substance versus relation, eternity versus transformation, private essence versus communal construct—set the stage for our current dilemmas regarding the soul.

Current flashpoints: the soul under pressure

Today, the concept of the soul is stretched at multiple seams. The science of consciousness pushes a hard question: if every facet of subjective experience correlates with neural activity, what work is left for an immaterial soul? The so-called 'hard problem'—why physical processes feel like anything at all—remains, but for many, invoking a soul seems less an explanation than a surrender.

Posthumanism—the consideration of life and identity beyond current human biological limits—and artificial intelligence present a practical challenge. If consciousness (however defined) can be substrate-independent, if the pattern of 'you' can be uploaded or replicated, what becomes of the singular, immortal soul? Which instance is the true one? The possibility forces a choice: either the soul is a uniquely biological property, or it must be redefined as a pattern of information.

Our digital age has transformed the ethics of memory and legacy. If we view souls as informational patterns, then our 'souls' are now actively curated online—through social media profiles, archived communications, and digital estates. This digital soul can be edited, hacked, memorialized, or erased by others, raising profound questions: who owns the impression we leave? Is a digital ghost a valid continuation of a soul?

Interfaith and intercultural dialogue further challenges the dominant Western, substantialist model of the soul. The relational, process-oriented views found in Eastern and indigenous traditions offer powerful alternatives that feel more congruent with an interconnected, ecological worldview. This leads to a final flashpoint: the ecological self. If we are fundamentally relational, should the 'soul' extend beyond human community to include the land and ecosystems that co-constitute our being? These pressures demand a vision that is both philosophically rigorous and capable of holding our deepest human concerns.

The soul as a conference of difference

The Gospel of Being enters this conversation not by adding another entity to the world's inventory, but by reframing what it means to be. Its central axiom is that all existence is a conference of difference: a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is defined and sustained in dynamic relation. From this, a coherent vision of the soul emerges—not as a thing, but as a process; not as a private possession, but as a shared impression.

First, consider Koan 10.5: "Everything noumenon: 'having been known' and phenomenon: 'having been shown' exists as a conference of difference." This dissolves the old split between a thing's inner essence and its outer appearance. Your noumenal self—the 'I' known only to you—is not an isolated entity. It is continually influenced by your phenomenal self—the 'you' perceived by others. The soul, then, can be seen as the ongoing conference of difference between these two aspects: the conscius sibi 'knowing together within' and the conscius: 'knowing together with others', each shaping the other.

This impression does not simply vanish at death. Koan 40.4 redefines omniscience not as a divine intellect, but as the constitutive act of the conference of difference itself which functions to realize everything. On a human scale, Koan 50.5 defines consciousness itself as a 'measure of knowing together'.^[5] Your consciousness is not a closed circuit; it is a measurement of relations. When you die, the immediate, internal measurement ceases. But the measurement taken by the world—the knowing of you held in the consciousness of others, in the habits you shaped, in your lasting creations—persists. Your soul transitions from being an active measuring center to being a measured and remembered part of the wider, communal knowing.

This is how the soul endures. Koan 60.3 states that all meaning is 'intending' thus sent: 'caused to go' that it might be sensed: 'transduced'. A life is a cascade of intentions sent—acts of love, creations, words. At death, the sending stops, but the sensing continues. Your soul is the sum of those transmitted intentions, still being received and reinterpreted by those who remember you. You live on in the ways your soul, held in the consciousness of others, continues to alter the course of their own conferences of difference.

Therefore, Koan 100.3 is literally true:

Death is not the end of being but a transformation in ability; a voice transforming from one chorus to another.

The ability of your physical body to act is transformed. But the ability of your life's pattern, it's impression—your soul—to influence, guide, comfort, or inspire is not destroyed. It is transferred to the communal chorus. Your soul becomes part of the social and emotional ecosystem, a voice now sung by others.

The implications are profound. The soul is cultivated through a lifetime of karma: 'work', the energetic transformation of ability into purposeful action (Koan 70.2). It is saved—achieving the 'process of having safety' or salvation (Koan 90.1)—not by a celestial verdict, but through the conference of difference of atonement (the action to be at one) and forgiveness (the measure of giving away) with other beings. A soul finds safety when its legacy is integrated into the community's ongoing life through honest reckoning and graceful release. Immortality, then, is functional. As Koan 100.4 declares:

Immortality is a given as each being contributes power—ability—in the never-ending process of transforming.

Your soul persists as a causal strand in the web of becoming for as long as its impression makes a difference.

This applies to all souls, for good or ill. The soul of a tyrant, defined by harm, also persists as a communal impression as a warning, a scar, a negative space that shapes future choices. Its 'immortality' is a testament to the enduring weight of our actions within the conference of difference of reality.

Convergence and divergence: a new map of an old territory

This view creates fascinating bridges and reveals clear departures from tradition. It converges powerfully with Eastern and relational models. With Buddhism, it agrees there is no permanent, substantial self. The soul is a transient, dependent arising—but within the Conference of Difference framework, this constructed self is not merely an illusion to be dispelled, but a real, relational pattern to be woven well. With Ruism (Confucianism), it shares the emphasis on the social self maintained through remembrance. Your soul is your legacy, actively sustained by your community. With narrative theory, it aligns perfectly: the soul is the story, and the community is both audience and co-author.

It diverges sharply from Western substantialism. For Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, the soul is a private, immortal substance. In the view from the Gospel of Being, it is a communal, functional construct whose continuity is contingent on memory and impact. For traditional Christian salvation, the soul is saved individually by divine grace. Here, salvation is the communal achievement of safety through atonement and forgiveness—a harmony you help create for others as much as for yourself. Even against reductive materialism, this position offers a third way: the soul is not an illusory ghost, nor is it a physical object. It is a real but relational impression, as real as a whirlpool in a river—a persistent pattern made of dynamic relationships.

The unique contributions of this perspective are threefold. First, it grounds the soul explicitly in the universal process of relation—the conference of difference—the literal process-primitive of existence. Second, it reveals how this physics of relation is already an ethic of care, legacy and remembrance. How we live matters because it eternally alters the relational fabric. Third, it redefines the stakes: the quest is not to escape relationship but to weave your relational impression with such care that the community cannot help but continue to hold it, and hold it dear.

The weaving and the web

So, what is the soul? Philosophically, it is the pattern a life weaves into the endless conference of difference. It is not a ghost in the machine, but the unique and irreplaceable impression of that machine's running—its warmth, its friction, its music—left upon the world. It is a gift we leave, a set of differences we introduced that continue in conference.

Humanly, this changes everything. It elevates our daily relationships to the work of soulcraft. Every act of kindness and every moment of integrity is a stitch in the tapestry of your lasting impression—and conversely, every act of cruelty or betrayal is woven in too. It offers a comfort different from the promise of personal paradise, but no less profound: you will live on in the pathways you cleared for others, in the love you planted, in the truths you helped them see. This view fosters a profound communal responsibility. We are the keepers of each other's souls. To remember, to honor, to tell the stories, to forgive the faults and atone for our own—this is the sacred work of sustaining a soul.

In the end, the Gospel of Being suggests we have been looking for the soul in all the wrong places. We've been searching within the solitary heart, the private mind. But it was always between us.

The soul is the echo of a life in the cathedral of collective memory. It is not housed in a body, but hosted in a community--the continuation of our being: 'action to be' in others. This is the final testament: to continue being is to be remembered, and to remember is to sustain the soul. In this endless conference of difference, no voice is ever truly lost; it simply joins the everlasting chorus.^[6]

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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