The western traditions are essentially dualist -- that is, they posit that there is a divine reality and a second, separate reality that includes the universe and our place in it. They also typically posit that within the second order, there are two realities: physical and spiritual. Hinduism (and Mahayana Buddhism and Jainism following) often posits a similar position, but there is within Hinduism a substantial movement, clearly embodied in Sankara (d. 820 C.E.), that sees only one reality: Brahman. That perspective seems to be anchored in Theravada Buddhism much earlier.

That reality is identified with our deepest consciousness, and it would be easy to suggest that this is the western concept of "soul." An exploration of "soul" challenges this suggestion.

We must consider a series of questions regarding the soul:

1. Where is the soul?
2. Is the soul infinite or finite -- does it take up space?
3. Can the soul exist separately from the body?
4. If the two can be separated, how are they joined together?
5. Does the soul govern the body, or is the soul the recipient of the body's decisions?
6. If the soul governs the body, is it our decision-making process?
7. If it is our decision making process, is it our conscious or subconscious thought?

If it is asserted that the soul is finite, its location is problematic. In a time when we transplant hearts, amputate legs, and perform deep neuro-surgery, the soul has yet to be isolated. If it is in the heart, do we change identity when we receive a replacement heart -- and possibly lose identity altogether if we get an artificial heart? We generally don't even assert that a lobotomy removes a person's soul. If some -- attempting to avoid this problem -- argue the soul is dispersed throughout the body, they are left with the possibility that a soul can be dismembered. Is the soul in our hair? What happens at haircuts? Is it in our bodily fluids?

The move, then, is to assert that the soul is not finite. Now we have the difficulty of asserting that a non-physical force (the soul) can cause a physical action (of the body). This violates a basic law of physics, and cannot be sustained in any other situation. It is also not necessary to assert it in the case of human experience. Neuro-physiology explains in ever-deeper ways the interaction between our consciousness and our physical actions, and the explanations involve physical forces acting upon a physical body which responds with physical action. Sensory experience triggers physiological responses of our glands, our bodies are flooded with the appropriate chemicals (such as adrenaline or dopamine) and the chemicals effect physical action. A ball thrown at our heads does not elicit reasoned reflection, but a rapid shift in body chemicals that move our muscles into an evasive move.

If the action has a measurable reason, why posit an immeasurable reason instead?

But some argue that there are other actions which are not simply chemical: moral decisions, perhaps. There must be, they argue, some master of our domain, a captain of the ship who guides and steers us. This is the driver-in-a-car model.. But who is the driver? The assumption that it is our consciousness doesn't fit the results of recent neuro-psychological experimentation. For example, a man with electrodes implanted in his brain (to control epileptic seizure) was asked to watch a slide show while the doctors measured his responses. He was given a remote and complete control of the pace of the show. Wires were taped to the appropriate places on his head. As he watched the show, he began to believe that the projector was reading his mind, since the projector seemed to change before his thumb pressed the advance button. Indeed, the slide was actually already changing as he became aware he wanted it to change. What he didn't know was that the remote was a null, and the actual impulse to the projector was flowing through the wiorse reading the implanted electrodes -- and the projector was receiving the message before his consciousness did.

The result: our consciousness is not the decision maker, but the monitor that reports. This is not difficult to accept when we consider the times we drive on auto-pilot or we say something we didn't "think" of saying.

So if our consciousness is not the decision-maker, is our subconsciousness? The difficulty here is that subconsciousness is not a single track. There are numerous impulses working at the same time at the subconscious level, and usually in opposition to one another. The success of one or another to make it to the top is seemingly an accident; hence, the Freudian slip. We in the west typically would say that the soul is ultimately responsible; it will be the recipient of any reward or punishment. Classical Hinduism will agree. But the idea of rewarding or punishing a thing that does not actually control the actions of the body it inhabits seems illogical at best, foolish at worst. Theravadin Buddhism rejects the idea of individualism and individual punishment/reward.

The Five Skandas
Instead, Theravada insists that we are, in every moment, simply the result of the coming together of various cosmic energies. Siddhartha identified five categories that lead to what we call "I." They are referred to as the five skandas.

Physical Body. The question is not whether our body exists -- we can indeed question THAT too, but assume it for now. Is it permanent? Or better, at what moment is your body you? Our physical body is constantly changing: we get bigger, then we diet and we get smaller. Was that extra weight that you lost really "you"? If so, are less of a person after the diet? If that extra weight was not you, can you say the same about what you have left over? At one point you were but seven pounds or so. Are you now over 100 pounds of "not you"? Our physical body cannot be our identity, because it is impermanent. When you die, that body will cease altogether, and those who hope for a resurrection of the body know that they cannot get the very same body -- because parts of what used to be you are incorporated into the environment (the worms eat, the worms poop), and in time those very same elements are incoprorated into the body of someone else. It is the cycle of life. So we look to something other than our physical body for permanence and identity.

Sensation. Our bodies allow us to experience the world around us, and if the instrument is not permanent, we might instead think that the goal was the sensory experience the instrument made for us. But Our sensory experience is both flawed and fleeting. Studies have demonstrated that sight, for instance, does not give us a real image of the world. Think of the picture screen on your TV. If you look very, very closely at the screen, you will see that it is not a solid image, but dots. Yet our sight fills in the spaces between the dots. You can understand this by remembering the time you were looking for your keys. You looked on the counter three times, and then found them the fourth time, right in the middle of the counter. You had directed your eyes in that direction before, but the keys were not actually seen. Your mind filled in a blank spot in your vision with what it assumed was there -- empty countertop. Now, make it more complicated: your senses are changing. Your eyes are losing their power, your hearing is fading, even your senses of smell and taste fade as you get old. You know your sense of touch is changing -- you couldn't stand the hot water when you first began washingdishes, and now it isn't so bad. At what moment is your sensation you?

Perception. Again, we could assume that the previous skanda is an impermanent vehicle to get us to something permanent, in this case perceptions. Perceptions are not the physical data of the senses, but what our experience interprets that data to be. When the light enters the eye and "projects on the screen," we determine what that image is. But perception depends on a mental database. A small child sees a chihuahua, and never having seen a dog before has no entry with which to compare and understand the image. Mom tells him, "Dog." The next day the child encounters a Saint Bernard, and the image of the chihuahua may not be similar enough to connect, but again Mom says, "Dog." Now the database has sufficient entries to process shepherds and terriers and Australian Cattle Dogs -- and the child sees a large animal in the field eating grass, and says, "Dog." But Mom says, "No. Cow." The database grows. Imagine how as you grow older more people you meet look like someone else -- because your database is growing. Thus, as your database grows, your perceptions are perpetually changing. Perception is not permanent, and there is no point in our lives where we can freeze it and say for all time, "That is me."

Emotional Responses. But we again imagine that body, sensation, and perception are impermanent vehicles, meant only to get us to our emotional responses. When we process an image, we respond to it: we like her face, we are afraid of that snake, we crave that pasta. But these emotional responses are changing as well. When I was small, I did not like the taste of coffee, although I very much likd the smell. To this day the smell of brewing coffee can comfort me. But now it does more -- I find myself waking up as I smell it. I am responding differently because of experience. On the other hand, I loved apple juice as a small child -- until I got the mumps and my mother gave me apple juice to drink. To this day apple juiceconjures up a negative emotional response. Our perceptions of nice people are often based on previous images of people who looked like this one. And our perception of beauty is almost always based on association of past images. Knowing that in every moment our responses are created by past expreience which itself is constantly changing leads us to the conclusn that my likes and dislikes -- what I will embrace and what I renounce -- cannot be considered permanent. Racism can be transformed through experience, but racism is also be born of experience.

Consciousness. Finally, we turn to consciousness. This isn't the simple reasoning process -- it is deeper. Also referred to as mind, this is the very basis of all the other skandas, the electricity that runs through the brain. We might say it is life force -- the stuff that makes us alive, electro-chemical energy that animates us and makes thought in the brain. But that electro-chemical energy is derivative. That is, when two cells divide, the electro-chemical energy that animated the undivided one is simply extended to animate the divided two. Eventually, that electro-chemical energy fizzles, and we (and all cellular entities) die. Is that "you"? If we maintain that the electro-chemical energy is our identity, we must deal with the fact that it was someone else's identity before it became ours. In other words, the electro-chemical energy that is "I" is also my mother, my father, my grandparents and so on. We are one. At the least, it is clear that it stops. It is not permanent, either.

So unless one can define "soul" in some way that makes sense, it is not rational to maintain that there is permanence to the "self".