Transcendence Of Being: Soul, Essence And Immortality

Transcendence of Being: Soul, Essence and Immortality

The idea of ​​immortality has been an issue to be addressed since time immemorial. A certain greed of the human being to want to remain in the physical world and at the same time the fear that feels to die, leave everything and never know anything again, they have led him to dream of the way he can continue to exist. And it is that the human being often ignores that he has more than just a simple body, since when he dies he does not do it at all, it is his physical body that does it, but not his soul, it still exists as something immutable and This is for all eternity. As mentioned in the first volume of Plato, Fedón or the Soul. Thus, we can say that the objective of this work is to illustrate how when we die we do not cease to exist at all, since our soul continues to exist over time and with it our essence. To do this we will rely on the book of El Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, world, illusion and death where they also show us a fairly positive position to the issue of death, without fear or cowardice because after all, it is not there where everything ends. Sooner or later the one born has to die. It is something undeniable for the living being, however we are all energy, sooner our life goes ahead of our eyes and we become the same energy from which we come once again. It is something like a cycle. 

Philosophy can provide an individual with a lot of wealth. A wealth that does not satisfy the senses, but rather to his thinking, which for the philosopher who is altruistic must be shared for those who want to acquire it.

As well as happened to Plato who was a disciple of Socrates and then Aristotle’s teacher. Probably born in Athens or Egina on 428 to.C, and died in Athens in 347 to.C, during his youth he fought as a soldier in the Peloponnese wars, in which Athens was defeated, so he had to live the consequences of that war. At 21 he became part of the circle of Socrates which produced a great change in his philosophical orientations. In the first volume of his work, Fedón or the soul, written around the year 387 to. We can realize it, because the conversation that Socrates held in prison with his friends, before his death when executed,. It talks about the immortality of the soul, a theory of knowledge, the meaning of philosophy and the life of the philosopher. Plato leaves us this document, as a dialogues and what was his teacher’s last day, to show us a testimony of the moment in which the philosopher faces the supreme moment of his existence: that of the death.  

The human being is greedy by nature. At first we talked about how man would like to be immortal to remain in the world that gives him pleasure for his senses and enjoy everything that is worth it for him. He is pretentious, but it’s really just an idea he has, because it’s just what he has learned. Learn from the flesh, live from the flesh and it is the only thing that attends, and this is the most important thing that has to lose, so when talking about death it means losing everything, when in reality what you need to continue existing has it with the. The vulgar attaches to life, because the only thing that he takes care of is the body and the pleasures of the senses, forgetting that he has a soul; And thus death terrifies him, because by destroying his body, he looks deprived of what he wants most. But what are the price of life and terror of death for those who do not give the body any value? In this case is the philosopher who finds his happiness alone in thought; that he aspires to invisible goods like the soul. Who have been subject to meditation all his life (Plato, 387 to.C). 

While it is true that most people get carried away by the first impression that everything ends, but what really is that? Maybe they give more value to something that they don’t even know where it came from or where it will go. Plato says it, what has true value is not something that can be seen, because sooner or later it will go, instead what is carried inside from the beginning is what will return to. When we are little, our brain is able to acquire how much knowledge is given to you. He stores it, and he is learning little by little about the environment in which he touched him to be, in this way he is forged as the person who will develop freely in the future. However, it is also true that in addition to acquiring that knowledge that is granted, there are others that already bring them and sometimes he does not even know why or how he learned them. Knowing is nothing more to remember, and the memory is an earlier knowledge; Therefore, if the soul remembers things that it has not been able to know in this life, it is proof that it has existed before. Is it not true that our soul, through the imperfect equality that the objects sensitive to each other show, has the idea of ​​perfect, intelligible and inaccessible equality to the senses? The consequence of everything is that the soul exists before our appearance in this world, and the same essences (Plato, 387 to.C) 

We could say that this knowledge is commonly called as talents, which are usually pointed out as acquired since we were born, but in reality it may have been even before birth and that they remained in our essence until that moment. The one that is good to draw and never went to a drawing class, which is good in music and never had someone close to teach him, that can be a clear example of this. "If I can’t see it, it does not exist for me" it is an affirmation that many people have stuck in their way of thinking. The soul of course is something that we cannot see and therefore those people believe they are right in affirming that there is no such thing. How can you say then that what endures our soul when we die and that it can even return? Moreover, why don’t you perish together what lives? It is then when we can clearly make distinction between two kinds of things: those that are noticeable and those that do not, but after all the latter are still there, although we cannot see them. As mentioned.

Death is the safe end for who was born. But it is equally sure that who has dead must be reborn. The spirit is indestructible and imperishable; He penetrates everything. No one can destroy that immutable being. Plato is even based on the Pythagorean ideas of the soul stay in the hell and his return to life, to prove that it exists after death, taking into account the maxim that says: the living are born from the dead. Everything that has an opposite, is born from the contrary. Thus we can rescue that the soul can last, and that it can even re -inhabit another being. Some religions can call it reincarnation. And it is nothing more than that essence that was already before, and returns to be in this world once again.

We conclude then that Fedón or the soul shows us that death does not suppose our end. Plato himself learned this idea of ​​his teacher Socrates, who even waiting for his death never abandoned the love of wisdom and therefore he was not afraid of saying goodbye to this world, because he knew that something of him would not disappear. Of course, the thought he was forming over time greatly influenced that situation, since by not feeling attachment to the physical world, he did not terrified to lose him. Otherwise the ignorant man who craves immortality, either to continue enjoying or because he is afraid of disappearing from the physical world that loves so much. Ignorant not realizing or rather subtract importance to everything that is part of it. He does not realize that since childhood he had knowledge that anyone taught him, he does not realize that the soul is what he has to feed because it will continue when he is no longer. We can even talk about hundreds of examples that are linked to this idea, be the past lives, reincarnation, the souls that meet again, destiny, etc. The truth of this is that the soul is the only thing we possess that it cannot be affected by anything, never mute, it does not have to fear dissolution by death like the body; It is the only thing we have and that is immortal.