THE COSMIC SOULAR THEORY

One fine morning, I was ruminating over the remarkable manner in which relationships develop between two apparently disparate individuals. How does a child under 10 form a bond with a grand father or grandmother who is decades older? Or vice versa? It is seldom at an intellectual level as there are only a million things that are yet to be on the same plane between the two, though each will make an effort to come down or climb up and meet somewhere. It is not necessarily at the physical level of sexual attractions or the emotional level of ‘falling in love’, even though these are also not out of the equation. Extending this even further, why does a dog form a bond with a specific human being more than others? Or vice versa?

It dawned upon me that the reason is more to do with soular (if I may be permitted to coin the term) compatibility. In other words, it is more about a meeting of souls than a meeting of minds, hearts or bodies. I hasten to add that the soular compatibility is in itself not incompatible with other level compatibilities mentioned above, given appropriate circumstances.

But while the reasons for physical, emotional and intellectual compatibilities can seem self-evident, soular compatibility is often obvious only to those who share it. It can seem absurdly inexplicable to others.

Thinking further, I was struck by a fairly interesting idea.

The Big Bang model of the universe has found wide acceptance across the scientific community. It generally refers to the idea that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past, and continues to expand to this day. Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître proposed this theory sometime in the 1930s although he called it his "hypothesis of the primeval atom".

I wondered why is this only being limited to matter? I saw that this hypothesis can be extended to the soul (of any form of life) as well. But in reality, my hypothesis is not so much about the origin of souls but more about what has transpired since. Anyways, here goes my basic hypothesis:

The Soular Big Bang: At some point in time, there was a primeval soul, like the primeval atom, which contained the nucleus of all souls that could possibly ever be. Suddenly there was a big bang and this resulted in zillions of souls being manifested across the universe in various galaxies/ stars/ planets in whatever form of life imaginable and unimaginable to mankind.

These individual souls have zillions of different characteristics just as the material world’s stars and planets have different shapes and sizes and component matter and/or energy levels. And just as diverse galaxies and stars are in varying stages of evolution, so are the souls too.

Soular Systems: Similar to galaxies, stars, planets, satellites and what not in the physical universe, there are Soular Systems spread across the universe. It is not limited to human beings but since that is the best way to perceive this, I will use human examples. A simple soular system could consist of the soul of a person around whom the souls of an entire family revolves like planets. There could be satellite souls around one or more of such planetary souls.

Bigger systems could include extended family / friends / dependants or followers of certain ideologies of this soul.

Soular Galaxies: This could be centered around great souls like Jesus, Gandhi who have carried the weight and hopes of millions of other souls around them. Just as different galaxies have different life spans, the influence-spans of such souls also vary. For instance, while the soular galaxies such as Buddha and Jesus are thousands of years old, that of a Gandhi or Martin Luther King is relatively young.

Soular Black Holes: These are akin to the destructive souls like a Hitler who ultimately sucked millions of souls along with them.

All these correspond to observations seen in real life on our own tiny little planet.

But what binds this universe full of souls together? The answer could be Soular Gravity.

Soular gravity could be defined as the pull that a given soul feels from various other souls and the pull that it in turn exerts upon other souls. Again the pull felt by a soul from various other souls (or exerted by it upon other souls) can vary based on the size, distance and other factor.

Inter-Soular-Gravitational pull is the single most important factor that creates tension as well as balance between souls.

Twin Souls: Just as twin stars abound the universe, twin souls are also not uncommon. These are just two souls that exert a tremendous mutual gravity and revolve around each other. They happen to meet up, form soular bonds because they share the same soular ideologies and philosophies. It is frequently seen that when two very diverse people connect with one-another, at this level, nothing else such as age, time, class, physical attributes or material wealth matters and they continue to revolve around one-another.

Free Souls: These are completely independent souls roaming across the universe with no binding whatsoever. They could probably likened to Soular comets/other such objects.

Trapped Souls: These are souls that would love to leave a system but are unable to – such as planets at the extreme edge of a star system with irregular orbits or weak gravitational forces from nearby to bind them.

Soular theory in the context of duality vs non-duality:

Hindu philosophers have argued about the duality (dvaita) and non-duality (advaita) theories. In layman’s terms, the former says that God’s Soul (paramatma) is the Centric to the Universe and all other souls (jeevatma-s) are constantly seeking to merge with it. However, non-dualists led by Adi Shankara have argued that all souls are the same and only those blinded by illusion cannot see this obvious truth. (Ramanuja’s Vishishtaadvaita philosophy is beyond the scope of this article.)

It is my contention that advaita is more about the pre-soular big-bang state, after which, zillions of secondary souls have come into being from the primary soul. Advaita in today’s context is more about the state of one’s mind than observed soular reality. Even in a human context, one can easily observe the various stages of evolution individual souls are in.

When we say “X is a great soul”, we are actually more precise than we imagine. X would represent a soul that is definitely more evolved than, say Y or Z. So, it is quite obvious that souls are not devoid of characteristics and personalities. If they were, every living object would behave in the same manner as the next, except for basic shape, size and intelligence levels.

Finally, what happens?

If one goes by the Big Bang theory of matter, nothing much other than perpetual expansion and distances between souls. However, if one were to apply the Indian philosophical / vedantic principles, there is also the Big Shrink where all matter will ultimately go back to its root source and then get ready for the big bang again. (This whole cycle has been alluded to by the great composer, Muttuswami Dikshitar in his composition, Veena pustaka dharini where he says, ‘nikhila prapancha sankocha vikaasa’).

Similarly, all secondary souls (jeevatma) will merge with paramatma, the eternal, primary soul. And so the cycle goes on…