Concept of soul in Indian philosophy

-vaani sharma
Concept of soul has always been an unsolvable maze of understanding, in the timeless pursuit
of understanding human existence, it has captivated the minds of philosophers, theologians,
and thinkers across cultures and epochs. Indian philosophical schools have also contributed
immensely to the study of soul.
Indian philosophy can be broadly divided into 8 different schools, Cārvāka, Jainism,
buddhism, Nyaya, Vaiśeṣika, Vedanta, yoga, Samkhya. Some of the mentioned schools are
orthodox in nature and some are heterodox in nature, orthodox schools are those schools
which believe in authority of the vedas, they take everything written in the vedas as true,
whereas heterodox schools are those schools which do not believe in the authority of vedas
instead they neglect them and give arguments to prove that they are not appropriate to be
followed.
Each school talks differently and gives different explanations for the concept of soul, in
general, most of the orthodox schools accept the presence of soul and concepts such as rebirth
but most of the heterodox schools deny the existence of soul, religious god, rebirth etc.
So lets delve into all the schools and what they preach about soul one by one:

Cārvāka:
This school of Indian philosophy follows gross egoistic hedonism in its theory, this can
evidently be seen in sutras such as :” Yavat jivet sukham jivet , rine kritva Ghritam
Pibat”, this means till the time you are alive, you should live with full happiness no matter
how, drink ghee no matter if you have to borrow money for buying ghee. There is nothing
outside this world and the only aim of human life is to get pleasure, one should always focus
on immediate pleasures rather than looking for long term happiness by compromising todays
calm.
According to this school, existence of things is proved on the basis of whether that thing can
be sensed or not. If an object can be sensed by our 5 organs, eyes, skin, nose, ear, tongue then
that object exists, otherwise it is nothing in this world. Similarly, this school also doesn’t
accept ether(sky) as one of the elements of universe because that can not be sensed.
Therefore carvaka denies the existence of soul, on the basis that it can not be sensed by
humans, that is it is beyond human perception.
The explanation and argument of this school is very shallow, it does not consider anything
beyond perception, anything that is beyond our sense does not exist, but this argument
doesn’t satisfy human craving for real knowledge of soul.

Jainism:
Jainism talks about two kinds of substance jiva and ajiva. Jiva is a conscious spirit and ajiva
corresponds to a non conscious non spirit. It regards, human body made up of matter which
perishes one day and get mixed with the nature, it is temporary and composed of ajiva matter
or unconscious material substance. But our spirit is conscious, permanent and eternal, it can
not be perished. The soul is eternal, but it also undergoes, changes of states, but its base
remains the same.
Jainsim believes that karma is matter which enters the human body and causes bondage, it is
the link which unites soul and body. Ignorance of human beings towards truth is a sticky
substance which leads to sticking of karmic particles on the body and this leads to bondage,
when the person frees himself/herself from these karmic particles then he/she attains
liberation and freedom from cycle of birth and death.
Finally, Jainism accepts the existence of soul and even regards it as an eternal and permanent
substance.

Buddhism:
Buddhism doesn’t talk about soul directly, but the idea of soul can be inferred from buddhist
philosophies of rebirth and liberation. It propogates that samsara has an endless cycle of birth
and death, which is only possible with the existence of a permanent substance, soul. One can
free himself/herself from this samsara, and attain liberation by doing good karma and this
would lead to nirvana of the soul.
Rebirth of a person can only happen when there is existence of soul, thus it can be said that
Buddhism supports the existence of soul in this world.

Samkhya:
Sāṃkhya soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is
absolute pure consciousness (cit). Relation between body or rather the mind associated with it
and soul is such that whatever mental phenomena happen in the mind are interpreted as the
experience of its soul. The souls are many, and had it not been so (the Sāṃkhya argues) with
the birth of one all would have been born and with the death of one all would have died.

Vedanta:
brahma satyam, jagat mithya; jivo brahmaiva naparaha
worldly things are materialistic and false, Jagat is real from practical point of view but mithya
from transcendental, indescribable from logical point if view. Whereas, soul is considered as
same as brahman, which is eternal and all pervasive. Jiva, which is an individual soul due to
ignorance considers itself different from brahman, and mistakes the plural world as ultimate
reality.
Ramanuja, a philosopher of Vedanta school gave the theory of visistadvaita, under which he
explains soul as:
chit, or organ/ attribute of god
spiritual substance and absolutely real
atomic and resides in heart but pervades the world just like light of lamp pervades a room
it is controlled by god
there are tree kinds of soul : nityamukta ((eg. Sesanaga, laxmidevi) live in vaikuntha in
service of god,) mukta(liberated sages like ramanuja), baddha(bonded souls resolving in
samsara)

Nyaya-vaisesika:
They regard soul as Dravya and substratum of guna, karma etc. Soul according to Nyaya
school is substance containing consciousness, wherein consciousness is the accidental
property of soul acquired through conjunction with manas (mind) and senses. They admit that
soul can not be perceived externally through senses, but it can be perceived internally by the
individual.
They also support the view that soul (pure substance) gets trapped in the cycle of birth and
death due to ignorance but through ways prescribed one can free himself/herself from this
cycle. This was is tattvaijnanam evam nishkamkarman which means true knowledge of self
and other objects and desireless action.
Concludingly it can be said that, soul has been accepted by most of the Indian philosophy
schools in some or the other way, soul is an immanent permanent unexplainable substance
present in the body of humans and other organisms and lays as a bridge between organism
and god.