A FEW weeks ago, I wrote an article that sought to elevate the soul to a place where the Almighty tunes into the individual and he alone knows the frequency. The body is a gift from God; the mind is the imperfection of the spirit and the soul is the means by which God communicates his acceptance or rejection of the spirit.A limit has been imposed on the body because it is physical and has by definition to deteriorate. In short we all have to die. The mind is capable of conjuring up anything because it operates in an environment of imperfection; it is therefore prone to manipulation by things and people around it. This is why it is possible to read someone’s mind.On the other hand, it is impossible to read the soul of another individual. It can only be read by the Almighty. The physical counterpart to the soul with regard to the uniqueness of identification is the fingerprint. The same way in which man discovered that there was a unique physical identification of an individual in the form of a fingerprint, the Almighty had to be able to identify and judge the spirit; it is done through the soul. Therefore the soul is the spiritual identification of the individual which is known only to the Lord. In this sense, the soul is superior to both the body and the mind.The death of the physical body is not the end. It is also not the thing that causes man to identify with God out of fear, since from conception the physical body is known to have finite life. The fear in death comes in the separation, as the mind is incapable of understanding death, because it no longer has a body in which to dwell.Once the soul has gained acceptance from the Almighty, physical death is only an issue to the extent that the mind has to separate from the body. If the mind is the imperfection of the spirit but the soul has acceptance, then the transition from the physical to the spiritual has been fulfilled.It is impossible for the mind to reach perfection once it exists in a physical world. Indeed, it may be argued that the pursuit of perfection is an unrealistic expectation in an environment that is incapable of accommodating it. This is why the ultimate judgement of the individual comes via the soul.The most popular song at funerals does not say it is well with my mind, it says it is well with my soul!If the mind were the ultimate basis for determining the individual, then the ultimate judgement could be done by a fellow human being. But the mind is the imperfection of the spirit; it believes; it conceives but it also deceives.The mind is therefore capable of achieving extra-ordinary things but only on the physical level. It may be developed to have a high tolerance level. It may be trained to behave in a particular way. It is therefore possible for the mind to assume powers that may be mistaken as omniscient, when it is simply extraordinary.It is impossible for the human being that we know to be omniscient. Anything that is all-knowing has to take a spiritual form which makes it capable of manifesting itself in whatever form it sees fit. The Almighty is therefore the ultimate soul into which all other souls are wired, if we accept the earlier definition of the soul.Both the body and the mind are constructs which permit the individual to exist in an environment in which all the desirable pursuits are measurable and therefore physical, even when processed in the mind. This is why emotions are revealed physically.On the other hand, the soul is purely spiritual because it is the domain of the Almighty into which each individual has access but not necessarily acceptance.           • Clyde Mascoll is a professional economist and former Government minister in the last Barbados Labour Party administration.
