Creative Journal 27-04-26

On reading an article on the book 'The Naked Ape' by the late Desmond Morris I was taken by a counter-question he reportedly asked an interviewer.

“Does a chimpanzee have a soul?”

“Perhaps a little one,” the interviewer conceded.

What a wonderfully evocative reply. Do souls come in different sizes? What would cause a soul to be larger or smaller? If the size of its posessor, then a child would have a smaller soul than an adult. This is somewhat reasonable according to the standard visual representations of the soul in art/film etc. When a soul is depicted in relation to its possessor, there is almost always a correspondence between the size of the body and the size of the soul which emanates from it.

However, the gist of the reply, I believe, was that the chimp's soul was lesser in size because the chimp is lesser in intellect. If then, the size of a soul is determined by intellectual capacity, cognitive ability, conscious thought or some other characteristic of mind, does it follow that an intellectual would have a larger soul than a simpleton? And would that size imply a qualitative difference? Is a big soul, in fact, better?

But more to my own interests: artworks, books etc are often described as being imbued with soul. We speak of the soul inherent in a ballet, or a great painting. Do those souls also vary in size? Which painting would have a larger soul, an Alma-Tadema or a Miro? If the intellectual capacity of a person confers a largeness (or perhaps even greatness of soul), then what quality of an artwork or book likewise confers greatness of soul? A wonderful question to wrestle with. Perhaps it is the ultimate question with which every tortured creative does battle.

Or another angle. Something that has always interested me is the more fundamental question: what is a soul? More particularly, how much of the ego (or sense of self) inheres in the soul, both before death and after? The soul is seen as something elevated, as being some essential quality of each being which is above and beyond the mundane life. If our ego-self is the part of ourselves which is most interested in mundane concerns, does it follow that the soul is the part of us which is concerned with the more ephemeral and spiritual aspects of our life? Being so, could the soul in fact be free from ego? The darknesses of our minds arr replete with petty personality traits, grudges, victimhood fantasies, and all manner of unhelpful phantasmagoria. I cannot believe any culture would endorse the idea that these are part of the elevated essence we term the 'soul'.

In Christian mythology, we believe the soul will enter the kingdom of Jesus and live in eternal peace and harmony. A soul which harbours petty jealousies and resentments would, by definition, be unable to live in such a state of harmony. Thus, we must conclude that part of the ego is removed from the soul upon ascension. That the soul is somehow purified on death or existsin a permanent state of purity, untouched by petty ego processes. Yet personhood remains after death. People fantasise about meeting their loved ones in the afterlife, implying that the soul carries with it memory, personhood and naturally, egohood.

This stands in contrast to a Vedic conception of transmigration and reincarnation. One is said to take 'lessons' or 'wisdom' or

'virtue' from one life to the next but not to retain a persistent sense of identity. So, if memory, even in limited or unconscious form, is transferred but sense of personal identity is erased, does this essence which carries on after death constitute an ego? Obviously not to the degree that Christians would have it. But both conceptions sense that there is something polluting about the mundane ego and its pettiness.

It is difficult to see what we can draw form this comparison which can be of use in the creative process. Perhaps that ego, a sense of self, can move from life to life to afterlife in the same way that the author's presence can move from book to book to artwork. For some authors, their authorial 'soul' moves through their work and their creative fingerprints are immediately obvious, like a persistent literary ego. For others, their authorial souls are inchoate, lacking identifiable ego traces and their creative output is disorganised.

So, we come back around to the question we but lately left. What quality of an artwork or book confers greatness of soul? Is it a deliberate, authorial ego which resides in the work, persisting after the death of the author, as in the Christian conception of the soul? Or does great work transcend and leave behind the personhood of the creator? The seeds of its greatness being found in only the most valuable lessons from the author's lifetime as in the Vedic conception?

Truly a question for the ages.