Brahman And The Oversoul

Silverbackman said:
about the existence of an Oversoul or Universal Soul.

The Oversoul is described as a universal soul
where all souls came from
All living things have souls.

Many of these Romance writers started out as Christians but after spending time in Nature for a while their religious views became more Eastern;).

Could this universal soul called the Oversoul be
the same as the Upanishadic concept of the Brahman?

If not, is there any other concept on Hindu scriptures similar to the concept
of the Oversoul?
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I found this great summary of "Brahman":

Brahman, the supreme entity from which everything originates, into whom everything merge, and by whom everything is maintained, is described in the Upanishads as the Supreme Person transcending matter and endowed with infinite attributes.

His position is superior to those of other devas like Indra, Agni, Rudra, etc, who are created entities who carry out their duties according to His wishes.

Being transcendental to matter, Brahman does not become tainted even when He takes avatAra in this world. Despite taking part in seemingly material activities, He remains ever untainted and always transcendental.
 
Silverbackman said:
Could this universal soul called the Oversoul be considered to be the same as the Upanishadic concept of the Brahman? If not, is there any other concept on Hindu scriptures similar to the concept of the Oversoul?
Click to expand...
There may be something universal. For example, 'physical energy'. The universe and all things contained in it seem to be constituted by it (does any one know any other entity which could be there?). And the fact is that we do not know fully about 'physical energy' (Have dark matter and dark energy been explained?).

But why should we make it into a soul? Is there any clear scientific evidence about soul? At best it seems that God (Goddesses) and soul, heaven and hell, judgment and deliverance are imaginations of humans.
 
Well, no neither dark matter or energy are explained (in terms of a widely accepted argument).

I am a firm believer in "non-material existence" as well as material existence. Is that non-material existence only consciousness-mind or is there something beyond that like soul? I personally experience both forms of non-material existence.

There is no scientific empirical evidence of mind either (it all could be, by all physical measurement, be an illusion also). The matter becomes an issue of rationalism (what can be logically constructed) and not empiricalism (what can be sensed with physical senses).
 
It does indeed seem that the planets and Stars revolve around the EARTH, doesn't it?
Curiously enough, this is not so.
 
radarmark said:
Well, no neither dark matter or energy are explained (in terms of a widely accepted argument).

I am a firm believer in "non-material existence" as well as material existence. Is that non-material existence only consciousness-mind or is there something beyond that like soul? I personally experience both forms of non-material existence.

There is no scientific empirical evidence of mind either (it all could be, by all physical measurement, be an illusion also). The matter becomes an issue of rationalism (what can be logically constructed) and not empiricalism (what can be sensed with physical senses).
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For mind we have the EEG and like. But this brings us to the question of existence and non-existence. Are they different, or they are two faces of the same, of 'nothing', as was mentioned in the 'Nasadiya Sukta' (my favorite) of RigVeda (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10129.htm):

THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
 
You are free to believe in the notion of nothing being something. I have real problems with that. There is what there is (in a dialectic monist sense, to include matter, mind and soul) and what is not. The Kosmos is the sum total of all there is. What else is there?
 
The heat death of the universe, like Mark Twain's premature death notice is but a rumor that has been greatly exaggerated.

The assumption behind the heat death is a spatially and temporally infinite universe. There is no proof of either (transitions at the Big Bang and Big Crunch, if they exist, as most believe--at least the former--disprove the assumption).

Any steady state, cyclic, or chaotic inflationary model of the universe allows for "increase of entropy" to be a localized phenomenon, thus del S=0 is a possible valid solution. Se the work of Alan Guth and the recent work of Egan and Lineweaver.
 
It depends on what one means by proof. In my hard core scientific view proof means proving "absolutely true", that is the thesis-hypothesis is true as a tautology )for all times in all locations). That definition preserves the sense of inerrant, eternal truth that is used in much discourse (and is endemic to Plato).

Given that as the definition of proof, all the empirical sciences (depending on sense data and measurement) can do is get us closer and closer to the truth (Higgs Field is closer than Einstein, who was closer than Newton). In the end we may be very, very certain of the truthiness of an hypothesis (the Minkowski-Einstein tensor or the Uncertainty Principle).

But absolute knowledge of truth (that is I believe, have sufficient reason to believe the hypothesis is true and the hypothesis is actually true) is not possible in the empirical world because the truth can never be absolute.

The proof can never be 100% true because alternative explanations or solutions always exist.

This is a pretty traditional Hume-Peirce-Popper-Psillos model of proof, knowledge, and truth.

I hold it because I am also a nuclear physicist by education... I believe in things that "do not make much sense" but are empirically very, very provable (and logically just not understandable in terms of reductionalism). Similarly, I am a strong believer in induction and abduction (thank you Indian philosophy) and the mathematics (thank you all mathematicians) but, as a matter of fact also beleive the contradictory notions of Hume's Problem of Induction (it cannot be deductively proved) and Godel's Proofs (higher mathematics cannot be shown to be both complete and consistent).

So, for me, if the Uncertainty Principle demands "spooky action at a distance"and the non-existence of a continuity of masses and energies, logic demands that induction is a pragmatic construct, and higher mathematics is logically unprovable why sweat the provability of dark matter or energy.

Bottom line, there are many explanations for galactic formation that do not require the "darks", but they get rid of things like the absoluteness of the speed of light or the gravitational constant. The darks were invented to ensure that the more fundamental notion of invariance was not violated.
 
radarmark said:
So, for me, if the Uncertainty Principle demands "spooky action at a distance"and the non-existence of a continuity of masses and energies, logic demands that induction is a pragmatic construct, and higher mathematics is logically unprovable why sweat the provability of dark matter or energy.

Bottom line, there are many explanations for galactic formation that do not require the "darks", but they get rid of things like the absoluteness of the speed of light or the gravitational constant. The darks were invented to ensure that the more fundamental notion of invariance was not violated.
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What you write is perfectly true, but still, let us go on. Perhaps we will find the reason for spookiness also, not in my life-time, but perhaps 200 years later. Can we stop? :D
 
bhaktajan said:
I found this great summary of "Brahman":

Brahman, the supreme entity from which everything originates, into whom everything merge, and by whom everything is maintained, is described in the Upanishads as the Supreme Person transcending matter and endowed with infinite attributes.

His position is superior to those of other devas like Indra, Agni, Rudra, etc, who are created entities who carry out their duties according to His wishes.

Being transcendental to matter, Brahman does not become tainted even when He takes avatAra in this world. Despite taking part in seemingly material activities, He remains ever untainted and always transcendental.
Click to expand...

You describe only Saguna Brahman - Brahman with attributes, Ishvara or Lord.

That which is utterly transcendent does not take form, and is Nirguna Brahman - Brahman without attributes. This aspect is utterly unknowable, although it is encountered in Samadhi, for there is no duality at all, thus no experiencer and no experienced. Thus no possibility of knowing is presented at all, which is why Buddha never even mentions it, only teaching how to encounter it.

Worshipful traditions seem to focus more on Saguna Brahman, and this aspect can be known through Dhyana, direct experience of the oneness of all things. Meditative traditions tend to focus on Nirguna Brahman, and to most will look atheistic.
 
I would suggest Saguna Brahman is usually called Brahma, as in the Trimurti, while it would be utterly wrong to call Brahman - the Absolute - a Deva, for it is that which the Deva's arose from.

In this, we see a correlation to Judeo tradition, where Devas would be Angels and Archangels, depending on stature, and Brahman would be God.
 
We also see the same in Buddhism, indeed many Hindu Devas have direct Bodisatva representations.

Here God and Nirguna Brahman are called Sunyata.

Thus we begin to see all the major traditions are in utter agreement.
 
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