The Weight of My Soul

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I picked up this crime thriller by Mark Billingham from the British Council Library the other day. For all my love for the literary "greats," I go to sleep every day with the exploits of gory, psychotic, Dexter-esque cops and killers.

In any case, something in this book I'm reading set me off on the usual tangent into myself. There's this gay pathologist with various piercings on his body who's the very-straight-and-almost-copy-book-macho cop protagonist's best friend. Over a post-mortem, he tells his friend the cop that an adult dead body weighs about 16-21 grams (3/4 ounce) less than the person did immediately before he or she died.

Or so a Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts came to believe after conducting experiments on 4 tuberculosis patients, one terminal diabetes patient and one man who was dying of undiagnosed causes in 1906. The good doctor, a religious man, thought the lost weight, sudden and substantial and inexplicable, was that of the soul. This was confirmed when his experiments on dogs showed no weight loss when he killed them for the sake of science—only humans have souls, you see.

My research shows that Dr. MacDougall’s findings were published in American Medicine in April 1907 in a paper pompously entitled "The Soul: Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance."

The pathologist in Mark Billingham’s book explained it as the release of the residual air from the lungs at the moment of death.

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Most religious philosophies juxtapose “body” against “soul.”

The body is material, the soul spiritual.
The body is effervescent, the soul eternal.
The body consumes and is therefore ultimately consumed; the soul is energy and therefore essential.
A body without a soul is dead; a shell to be discarded. A soul without a body is free, has gained nirvana, merged with the essence of the godhead—the param-atman—and has therefore reached its ultimate goal.

For religious philosophies, thus, the body burdens the soul while the soul “enlightens” the body.

One of the reasons I can’t subscribe to religions (and the eminent Dr. MacDougall) is my lack of faith in the absolute certainty of their beliefs.

If my body “contains” my soul within its limits (and therefore its limitations), does it not affect the “shape” and “scope” of my soul as long as it is within my body?
Does not the soul get imprinted with the experiences of the body?
Don’t the body’s properties affect the chemistry or the character of the soul?

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that my soul must also show some scratches from the life that has been etched into my body. Otherwise, how is it my soul and not yours or a tree’s or an ant’s?

If my soul is essential energy, unaffected by the “cage” it must inhabit, how does it reap the benefits of the good my body does or get punished for the sins it commits?

If all souls are one and inseparable from each other, how is the body I inhabit today a result of my soul’s karma and a part of its purification process?

Does the body or the soul commit the acts that will be rewarded or punished?

If it is the soul that is responsible for my karma on earth, why is my body incarcerated, whipped, tortured, maimed and killed?

If it is the body, why an afterlife? Why heaven or hell?

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

For some reason, I’ve been ruminating the truth about cats and dogs today.

Perhaps my canine thoughts owe their origin to Asterix (my Jack Russel Terrier, son of my heart if not my womb) who is, I know for sure, pining at home in our absence as my husband and I spend two weeks in the Andaman islands.

Maybe our frequent conversations about Asterix and his antics (we're missing him too!) make my thoughts stray to the feline because his primary day-job seems to be to keep our existence totally free of the neighbourhood cats and crows.

He takes his job very seriously and at various times of the day, he can be seen tearing from one verandah to another, growling and barking and lunging and generally posturing to be scarier than his 7kg body could possibly be—all because some intrepid cat or crow has dared to breach the invisible boundary into what he has designated to be his territory.

My feline thoughts could also be because of our recent visit to Istanbul—a city that seems to belong more to cats than to humans. Whatever the reason, I’m reminded today of a ginger, tiger-striped little cat who was waiting outside my apartment door one night many years ago.

It was late in the evening in Athens, Georgia, where I lived and taught at the time as I worked on my PhD as a Graduate Student. I lived in this off-campus housing estate comprised mostly of students and other poor folk of the community who couldn’t afford real houses.

So this mini tiger-cat was waiting outside my door when I came in. It was late fall and the last yellow leaves were on the ground already, waiting for my weekend tryst with the broom and trash-can. Although it was my 4th oncoming winter in the US, I still wasn’t used to the dreary, drizzly, gray and depressing months of the winter. I shivered as I stuck my key into the door, but before I could get in, this cat walked in as if it owned the apartment.

He walked around the entire flat (not that it was more than handkerchief size anyway) as if he had all the time to take stock. He surveyed my bathroom, my kitchen, my bedroom and looked gravely at himself in the full length mirror of the walk-in closet as I hung my coat. Apparently, my sense of hygiene, neatness, interior decoration, culinary taste and general lifestyle satisfied him.
He stayed.

I like to think that I let him stay, but that’s not really the way it was.

Through those winter months, he chose when to grace my lap with his presence; when to allow me to pick him up; when to purr at me and lick my hands with his rough tongue; when to curl up next to my body under the comforter.

But I, being human, thought he was mine. I bought him a litter-box and tins of cat food and told my friends at O’Malley’s on Friday nights that I had to go home because “my cat’s waiting for me.” And for that entire winter, he was.

Then one spring evening, I came home and as I let myself in, he let himself out. I never saw him again.

And now there’s Asterix, so undeniably, so completely, so totally mine. His entire existence revolves around me. His entire being trembles with excitement when I come home. His entire universe is suspended when I leave in the morning. If I didn’t say another kind word to him for the rest of my life, for the rest of his life he would still adore me.

I love Asterix.
I still think of the tiger-cat with awe.

You’re now thinking about the point of this post. I don’t know if there truly is a point, or if there is any 'truth' to the truth about cats and dogs, but I've heard many humans in my life classify themselves as cat-people or dog-people.

I'd like to ask those humans--what makes you a cat person or a dog person? Can you really know if you’re a cat or a dog? Are you really a dog who would like to be thought of as a cat? Or are you a cat brainwashed to think you should be a dog?

Whatever you are, you have to first recognize yourself.
Then you have to admit to yourself that you are meant to be what you are.
Then you have to allow yourself to be what you are.
Then you have to forgive yourself for being what you are.
Then you have to like what you are.
Then you have to be proud of what you are.

Then, and only then, can you fulfill your potential truth--cat or dog or both.

And talking about Asterix, watch this space for a video of him as a puppy killing his first ball!