LaRouche: State of the Union Address, 2003

What Is the Soul?
page 53

What Is the Soul?

Question: As many people know, Mr. LaRouche has committed himself to build a youth movement, in the United States and globally, not only as part of his commitment to the future, but also because they represent an unpredictable and unstoppable light cavalry, which is critical in this period.

We have questions that have come in from youth, from all over the world, as they listen to Mr. LaRouche's remarks. What I'm going to do, in closing, is to try to summarize the question that they seem to be submitting most frequently. It's an easy question for Lyn. It says:

"In talking to young people, the most frequent question that I'm confronted with is, not that people disagree with what I'm saying, but people say, ‘What can I do? I'm just one person, in a completely backward and seemingly unstoppable global collapse.' I happen to think that one person actually can do something, but I'd like to know, what do you see as the most immediate difference that one individual can make at this time, and why? I guess, what I'm really asking, is: ‘What is the soul? And how can you know it?'

"What is the soul? It seems to be something a U.S. President should know!"

LaRouche: I think it bears repeating, though I've said it often before, and written about it a great deal, about this question of the soul and spirituality. We go back to science a bit. See, we should not have religion and state mixed up, in any way. But, it's not necessary. To say, “I've learned it from a Bible”; “I've learned it from a preacher,” that doesn't mean anything, because that's learning. That's not knowledge. And, people are taken in, when religions start teaching learning, rather than knowledge, it becomes dangerous, because it denies people their soul. And, that's a lousy religion, that takes people's souls away from them, and gives them a free ticket on a non-existent place, in a non-existent Heaven. Sort of like a Moon trip, you know?

We can know. We can know the truth of the existence of God, as a Creator. We can verify things, that we get as a matter of knowledge, by the same principle, developed by Plato in his collection of Socratic dialogues, and his supplementary piece on The Laws. You have a famous piece by Moses Mendelssohn, which is a study of the significance of Plato's Phaedo, called The Phaedon, by Moses Mendelssohn, which is an example of this. We have the ability to have certain knowledge of things that some people call “spiritual,” “religious,” and so forth, without relying on any particular teaching, book, or anything else. We can know that, the same way that we know any other principle, that I just illustrated, crudely in other places, this principle of gravitation. You find a contradiction to what the senses teach you. And you solve the contradiction, and you demonstrate experimentally, that you've found the solution. This becomes known as a “universal principle.”

What's this question of the soul? Which is dealt with so admirably by Plato, and by Moses Mendelssohn. One should read these things, and study them. Because, one should know, rather than learn. We have too much learning, and not enough knowledge.

We have a fellow called Vernadsky--great man, dead--didn't know everything, but he made a very useful contribution, a fundamental contribution to humanity, with his concept of the biosphere and the noösphere. What he did, simply, is demonstrate, as a physical chemist: He demonstrated, that the principle which Pasteur pointed toward, which Curie defined--and Vernadsky studied with Curie--that life is a principle separate from abiotic universe; but, that it interacts with the abiotic universe. In other words, life intervenes in the universe, to transform the universe. He demonstrated that, as a principle of life.

Secondly, that mankind, by his ability to make discoveries of principle, and intervene in the biosphere, through that knowledge, is able to change the universe, in ways that the universe would otherwise not change itself.

Next Page

|| - page index - || - chapter index - || - download - || - Exit - ||