By The Club
Toronto, Ontario
I sometimes take my daily trek along University Avenue and pass by a place where a friend of mine worked as a waiter for years at a University club. He told me of a Dr. WG Bigalow who used to frequent the prestigious club. As a world renowned heart surgeon in the 60’s and head of cardiovascular surgery at the Toronto General Hospital, Dr. Bigalow Had urged systematic research to determine the nature of the soul. He was at one time noted to saying, “If there is a principle of vitality, what is it?” I presume that he was speaking about consciousness when he said, “The soul doesn’t exist anywhere specifically, geographically, it’s everywhere and yet it’s nowhere in the body.”
I had looked at these statements from what was news in Canada during the time that our guru, Srila Prabhupada, was in Montreal. He responded to Bigalow’s observations, that there is a noticeable sudden lack of life or luster to the eyes when a person passes. In a letter by Prabhupada sent to the surgeon, an excerpt on the topic goes as follows:
“Just as a spark that comes from a fire appears to be extinguished when it falls away from the fire, the spark of the soul originally comes from the spiritual world to the material world… then falls down into three different conditions called the modes of nature – goodness, passion and ignorance.”
He also expressed in his correspondence that the soul is present in the heart of the living entity and it is the source of all the energies which maintain the body. The energy of the soul is spread all over the body, and this is known as consciousness.
Srila Prabhupada was very much encouraging the scientific research of the soul, but also cautioned that despite its presence in the body, it is so mystical that science may discover its symptoms, but not its actual location.
I get a personal boost when walking by the university club and what connections it has to do with our guru, soul dialogue and the openness to explore a worthy subject.
8 KM
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