UNDERSTANDING THE SOUL
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Do you have an illness that doctors and medicine cannot cure
GOD WILL HEAL YOU
In our Scripture, God tells us:
However serious an illness will become, I never say that it will not be cured. 12-52 Ofudesaki
In the Bible, Jesus and his disciples were said to have healed the sick. In the beginning of the our religion, thousands of people were cured of their illness; but where are the miracles now?
What are the ingredients to make these miracles happen now? Does this require believing in God and having faith? Does it require making donations or making a pilgrimage to a holy site? The following is from Tenrikyo’s sacred scripture:
The saving of those whom doctors are unable to save is the foundation of the path. You tell them the teachings (about the soul). They listen and they are healed. Oct 17, 1893 Osashizu
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GOD WILL HEAL YOU IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE SOUL
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Why would God heal us if we understand the soul? To answer this question, we must first find out why there is illness and suffering. Why are some people afflicted with cancer? Why do people suffer from diseases? Why do people get into accidents? Why do I have these intense headaches? Why am I depressed? Why do bad people appear in our lives? Are these all random events or planned by God?
God tells us that these events are not random or created by God. God has been a spectator since the creation of mankind.
Though until now God has never come out into the open, no matter what unpleasant occurrences one experienced. 8-66 Ofudesaki
God tells us that it is our own soul that brings upon joy or suffering to us:
Above all else, guard your soul,
for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23
God tells us that we do not understand the soul. The first verse of our most sacred scripture begins with:
Looking all over the world and through all ages, I find no one who understands the soul. Ofudesaki 1-1
What is the soul?
The soul has also been called the heart or the spirit. Scientists have not yet located and verified the existence of the soul in our bodies; but many of us believe that it exist. We believe that the soul is composed of energies. These energies will manifest into our fates and our thought patterns (figure 1) in our minds. It is these thought patterns and their proportions that distinguish each individual from the other. It is these thought patterns that influence our behaviors, especially when fate is manifested by our souls.

figure 1
Evil thought patterns are arrogance, greed, regret, and self-love. These neural pathways influence our behaviors.
God tells us that it is our own soul that monitors our thought patterns and behaviors by collecting and storing our merits and demerits as energy, and it eventually releases them as joy or suffering back to us as fate. We reap what we have sowed. But some people will say that they can’t remember having sowed evil, yet they suffer. Others will arrogantly boast that they have done evil, yet they do not suffer. It is as if God places a wall in front of us by the prolonged lapse of time between cause and effect; we cannot see what fates exist around the corner. This lapse of time between cause and effect often extends into our previous and next lifetimes. These are the concepts of reincarnation and karma, where our memories are erased upon our death; but our pattern of thoughts and our fates are saved to be manifested later in our next lifetime. What makes this possible? Enter or exit the soul.
God tells us that our physical bodies eventually decay, but our souls continue for eternity. Metaphorically, our souls are like little suitcases that contain our pattern of thoughts and our fate, exiting our bodies at death, and entering our new bodies before birth. One can say that we live forever because of the soul.
By what mechanism does the soul operate?
Upon entering our developing bodies, the soul programs our minds with our previous thought patterns (like greed and arrogance) from our past life (figure 2).
