Morality is about behavioral codes agreed upon by a society. Science is about discovering the truth about how everything in the universe comes about, works, and interacts. Science has nothing to do with what a society determines to be the right way to behave or think. It is only concerned with what can be proven under laboratory conditions after repeated results.

History shows us many cases in which Science and the morality of the time clashed. Galileo was imprisoned because he dared to defy the common morally-held belief at the time that the earth was the center of the Universe.
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The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered three parts:

• Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" when he stated that the Earth is not static and stationary at the center of all that is but it moves, contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse, and detest” his statements.
  
  
• He was sentenced to formal imprisonment, which was commuted to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life.
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• His writing were banned; publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
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Galileo was a scientist who just told the truth about his observations and calculations. But the moral code of 17th Century Europe couldn’t take the truth. They tried to suppress it through punishment. He died condemned by the Catholic Church for "vehement suspicion of heresy."

Years later, we all know that the the entire Universe does not revolve around the Earth and that the earth revolves around the sun. To put anyone in prison for declaring this fact would be highly immoral by today’s standards.

“Uncover” is the correct word to use. The soul is there but it is covered over like a lightbulb covered with masking tape. This masking tape is the endlessly chattering mind with all its fears about the future and regret about the past. So we must, literally, uncover our souls and free ourselves from this clutter.

People have used various techniques from yoga and meditation to chanting, self discovery satsangs, and ecstatic dance. Anything that works to quiet the mind and its anxiety-generating mechanisms will lead to discovering and uncovering the soul. Then you will feel the profound peace that underlies all this turmoil.

Dulling the mind with substances is not the path because they do not weaken the chattering mind, they only paralyze it temporarily. The only way that is lasting is to weaken the monkey-mind by overriding it, allowing it to carry on, as you dive deeper into the profound peace that underlies it all.
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Recognize that thoughts and feelings come and go, bodies and minds come and go. They do not last. What lasts is the soul. Allow yourself to feel this and you will want to live in it. Only things that last are real. When you realize this, it becomes easier and easier to dwell in your soul and find the tranquility within.

NPD, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, can be seen as evidence of a “young soul” as opposed to an “old soul.” Old souls have cycled through many lifetimes and have a firmer grasp of, and familiarity with, the world of the Spirit because of this depth. Young souls have few past lives compared to the highly-diversified past lives of the Old Souls. Therefore, they may not display the soul-filled qualities of empathy and concern for others, the humility of a spiritually committed person, and the serious intention to discover who they are in the eternality of their Being.

Narcissists are deeply absorbed in the image they are trying to project to the world. They want others to worship their image to fill a void within. This is not a spiritual journey or even the first step into egoless-ness. It is a mis-step. It is a journey into the pitfalls of the human mind and its constant need for validation due to fear and insecurity. It is a pit of need that can never be filled and offers no real satisfaction.

Narcissists do not think there is a problem with their approach to life. They will rarely seek the egoless state that is the center of spiritual practice.
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All souls eventually awaken to their union to Source Energy, Cosmic Creativity, and Expanding Bliss. Narcissists take more lifetimes to get there because they are on the completely opposite path to the one that leads to the egoless state of spiritual awareness. Yet even those with NPD are just delaying their eventual awakening in a future life.

There are several reasons why scientist have taught us virtually nothing about consciousness. They need to:

1. Define what consciousness is. A person in a coma may be minimally conscious. Others attain cosmic consciousness and feel spiritual unity with all that is. Maybe the word “consciousness” is too imprecise, cannot be defined and therefore scientists cannot study it.
   
   
2. Measure consciousness. This means they need instruments to do this. Right now the instruments to do this would destroy the part of the brain where consciousness is supposed to reside (if it resides solely in the brain).
   
   
3. Determine exactly where consciousness resides. Some researchers posit that it is partly in the gut. The gut has been called “The Second Brain” as this Scientific American Article presents: Gut Feelings–the "Second Brain" in Our Gastrointestinal Systems [Excerpt]

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Science has its limitations about what it can tell us about our world. This is especially true about the non-physical things, such as consciousness. We then must turn to quantum physics. That is where all the unseen forces of the universe are taken into account. The empty space between the stars and the empty space in and between the atoms cannot be seen—only proven through calculation. The mathematics of consciousness does not exist right now but may in the future as we move into a more evolved state of collective consciousness.

Not everything has a purpose. Some things just exist. It is like asking, “What is the purpose of the Universe?” It just is. The Universe is not on a path towards some goal in the future. The soul is like the Universe. It is boundless, endless, without beginning, and without the need to get somewhere to fulfill itself. It is already completely fulfilled at at every moment of its existence.

The soul, being eternal, is not bounded by time components such as past and future. It is that part of us that cannot die, is not born, and is not bound by the physical properties of time and space. It is therefore outside of the laws of cause and effect. Cause and effect imply time and space: You throw the ball. In a split second the ball flies through the air to another space. Newtonian physics do not apply to the soul.
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Therefore, to understand who you are as an eternal soul, ideas such as purpose and usefulness, practicality and future payoffs, are not relevant. If you put the question another way, “What is our true purpose?,” I would reply, “It is to get acquainted with who we really are as our souls.” But the soul itself, like life itself on the highest level of contemplation (beyond eating, procreating, and grabbing a bunch of toys before we die), is gloriously purpose free in its grandeur and magnificence.

People who strictly follow the behavioral codes of their society are considered to be moral. This can be at odds with what most humans, in their hearts, consider to be good. Human sacrifice was thought to be moral by many civilizations throughout history. But was it good? At the time in our development, it was considered to be an act of highest good.

Morality depends on what society defines it as at the time. Good is a based on individual decisions and preferences. For example, what you consider to be a good dinner may be repugnant to me. You may crave fish eyeballs, while I might pass on that. A good meal depends on so many variables: Quantity of food, food memories, the perceived skill of the cook, the freshness of the ingredients, and how we were raised to believe a good meal should be.
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When someone says, “He’s a good person,” it could mean so many things. It might even mean he is a highly moral person. In that case, he follows all the rules of society in general and has other qualities that make him more than a programmed robot. What we generally regard as a good person is one who shows compassion, empathy, generosity, and kindness.

Some ethical vegetarians do use their position to pad their egos and to make others wrong. But this is hypocrisy, because the basis of ethical vegetarianism is to do no harm to living creatures. It is a moral stance that is highly individual but always based on non-violence. When we judge and even lecture others for not seeing our point of view, that is a form of violence too, emotional violence, which strengthens our egos because we are the “right” ones.

I have known several vegetarians who use their eating patterns as a form of spiritual one-upmanship. They are purer than anyone because they never even walked into a restaurant where meat was prepared. Or they loudly announce when invited to dinner, “I’m a vegetarian” and remind the host periodically until the actual event. Then they grill the host to make sure that no animal products were used in the preparation of the meal. They may even present the host with a list of what they will and will not eat.
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Now we are mixing moral superiority with entitlement and that is not a pleasant sight. Militant and moralistic vegetarianism is not a non-violent position towards living creatures if you are hurting other’s feelings in the process. Eating a meal lovingly prepared by someone who unselfishly wanted to please you may be the most nonviolent thing you can do in this situation, even if it contains some animal products.

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Morality is about making choices in life—It is about how you choose to live your life in a way that produces the highest amount of joy and the least amount of pain for yourself and to others.

Throughout history, rules have changed. In Victorian England it was OK to chain a mentally ill person to a pilaster for passersby to taunt and abuse as they would an unprotected animal in a zoo. The rules changed and then it was criminal to treat people this way.

The rules changed, but the morality stayed the same. It is cruel to treat less fortunate people like berated animals to be laughed at and scorned. Happily, at this stage of our planet’s history, if someone did that to another human, they would be prosecuted.

When we depend strictly on rules for our morality, we are going along with the fashion of the times. And when these rules are heavily enforced, it implies that they do not come naturally to us and so we must be frightened into obeying them.
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True morality does not come from some external source that threatens punishment. It comes from our own inner reflection on how it would feel to us if we behaved in a certain manner or someone behaved in that way towards us. I do not harass the less fortunate because it doesn’t feel good in my heart to do so—not because someone is watching to see if I break the rules. That is the lasting source of true morality and not someone holding a big stick over my head.

The Theory of Imagination postulates that imagination is a mental quality common to all people to some degree. Imagination involves a complex series of processes, including impressions. memory, and how they connect to ideas. What we see, hear, and perceive through our senses is stuck in a space-time, cause and effect pattern. It is only imagination that allows us to transcend these space-time and cause-effect-relationships. It therefore allows a freer journey for discovery and fun.

We can imagine that we are a flying duck, breezing through the sky, when in fact, physically, we can’t flap wings that we don’t have. That is what imagination does for us.

Consciousness is not imagination. It is awareness. You are aware of the flying duck. But you are not the duck and you know it. You may see the duck as part of the larger whole but you are not imagining this. Your deeply conscious awareness brings this to your attention but it is not your imagination.

Unconsciousness also has nothing to do with imagination. Imagination is a mental faculty. When you are unconscious, your mind isn’t working. You don’t even know a duck exists, let alone picture yourself merrily flapping your wings at the local pond.
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Imagination allows us to invent new ways of doing thing and to be creative. It can start with conscious awareness and move into growth from there. Unconsciousness is non-productive and leads to no creative growth.

Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is the embodiment of Emerson’s Essay on Self-Reliance. It is a poem that was way ahead of its times and completely original in form, language, and ideas. It is a perfect example of what Emerson says in his Essay on Self-Reliance:

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Emerson is saying, look within to find wisdom and truth. Don’t think you will find it in books and in the laws of society. You will only regret it if you live your life as a sheep. Discover your own wisdom. Don’t think that because it came from your own consciousness that it is second rate and that others, such as the organized religions, know better.

Walt Whitman, in his exuberant, Song of Myself (from Leaves of Grass) says:

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”

This simple, direct, and artistic language points to the same thing Emerson directs us to: Listen to everyone and then come to your own truth. Do not rely on what’s written, the priest, the teacher, or what you have been conditioned to believe by the society you were born into. Listen to your inner wisdom for you are as good as anyone else, as Whitmans says:
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“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”