Key Philosophical Terms
Soul → transpersonal side, the source of the action of love
Self → animalistic side, the source of desire
Vessel → body
The Soul vs The Self
Beyond the surface, there lies a thread that connects us all: love, specifically agape — a selfless form of love that embodies vicarious joy for another person’s happiness. All genuine acts of love share a few traits: they are unseen yet deeply felt, offering evidence of something transcendent within us. Why would one sacrifice their bread for their children if not for the awakening of a deeper aspect of their being, known as the soul—a transpersonal reality within? It is evident that acts of love occur when our soul is permitted to be at the forefront, guiding our vessel (also known as the body). This contrasts with our animalistic side (physical self, which is referred to as ‘self’ in this paper), which perceives only the physical transaction: I give you bread, you give me bread. However, the soul knows: I give you bread, you grow, which in turn fills me up, allows for more of me to shine, and brings me a kind of baseline happiness that is incomparable to ephemeral worldly pleasures. In summary, the soul, a transpersonal entity, is the source of love, while the self, rooted in our physical and animalistic side, drives our desires. In any given moment, the amount of soul expressing itself through our vessel varies on a continuum which is described below.
The Source of Love
To illustrate this idea, this paper will draw from neuroscience, psychology, and the film ’15 Reasons to Live’ which captures the various ways the soul manifests itself, threading through 15 distinct stories. The beauty of these 15 stories lies in transcending one’s self to act from the soul. It’s not that the self is bad or the soul superior, but maintaining a healthy balance between both is crucial, ensuring one doesn’t unconsciously dominate the other. Though a deeper exploration of this balance is beyond this paper’s scope, this paper focuses on describing what our soul is all about: love, which is the action of the soul.
A Psychology-Based Visual
To enhance clarity with a foundation in psychological theory, the subjective experiences from each story in the film are aligned with the continuum shown in Figure 1.
As the circles representing the self and the world converge, moving closer to the far right, this visually symbolizes what was described above: the soul taking front seat in our vessel (Kaufman, 2020, p. 203). This zone is where selfless humanitarian acts are produced because the separation between the self and the world dissipates. This convergence signifies that one recognizes and feels the underlying thread connecting us all — the soul. The more of the soul that is at the forefront of our vessel, the more one’s capacity to love increases. The stories from ‘15 Reasons to Live’ share various stories titled after reasons to live, and each story is a beautiful depiction of the soul in action at various degrees.
Flow: Stories 4 and 11 (Creativity & Praise)
The story titled “Creativity” narrates the journey of a man who lost his ability to read while still being able to write. This led him to realize that creativity originates from what he described as ‘another part of our brain.’ He’s partly right, during a flow state, the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is usually active during mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts, quiets down (Van der Linden, 2021). This allows for heightened attention and immersion in the task at hand, reducing distractions and self-consciousness. In simpler terms, it is as if the rational mind is turned off and the soul takes over part of the vessel. In a flow state, individuals often report creating content ‘effortlessly,’ hence the term ‘flow state.’ This phenomenon is also depicted in the story titled “Praise,” where a man finds a sense of community through songwriting. He describes his songwriting process, saying, “I’m an atheist, but I believe in forces that are greater than me. One of them is creativity.” While some may shy away from the word ‘God’ due to its religious connotations, it can represent a higher power, a transpersonal force — essentially, our soul, the fountain of love. Here, both cases appear to describe the soul stepping into command of the vessel, channeling creativity from its core essence: love.
Love: Stories 1 and 12 (Love & Meaning)
The first story, titled ‘Love,’ describes how a woman lets her husband go on a trip around the world by foot because she loves him. She believes that if you love something, you won’t keep it for yourself. This perfectly demonstrates the concept of ‘fish love,’ described by Abraham Twerski, an American psychiatrist. He narrates an encounter where a boy says he ate a fish because he loved it. Twerski points out that if the boy truly loved the fish, he would have kept it in the water and nurtured it. Instead, the boy loved himself, which is why he took the fish out of the water, killed it, and ate it. This story of the wife and her husband exemplifies the distinction between selfish love and selfless love, perfectly illustrating Twerski’s concept of ‘fish love.’ She loves selflessly because she transcends her self by allowing her soul to make a compassionate decision out of true love that benefits her partner, regardless of her material gain. In the film, she appears cheerful and looks at her husband with a loving gaze, in which the joy she feels for him is evident.
Another tale that depicts love is evident in story 12, “Meaning,” which tells the tale of a man living a hedonic lifestyle – drinking, partying, engaging in bad habits, and struggling as a starving artist. He is forced to take care of his dad’s finches. One day, a finch dies in his hands, which he says changed him. Overnight, he gave up all his bad habits and began going for walks in nature. He recounts, “I felt something that felt a lot like love for these wild creatures… it fulfills something that I didn’t know was missing. It fills a big space in my life. I feel a real connection to birds and nature. I don’t have to think about it; I feel easy-hearted, I don’t feel heavy, I feel alright.” It was as if the death of the finch prompted a profound psychological transformation, awakening his soul to take a front seat in his vessel, which was previously dominated by the self, thus shifting his focus from self-indulgence to a loving care for the birds and a deeper connection with the natural world. He began regularly going out in nature and engaging in bird watching. This is a great depiction of love because he does not gain anything from watching the birds, merely experiencing a vicarious joy for their beauty, and perhaps a sense of awe. Awe is a feeling that, in psychological literature, is described as a sense of expansive wonder and appreciation that leads to one forgetting about the self (Zelenski, 2020). A great way to explain it is that instead of merely intellectually knowing that the sunset is beautiful, it’s about feeling that the sunset is beautiful, or even feeling that one is the sunset.
Awe: Story 14
The story titled “Duty” narrates the courageous act of a couple who risk their lives to free a whale entangled in a net. Observing a hump in the water, they approached and discovered the whale trapped. The husband commenced cutting the net, with assistance from everyone on board. During the rescue, the whale’s movements posed a risk of capsizing the boat, and they spoke of fearing for their life at one point, but still continued the rescue. Luckily, they successfully liberated the whale, which then joyfully swam away, leaping in the water. They stayed for a long time, simply marveling at the beauty of the whale and feeling vicarious joy for its freedom. They reflect on their act as an exercise of compassion, a “muscle” everyone should strengthen. They prioritized their soul’s call to love over self-preservation, stating they couldn’t live with themselves had they not helped. Their eyes, sparkling with emotion as they speak, reveal the depth to which they were touched by this experience. Their description hints at an “awe experience,” potentially verging on a peak experience. With a specific line of questioning, it’s possible that they might have indeed had a peak experience as well. Peak experiences are the full embodiment of the soul in one’s vessel and are described extensively in psychological literature as ‘unifying’ or ‘transcendent’ experiences with strong neurological bases often studied in the field of neurotheology, but again, that is beyond the scope of this paper.
On a lighter front, there are other stories shared in the film as reasons to live, which, even on the surface, may not seem to fall anywhere on the continuum. However, they are all connected by the essence of our souls. One such story is number 8, “Humour.” As a joke, the protagonist changes his last name to ‘Nobody’. He shares his story of how, on his first day with the new name, while working as a security guard, he connected with a man who made a joke about it, saying ‘Nobody’ is watching the cameras. This interaction made him happy. Why did it make him happy? Because he felt that he had a positive impact on someone, and this made him feel a sense of connection. Connection comes from love, and love is the thread that connects us all. Love is the action of the soul, and love is a wonderful reason to live. In fact, it is the core theme of each of the stories in the film.
In conclusion, these stories from ’15 Reasons to Live’ portray love’s multifaceted nature. Whether through acts of creativity, selflessness, or a deep connection with nature, each narrative underscores the soul’s central role in our lives. As these stories unfold, they also align with neuroscience and psychology’s understanding of the continuum from a flow state to peak experiences. It’s clear that love, in its purest form, is not just an emotion but a transformative force that transcends our individual selves, binding us all together. At the heart of this continuum is the soul, engaging in its most profound action: love.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Jung, C. G. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious. Princeton University Press.
Kaufman, S. B. (2020). Transcend: The new science of self-actualization. TarcherPerigee.
Van der Linden, D., Tops, M., & Bakker, A. B. (2021). Go with the flow: A neuroscientific view on being fully engaged. The European Journal of Neuroscience, 53(4), 947–963. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.15014
Zelenski, J. M. (2020). Positive psychology: The science of well-being. Sage Publications.
Zweig, A. (Director). (2013). 15 Reasons to Live [Film]. Shadow Shows.
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