Review Are We Bodies or Souls Richard Swinburne Prabuddha Bharata March 2020

I was intrigued by the title of this book. Finally, I thought, the Western academia has come to terms with the incorporeality of the individual soul as presented in Indian philosophy. Richard Swinburne’s introduction dispelled my delusions. He proposes that individuals are not bodies but are souls and implies that these souls have properties and that is where the incorporeality part is lost. To an Indian philosopher, anything that has properties is matter and anything that is material is corporeal. The corporeality itself could be subtle or gross. According to Advaita Vedanta, every living being has three bodies—the gross, the subtle, and the causal. The physical body is obviously the gross body. The subtle body is a conglomeration of the manas—not to be confused with the broad Anglophone term ‘mind’— chitta, ahamkara, and buddhi—again not to be confused with the broad Anglophone term ‘intellect’. Lastly, the causal body is ignorance of one’s true nature, which is Atman that is beyond all names and forms, beyond all ideas, constructs, and properties