The Old Soul Studio

The photographs on this page are by Miss Ling Tok, the proprietor of the Old Soul Studio in Malacca, a charming guesthouse in the centre of the old city. Wonderfully out of phase. 

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CONCERNING OLD SOULS

We tend to think of reincarnation – or metempsychosis, or transmigration – as an Oriental teaching. This is because it is specifically not a teaching of Christianity. A core structure of Christianity, across nearly all churches and denominations, is that human beings have only one life, an afterlife but no preexistence. In the Eastern world – which is really to say the Buddhist world – the norm is to conceive of human life as part of a larger continuum of former and future lives.

But this view is also part of the (non-Christian) Western tradition and it was a common view in the pre-Christian West. Most notably, it was a doctrine espoused by Pythagoras and his followers, and then by Plato. The works of Plato provide us with the fullest account of such teachings in Occidental thought.

The Platonic account goes something like this:

Souls have ‘fallen’ or are imprisoned in mortal existence and all they do is long for immortality.

The conditions of mortality impede this. Only slowly can the soul free itself. Until then it is trapped in a cycle of many lives.

The way to liberation, according to Plato, is to live the philosophical life for three lives in a row.

The task is made more difficult because we do not remember the lessons of previous lives.

In Plato’s Myth of Er souls are led to a river in the Underworld – the River Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness – and they must drink of the waters. Some souls are thirsty. In their next life they will remember almost nothing. Other souls are wiser and drink in moderation.


In Plato’s account, souls choose their next life. Some choose well, others choose foolishly or according to mistaken calculations. Only over time does a soul learn to choose wisely.


The gradual development of souls is described as an alchemy of metals. There are four types or grades of souls: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron. The objective in the whole cycle is to transmute the base metals into gold.


For Plato, philosophy (the love of wisdom, rather than the love of wealth and pleasure) - philosophy as an initiation, as an inner education - is the means to the transmutation of the soul.


Because he is a political philosopher, Plato also believes it is important that human beings live in societies and under laws that encourage and support human beings on their journey.


Young souls are forgetful souls. Young souls choose lives of wealth and pleasure instead of lives of wisdom. They choose what Socrates calls the “unexamined life” which he thinks is a waste. It doesn’t bring the soul to maturity. (‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’)


Old souls have learnt from their previous lives, past mistakes and past sufferings. Old souls have good memories. They sip the waters of Lethe. They don’t guzzle. They choose the philosophical life, the examined life, and the path to the Fields of Bliss.

 THE OLD SOUL STUDIO

Jalan Bunga Raya, Melaka