Are you in love with an illusion?
Aathma is popularly translated to mean the term Soul. "Soul" easily maps on to concepts behind other religions, which promote an idea of fusion with a Creator in after life.
The Law of Anaathma, i.e. the absence of an identifiable, indestructible "Thing" within living things, is the foundation of Buddhism. In other words, "Anaathma" should not be interpreted as an opposite of "Aathma" - an absence of an "Aathma" or "Soul"
There is no "Thing" within "you" that "you" can control. For example, can you delay or prevent aging, however you may wish or try?
It is the Law that sets Buddhism apart from all other "religions" in the world. Anaathma is the basis of salvation. It is the realisation of this Law that opens the doors to the Noble Eightfold Path.
When there is no Aathma, one would be posing questions to oneself like, Why Should I Hate?. Hate whom? What is love? Love whom?
If there is no Aathma, then, is there anything that goes across the Great Divide?
Every other religion guarantees a better place on the Other Side, if one were to strictly follow the rules and procedures laid down in them, or a really bad place for those who live otherwise. There, therefore, exists a concept of an Aathma.
How can we reconcile what we are told, and what we practice with what Buddha had very clearly pointed out in His teachings?
Now, if there is no Aathma, what about the Merit we acquire so piously? This is where I am really struggling, I must admit.
Read more about Merit here...This reminds me what I had read in a certain Sutta. Sorry, I forget the title. A Brahmin had decided to test the presence or the absence of Aathma in humans. So, he had proceeded to weigh people before and after killing them. The result had been negative - he had not noticed any change before and after. Of course we have to allow for the attainable accuracies in those days. Still, we have to admire the scientific approach. The Brahmin had then confronted Buddha with the result, as he was very much perplexed by the result, which contradicted his own beliefs.
Returning to modern day science, I am not sure whether such a scheme can even be contemplated! Even so, modern science does not recognise a concept of a soul. I think, wearing a heretic hat, that is because they have not yet discovered a suitable instrument to deal with Soul.
Recently, they have had to invent a new kind of matter: Dark Matter, in order to explain away certain anomalies in astronomical observations and make some theories work.
Well, who knows...
Funny, you would say. Would scientists view themselves as soul-less?