The Soul and Spirit in Filipino thought.

Growing up, I have heard countless of stories, superstitious beliefs about the Soul. Soul is
basically the English word for what we known in Filipino as “Kaluluwa or Kalul’wa”, and as a
child, the Soul or Kaluluwa is the term used by the adults to describe a soul or sometimes called
as a Spirit (espiritu) that wanders around, even if it is a good or a bad one. I remember my
mother telling me that after the death of a person, his soul wanders around for days until he
found his way to light, that is why there is a lot of tradition that says that we should offer the
death food sacrifices as they are still wandering in the world – some found the light and left the
physical world, but some stayed and they are now perceived as the evil souls or evil spirits of the
physical or the living human world, they are also called as Lost Souls or Spirits and “Kaluluwang
Ligaw” in Filipino – and that is a common belief I knew as I was raised in a Catholic Family.
Nowadays, as I grew older, I finally have reached what the stories from my childhood means,
and that was simply the Traditions and Beliefs, and now with better understanding and
knowledge from different perspectives, beliefs, views and religion, I can say that “it has the same
thought” but arguably “different” why did I say so? Then keep reading!

When I started to read the very first paragraph of the article, I have also created a
countless of questions in my mind regarding of what the Soul and the Spirit are all about but I
will stick to my three big questions in my head, the first is, are there any differences? The Soul is
the equivalent to the “Diwa” and the Spirit is the equivalent of the “Espiritu” but in the Filipino
language, culture and traditions, the Soul and the Spirit somehow stand as one in the thought of
“Kaluluwa” or “Kalul’wa” although all of them fall in the category of the Spiritual Realm, they
stand as one in the thoughts and knowledge of the Filipino people. Secondly, how are these
differences will affect the way our community lives? We all knew that the Filipino people have a
lot of point of views, perspective as they lived with different religion, cultures and traditions just
like what was stated in the article, it said that from the North of Luzon to Mindanao, these results
to the people having the same thinking but different way of believing. Lastly, as part of the
youth, what are our take on these? Do we just let it go, or learned these differences as we and
these people are part of the same Nation?

Truth be told, as part of the Tagalogs I didn’t know the differences of terms and
explanations of what we know as the Soul and the Spirit, what had been mentioned the articles
are way too far to what I simple known before, maybe because I am a believer of the Catholic
Church which have a distinction about the Soul and the Spirit, meanwhile on the other part of the
Philippines, there’s a lot of known beliefs and philosophy of the people who lives there as they
are part of that particular community, these different ways of believing clearly gives the idea that
our Philosophy are very rich but still needs to be known more.

Through different languages, beliefs, our people’s culture, traditions and even the
religion made our Filipino thought about the Soul and Spirit very rich that it gave a huge amount
of contributions to our Philippine Philosophy, and in conclusion, I do believe that there is a
difference on the beliefs or their traditions that was mentioned in the article, differences on what
they know and how they believe it and I do believe that in the Filipino thought, there will be
some cases that they will agree or disagree about their perspectives in the Soul and the Spirit but
as far as I know, we Filipinos, have high respect to these circumstances as we all have different
backgrounds about the Soul and the Spirit but as part of the youth, these article gave me enough
knowledge to understand the differences, beliefs and how the other nations contributed to what
our ‘kababayan’ or our fellow Filipinos from the North of Luzon to Mindanao believed about the
Soul and Spirit in Filipino Thought or Perspectives, these all I can say is we need more texts,
researches or articles that can be more useful to the youth as we will be the fundamental of the
next generation.

RICAFRENTE, ISABEL A. BS PSYCHOLOGY 1-C