twin souls

The Alangan Mangyans who live around Mt.Halcon in the island province of Mindoro believe that a person has two souls. An "abiyari" or a good soul and a "bukad" or a bad soul. Sort of like yin and yang, this piece of data from the NCIP got me interested.

What if the Mangyans were right? Imagine having Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde emanate from your body once you die, one going towards angels trumpeting the glory of God and the other one going down to the pits of hell, while jealous demons hit you with their forks.

Having two souls seem implausible for one raised in the tenets of the Roman Catholic church. But blame it on pop culture for us to have images of an angel and a devil on each of our shoulders whenever we have to make a decision, or are tempted by something. Though one can say this is a different thing since it refers to conscience, or the absence or presence of one, or the decision of whether to heed the angel's call or the demon's taunting, still it implies how everyone is vulnerable to both the good and the dark side.

More than this, i believe in the theory of tabularasa (i forgot the philosopher who said that), wherein basically every person is born with a blank mind and a conscience like a blank sheet of paper. It depends on how the person is raised and what environment he or she has grown up with that decides which way he will go.

No person can be purely and totally good, or purely and totally evil. The female lead character in Gulong ng Palad is simply a figment of imagination, an ideal imposed  on female viewers since no one can be that kind enough to forgive an equally unrealistic wicked person. (Interestingly, Kristine Hermosa fit well in that role in the ABS-CBN adaptation last year, since her mind seems to be a figment of imagination as well)

Going back to the Mangyan belief, it makes some sense to me. The soul is not something fixed you were born with, its something that develops from your actions. Its your essence that grows with you and changes color whenever you change.

So does this mean babies don't have souls? For me they have souls that don't die if ever their physical presence on earth is cut short. Babies, aborted, killed or died from illness, goes back to heaven only to be send again by God to another set of parents. I think there's a Native American belief on that, that there is a place of silence somewhere in heaven where the spirits of babies unborn or persecuted by man or nature lie in the meantime until the next moment when his or her real mother will take him or her back to earth.

and when the person grows up, he or she has the the capacity to do both good and evil. again it depends on his or her upbringing.

and when the person dies, the soul goes to where the person's actions qualify it for - heaven, hell or purgatory.

But if I were an Alangan Mangyan, then my two souls would be split, one would go to heaven and the other one would go to hell, since i've done both good and bad things in my life. I wonder how God would manage that.