Detecting the Spirit Soul

What is Soul? What is Spirit? Are they one and the same thing? According to my understanding they are. Allan Kardac tells us in The Spirits Book that “Spirits temporarily assume a perishable material envelope, the destruction of which, by death, restores them to liberty. He tells us that the Soul is an incarnated Spirit, whose body is only the envelope. There are in man three things : 1. The body, or material being, analogous to the animals, and animated by the same vital principle; 2. The Soul, or immaterial being, a Spirit incarnated in the body; 3. The link which unites the Soul and the body, a principle intermediary between matter and Spirit. Man thus has two natures, by his body he participates in the nature of the animals, of which it has the instincts – by his Soul, he participates in the nature of Spirits.

The link, or Perispirit, which unites the body and the Spirit, is a sort of semi-material envelope. Death is the destruction of the material body, which is the grossest of man’s two envelopes; but the spirit preserves his other envelope, viz the Perispirit, which constitutes for him an Ethereal Body, invisible to us in it’s normal state, but which he can render occasionally visible, and even tangible, as is in the case of apparitions. A Spirit, therefore, is not an abstract, undefined being, only to be conceived of by our thought, it is a real, circumscribed being, which in certain cases, is appreciable by the senses of sight, hearing and touch.”

In the book Life comes from Life – Moring walks with His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, there is a conversation between Srila Prabhupada and Dr Singh :

“Dr Singh. Scientists find it very hard to see the Spirit Soul. They say its existence is very doubtful.

Srila Prabhupada. How can they see it? It is too small to see. Who has that seeing power?

Dr. Singh. Still, they want to sense it by some means.

Srila Prabhupada. If you inject someone with just one hundredth of a grain of a very venomous poison, he dies immediately. No one can see the poison or how it acts, but it is acting nevertheless. So why don’t the scientists see the Soul by its action? In such cases we have to see by the effect. The Vedas say that because of the minute particle called the Soul, the whole body is working nicely. If I pinch myself, I immediately feel it because I am conscious throughout the whole of my skin. But as soon as the Soul is out of my body, which is the case when my body dies, you can take the same skin and cut and chop it, and nobody will protest. Why is this simple thing so hard to understand? Is this not detecting Spirit?

Dr Singh. We may detect the soul in this way, but what about God?

Srila Prabhupada. First of all let us understand the Soul. The Soul is a sample of God. If you can understand the sample, then you can understand the whole.”

Detecting the Spirit Soul is achieved as explained above. It is a matter of understanding the self. Knowing from where the self – The Soul – has come and to where it will return. As Srila Prabhupada says, the Soul is a sample of God, so it is that each one of us is an extension of God. God resides within the Spirit world and it thus makes sense that we are all from the Spirit world too.

One could say that the Spirit is the higher self and the Soul the lower self, being that the Soul is that part of the Spirit which incarnates into an earthy physical existence. It is the Soul that experiences the day to day emotional existence of the Spirit. It is the Soul that takes on the responsibility of contracting with other Souls within the Soul Group or Soul Family, to go through various experiences, eventualities and relationships in order to facilitate the eternal progression of the Spirit. That progression intended to advance the Spirit to Pure Perfection, negating the need to incarnate.

As the Spirit progresses to perfection, so it is that enlightenment comes about. The further along the journey of progression the Spirit is, the lighter the load in terms of the lessons required to be taken on by the Soul. The result is that the Soul progresses to taking on lifetimes that form part of the mission of the Spirit World, which is to unite all Spirits into the Absolute – a return to Paradise if one might say that. In uniting all Spirits into the Absolute, the Soul takes on lifetimes that are used as teaching experiences for other Souls. Through those teaching experiences, the Soul is given more opportunity to advance to Perfection. A perfect cycle of being in Service one to the other.