Somebody has disputed the idea of 'soul', so for him and for others who are sceptical I shall make an analogy, because apart from a mathematical formulae which would just go on forever, an analogy is the best way to describe such an intangible.
The soul or personal spirit is just a part of the great universal spirit which is totally connected and intergrated with every single atom in the universe, it evolves, re-invents and re-incarnates itself endlessly.
One analogy to re-incarnation is thus :
Take a body of water - a churning river, alive with the power of it's momentum - all the while this river exists, parts of it are 'dying' or evaporating. Though this isn't discernible to the eye,the water which has 'died' is usually reduced to its single atom status and it is carried by whatever atmospheric condition exists at the time to a new destination where it will join up with trillions of other atoms to create or add to another body of water.This body of water could be anything, from rising damp to an ocean, from an iceberg to a snowflake, from a virus to an alien.In any case it will either be within a life form or it will nourish it or it will provide a habitable environment for it to live in.
The soul behaves in an uncannily similar fashion. one analogy for the soul is thus:
If the organic brain/mind was related to an electronic computer, then you could say, that the brain/mind is programmed and conditioned by the sum of its experiences and that any notions of soul are purely illussory and based on fear or wishful thinking. A computer is programmed and configured by the sum of its maker and it's user.It can play music to you all day, it can offer you fantastic environments for you to play games in, it can do an abundance of things but, does it have a soul?
Yes, it does now, well almost.But its soul actually existed long, long before computers were even thought of. Yeah right!! I hear you say. But of course they have a soul now, the internet is the soul. That intangible quality which was never programmed or configured by either the maker or the user
except to simply enable its function.But the ordinary people who are the providers and the users of the 'net have been around a very long time.The internet is immortal, whatever is on it now will never die, it will simply evolve, as will the technology that provides it. It's nothing new when I say that in the not too distant future the internet will be as interactive and as real as a real living lifeform, the technology for this will exist as a microscopic brain implant and humans will be able to become 'as one' with the virtual universe,at will. This is a fact pre-emptied!
The soul is like a universal internet,it is invisible and unobtrusive until it's 'dialled up'.Some people who believe they have a soul are actually able to become as one with the real universe/God/whatever, the human mind cannot comprehend fully that which was never programmed into it and so therefore descriptions/assumptions of this type of phenomena are invalid and ambiguous ( I looked through a glass darkly )
but these people do tend to acquire very deep insights and wisdom, seemingly from nowhere.The spirit is everywhere, it is in every living thing and it is out of every living thing and it is outside of time.To quote from one your holy books, ' it always was, always is and always is to come'.Your individual soul is attached to the source of all things and to the end of all things.Your soul is outside of time!just like the 'net.Its just that its past and its future are invisible but, just like the'net every one of its experiences/actions may be recorded and stored.The 'net providers/operators do this to gain customer profiles by which way they can evolve their services to better attract new clients and capitalise on their knowledge.The spirit is always developing and evolving through the experiences of individual souls and is continually re-incarnating new souls which in essence have been configured by the previous ones - eventually, over time an entire sea change occurs to absolutely everything, changes which are directly but unwittingly caused by the souls themselves.
I'm sure you get the gist of it by now so I'll leave it at that for now...I'm a soooul man deden de da deden de da, a sooul man!