Are spirit and soul one and the same ?
In spiritual circles, we often hear about the concepts of body, soul and spirit. This comes from several Asian religions and traditions that understood their interdependence long before the West! In Hinduism, for example, devotees are expected to nourish these three aspects of their being. The practice of yoga is recommended for the health of the body, meditation for the health of the mind, and religious practices such as rituals, prayers and the kamasutra, to nourish the soul. In our Western world, we’re familiar with these concepts, of course, but centuries of monotheism have often imposed a rather dualistic vision of life in which the body, which is relative to matter, is a source of sin and temptation of all kinds – I won’t mention the consequences in terms of gender because that’s not the purpose of this article – whereas the soul and spirit are connected to God and are pure. Humanity is waking up to its faith and wants to understand itself better beyond the reductive prism of religions. It is in this context that the quest of harmony between body, mind and soul comes into play.
The aim of this article is to discuss spirit and soul, in my opinion, based solely on my personal experience since I recovered my gifts about 8 years ago and on discussion with ‘colleagues’. I would also like to point out that this article remains an attempt at providing an explanation. Spiritual mysteries are great and our knowledge very small indeed. All this is relatively mystical. I’ll come to the point: I was asked recently about the possible difference between spirit and soul, or whether these terms refer to the same thing. I think that’s an excellent question to ask. For me, there is a difference, but it’s true that in everyday language I sometimes tend to use them interchangeably.
The spirit is our mind, but also our intuition, housed in our third eye or pineal gland.For me, it’s what allows us to say ‘I’.I’m a woman, my name is Seva, I’m 30 etc… But also, I feel that this person is sad or uncomfortable or I want to go to this place etc… Thanks to our mind, we express our tastes, our emotions, our feelings, our desires (conscious or unconscious), our limits, our personality, our intelligence etc… The mind is intimately connected with the body. We all know “a healthy mind in a healthy body” (mens sana in corpore sano).
The soul is more subtle to identify. It is even elusive. It would be an immortal part of us, a kind of constant, an essence. (Questions about its origin, destiny or destruction are irrelevant here). The soul allows us to return to earth, to incarnate in a new body and spirit in order to experience and grow. The soul is like a personal hard drive. It contains all the memories of our past incarnations and even beyond.It is our direct connection with God, the universe, divine source, etc. It could be described as higher consciousness, and is represented by our crown chakra.It is also the seat of our intuition, and it is in this sense that spirit and soul are intimately connected.
Having offered this brief summary of explanations, one of the questions that arises is as follows: since the soul is in essence immortal, what about our spirit?Which brings us to another question: does the spirit actually die?If it dies, why is it possible to communicate with the dead or with beings whose bodies have died?For me, the spirit does not die. Yes, but people might say to me: so if I talk to my dead grandmother, am I talking to her spirit or to her soul? Well, both. A soul is made up of the memory of all the spirits (i.e. identities) that it has incarnated physically (human, animal or vegetal). This number can be higher or lower depending on the ‘age’ of the soul. This means that I can talk to my grandmother in the spirit form I know (an old lady), even if her soul is reincarnated as an animal or a little boy. This vision is in contradiction with certain religious traditions according to which once the soul has been reincarnated, it is impossible to contact it. Finally, I would add that the universe is a living space where “nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed”, so every spirit incarnated by a soul leaves a trace in the universe. I can therefore connect with a soul in its most recent spirit form (for someone who has just died, for example) and help that soul to pass on. This is why we use the term soul passage.
And you, what do you think?
Seva