The word "soul" and the word "spirit" are treated separately.
"Our spirit differs from our soul because our spirit is always pointed toward and exists exclusively for God, whereas our soul can be self-centered. The joy, comfort and peace of God's presence can only be experienced through our spirit."
So they're constructs from the Greeks. Possibly older. Some of the ideas for the soul come much more recently. Some religions require the body to be the vessel even after death. "The Modern English noun soul is derived from Old English sāwol, sāwel. The earliest attestations reported in the Oxford English Dictionary are from the 8th century." "The Ancient Egyptians believed the soul had three parts, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The ka and ba were spiritual entities that everyone possessed, but the akh was an entity reserved for only the select few that were deserving of maat kheru." "Egyptian descriptions of the ba and ka are strikingly similar to modern scientists' descriptions of the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche."
"The soul of Hinduism is different from that of Abrahamic religions. Soul in Hinduism is without qualities and attributes such as a name or form. According to most schools of Hinduism, all souls in their purest state are indistinguishable, eternal, indestructible, immutable, invisible, formless and infinite. Only when they are bound to Nature, they develop qualities or some distinction."
Ok, so this brings me back to my current thoughts on religion. Physics has shown that everything is energy so in my view we are all just ripples on a plane of energy curious about life.
Alan Watts says the "there can be no understanding of life without death.". So before we were born we were as we will be after we die.
And yet....I wonder. Guess we'll have to wait and find out.
