The terms “spirit” and “soul” have been used interchangeably all throughout the ages and even into the modern day. However, what many may fail to realize is that though they are related, there is a distinct difference between the two.
Let’s start with the etymology of the word “spirit”; it comes from the Latin spiritus which means “breath”. Therefore, one could say that the real meaning of spirituality is simply the art of breathing. Breathing is something majority of us do without ever really thinking about it. We know it’s important, for if we did not breathe we would not continue to live, but most take the act of breathing for granted and don’t contemplate exactly how essential it is for our overall well being. People who perform yoga and meditation however are aware of the importance of practicing good breathing techniques and how doing so gives them an abundance of energy and good health. Breathing is directly related to the heart, and the heart is the house of the spirit!
“Your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am going to create a human being out of clay. When I have formed him and breathed My Ruh (spirit) into him, fall down in prostration to him!’” – al-Qur’an Surah 38 Sâd 71-72
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” – Genesis 2:7
The first organ that forms during the development of a human embryo is the heart. About 3 weeks after conception, the heart starts to beat. The embryo at that point has become a living animate being, the spirit being the animating energy!
The spirit is the animating energy found within all living things alike; it can be likened to the electricity powering a machine or computer. The spirit is the “divine spark”, the direct connection to the Source, and is therefore in itself indestructible and immortal. The Western religious traditions always hold that the spirit is given to man by God himself. The Gnostic tradition differs only in saying that the spirit was not given to man by the creator of the physical world (known in Judeo-Christian tradition as Adonai or Yahweh, but known to the Gnostics as Yaldabaoth) by his own power, but was given to man by the creator from the power he obtained from his mother Sophia, whose power comes from the true God above in the Pleroma. Nevertheless, the Gnostic tradition still holds the view that the spirit is divine and is the direct connection to the Source.
This is in contrast to the soul. In Greek, the word for “soul” is psykhē. Interestingly, the root of psykhē also means “to breathe”. This might explain the cause of the confusion between the two words along with why they are used interchangeably, but in classical philosophy there is a distinction between the words “pneuma” (the Greek word for spirit) and “psykhē” (the Greek word for soul). You may immediately notice that the Greek word psykhē is where we get our modern word psyche from, which in psychology (the study of the psyche) means the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious. That is exactly what we are dealing with here; the soul is the human mind.
Whereas the heart is the place that houses the spirit, the soul is housed within the brain, specifically within the pineal gland which is known as “the third eye”, “the mind’s eye” and “the seat of the soul”. While it is also immaterial like the spirit, the soul is much more personal in nature. The soul is divided up between the higher nature and the lower nature which in turn are both further divided up into different aspects. These aspects along with your personal knowledge, experiences, and memories together make up the totality of who you are individually; your soul, it’s everything that makes you who you are.
There is debate over whether or not the soul/mind is immortal and survives after the body expires. One school of thought that is along the thoughts of Aristotle is that the soul is indeed the personality and essence of a person, but it does not have a separate existence from the body, and therefore upon death the soul dies too. This is likened to the act of cutting being the “soul” of a knife, because cutting is what it means to be a knife. Once the knife breaks, it is no longer cutting. Thus the soul is not immortal. Many of the gnostics of old would be satisfied with this view because they too believed that the human mind/soul was a creation of the Demiurge, and therefore not divine. In contrast to that view, there’s the school of thought that says the soul is also divine and immortal and upon death of the body that soul will either be judged, inherit paradise, be sentenced to eternal damnation, reincarnate, or continue to evolve in the astral realm. The middle ground between these two schools are those that teach that certain aspects of the soul are divine and immortal, while others are tied to this life and expire along with the body. I like the idea of my knowledge, experiences and memories living on after I die…and in many ways I know that can happen…but that is a different discussion to be had at a later time. In an upcoming entry I will talk more in-depth about the divisions of the soul.
Peace, Love, & Balance
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