@Leadfoot,
WHAT IS THE SOUL?
I am a triad being consisting of Body, Soul, and Spirit. The body is created from the universal elements and must return to the elements from which it is created. The Soul is the divine animating principle that pervades the entire universe activating all within, and like the elements, the soul must also return to the ‘GREAT THOUGHT’ which is made manifest as this visible universe.
While the Spirit is the invisible mind which is the ‘I Am,’ that is imprinted upon the eternal universal Soul, which Soul must return to the ‘GREAT ETERNAL THOUGHT,’ with or without the ‘I Am,’ that is either accepted into the GREAT THOUGHT, or rejected, and if rejected, it is separated from the eternal Soul and ceases to exist.
The scriptures equate the ‘MIND’ with the ‘SPIRIT’, in one place it is said, “You must love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul:” In another place it is said, “You must love God with all your body, with all your spirit and with all your soul.”
“YOU,” as a human being, are Body, Soul and Spirit, but “YOU” the invisible mind, are spirit. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of heaven.
The emptied soul is a dead soul which is cast back into the refining fires of physical life, where God will give it a new heart=body in which to develop a new spirit= mind.
When the body in which you [the mind] are being formed, dies, [This is the first death] and your body of “skin, flesh, muscle, blood, bone, brain matter etc, etc,” has returned to the universal elements from which it was created, all that remains, is a shadow or rather, a facsimile of YOU, the mind or spirit, that has been imprinted into the universal life force or soul, which returns to ‘THE GREAT THOUGHT,’ [The collective consciousness of all that exists] from which it will be resurrected to either everlasting life, or everlasting oblivion.