The Living Soul

By Linda Mihalic

  Soul is the animating and vital principle in human beings, credited with the faculties of thought, action and emotion, and is often conceived as an immaterial being; the spiritual nature of human beings, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.–Oxford English Dictionary
  The soul, often called the living soul (Genesis 2:7), is your ground of being in God. Each soul is an individuated portion of the divine Mind, which directs and controls Power to condense Substance as life sparks of and animates them by breathing them into a physical form as a vehicle of expression, what we call an embodied soul.
  For functioning at all levels of reality, soul is apportioned into three facets, corresponding to facets of mind encased in soul substance (as an embodied soul): the Oversoul (super-conscious mind) is half of a living soul, the portion that has never been embodied in physical form, which remains in the Presence of God as our fullness of being and the voice of conscience.
  The other half of the living soul expresses through the conscious and subconscious facets of mind. The rational soul (conscious mind) is the embodied consciousness that we call an individual soul. The impulsive appetitive soul (subconscious mind), encased in the life sparks of physical form, is the soul’s functional supervisor of the body metabolism.

  Plato divided the soul into three parts: the appetitive (epithymetikon = ἐπιθυμητικόν), as in desire or craving; the spirited (thymoeides = θυμοειδές), as in impulsive; and the reasoning or rational soul (logistikon = λογιστικόν).
  Jewish mysticism also recognizes five levels of the soul: 1. physical awareness and vitality (nephesh = נֶ֫פֶשׁ), 2. emotional awareness (ruach = רוח), 3. intellectual understanding (neschamah = נשמה), 4. comprehension of truth (chayah = חיה), 5. G-d consciousness (yechidah = יחידה).
  The animal soul (nephesh) and the impulsive emotions (ruach) correspond with the impulsive-appetitive aspects of the embodied soul. The intellectual understanding (neschamah) and intuitive aspect of soul (neschamah) correlate with the embodied rational soul. The super-conscious aspect of soul (chayah) corresponds to the Oversoul, the individual I AM THAT I AM. The comprehension of truth (yechidah) is constantly in contact with THE ON, I AM THAT I AM.
  The field of psychology is most accurately named the “study of the soul.” Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud adopted his concepts of the id, ego and superego directly from Plato, doing violence to the true meaning of Plato’s nomenclature of the soul, reducing psychology to the study of man’s mere animal nature and sexual behavior.