From the book "Gods About Us", Max Rempel
We have already become acquainted with two properties of the soul that allow us to suspect that our soul is a parasite. One property is that it feeds on our energy, on our feelings; and the second, that it itself chooses its own fate - the time, the country, the parents, the genes, and the main lessons of the life path. If it makes us suffer, is it not a parasite? Traditionally it is customary to blame all misfortunes either on demons or on God's punishments, but here it suddenly turns out that the soul itself chooses its own misfortunes - so should we now reproach it, that is, ourselves? Here there is an evident paradox. To what degree can we consider that the soul is you yourself, and to what degree that the soul is something external?
The answer comes, above all, from the research into the afterlife. As I have already said, the afterlife has been very well researched. The main thing that limits our knowledge of the afterlife is not the absence of a dialogue with the spirits but the fact that it is difficult to translate into our language of the physical world the events of the world of spirits, where there are evidently additional dimensions and other physical laws operate. Nevertheless, to the main question we have an answer, and it is unambiguous: we and our souls are one
and the same thing. Our consciousness is the consciousness of the soul. After death a person retains his personality. This personality is preserved both in the world beyond and in subsequent incarnations. In new incarnations a person changes sex and age, but his character and facial features remain quite recognizable. This is yet another piece of knowledge that we have obtained from the research into past lives. People first recall their old name and the details of a past life, then the researchers find out who that was, and it turns out that the photographs of the previous incarnation resemble the present one. Moreover, souls reincarnate in groups, and the photographs of old friends and relatives turn out to resemble the new ones! Even the characters turn out to be similar. Simply, those lessons that turned out to be unlearned in a past landing on the earth are now played out under new conditions, with a somewhat different arrangement of the figures.
When a soul arrives in the world beyond, its interests remain, to a substantial degree, the same as before. Inexperienced souls, who were at low stages of development, continue to be interested in rather simple things in the world beyond. So, for example, a person who was interested in fishing and golf continues to engage in fishing and golf in the afterlife. And so on, until he finishes working through the lessons and experience of his previous life and the time comes for his new incarnation. (We keep in mind that time on the other side flows in a quite different way than here, and it costs them nothing to stretch or shorten it.)
What happens when the soul leaves the body, even if only for a while?
Do you know the answer?
Yes, of course! During sleep the consciousness leaves the body, and if you wake a person, then, half-asleep, he thinks extremely poorly - until the consciousness returns into the body. Human consciousness is divided into two parts - the so-called lower, physical mind and its higher mind. Hereafter, for brevity, we will call them the mind and the soul. They work in pairs, hand in hand. The physical mind (the mind) is responsible for fast motor function, for movement, for solving primitive practical tasks. The higher mind of a person (the soul) animates his actions, whispers ideas to the mind, coordinates scattered thoughts, provides inspiration and emotions of a higher order. For an analogy, let us take the commander Kutuzov directing a battle. The soldiers know their business: they load the cannons, fire, stab, hack, attack, flee, but the larger picture of the battle is known only to Kutuzov, and why this battle is needed is again known only to him. It is he who inspires the soldiers, explains to them the higher goals, and fills their rather chaotic actions with meaning.
Here the analogy ends, because the soul incarnates in order to obtain energy and experience, whereas Kutuzov, in his idealized form, directed battles not in order to obtain experience but in order to serve higher ideas. Such, incidentally, are the goals of developed, experienced souls in the final stages of the incarnation cycle: they incarnate not in order to learn but in order to teach and to help.
Can the soul govern the body without the presence of the mind? I suppose that this is precisely the example of the lunatic, the somnambulist - a person who walks in his sleep. At that time the mind sleeps, and the soul, without the help of the mind, tries to walk on its own. It manages this rather clumsily, because this is not its function. It is not honed for this. It is interesting that, in the traditional understanding, sleepwalkers do not get hurt when they fall. If this is so, then it is a good illustration of the fact that the soul knows how to govern luck. We will return to this important function of the soul.
Another example of a person without a soul is the example of a coma (when the body lives but the person's consciousness has left it) and the example of Alzheimer's - this is when a person does not remember who he is and altogether loses the memory of the last years of his life. While the person feels tolerably well and lives here, from the other side come messages (through mediums-conduits) that his soul is already there, has returned home, and rejoices at the reunion with the souls of loved ones.
So in life the soul and the mind are in close cooperation - in symbiosis. They cannot do without each other. At least in normal, full-fledged people. It is said, of course, that there are people whose soul is not genuine, not alive, being only a parasite and a reflection of living souls, but I can say little about this, so let us limit ourselves to mentioning such a strange case. Yet another illustration of the fact that we (our body and mind) live in symbiosis with the soul is that our souls are more ancient than we are. It is a more ancient form of life, dwelling in the fifth density. It is said that originally our souls created the human being on other planets. I have encountered the mention, in many places, that one of the ancient and modern occupations of souls is to direct evolution by means of directed genetic change. Souls have the ability to rig the genes. In an interview with one of the souls (by means of the hypnotic regression of one of the patients), the soul was asked what it does in its free time and what of its achievements its mentors are proud of. It answered that it was making progress in the creation of new species of fish. It was asked: what, from scratch? It was surprised and answered: of course not, by means of modifying existing species.