What Is the Soul? 

The soul is an exclusively spiritual human acquisition that forever separates human beings from all other living beings. The soul is self-reflective, truth-discerning, and spirit-perceiving. The foundation of the soul is the individual’s moral consciousness, and it is this moral self-consciousness that determines the potential for eternal survival of the soul. The soul exists and grows only in relation to moral thinking and spiritual progress. If the soul stops growing, it dies.

Progress in soul growth is aided by the Thought Adjuster, the literal presence of God in the mind. The Thought Adjuster comes to dwell in the mind of every individual at the time of that individual’s first moral choice, usually at about five years of age. The coming of the Adjuster signifies the birth of the soul, but the soul is distinct from the indwelling spirit.

Over a lifetime, the growth of the soul is either helped or hindered by the moral choices made by the individual. This moral consciousness is evolutionary and improves with experience. The closer the alliance between the moral consciousness and the indwelling adjuster, the more the soul grows and the surer the possibility of eternal survival of that soul. All conflict requiring choice has to do with maintaining harmony between the intellectual consciousness and the moral consciousness.

When the human soul is thus spiritualized through consistent moral choice, it becomes an entity in and of itself, an entity that is designed to survive the mortal death of its bearer and go on to immortal life in the hereafter. Even though it is impossible to prove the existence of the soul, many morally-conscious persons know that their soul exists through their own intuition and personal experience.

The soul is born early in life and at about the age of five, on average. The first moral choice of the human mind marks the birth of the immortal soul, and signals the arrival of the Thought Adjuster – the indwelling Spirit of God which lives in the mind of every human, and which strives throughout mortal life to guide this emerging soul in its growth. Thereafter, the soul grows with each and every decision of the human mind which is true, good, and beautiful. In short, it grows with every decision that is aligned with the will of God.

This new spiritual entity becomes the embryonic form which grows over a lifetime into the immortal "vehicle of personality identity." It is in every way the spiritual counterpart of our mortal nature, but unlike the strictly human part of us, the soul is equipped to survive death, and after reunion with the personality and mind, to progress into eternal life.

The soul of man is an experiential acquisition, conceived and nurtured through alignment with the inner spirit of God. This means that as a human being makes choices in life that are consistent with the will of God, the indwelling spirit of God becomes the father of a new way of living for the individual, one that is morally conscious. The material mind is akin to the mother of this emerging reality. The substance of the resulting soul is neither completely spiritual, nor completely material, but occupies a realm somewhere in between these realities. Yet, the soul is very real and is destined for immortality, as it will survive the physical death of its mortal owner.

This is cause for joy, as it presents the very real possibility of increasing communion with the indwelling spirit of God that is so closely associated with the growth and development of the immortal soul. Our human life experiences are the soil from which our evolving soul is growing. Maintaining a healthy moral compass through religious and spiritual growth becomes of prime importance as we go through life.

Survival of the human self is dependent upon transformations in the mind that allow for guidance from the spirit of God within. Over time, this transformation in the mind ensures that the individual becomes spirit-taught and spirit-led, making soul growth inevitable. When the mind chooses to yield to spirit guidance, such a choice means that the individual becomes increasingly spiritual and thus able to achieve eventual oneness with the immortal indwelling spirit. A purely material-minded individual cannot achieve oneness with the spirit.

There is eternal value in the growth of higher values and the progress in meanings. When the individual experiences the interrelatedness of values and meanings, aided by the guidance of the spirit within, this experience is equivalent to God-consciousness. This experience lifts the individual from material-mindedness to that superhuman state where the soul is allowed to grow and evolve. The evolution of the soul is not dependent on education, culture, or wisdom; the motivation of the individual and the choices that s/he makes toward spiritual growth are the primary determiners of the evolution of the soul.

Said Jesus: “Let every person make sure that the intellectual and moral foundations of character are such as will adequately support the superstructure of the enlarging and ennobling spiritual nature, which is thus to transform the mortal mind and then, in association with that re-created mind, is to achieve the evolvement of the soul of immortal destiny.”

Our mind is the arena where we make choices. Every choice that we make either helps or hinders the growth of our soul. We may think of our mind as our ship. Our human will is the captain of our ship, and the indwelling spirit of God is our pilot. We would do well to trust the divine pilot to guide our ship into safe and nurturing harbors. As long as we embrace truth, goodness, and beauty in our choices we can grow an immortal soul that will carry us through eternity. Only selfishness, apathy, and deliberate sin can wreck our ship.

Faith is a valuable and necessary element to the growth of our soul; it is through faith that we are able to unlock the activity of our inner spirit, that immortal spirit that holds the key to our eternal survival. Just as earthly plants and animals pass traits on from one generation to the next, the human soul continues into a higher and progressive existence through identification with the indwelling spirit. This indwelling spirit is the seed from which the soul grows. When we can grasp by faith the fact that we are sons of the eternal God, we can better access the beneficent guidance of his indwelling presence.

Our eternal survival depends entirely on the choices that we make in life. Our choices determine the growth and stability of our immortal soul. When we believe in God, when we seek God, and desire to be closer to him throughout life we will experience more of God in our lives. It is this desire to know and be more like God that grows our soul and ensures that we will experience the survival of our personality after death.

When we die our physical body remains here on earth and eventually returns to the elements from which it is fashioned. It is the immortal soul that constitutes the new entity which survives the death experience. Throughout life, our soul is in an embryonic state, not fully realized. After death, our soul is “born” into a state that is in between the material and the spiritual. Having no distinct form of its own, the soul is housed in a new bodily form that then becomes the life vehicle for both the soul and the spirit of God that has been our companion throughout life. In between the time of death and the time that we wake up after death, our soul is in the care of our guardian angel. And when our soul, our adjuster, and our personality are reunited, this joining constitutes our “resurrection.” All of the essential parts of us are joined into a new being, an immortal being.

Even though this process of resurrection after death is not easy to explain, and while it may never be wholly understood by any individual, all of us will someday experience the truth of it.

“The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.”