If you’ve made it this far, you acknowledge the possibility that there is a soul, and that you have one, yet there are a couple of ways of looking at the Soul, in various parts of the World. In the Western cultures, we have Philosophy and mainly the abrahamic religions that deal with the Soul. There are Eastern models as well, that deal with the Soul, but for now let’s focus on the Western path, which is the one most of us in the West are geared to walk upon.
In our modern days, modern Philosophy has mostly relinquished Soul to Religion, which I think is a sad state of affairs because in ancient times it was Philosophy that researched and tried to define the Soul, which in turn informed religious and spiritual practices, at least in the West. In the East, the Spiritual practices are still deeply embedded in Philsophy, and vice versa, as far as I understand things.
Perhaps the quintessential difference comes from the conceptualization of pneuma/spirit, in neoplatonic/plotinian thinking and early christian thinking, which I think reconceptualized it differently in relation to the Divine. In one of the Gospels, Christ breathes ‘spirit’ unto his disciples, which implies that they had no ‘spirit’ before then, or at least it was not a proper divine ‘spirit’, whereas according to neoplatonists we are born with spirit, but a part of our soul is undescended and remains with the Divine, and spirit is what is constructed through the journey of the lower soul through the celestial spheres before it reaches earth and a body.
Therefore there are 2 paths to ‘salvation’: Ascending back through the spheres by one’s own power, or by accepting Christ’s blessing and Holy Spirit. Are they 2 different things? Is one true and the other false? Are they both valid? Are they sides of the same coin? Do they simply describe different celestial mechanics with the same outcome? Are they 2 different roads? What about the eastern paths? Are they valid as well?
I am thinking that there is a middle ground in all this, and I guess I’m aiming towards