Question: I was having discussion with one of my known friends who is running his own church. I was explaining about our Vedic philosophy. When the discussion came about soul, he asked me again ~ am I talking about spirit or soul? I said both are the same. In reply, he explained they both are completely different. He said, Spirit is the one within the body whereas soul is made up of mind, emotions and consciousness. Often we refer simply as soul or we refer to the ‘self’ as spirit soul. I humbly request you to clear up this question.
Answer by Romapada Swami: Soul is spiritual; and therefore, it is, also, referred to as Spirit Soul. Mind is part of our subtle material senses and is also known as the sixth sense. Consciousness is an attribute or the symptom of the soul’s presence in the body. The spirit soul is actually sac-cid-ananda (Bs. 5.1)—eternal, full of bliss and full of knowledge. This is not so for mind, emotions and contaminated consciousness. [See SB 3.26.14: “The internal, subtle senses are experienced as having four aspects, in the shape of mind, intelligence, ego and contaminated consciousness.”]
Within the soul are profound transcendental emotions, which lie dormant, as long as the soul sleeps in maya, material illusion. But such sublime emotions awaken with the awakening of pure, spiritual consciousness. The entire range of emotions experienced by a conditioned soul (such as happiness and misery, love and hate, compassion and envy) are merely dim and perverted reflections of their spiritual counterparts, which exist in absolute purity and are experienced by fully realized souls in their eternal relationship with the Lord. These “dim and perverted reflections” are due to interactions [vikaram] of the 24 material elements. [See BG 13.6-7]
