Hi-Ho,
aimtobe, adding my bytes to LV's overarching survey:
I 'see'
souls as kind of being mini-computer 'chips'
whose operational 'purpose' is to augment the execution of the BIG One's 'program' - my
theory of what that 'program' is is included in the snippet (from my treatise) below:
It has ... struck me that developments in the field of modern computer systems may provide us with an even more illustrative model for the universally creative, feedback-loop based interfusion of The Essence of Creativity (i.e. 'the Father') and the Life (i.e. mind-and-spirit activated 'soul') of every individual and amalgamated aspect of Its expression. To explore this proposition, imagine if you will that the main aim or goal of said Essence’s ‘program’ – the primary motive (i.e. desire) ensconced in Its ‘source code’ – is to maximally express and thereby experience Love and Joy, i.e. to Joyfully express and experience Love and Lovingly express and experience Joy to the greatest possible degree in every possible way, or something like that.*
*Footnote: Not that this is the only available supposition, mind you. Many, for example, think and feel that the expression and experience of Power and Success is Life’s prime imperative and so believe that maximal actualization and experience of these (i.e., of Power and Success) must be The Cat’s Meow (idiomatically speaking). However, since I myself most keenly enjoy recalling and vicariously reliving the loving and joyful times I had as a child, and as I continue to spontaneously resonate with the ‘Spirit’ exuberantly displayed in the antics of the (unadulterated by conditioning) young of many species including ours, also having deeply appreciated ‘returning’ to expressing and experiencing Love and Joy after sometimes lengthy dry-spell detours and digressions therefrom, and having gradually become more and more thoughtfully impressed by Jesus’ saying things like: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3); “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure [i.e., that keeps on being loving!] unto the end, the same shall be saved.” (Matthew 24:12‑13); and “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34), the proposition pertaining to the expression and experience of Love and Joy which I put forward in the preceding paragraph is the one I believe to be and so suggest is both the most pertinent and the most propitious in the long term.]
Next, to picture the activity of the Living Entity of our Creation (i.e., of ‘the Son’), imagine a universe-sized network made up of an infinite array of banks upon banks of computers matrixially web-strung together by way of both parallel and series connections, all simultaneously, individually and together, multi-processing the above referenced Love and Joy ‘program’, with each processor and every amalgamation thereof functionally outputting the ‘solution’ it ‘calculates’ will most probably yield the greatest possible Love and Joy ‘result’ in its case (as far as it can prognostically project, that is), which ‘solution’ then operationally functions as input in relation to any and all associated processors to whatever extent they ‘calculate’ it to be relevant to their own Love and Joy process, such that said output-n-input data-packet sequences co-actively ripple and reverberate around the network, sparking Love and Joy focused perceptions and decisions (i.e., experiences and expressions) which conjointly determine what takes place here, there and everywhere in ‘the body’ of said Entity over the course of time.
I elaborate my understanding of what's called 'soul' and explore its worldly dynamic in the second chapter of the treatise (titled "
What Jesus Really Meant"), which is available as a free pdf download from my website if you or anyone else is interested in digging into it.