THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE SPIRIT

 
How many aspects do we have? We have a physical body, we have our desires which are full of energy and which stem from our subtle body, we have our mind which Meher Baba says is the mental body, and we have a soul at the back of it all. The soul is absolutely detached from all this, but it has two aspects. The soul in relation to the mental body, the subtle body and the physical body, which we call a human being, has experiences; it is called the spirit.

The other aspect of the soul, the real nature of the soul, is absolutely detached. This is the difference between the soul and the spirit, and I do not think anybody except Meher Baba has explained this. All the time we drive a horse and donkey with the same whip — we do not know the difference. Baba, however, has drawn the difference: the soul is absolutely detached from everything, but that aspect of the soul that comes in contact with our mental, subtle and physical bodies is called the spirit.

Experiences, then, are not really taken up by the soul. They are there because the soul is the background. Pictures could not be formed without the background of the soul.

These three bodies — the mental, subtle and physical — are all destructible. At the back of them and their experiences is a central thing which is called "I" or ego. It is because of the ego that we think, see and feel. It is a useful thing indeed. If this ego were not there, we could not collect all our experiences to compare and contrast them in order to draw conclusions. So this ego is absolutely necessary, but there comes a time when we have to throw it away — and this is self-effacement.