[Mike Todd]

Hi Sjahari,

You could use the word “soul”, of course, but I wouldn’t, because one meaning of “soul” (which appears to be its assumed meaning) is “immortal self”, and this entails that individuation has some ontological purchase. I don’t believe that individuation has any ontological purchase: I don’t believe I am an immortal self but rather a timeless Self that has also been referred to as “Essence or Impersonal Real”:

https://www.davidgodman.org/bhagavans-self-realisation/

Also:

“Questioning ‘Who am I?’ within one’s mind, when one reaches the Heart, the individual ‘I’ sinks crestfallen, and at once reality manifests itself as ‘I-I’. Though it reveals itself thus, it is not the ego ‘I’ but the perfect being the Self Absolute.”

https://www.davidgodman.org/i-and-i-i-a-readers-query/

I consider “I-I” synonymous with awareness of awareness, i.e. foundational consciousness. I believe that this foundational impersonal consciousness individuates into higher-order personal consciousness which untimely returns to the ground, perhaps – and this is highly-speculative – in order to know itself better (Gnothi seauton): the whole divides – differentiates, to be precise – in the process of becoming more whole; Dr. McGilchrist describes an individuated analogue to this process, the right-left-right hemispheric cycle, in his books