Spirituality is always a matter of consciousness. It is its founding principle. Consciousness is basically “that which is conscious of”. This may sound like a tautology, but it is nevertheless a most accurate statement. For if one wishes to get to know, or touch the spiritual, one must realize within oneself, the very important distinction between what consciousness is, and what consciousness isn't.
First, consciousness itself is different from “what one is conscious of”. We can be conscious of our physical body, its sensations, its overall state. This suggests consciousness is different from the body itself, and that includes the brain. The brain isn't consciousness itself, but a means by which consciousness can be conscious of and within the physical, sensory world.
Second, consciousness is different from the whole realm of emotion and desire. We can be conscious of the realm of emotion and desire, how they arise and change within us, how we feel about things, people, or situations. Since we can be conscious of these things, it again suggests that consciousness is different from this whole realm, that is also often called the astral plane. The soul is not the astral body.
Third, consciousness is different from the whole realm of thought. The conceptual mind, and all its thoughts and thinking faculty, is different from consciousness itself, for the same reason. We can be conscious of the activity of the mind, which suggests it is not the same thing: the mind is not consciousness, the mind is not the soul.
In other words, the soul is not the psyche, that is that combination of emotions/desire + mind within us.
The exact same goes for what we call our personality, our sense of being somebody, of being the person we believe we are. Our ego, or personality, or the personal “I” is definitely not the same as the soul.
So what is the Soul, really ?
We have mentioned that consciousness is basically “that which is conscious of”. The simple fact of being conscious. What consciousness is and what it is conscious of, are obviously different. This is a most important distinction to develop within oneself, in order to eventually experience some actual spiritual realization. In other words, we must realize the nature of consciousness, which is the Soul.
Now, consciousness hasn't realized what its true nature is. The main obstacle towards this, is that consciousness is caught in a state where it is identified with what it is not. We believe “my body”, “my emotions, my feelings, my desires” “my thoughts, my opinions or my beliefs” culminating in “me”, “I am that person”, “my personality”, “I am that”.
However, as i have explained earlier, consciousness can become conscious of all these things, which strongly suggest it is different from them. Our real self is consciousness, and consciousness in itself contains none of these things. It is basically empty of them. One way to describle the nature of consciousness is emptiness, that is, emptiness of anything physical or psychical.
