The Spirit is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new omnipresent Joy; the soul is the individualized reflection of ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Joy, confined within the body of each and every being.

Man lives in one body and with one name only once. He never reincarnates again with the same form and identity. A person may wear a garment for some time and then discard it, never to use it again. Similarly, the soul wears a different body in each of many lifetimes until, through reincarnation and spiritual evolution, it ascends back to Spirit. Thus you live only once as any particular person, but the soul, the eternal you, lives through numerous reincarnations, carrying with it the cumulative personality and karmic tendencies of its past existences.

Soul is individualized Spirit, which is unmanifested, ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss. The soul, as Spirit's reflection, has the same qualities as Spirit, but the soul identifies itself with the three bodily sheaths that cover it: — the ideation body or consciousness, — the astral body or life force, — and the physical body of flesh — and their normal and abnormal conditions.

'This Self [Soul] is never born nor does it ever perish; nor having come into existence will it again cease to be. It is birthless, eternal, changeless, ever-same (unaffected by the usual processes associated with time). It is not slain when the body is killed.' (The Gita II:20)

The moon is reflected in a cup containing water; the cup is broken and the water runs out; where does the reflection of the moon go? The reflection of the moon may be said to have returned to its inseverable identity in the moon itself. If another cup of water is placed under the moon, another reflection of the moon would be reincarnated! The reflected moon, circumscribed by a little cup, becomes, at the destruction of the cup, the one moon whose rays spread over the sky. Similarly, the soul, when fully liberated from imprisoning desires, becomes omnipresent like the Spirit.