Facets of a Diamond - Blog

Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.

This is a general note on what I believe is the nature of, and the differences between, the entities I call the Soul, the Spirit, and the Great Spirit.

The Soul is the Deepest, Holiest part of an individual’s self, which is pure love.  It is our Humanity, our Muse, what Confucius called what our Jen.  Being of the self, the Soul dies with us.

The Spirit dwells within us throughout our lives, being incarnated at our conception. And on our death it returns to the Spirit World, to be reincarnated again and again as it has been countless times in the past – and as it will be in the future.

The seeming purpose of each successive incarnation is to enable the Spirit to progress, to evolve, through all the experiences (so-called positive and negative) that the self undergoes. It is thought that there is an endpoint to its evolution so that eventually it passes through what is called The Barrier and no longer needs to be reincarnated.

The spirit is of us, and yet not us. As far as can be ascertained, one of its functions in the Spirit World is to guide those on earth, that is to say, to be an agent of The Karmic Plan, the name I give to the universal, predetermined plan for all existence.  The spirit retains full memory of all its past lives, its incarnations, and it is through the appropriate one that it can relate in giving guidance.

And finally there is the Great Spirit.  The Great Spirit is the Tao, the Karmic Plan, God.