A "Deeper Shade of Soul"

If something akin to a “soul” or some essence of our being can transcend physical death and have a re-birth, it stood to reason that I needed to examine the concept of the soul.  Growing up Christian, of course our collective faith does not believe in reincarnation, but the existence of one’s soul (and the salvation of such) after your physical death is definitely part of our faith.  Something of you still exists.  I’ve been exploring other perspectives, and recently I’ve been reading through some philosophical accounts of what constitutes our soul.

Some philosophers like Rene Descartes have written about the dualistic nature of the mind and body – that they operate separately.  Now that stance should make neuro-scientists protest loudly, as their research shows that the brain and our nervous system are pivotal for us to have memory (information comes in, is coded and stored, then used perhaps).  Philosopher Gilbert Ryle also agreed with the concept of mind and body being one, in his famous critique of Descartes’ philosophy about the mind/body connection, which he called the idea of a mind separate from a body as the “ghost in the machine,” and essentially mental states are not separate from physical states.

Then there’s genetic memory….which is basically the notion that what is useful  is encoded genetically and passed along because it gives you the ability to respond to certain stimuli – and these are not learned traits – they exist at birth (please forgive me for oversimplifying this – I am not a scientist).

So I’m wondering if memory and soul are equivalent concepts?  If the collective experiences of a group of people are encoded in genetic memory…and contributed to the “collective consciousness” as Jung said, is that a way to live on?  Think about what that also means in terms of living on in the collective consciousness online……  hmmmmm….