Seeking the Soul

As a transpersonal hypnotherapy facilitator, I often reflect on what the soul means and how it reveals itself in everyday life. My practice was inspired by Journey of Souls, and I trained to facilitate Life Between Lives sessions. After working in this modality for almost a decade, I have come to see that my understanding of the soul has continually evolved and deepened.

Soul as Psyche

The definition of the soul differs across cultures. In Western thought, it is often associated with the Greek word psyche.

"Psyche" comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή (psychē), a word that could mean soul, breath, and life. In ancient Greek understanding, breath was the animating force of the body. When it left, so did life. Psychē, therefore, could refer not only to the soul, but also to the spirit or vital force that makes a person alive.

Psyche was also a figure in the classical myth of Eros and Psyche. She was a mortal woman who fell in love with Eros and is often depicted with butterfly wings. The butterfly became a symbol of the soul, something delicate, alive, and capable of transformation.

Over time, the meaning of "psyche" shifted from the spiritual toward the psychological. This is the root of words such as psychology, psychiatry, and psychic.

Today, when we speak of someone's psyche, we usually mean their inner world: their thoughts, emotions, personality, and their experience of being alive. From this perspective, the psyche may be understood as one expression of the soul. It is the aspect that holds the many dimensions of who we are and the uniqueness of each individual. 

This evolution suggests that the soul’s original, ethereal meaning has gradually faded as attention shifted from the spiritual to the psychological, from a sacred animating force to an object of empirical study.

A Buddhist Perspective

In Eastern cultures, particularly those influenced by Buddhism, the understanding of the soul takes a different form. Buddhism has many different sects that branched out from the original teaching of Buddha, but the foundational belief is that there is no immutable soul. A core belief in Buddhism is that nothing ever stays the same and things are forever changing. The only thing that does stay the same is the fact that everything is ever changing.

Thus, it is understood that there is no soul as an individual, because in the philosophy of Buddhism, "I" is defined by five collections of components, known as the five aggregates: form (the physical body), feeling (sensory experience), perception (mental representation), mental formations (volition and conditioning), and consciousness (cognitive awareness). These elements simply come together and function; Buddhism holds that there is no fixed core called a "soul" behind or at the center of them. Just as a river may appear to be "the same river" even as its water is constantly replaced, or as an assemblage of parts is called a "car," "I" is merely a convenient label.

Why Rebirth, If There Is No Soul?

A question that naturally arises here is: if Buddhism denies an eternal, unchanging soul, then what exactly is reborn? This has been one of Buddhism's most difficult questions since ancient times.

The standard Buddhist answer is that no fixed entity passes from one life to another. What continues is a chain of causes and conditions that a continuity shaped by dependent origination.

The usual analogy is a candle flame. When one candle lights another, the original flame does not literally move into the new candle. Yet the new flame is not entirely unrelated, either. It arises because of the first flame. In this sense, it is neither the same nor completely different.

Buddhism explains karma in much the same way: its effects carry forward through this continuity of conditions.

The Japanese Way of Knowing

In the Japanese culture I grew up with, the idea of the soul is understood somewhat differently. Buddhism arrived in Japan by way of China and gradually blended with the animistic beliefs already rooted in the country, evolving into a distinct spiritual outlook.

Japan's indigenous spiritual tradition is Shinto (神道), often translated as "the way of the deities" or sacred spirits. Like many Indigenous spiritual traditions around the world, it has no single known founder. Shinto is deeply intertwined with nature, and one of its central beliefs is that spirit resides not only in human beings, but also in animals, natural phenomena, objects, and even places or spaces. For many Japanese people today, Shinto may be the spiritual tradition most quietly woven into everyday life.

Marie Kondo, the organizing consultant and author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, illustrates this sensibility through her tidying practice. Before beginning to declutter a space, she bows as a gesture of respect. She also encourages people to thank objects and say farewell to them before letting them go. Her emphasis on forming an emotional connection with the things we keep, which she describes as "sparking joy," reflects the Shinto understanding that spirit can reside not only in living beings, but also in objects and spaces.

One common strand of Shinto-influenced Japanese practice is that the soul is understood as a vital, spiritual force that should remain pure. It exists in continuity with the world of the kami, while also being shaped by the dynamics of impurity and purification. After death, a person is not thought to be reborn somewhere through reincarnation. Rather, through purification, they become an ancestral spirit, remaining within and continuing to circulate through the community.

Where Buddhism seeks liberation from the cycle of rebirth, Shinto does not fundamentally operate within that framework. Instead, it keeps the dead close as ancestral spirits. This is one of the clearest differences between the two traditions' understandings of life and death.

In practice, however, these traditions often coexist rather than compete. Most Japanese funerals, for instance, follow Buddhist rites, even as the deceased are quietly felt to remain nearby as ancestral spirits. Although this varies widely by family and region, t is often said that the Japanese are born into Shinto and buried through Buddhism, a phrase that reveals how naturally these traditions have blended into the rhythm of everyday life.

Moreover, while not everyone does so, many Japanese people choose Christian style weddings and celebrate Christmas without identifying as Christian. This reflects a cultural tendency to engage with different cultural and spiritual traditions in distinct ways. Shinto, in particular, does not generally exclude or reject other beliefs, which may help this coexistence feel natural.

I find a resonance here with the ancient Greek meaning of psyche. In ancient Greek thought, psyche can refer to the soul, breath, or life force. It suggests something living and mysterious that cannot be confined to a single religious definition.

What Does Soul Mean for My Practice?

As a Life Between Lives facilitator, I deeply resonate with the perspective presented in Journey of Souls, particularly its understanding of the soul as something that transcends any single organized religion. It reminds us that ideas of right and wrong are shaped by time, place, and culture, making it difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at one absolute truth.

I am also drawn to the idea of spirit guides who support us from the planning of an individual life’s blueprint through the embodied experience of being human. The thought that familiar spirit guides welcome us after death, along with the possibility of reunion with deceased loved ones, is deeply comforting. It helps me see death not as an ending, but as a transition.

At the same time, I am a depth psychology practitioner. Carl Jung’s concepts of the psychoid, the numinous, synchronicity, and the collective unconscious have been deeply meaningful to me. These ideas support an understanding of spirituality and ethereal phenomena that feels closely aligned with the perspective offered in Journey of Souls.

Similarly, the modern depth psychologist James Hillman’s acorn theory suggests that each person has a unique calling. This also feels connected to the perspective presented in Journey of Souls.

Hillman, however, sees the soul not as a substance or a thing, but in a more archetypal way. For him, the soul is not something physical. It is a perspective, a way of allowing events to become deeper experiences. It appears through images, imagination, and the way we live.

When I facilitate transpersonal hypnotherapy, I often notice what feel like ethereal phenomena. For example, during a client’s profound healing experience, I once noticed sudden rain outside. It felt as though the rain were washing over and cleansing the dusty air. On another occasion, while a client was experiencing a reunion with her deceased mother, I noticed a doe and her fawn outside in my garden. The mother was licking the fawn, and the image felt like a gesture of maternal love.

Some clients have also shared that, after a session, they notice images that resonate with the ethereal experiences they encountered during transpersonal hypnotherapy. One client, for instance, was shown an owl as a symbol of her connection with a spirit guide. A few days later, she received a birthday card from a friend with owls illustrated on it. My clients have shared many stories like this with me.

These experiences feel close to what Hillman describes as soul. They are not simply expressions of individual energy, but may be expressions of soul itself. They cannot be proven as evidence of the soul, because they are understood through a subjective and interpretive lens. At the same time, they are real experiences for those who encounter them. For people who are open to seeing life in this way, such moments may arise often in daily life.

Buddhist philosophy creates an interesting tension with the perspective offered in Journey of Souls, yet I feel that both may speak to some aspect of existence. Buddhism dissolves the idea of a separate and permanent self, yet what remains is not nothing. What remains is an unbroken web of interdependence. In this sense, the two views may not truly contradict each other. Where Journey of Souls sees individual souls, Buddhism may point toward a shared source from which all life arises. Perhaps spiritual traditions around the world are each speaking to an aspect of this mystery, while none has reached a definitive conclusion.

For me, ethereal experiences, from finding spirit in nature to facilitating transpersonal hypnotherapy and Life Between Lives sessions, are part of the ongoing act of seeking soul. These unique experiences can contribute not only at an individual level, but also at a collective level. As consciousness expands, it may create a ripple effect that naturally influences others.

Finally, my intention in facilitating these experiences is to support people in cultivating their own unique perspective on the world while embracing the extraordinary experience of being human. I see myself as a seeker rather than a researcher, valuing the journey of exploration over the pursuit of absolute truth. It feels as though this is how the Soul invites us to engage: by exploring different ways of connecting and continuing to ask questions. Soul is an endlessly fascinating notion, and the journey continues.