for me, what we think of as the soul is really the consciousness, and the consciousness of a person does not die when their body does, and can remain after death...
to my way of thinking, most ppl die and go onto their Gods and heavens, but before they go onto this bliss, they first have to know what this bliss is, and that might take several lifetimes... I do not believe that ppl have knowledge of their past lives, unless they are-dvijati, or twice born, but to be twice born like this means that u have chosen such, consciously, willfully, deliberately, and most ppl do not...
some ppl when they die, have a very well developed consciousness, and these ppl can choose to be reborn retaining their consciousness stream from the previous lifetime, but it takes years of practise to get urself into the right frame of mind not to be frightened by death and dying and to manage the transition from ghost to human again, and the majority of ppl are never able to do this, even if they wanted to...
so, maybe it sounds like hocus pocus, but...
my da always said he would come back as a blackbird... of course, it could just be a coincidence, but when my brother is in trouble, the blackbird comes to my house... uncanny that he appears when he does, but appear he does... I like to think that this blackbird is my Da, reborn, but yes, of course, I live in england, and yes, there's lots of blackbirds about, but...
I have also seen quite a few ghosts in my time, too...
once, I lived in this old building that used to house "fallen women" (blue plaque outside the door, the works), and it had also been a nursing home and a hospital for the poor...
a lot of ppl had died there, over time, and I saw quite a few ghosts...initially I didn't bother telling anyone about it, as I did not want ppl think I was wierd, but eventually somebody told me about things they too had seen which made me think on...
the weirdest of them were two old ppl who used to show me a strange scene wherein one would fall over and the other would pick them up, over and over again, I eventually told them they were dead and sent them on to look for heaven, and they didnt come back to me... nobody could verify this, yet...
some nights, I would see a little boy, yet only from the waist up, and he would stand behind a chair in the bedroom and he and I would play peek-a-boo together... a security guard and I were talking, late one night, and he was telling me about how haunted the place was, and he told me that some ppl had seen half a little boy running about in the conservatory.. I hadn't mentioned the little boy to anyone, of course, and it was strange that somebody else had seen him too...
I also would see a white figure downstairs going into this room which had its entrance bricked up- the room had once been a mortuary room, and many other ppl had also seen this ghostly figure in the hall too...
to be honest, I think ghosts are a lot rarer than ppl think they are, and not many ppl get stuck between the worlds like this.. most of them go to heaven, or a place much like heaven, get refreshed, and then they come back for another go, maybe as a sheep, or a bird, or if u are really lucky, as a dvijati...
...sometimes ppl rage against the dying of the light, they have bonds with ppl they feel unable to break, they have a traumatic death, they get lost crossing over, and they remain, on earth, as displaced consciousnesses, until they go off looking for god... most of them don't hang around long, and when they do it is just like an energy trace, like they have left a little bit of themselves behind, and usually u can send them on to where they need to be...
in the main though, ppl are lucky and know when their time is drawing to a close, they come to peace, and they journey onto bliss...
that's just my thoughts...
