Part of the Global Ascension series

Explainer: The Soul, Oversoul, Soul Family, Soulmate, & Soul Contracts

[Updated January 28, 2024] Understanding the soul from contemporary spiritualist perspectives.

Non-Medium subscribers can access this full article here.

CONTENTS

[1] Definitions — [1.1] Limits of Human Words & Concepts [2] Duality & the First Soul [3] The Universal Glue — [3.1] Soul Families, Soul Collectives & Parallel Souls; — [3.2] The 12 Aspects; — [3.3] Old Souls [4] The Oversoul & The Higher Self —[4.1] Dreams; — [4.2] Oversoul “Life Review”; — [4.3] Multiple Soul Families & Oversouls; — [4.4] Universal Mind or “Superconsciousness” [5] Soul Contracts & Agreements — [5.1] Soul Cooperation & Goals; — [5.2] Free Will; — [5.3] Soulmates & Twin Flames [6] Dark Night of the Soul — [6.1] Soul Retrieval [7] Aligning the Ego & Soul for Instant Manifestations

[1] Definitions

THE “SOUL” is a concept that is present in most of the world’s religions, though it does not have a precise, universal definition and understanding. Many agree that it is a non-physical form that enters the body at around conception or birth, and leaves the body at death.

A New Age (probably Hindu) definition that I like is: Your soul is your unique thread of consciousness. Your soul (or individual soul) is one of many unique threads of consciousness, all of which are directly connected to the Universal Soul of all consciousness.

At the level of the universal, there is only one soul. One definition of awakening or enlightenment is the self-realization of that truth.

At the level of relative reality, which is our experience as an individualized ego, souls are infinite. In this article, I discuss the many ways we (as a separate ego-mind) try to make sense of that infinity.

The Body is the Living Soul

Seth (as channeled by Jane Roberts) often described the close relationship between our body and our soul.

“There is no difference between the energy that shapes your ideas and the energy that grows a flower or that heals your finger if you burn it. The soul does not exist apart from nature. It is not thrust into nature. Nature is the soul in flesh, in whatever its materializations. The flesh is as spiritual as the soul, and the soul is as natural as the flesh. In YOUR terms the body is the living soul. Now the soul can live and does in many forms – some physical and some not, but while you are material, the body is the living soul. … The body is OFTEN closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality, session 630 on December 11, 1972 (See section [8.2] below for an expanded version of this idea from The Education of Oversoul Seven.)

• ⬇ The author of the article linked here suggests quantum physics implies the existence of something that observes our physical universe, but is outside of it and could be called a ‘soul’:

• ⬇ Wikipedia debunks a widely cited, but very small, study done in 1907 that claims the soul weighs 21 grams:

Where does the soul come from? What is its role or purpose in our physical body? What does it do after leaving the physical body? These questions are much disputed among different religions and religious thinkers.

I base this Explainer on contemporary (or New Age) spiritualist and esoteric teachings. Much of this information comes through channeled messages from non-physical sources. (See my New Earth Consciousness Channeling series for more on channeling.)

Your soul is the part of you that is beyond your thoughts, emotions, ego, and body. These are part of your physical experience — often referred to as the 3rd Dimension (3D).

Your soul is the eternal (never-ending) pure consciousness that is the core of your non-physical being.

We also refer to the Soul as Consciousness (or Pure Consciousness), the Higher Self, the True Self, the Inner Self, the Inner Ego (as opposed to the Outer Ego), the I Am, the I Am Presence, your Spirit, and Atman (in Hinduism).

For a more detailed list, see:

I have also heard it said that your soul is God or Source expressed/known as a personal/individualized experience.

Many say that your soul connects with your physical body through your heart (or spiritual heart, or heart chakra). So people naturally point to their heart area when referring to themselves.

Based on these definitions, there are two somewhat distinct aspects of the soul. One is its connection to a universal Source that is shared by everyone, and probably everything. The other is an individual aspect that is unique to everyone and everything.

On this point, Seth (channeled by Jane Roberts) says…

“…physical perception in no way alters the native, basic, unfettered perception that is characteristic of the inner self, the inner self being the portion of the soul that is within you. The inner self knows its relationship with the soul. It is a portion of the self that acts, you might say, as a messenger between the soul and the present personality. You must also realize that while I use terms like “soul” or “entity”, “inner self” and “present personality”, I do so only for the sake of convenience, for one is a part of the other; there is no point where one begins and another ends.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks, session 527, May 11, 1970

For clarification, I will use the “Universal Soul” to refer to its most expansive characteristics, and “individual soul” to mean its most individualized experience. Keep in mind what Seth says above, there is really no distinct line that separates these.

According to William Meader (on YouTube), your individual soul seeks to express itself through your personality (ego) with no resistance. Clearing your chakras helps to remove resistance. Your ego/personality serves as its outer vehicle or interface with 3D reality. Your soul wants to contribute to this 3D reality.

This is “all the soul wants” through multiple incarnations — to become “Christ-like”. He says that about 1% of the world’s population is aware of this. (That is 80 million people.) They will take on planetary karma, rather than personal karma, to transform the world. As this “New Group of World Servers” (similar to “Light Workers”) grows on their path, their personal karma becomes less, while their holding of planetary karma increases.

Elsewhere, I discuss the differences between the Soul, Consciousness, and Love. These are three universal aspects of Source/God that are present throughout creation. Because of that, we sometimes confuse them with one another. Hinduism refers to them, respectively, as Sat Chit Ananda.

For more on this, see:

In Vedanta Hinduism, there is a sense of an individual soul (small “s”), which is “Atman”, and a Universal Soul (big “S”), which is “Brahman”. Some schools of Hinduism see these as separate, while others say they are the same things: “Atman is Brahman”. The latter shows the fundamental oneness of these two forms of the Soul. At an experiential level, connecting with one is the same as connecting with the other.

We also called the “Universal Soul” the “Cosmic Soul”, “Supreme Soul”, “World Soul”, and “Universal Mind”. We even personify it and treat it as “God”. In this article, “God” created the Soul and is therefore distinct from it.

Many of us also treat intermediary “collective souls” (such as an oversoul) as god-like. (See section 3.1 on collective souls.)

Hindu beliefs about the Soul probably come closest to what I described as the soul in this article:

Hindus believe that all living creatures have a soul. This soul — the spirit or true “self” of every person, is called the ātman. The soul is believed to be eternal. … The goal of life, according to the Advaita school, is to realise that one’s soul is identical to supreme soul, that the supreme soul is present in everything and everyone, all life is interconnected and there is oneness in all life. — Wikipedia, Hinduism

And I like this more poetic definition of the soul from Seth:

“It keeps your eyes open and your lips smiling as you look at me. It keeps your legs up upon the table; it keeps your eyes blinking, and it goes on within you all the time. It is the essence of your being. It keeps you alive. If you cannot trust that which keeps you alive, then what can you trust?…

It is the unknowing knowing that rushes within you at every moment, and you can trust it above all things. It is the unknowing knowledge of which you can also become aware, but it is your most intimate being. It does not come from others. You will not find it in books or concepts or precepts. It comes from the intimate experience of your own being. When you are alone, feel it; Go along with it joyfully, and say, ‘I give myself up to my life!’ And with that attitude, all other things that you need to know will come to you.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, source unknown

[1.1] Limits of Human Words & Concepts

“Words” are a feature of the 3rd Dimensional reality and the lower 4th Dimension. They do not exist in higher-numbered dimensions. This article talks about “soul”, “soulmates”, “soul contracts”, “soul families”, “oversoul”, and many other spiritual terms here. Please remember these are all human-invented concepts.

None of these words grasp the true nature of these phenomena. They can only point in their direction. So try to grasp the feeling for what is being said in this article, more than the specific words that are being used. Use that feeling to come to your own understanding of reality.

[2] Duality & the First Soul

NOWADAYS, spiritualists widely agree that all manifested reality (everything we can know with our thoughts) comprises different spiritual dimensions (or densities), which reflect different frequencies of energy. That everything is a version of energy correlates with a quantum physics view of the universe.

Beyond the many dimensions of reality, there is the unmanifested. This is something that we cannot know (although some dispute that). We call this Source, God, Brahman, All-That-Is, the Quantum Field, and the Void, among other terms.

The Soul is the first manifestation (or creation) of Source. It is a mirror image of Source and is the 1st spiritual dimension of reality (1D). This means it is eternal (time) and infinite (space). And it can also create from itself. The Soul’s first creation was “duality” (positive/+ and negative/- polarity), which is the 2nd Dimension (2D).

“Duality” is what differentiates the Soul from Source. Source always remains the “non-dual Oneness”. The Soul, through its creations, became everything other than the non-dual Oneness. In this way, Source expresses its creative intelligence through the Soul, while still maintaining its original nature.

Another way to think of this is that Source is the eternal “I”, and the Soul was the first instance of “I Am”. From that first Soul level of “I Am”, all other creations emerge to form the multidimensional universe that we experience (the 3rd Dimension, 3D, and beyond).

These creations become more and more complex and diverse as they expand out from the original “Universal Soul”. Some say that Earth is among the more complex creations because it has a density (or dimension) that is the near opposite of the oneness of Source.

“You are the Soul, creating this dream of being human.” - Lincoln Gergar, Channel for Higher Self

[3] The Universal Glue

THE SOUL exists and is present through the infinite diversity of the universe. It exists both as a singular manifestation of Source (a single Universal Soul), and within the diversity of all that exists.

Everything in existence has a soul (small “s”). This includes every scale at which an entity of any kind can exist, from the smallest atom and photon, to every plant and animal, to a human person, a country and a planet, and to the largest clusters of galaxies. (Note that some people believe only humans have souls.)

How a soul incarnates in the 3rd Dimension (on Earth, for example) has nothing to do with the type of soul they are in other dimensions. A soul may be a human in one incarnation and a plant or a rock in their next incarnation. It all depends on what lessons (or energies) they want to experience for a particular incarnation. (Also, time is far more flexible at the soul level, so there are no past or future incarnations, and there is no going backward.)

Each being or entity has an individual soul. Each of those entities is also a cluster of even smaller individual souls. For example, the cells of our body each have its own soul, which is part of the collective soul that is us.

And each of those beings or entities is also part of a group or collective of souls that makes up a larger entity and soul (or oversoul).

This “pyramid” structure continues up to the single Universal Soul (upper case “S”). And every level is dependent, to a degree, on every other level above and below it.

Note that individual souls contribute to many types of large entities. Your soul, for example, is also part of the larger soul of your family, workplace, school, city, country, planet, and galaxy.

Other soul collections that you are part of are non-physical and spiritual. They are thus less clear in our physical reality.

In this paradoxical way, the Soul ties and holds our manifest universe together, and every part of the universe has direct access to the Soul.

Through the Soul operating in this way, Source has a presence in every particle and entity, and at every dimensional level of reality.

For more on this perspective, see:

[3.1] Soul Families, Soul Collectives & Parallel Souls

All souls connect with other souls through larger groups that they are a part of. These groupings form a “soul family” or “soul group”. People use these terms to mean the same thing.

I prefer to use “soul group” for the physical (3D) reality collectives we belong to, such as our workplace, city, and country. Spiritualists rarely talk about these types of soul groupings.

“Soul family” would refer only to non-physical soul groupings. This is what spiritualist and esoteric teachings focus on most of the time. Soul families come in many forms, including ancestor (DNA) family groups, and extraterrestrial or starseed families (connected to planets other than Earth).

Some say that when we first ‘individuate’ from our larger Soul (or “entity”), we are part of a soul family of 30 to 50 “parallel souls”. These souls are separate but connected. They collaborate and cooperate through incarnations with each other.

A parallel soul is an individual who is also part of a larger group of souls. They have their separate soul having its separate incarnation or life. But they also share a higher-level group soul whose life is a combination of all its lower-level souls. That is often called an oversoul (see section [4]).

“… There are many yous in that system, and each you is related psychologically in a personality structure.… And, yet, you must understand that all of these other identities are independent and fully individual. … They remain latent within you and unexpressed within this system. You have their abilities, unused. You remain latent in their personality structures, and your main abilities are unused within their systems. Yet all of you are a part of one self, you see, in a multidimensional psychological structure.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions, Book 7, session 309 on December 14, 1966

At a lower-dimensional level (like on our 3rd Dimension Earth), each of those 30 to 50 souls can further divide into anywhere from 12 to 1000 more individualized parallel souls. The number varies with different teachings. The “12 Aspects” of a soul are an example…

[3.2] The 12 Aspects

There is a teaching that says that each “human soul” has 12 aspects, of which 11 incarnate (are born) as separate beings living separate lives. Each reflects unique aspect (personality) of the one soul that they come from. You are one of those 11.

The other 10 may be on Earth at the same time as you. Or they may be in different dimensions and times in what we in the 3rd Dimension call the “past and future”. The twelfth aspect is your Higher Self, which stays connected to the Universal Soul and is available to guide the other 11. When the time comes, all 11 aspects die at the same time. They then re-unite to become the complete soul again.

No matter the number of parallel souls at these lowest levels, these are the ones that you have the closest connections to. You will rarely ever meet one of them in person. However, what they learn, you too can quickly learn. And what they suffer, you too can be susceptible to suffering — or so that is what some teachings say.

Seth (Jane Roberts) talks about “reincarnational selves”. These are the parallel souls that we mostly consider past incarnations. However, for Seth, they could also be present and future incarnations of us. (They sound a lot like the 11 aspects just described.) From a reincarnation perspective, Seth says…

“Each of your reincarnational selves has its own ‘points of power’ or successive moments, in which it materializes daily existence in a linear manner from all probabilities available to it.… [T]here is a kind of coincidence with all of these present points of power that exist between you and your ‘reincarnational’ selves.

There is a constant interaction in this multidimensional point of power, therefore, so that in your terms one incarnated self draws from all of the others what abilities it wants…

…at certain intervals you meet, so to speak. Each of your “presents” [parallel souls] becomes charged, filled with potentiality. And your entity [oversoul], itself conscious energy, is also enriched by your various experiences, by the combined and magnified power of its own “past.”

…Privately this is when human beings find themselves aware of greater illumination, when they make sudden decisions and experience new strengths. Now such a time is in the offing socially. This may be reflected in periods of seeming unrest [like major wars] in which, however, new creativity is looming. There will then be great planetary changes in terms of your organizations, but these will reflect private interior illuminations that become physically materialized. (More powerfully:) You do not trust your inner selves enough, or realize the creative ferment brewing. If you did, you could save yourselves much trouble.”

— Seth/Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality, chapter 15, session 657 & chapter 19, session 668 on June 6, 1973 [bracketed text added by me]

Most likely, you, your friends, and your family are also among those lowest level soul groups in your current incarnations. (Note that family and friends fall into both the spiritual ‘soul family’ and more physical ‘soul group’ definitions, as I use them here.)

I have also heard that soul families form through the relationships that one develops in their human incarnation. This means we can create a soul family in the present incarnation, rather than before it. While this view is rare, it is possible and does not conflict with the more common views above.

Some say we create new souls from ourselves. These are yet another form of “parallel soul”. Seth (Jane Roberts) refers to these as “personality fragments”. These fragments can themselves form more personality fragments (or more parallel or off-shoot souls):

“…the present individual in any given life could be called a fragment of his [sic] entire entity, having all the properties of the original entity, though they remain latent or unused. The personality fragment, in this sense, can learn to develop what it has, rather than seek new powers. There are no new powers. …

In a sense, all things could be called fragments, but there are different kinds. Personality fragments differ from others in that they can cause other fragments to form from themselves. In a way, say, that a tree cannot, personality fragments form other fragments having all the properties of the parent fragment — emotional life and so forth.”

— Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Session, volume 1, Session 9, December 18, 1963

[3.3] Old Souls

An “old soul” in non-spiritual, vernacular usage means an “elderly person”. In spiritual usage, the term means someone who has had “many past incarnations”.

The implication is that an “old soul” is wiser than a “young soul” who has not had many incarnations. Channelers and other New Age spiritual teachers often use “old soul” when referring to their audience. (I believe they use it to flatter them.)

Because time is an illusion, all incarnations are taking place at the same time. What we feel is “the past” has a different frequency or energy vibration from what we feel is “the present” and “the future”.

We can have as many incarnations as our imagination allows. The main issue is how well the incarnation of a person has integrated the many other incarnations that their soul is currently involved in.

There is some correlation between human age and soul integration. When I was a teenager, I had a very low level of integration. Now that I am a retired senior, my level of integration seems to be quite high. Thus, the spiritual “old soul” correlates with the popular “old soul”. The degree of “wisdom” that a person exhibits is a potential indicator of integration they have achieved.

So the actual definition of an “old soul” is someone who is integrating the lessons of their current and many other parallel soul incarnations. This requires a higher state of consciousness that is more open and inclusive of alternate realities.

[4] The Oversoul & The Higher Self

THE higher-level soul that you share with others in a soul family is your “oversoul”. You are both an individual soul, and you are a part of your oversoul.

Some people use the word “spirit” to mean the same thing as “oversoul”. It is said that the three fundamental aspects of our existence are our body (physical, matter), our soul (emotion, energy), and our spirit (mental, vibration). Spirit vibrates to create a soul energy that then creates physical matter.

I have also heard people say that the soul is the interface between the spirit and the body — between the non-physical and the physical. I think what they are saying is that our “individual soul” connects our “body/mind” to our “larger collective oversoul”.

I prefer that definition because I have heard “spirit” used to mean many things, including:

—Source/God/The Absolute/All-That-Is/The I Am Presence/Brahman — Individual Soul/Soul/Universal Soul/Mind/Oversoul/Atman — Angels, Archangels, Spirit Guides, Higher Self, Future Self — Causal/Mental Body/Astral/Emotional Body/Aura — Vital Life Force, Qi/Ki, Kundalini, Unified Field — Ghosts, who have previously had a 3D physical form —anything greater or above the 3D Mind/Body —anything that has never incarnated in a 3D physical form — anything greater or above the Individual Soul

I do not use the word “spirit” at all in this article because it has too many conflicting definitions. “Soul” also has differing definitions, but not as many as spirit does.

Note: Seth/Jane Roberts says the “Inner Self” (or “Inner Ego”) is the interface between the “Outer Self” (or “Outer Ego”) and the “Soul”. This is like my definitions, with “Inner” being the “individual soul”, “Outer” being the “mind/body”, and “Soul” being the “larger collective soul”. (See section 6 for more on that.)

Based on my definitions, both your oversoul and your soul set the spiritual goals of your present life incarnation (see the Goals section, below).

Your oversoul is also part of a collective of other individual oversouls that have a still higher level oversoul that they contribute to. (This is that pyramid scheme, again.)

Our oversoul communicates to us through our Intuition, our Inner Knowing, our Higher Self, our Spirit Guides, and beings who we see as Aliens and Ascended Masters. Externalized guides like this may appear as an individual or as a group of beings.

They say our oversoul is in the 7th Dimension (7D), our individual soul is in the 6th Dimension (6D), and our higher self and spirit guides are in the 5th Dimension (5D). So experiencing 5D is experiencing the reality of our higher self and spirit guides. At least that is a common understanding in many, but not all, spiritual dimension models.

The Law of One teaching says that our “spirit guides” are lower or heavier density aspects of our higher or lighter density soul. This teaching says that we each have three guides, one male, one female, and one androgynous. Sometimes we only actually see two of these guides (which was my personal experience).

Communicating with our “higher self” means we are accessing the knowledge and awareness of our oversoul. Because there are different levels of oversouls (correlating with different dimensions), there are also different levels of our higher self, which can sometimes be confusing.

What I call our “oversoul” is what Seth/Jane Roberts refers to as a “multidimensional psychological (or personality) structure”, or an “entity”. Here, Seth suggests that our 3D lifetimes are like one dream experience for our oversoul/entity:

“Individual life or the life of the present individual could be, legitimately, compared to the dream of an entity. While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity. The entity is concerned with these years in the same manner that you are concerned with your dreams. As you give inner purpose and organization to your dreams and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from your dreams, though they involve only a part of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities during their existence. And so, does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from his existing personalities, although no one takes up all of his own attentions.

And, as your dreams originate with you, rise from you, attain a seeming independence and have their ending with you, so do an entity’s personalities arise from him, attain various degrees of independence, and return to him while never leaving him for an instant.

The planes [dimensions] represent the various levels upon which the personalities operate.”

— Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions, Book 1, session 28 on February 24, 1964

Higher-level oversouls handle greater and vaster regions of the universe. A soul or entity in the highest dimensions might be responsible for the well-being of an entire planet, solar system, or star cluster, for example.

Seth II: “Do not imagine that we are not individuals or that because we seem alien to you, that we do not know joy or creativity. Our joy forms universes. It is only because we are unused to bodies that communication is difficult. Our joy forms the universes that you know and dances through your molecules. Our consciousness gives fuel to your own. We possess the energy that gives your sunlight.” — Seth II, speaking through Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Class Sessions, vol. 1, ESP Class Session, October 14, 1969 [As Seth was a “future version” of Jane Roberts, Seth II was a future (higher dimensional) version of Seth.]

[4.1] Dreams

I have heard a couple of people say we return to Source every night in our dreams. Matias De Stefano says (on YouTube) it is our deeper oversoul (he calls it “spirit”) that returns to Source (or the Akashic Records) to get instructions and informations for our body to use in its present incarnation.

The oversoul then interprets the information for our individual soul. Our individual soul then interprets the information for our body through our chakras. Using our 3rd Eye Chakra, our brain decodes the information using what it knows about our physical reality. That is what we experience as a dream.

Whether we remember the dream is not important because we keep the information in our chakras. But the original message gets interpreted several times from (1) Source to (2) oversoul to (3) soul to (3) body chakras to (4) body. If there are any irregularities in any of those stages (which there often are), then thing will not go as smoothly as they should.

For more on 6D, the Soul Dimension, see:

[4.2] Oversoul “Life Review”

As mentioned above, a common model of the spiritual dimensions of reality places the individual soul in the 6th Dimension (6D) and the oversoul in the 7th Dimension (7D). After a human dies (leaves 3D), their 7th Dimension oversoul conducts a “life review”. The focus of this review is on issues that were not resolved in the lifetime (incarnation) that ended.

The individual soul’s expansion is also the oversoul’s expansion because, even though they are different, they are also the same being. So the oversoul is also experiencing, learning from, and growing through the life experiences of its individual souls.

Everything in the universe has equal value and purpose. This also applies to the relationship between individual souls and oversouls — they are equals, but with different perspectives.

After the life review, the individual soul may be reborn again (on Earth or elsewhere). They also may take a break from incarnations by staying in 6D or any dimension higher than 3D and 4D. The focus of their next incarnation is to address the unresolved issues from the life review — hopefully without creating additional issues that will require further incarnations.

“The entity [oversoul] then, or greater self, is composed of [individual] souls.… The entity has its existence in multitudinous dimensions, its souls free to travel within boundaries that would seem infinite to you. As the smallest cell within your body participates to its degree in your daily experience, so does the soul, to an immeasurably greater extent, share in the events of the entity.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 9, Session 637, January 31, 1973; [bracketed text added by me]

Seth says we are fragments of our oversoul/entity. We carry a fragment of our oversoul’s personality and abilities, for example.

“The entity is simply the part of the self that cannot fit into one life alone. It is not, for example, an alien super-self. When you go on a journey, you cannot take your home with you — only certain luggage. In physical life, you cannot take your entire entity with you — only the part of it that you call ‘yourself’. And you are well-equipped with the proper passports, and inoculated with certain root assumptions.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Personal Sessions, Book 3, session on July 25, 1977

But below is a quote that from Dolores Canon that I saw on Facebook. She implies the same hierarchy of a collective oversoul/entity at a higher level than our individual soul and ego personality. Except she approaches it from the opposite direction.

Dolores Canon says we come together overtime with like-minded others who are equal to ourselves to form an oversoul/entity. In this quote, it seems the oversoul/entity does not exist until we decide to merge our individual souls/ego personalities to create it. That is certainly a plausible alternative.

[4.3] Multiple Soul Families & Oversouls

The spiritual teachings that I have come across speak only of a single soul family that we belong to, with a single oversoul. They do that to simplify things for our human brains.

We live in an infinite universe and we belong to many physical reality “soul groups” (such as our workplace, our city, and our country). Each of these groups has a larger identity beyond its separate members, which is a type of soul family with an oversoul identity.

We also belong to many non-physical spiritual “soul families”, each with its own oversoul. These exist at different dimensional levels, as already discussed.

But we are likely to be members of many soul families in the same dimension as well. The quote from Seth, above, points in that direction.

Our physical bodies, for example, are composed of physical elements from our Planet Earth (soul group). We also have deep personal identities and spiritual connections to this planet (soul family). Through these, Mother Earth is an oversoul that is both physical and spiritual to our personal soul.

In our infinite universe, such relationships exist at all scales below and above our planet. This gives us an infinite number of soul families/groups that we are a part of.

“You usually live with your physical family, though this does not always apply; sometimes your ancestors come from various countries, so there is a physical lineage that you understand. There are often homecomings, where distant relatives return to the homestead.

Now psychically the same applies in terms of counterparts. If you belong to any particular groups, often your closest counterparts will also be there. You will be a counterpart from their viewpoint, by the way. Many political, civic, educational or religious groups are composed of counterparts.”

These counterparts form psychic families. They are family representations on another level. First of all, such groups have a built-in focus — political, civic, religious, sexual, or whatever. (Pause.) Certain members of the group express the repressed tendencies of others. Yet each is supported through a common sense of belonging, so that the group sometimes seems to have its own overall identity, in which each member plays a part. Any reader can easily discover this by examining the groups to which he or she belongs.

Now there are races, physically speaking. There are also psychic counterparts of races — families of consciousness, so to speak — all related, yet having different overall characteristics or specialties.”

— Seth/Jane Roberts, The Unknown Reality, Volume 2, section 6, session 732, January 22, 1975

PLUS…

“Any section of the land has an identity, so to speak, and I am not talking symbolically. Such identities represent the combined organizations of consciousness of land, man, and animal, within any given realm. Simply enough put, there are as many kinds of consciousnesses as there are particles, and these are combined in infinite fashions.”

— Seth/Jane Roberts, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, chapter 9, session 791, January 17, 1977

[4.4] Universal Mind or “Superconsciousness”

Psychic abilities occur when we connected with a higher dimensional version of ourselves. We can know another person’s past or communicate with a tree, for example. We do this by connecting to a level in which we share the same soul of the other (through a soul collective and oversoul).

Reaching the highest dimension or density of consciousness gives you access to all timelines, all lives, and all universes that ever existed, including future universes. This is because the “Universal Soul” that exists at that level includes every soul that has ever existed in manifest reality. We all share the same Universal Soul.

The Universal Soul’s knowledge and intelligence are called the “Universal Mind”, the “Akashic Records”, and “Superconsciousness”. The highest channeled teachers come from this dimension, which is closest to Source. It is also the highest version of the Higher Self. (Some teachers refer to the Universal Soul as the one and only “Oversoul” or “Over-soul”. This belief is kind of rare, however.)

(I have also heard that the higher the dimension that the teacher comes from, the less they know about 3D incarnations on a place like Earth. And because of that, most higher dimension beings never even try to interact with those of us in the 3rd Dimension.)

[5] Soul Contracts & Agreements

“SOUL Contract” refers to pre-birth agreements made between two souls to play certain roles in a shared life incarnation so they can have specific learning experiences.

“Soul Agreement” is probably a better term because all such contracts can be changed or broken. Some, however, are a lot harder to change than others.

The roles might be small or large. In time, they might take a few seconds and be over, or they might be ongoing for much of a lifetime. In impact, they might be barely noticed or they might be deep ego and personality shaping events.

Some agreements are major keystones in one’s life experience. These are often very difficult to change. The more minor ones are often easy to change as we grow spiritually.

Looking back on your life, the major events that involved other individuals as catalysts for your ascension are usually easy to identify. They are the ones that defining who you are.

The biggest one is selecting parents (both biological and the ones who really raised you). That is a soul contract between you and them that has lifelong influences.

You also often have strong soul contracts with your siblings, your closest friends and partners, and the people you have worked with in your career. This list can be quite long, and you can often easily classify people into greater and lesser degrees of importance.

Soul agreements do not always work out exactly as we planned, because every soul has the free will to change its experiences at any time (see below).

But, even when you change things, that is perfect because your oversoul knows what is happening and is coordinating your cooperation efforts to attain the most benefit possible for all. (This is like the autonomic nervous system in your human body, which automatically controls most bodily functions.)

[5.1] Soul Cooperation & Goals

You have soul contracts or agreements because of the cooperative nature of the universe. Everything in the universe is cooperating with everything else to facilitate the expansion and ascension of all.

Consider, for example, the cells in your body. They are all cooperating, even though each has a sense of being an individual cell. Similarly, in your soul family, each soul has its sense of identity. And, each connects to every other individual soul that forms your higher dimensional entity or oversoul.

As you go deeper into your inner self and expand your consciousness, you are becoming your oversoul.

At a different scale, if you consider that each cell and organ in your body has a soul, then you, too, are both an individual soul and an oversoul. This is true through all levels of existence. (Remember that the Soul is the glue of the universe that holds this pyramid scheme together).

You and others in your soul family seek to achieve the goals of your larger “oversoul”, which are also your goals at the oversoul level.

Simultaneously, the souls that make up your body, mind, and emotions are seeking to achieve the goals of your physical (3D) human personality and soul. These goals are unique to each person/soul but are in harmony with your larger oversoul’s goals.

Goals change through time, and the different souls that make up an entity (including you) may take the lead at different times. This fluctuating cooperation is where the soul agreements come into play to keep the overall trajectory of a soul’s incarnation on track.

“Each entity, for example, is different from any other, and will seek different kinds of focuses and intents. There are vast individual differences operating there also. One entity might focus its main energy, intent, and drive in one particular earth life, filled with incredible creativity, so that that ‘focus life’ becomes a central core for all other existences, the foundation and the source of energy for all other lives.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Personal Sessions, Book 3, deleted session on July 25, 1977

[5.2] Free Will

Free will is the creative process required for an infinite universe. It means that outcomes are always new and never certain. That uncertainty keeps the universe constantly expanding and ascending into something new that is beyond what we thought possible before. That is “infinity”.

This is the wonder of creation. As a soul, you are cooperating with all other beings through different levels and forms of agreement to create something new.

This sharing of goals and creation continues up to the Universal Soul, whose only goal is to return to Source. In that way, all souls have the goal of returning to Source. Some call this “God Consciousness”. (Note that there are different definitions of God Consciousness.)

For more on this see:

[5.3] Soulmates & Twin Flames

“SOULMATES” and “Twin Flames” both refer to two souls who come from the same soul family and have a pre-birth agreement to play certain roles in a shared incarnation. Most people seem to use the two terms interchangeably, and almost always concerning lifelong romantic partners. This is what many are intensely desiring in their lives.

Matia De Stefano defines “Twin Souls” as a singular soul that splits in two for an incarnation. He recommends that they not try to get together because when one dies, the other will die at the same time.

In popular use, Soulmate and Twin Flame (and maybe Twin Souls) are used interchangeably, results in a lot of confusion in many of the Facebook discussions I have seen on this topic.

As a result, others have tried to distinguish between what a Soulmate is and what a Twin Flame is. Here are two approaches:

(1) A common definition sees Soulmates as two people who are part of a larger soul family and who come together for some portion of their shared incarnation to support one another’s spiritual ascension.

That support is usually positive, but it can be negative. It can be romantic or not romantic. It can be a short-term relationship or a lifelong relationship.

In this definition, a Twin Flames is a rare form of two Soulmates (like above) who are extremely close at the soul level, like identical twins. Their spiritual relationship in human form is equally extremely deep.

Some say they are a single soul that split in two. The focus here is on the word “twin” (being identical to one another) rather than the word “flame”. (See here for more on this definition.)

(2) In this definition, Soulmates are lifelong romantic and spiritual partners from the same soul family.

A Twin Flame, however, is a person who also provides spiritual support but does this over a short period in which they specifically force you to face the darker shadow aspects of your life experience. This can be very challenging, but it was agreed upon pre-birth as a way of propelling your ascension.

The focus here is on the word “flame” (forcing a transformation) rather than the word “twin”. (This definition comes from Matt Kahn.)

For more on this see:

[6] Dark Night of the Soul

“DARK Night of the Soul” refers to periods of a low vibration (fear, anxiety, despair) that some people have following an awakening experience. It can also refer to the many forms of suffering that humans experience on our 3D planet.

One common definition of awakening is a realization that we are not our body, mind, emotions, and ego. Our true self is something deeper than that.

Enlightenment is when you fully identify with your true self and not your temporary 3D ego-self. In that state, you never suffer again. Your body and emotions may suffer, but you are not your body and emotions.

Initial stages of awakening are temporary and far from full enlightenment. As the experience of bliss fades, your ego re-emerges to claim itself as who you are — your identity.

That causes a Dark Night of the Soul. It is an existential crisis of identity. And it appears to be a very common experience.

From your physical mind and body, you can never fully know the experience and lessons that your soul has for you. And you can never know what the soul of another seeks in its incarnation.

You can only trust that the suffering you see in yourself and others has a purpose and that the soul knows exactly what is doing — and perhaps be in awe of that.

The best way to help yourself is to release your outer ego’s grasp of your life and to become more identified with your inner ego (or individual soul). Your inner ego directly connects to the Universal Soul and is far more powerful than your physical body, emotions, thoughts, and outer ego.

For more on the “outer ego” and “inner ego”, see this channeled message from my guides:

The best way to truly “help” another with their Dark Night experience is the same as when working on yourself. You need to become the best version of yourself possible, which is to bring your outer ego into pure alignment with your inner ego or soul self.

By doing that, you change your reality and your universe, along with everyone and everything in it (both physical and non-physical). You could also see this as shifting timelines for you and everyone that you share your reality.

For more on the Dark Night of the Soul, see:

This article relates to the idea of helping others:

[6.1] Soul Retrieval

Soul Retrieval is a shamanic practice that attempts to put back together (or reintegrate) an individual’s soul, which life’s many traumas have broken apart. It is a healing practice that is based on the belief that a soul can be broken into parts and damaged. (Although different, the Seth quote on “personality fragments” in section 3.2, above, might be something like this.)

This idea is like the Dark Night of the Soul condition. It is a low vibration in which the many parts (or smaller souls) that make up your soul are not in harmony and alignment.

As noted in the section on “soul cooperation”, every part of your body, mind, and emotions is a separate soul. Your current personality is the “oversoul” of that body’s “soul group”.

So this is not a condition of your higher self or inner soul. It is an out of alignment condition of our outer self and soul group that makes up your physical being (body, mind, and emotions).

Your higher or inner self/soul always aligns with the Universal Soul. It knows what it is doing, even if your outer ego is lost temporarily. Trusting your inner soul intuition when seeking help from others is the best spiritual path you can take.

This is a good reference on Shamanic Soul Retrieval:

[7] Aligning the Ego & Soul for Instant Manifestations

THE “ego” is a part of our 3rd Dimensional (3D) incarnation experiences. We often refer it to as our “thoughts, emotions, and body”, and bridges 3D reality and our soul’s reality (which is beyond 3D). We also described the ego as the protector of the soul in its 3D experiences.

Most people, however, are so engrossed in their 3D experiences that they become entirely ego-identified. They forget that their true self is their soul.

For more on the many ways that people define the “ego”, see:

The goal is to bring balance back to our ego-identified 3D personality. This requires reducing our focus on our physical thoughts, emotions, and body. Instead, we increase our awareness of our non-physical and eternal soul self.

As we become more soul-identified, we realize our ego’s role as an interpreter of physical experiences. It is our true self who is the experiencer.

This is our soul’s path through all the dimensions of manifest reality — to experience the great diversity that God/Source has manifested. This is how Source comes to know and celebrate its infinite creativity.

The personality “you” (your “ego”) can never go against the desires of your soul because that is the deepest and most powerful part of who you are. So any desire that arises from your soul manifest in your life.

Our soul exists at a higher level of consciousness (or a higher dimension) in which “unconditional love” is ever present. That means it loves everything in existence, including everything that we do, no matter how “evil” we may judge ourselves. Our soul does not judge. It simply knows everything is God/Source, and everything and every event has a purpose and is a step toward ascension.

Of course, we cannot see that from our 3rd Dimensional perspective. Our ego judges everything as good/bad, right/wrong, better/worse. That is what 3D reality is all about — separation.

Our soul will always try to give us what we most deeply want. It listens to our ego to do that. If our ego is telling our soul that it wants something bad to happen to us, then our soul will deliver that. That is how the Law of Attraction works.

Thus, it is important that our ego is very clear in sending the right messages to our soul. Have clear and balanced chakras is one way to ensure that level of clarity.

Seth/Jane Roberts says, “we create our own reality”. We do that by our ego telling our soul what it wants.

The problem is that we are constantly, from moment to moment, telling our soul what we want through the judgments we make about our reality. Many of those judgments are negative, which then results in our soul delivering a negative reality.

Thus, we experience bad things because that is how our ego interpreted our reality to our soul. We brought that unpleasant experience into our reality — although we are seldom fully conscious of that.

(Warning: We can consider this a form of “spiritual bypassing”, which is using spirituality to blame the victim. Thus, while it may be true on a higher level, this is not something to tell someone who is suffering on a 3D level and is not in that higher state of consciousness.)

Another complicating factor is that we can change our minds from moment to moment. That confuses our soul and created chaos in our reality. Being more focused and aligned with our true self can help calm our monkey mind down and bring more clarity to our world. For example…

When we manifest might be an indicator of how far removed our ego-self is from our soul-self. Our soul is beyond time, and it manifests instantly. What may seem years in the 3D is a flash of a second in the soul’s experience.

We, however, are embedded in the 3D dimensions of time and space. What is “instantaneous” for the soul may be anywhere from a minute to many life incarnations for your ego-personality. The more we align our ego-self with your soul-self, the shorter the manifestation time will be (probably).

Some (like Lincoln Gergar in this meme ⬇) say the beliefs we hold and the degree to which we resist our soul’s desires create our sense of “time”.

Our soul always makes the right choice for us. It brings us what we want, and it brings us what it wants. We have free will to follow what our soul brings us, or to resist it. The more we resist, the longer our experience of time will be.

For example, if we think it will take 2 years to learn a certain skill, then that is about how long it will take. Or if we resist certain changes in our well-thought-out “plans”, then that resistance will delay our outcome. Our soul-self will always get its way, but it may take a period of struggle and pain before our ego-self realizes this.

Thus, “time” as we experience it in the 3rd Dimension, is created by the beliefs and resistances we hold that separate us from our soul.

We overcome “time” and “manifest instantaneously” when we have a direct connection to our soul (with no filter from our ego-personality). With that connection, we can also have instant knowledge of anything we place our attention on. This is because everything is connected and one at that soul level.

As mentioned at the start of this article, from the perspective the Absolute, there is only one soul. And that one soul is who we really are. That is the awareness of an “enlightened” being.

[8] Related Resources

• [8.1] ⬇ This article is a fictional account that portrays one way of understanding our individual soul’s incarnation on Earth.

• [8.2] Recommended Reading: The Education of Oversoul Seven, by Jane Roberts (1973) is a fictional story about a young oversoul who is learning to manage several of his personality fragments (as Seth/Jane Roberts calls them) who are incarnated on Earth at vastly different time periods. I highly recommend this book to understand our relationship to our oversoul from a different perspective. It is available on Amazon.com and as a free scanned download from the Internet Archive (pdf, mobi, epub, and other formats). ⬇ This quote is from The Education of Oversoul Seven:

The mind cannot dance above the flesh, or on the flesh. It cannot deny the flesh or it turns into a demon demanding domination. Then the voice of the flesh cries out with yearning through all of its parts; the ancient contract undone. And both soul and flesh go begging, each alone and without partner.

Who feeds the body with love, neither starving it nor stuffing it, feeds the soul. Who denies the body, denies the soul. Who betrays it, betrays the soul. The body is the body of the soul, the corporal image of knowledge. As men and women are married to each other, so is each soul wedded to its body. Those who do not love the body or trust it do not love or trust the soul.

… The body is the soul in Earth garments. It is the face of the soul turned toward the seasons, the image of the soul reflected in Earth waters. The body is the soul turned outward. Soul and body are merged in the land of the seasons. Such is the ancient contract by which the Earth was formed.

The knowledge of the soul is written in the body. Body and soul are the inner and outer of the self. The spirit from which the soul springs forms both soul and body. In Earth time, the soul and body learn together. The genes are the alphabets by which the soul speaks, the body — which is the soul’s utterance in flesh.

So let the soul freely speak itself in flesh. The body is also eternal. The soul takes it out of space-time. The body is the soul’s expression, and its expression is not finite. The spirit has many souls, and each has a body. The body is in and out of time, even as the soul is.

— Jane Roberts, The Education of Oversoul Seven, (1973)

• [8.3] ⬇ Do you feel your soul came from another star system? Linda Backman is a psychologist and channeler who specialized in soul regressions. She discusses her perspectives on “interplanetary souls” in this interview.

• [8.4] ⬇ In this recording, Ryo (an Essessani being channeled by Tyler Ellison) answers questions about what an oversoul is. He claims that there are 300,000 oversouls on Earth today (compared to 8 billion humans). It is an interesting perspective.

• [8.5] ⬇ People have different definitions of the Soul and God. In this video, Lincoln Gergar’s Higher Self explains how we are God and God is in everything. While he does not mention the Soul, the idea is the same as discussed in the article above.

• For more Spiritual Explainer Articles, see this ⬇ collection. Note that the articles in this collection are behind the Medium paywall. For paywall-free access to my articles go to www.AlanLew.com, linked below.

Notes

• Portions of this article were originally part of the article: Explainer: What are the Different Spiritual Dimensions of Reality? As I gathered more information on the Soul, I made this a separate article.
• The section on Soul Contracts, Cooperation, and Free Will are edited versions of channeled messages from my Energy Group, received on December 30, 2020, and on January 15, 2021.
• The “Time” section is something that I learned about on January 31, 2021, when I received 3 messages about “Instantaneous Manifestation” from three completely different sources in one day.

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• Written in collaboration with my Energy Group/Higher Self. This is our personal sliver of the truth and not the whole truth of reality.

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