Soul - Have you a soul?

Have you a Soul? –
The question, have you a soul is much easier to answer than what is a soul? The reason is that the former question is about a belief or a feeling while the latter is controversial and has umpteen answers depending on Religion, Philosophy, Opinion, and one’s perception.
We have all a superficial understanding that the soul is what we consider as ‘I’ less it’s physical component. That is to say that it is the spiritual part of ‘I’, including mind etc.; that is, with the corporeal body alone fully omitted.
According to the ancient Greeks, the soul is ‘aliveness’. This is somewhat similar to the Buddhist view that the soul dies along with the body. But in Buddhism some residue (Anatta) continues to live to reincarnate. In ancient Egyptian religion, soul is the mental processes of a human being and is continuously changing. On rebirth the individuality continues very much changed.
Aristotle said that the soul is the living essence and dies on death of the body. But Socrates and Plato considered this essence to be spiritual and continues to be reborn eternally. The Persian Muslim philosophers (Ibn-al-Nafis and others) said that while the soul died there is some thing else that is spirit which is having the quality of immortality.
In Hindism the soul is translated as Athma but the word does not convey the same meaning as soul correctly. Athma is part(or even the whole) of the Absolute known as Brahman. All Hindu gods are other names for this absolute reality. Individual soul or individual itself is not real. They are illusions(Maya) and feelings of continuity created by the ignorance of the individual. This illusory spirit or soul disappears when the individual realizes that he is none other than the Absolute itself. For this realization it takes so many rebirths in which one progressively proceeds with good deeds and meditation. There are other schools of thought also in Hindism that says the individual soul has separate identity but still merges with Brahman ultimately.
Taoism has ten souls for each individual. Seven are YIN and three are YANG. Some may reincarnate and others may not. In Judaism The soul is breathed into an individual by God at the time of birth and returns to God on death. In Jainism every living being including insects and plants have a soul. The soul in Sikhism is similar to the soul in Advaitha Vedanta of Hindus. It is part of God or God itself and merges with God on the death of the body. But there are different opinions as to what immediately happens after death before the merger.
According to most of the branches of Christianity the soul is given to Man at the time of conception or birth and returns to God on death. But each individual’s soul is sent to either hell or heaven for an eternity by God till final judgment on resurrection. Jesus Christ saves people’s souls on the basis of good deeds and repentance. There are variations in the beliefs as to how this happens in different branches of Cristianity. Some of them believe that hell is nothing but the grave where the soul is till resurrection. Some others believe that soul progresses even after death till resurrection.
According to the Hadith of Islam the soul is put into the embryo 40 days after conception. In some different interpretation an angel is sent to breathe spirit into a human being after 120 days of conception. At that time itself his future is written down in detail. Like in Christianity on death the soul is sent to hell or heaven on final judgment.
According to Bahai faith the individual soul does not exist before a person is born. After birth the soul is immortal. After death the soul goes to God. Nearness to God is said to be heaven and distant from God is said to be hell.
From about more than twelve view points on soul described above one can make out how difficult it is to decide what a soul is or to answer the question as to whether one has a soul. Therefore people are inclined to say, yes, I have a soul, or no, I don’t have a soul, according to their notion gathered from what they have been taught or told in their childhood. Most people believe blindly what they have been told. There has been no other way.
Now, what is the remedy? To accept one of the views? Or to say there is no soul or no God, like atheists or Karl Marx.? That will be escapism. And I refuse to be satisfied. So, I decided to find out for myself whether I have a soul within me by searching inside. It was difficult and I am not sure I will ever get any result. But I will at least know that there is no soul or it is not possible to know. I tried.
I sat down and started looking inside. First I noticed my body, my body as a whole. Then I felt the breath going in and out. Then I noticed comforts and discomforts of the body. These have some connection with my thoughts and emotions. The thoughts seem to come from the discomforts and comforts- bad and disturbing thoughts and bad emotions from bad discomforts and pleasant ones from comforts and happiness. Of course reasoning thoughts are neutral and arises from memory- by correlations of memory with sense experiences. And thoughts are controlled and directed by intellect unless the emotions hijack them. Then comes the ego, which, whatever Freud might have said, is seen to have two elements. First is the pure ‘I’ feeling, and the second, the structure constructed or put up by thought. I have no quarrel with the first. But the second, staying glued to the first does all the havoc giving one the miseries, troubles and agonies of the world. Beyond the thoughts, memories, emotions, and intellect, I could find nothing. It is empty, nothingness, but alert, fully attentive (because I am on the look out for something or anything that may pop up at any moment!) and pleasantly vibrant with energy, the energy that drives the system and that remains in the whole system. I could not find any soul unless you call the empty vibrant space with the possibility of the pure ‘I’ lurking somewhere in that space, as The Soul.
Anybody may think that my idea is a summary of what I have read in books. True, I might have been influenced by what I have read and heard; but nothing in what I said is what I have not verified from my observation of my own mind.
Regarding rebirth of the soul or any life after death, no indication at all could be got and I have a suspicion that nothing ever can be found out unless one is able to die and come back. Any claim to the contrary could be the play, trick of the mind or some vivid hallucination. Mind cannot fathom what is before or after this life. I would like to keep it open for the present so that we are not accused of blind denial.