The Concept of Souls

Vedas say one thing emphatically - that we, the living beings are all souls of the same kind. Only the bodies that we have are different.

Proof? We know it intuitively, except that we don't pay attention to it. I am able to think of my body, my mind, my thoughts, my feelings everything separately from me. But me as an entity is always a constant, regardless of all the changes that my body, mind and feelings go through.

But is it so important that I am a soul? so what if I am or am not? Because it creates a fundamental shift in our thinking of life. All the man-made miseries in life are mostly because of our wrong perception of ourself. We think ourselves to be things we are not and direct our energies in the wrong direction. If I think I am the body, my efforts will be focussed on maintaining it well. But most realize after a while, no matter how you maintain it, this body finally falls. No matter how pleasuring a pleasure is, it ends.

If I think of myself as a soul, then I would start thinking, so what's important for me, the soul? Now I see body as a tool I have to use. So, how do I use the tool? to do what? why?

Like science says about energy, we are like tiny-bits of ever-present energy, neither created nor destroyed, but get transformed always. Who does this transformation? why?

Vishishtadvaita as a philosophy answers all these fundamental questions and more, culled out of the Vedas of course.