“We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.
Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.”

— Plotinus

First Tractate : The Animate and the Man, §3
The First Ennead (c. 250)

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Plotinus 15

Neoplatonist philosopher 203–270

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“Saying that what we call our “selves” consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 12

“After realizing God, one does not identify oneself any more with the body. Then one knows that body and soul are two different things.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 319
Context: The body was born and it will die. But for the soul there is no death. It is like the betel-nut. When the nut is ripe it does not stick to the shell. But when it is green it is difficult to separate it from the shell. After realizing God, one does not identify oneself any more with the body. Then one knows that body and soul are two different things.

“Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows.”

Plotinus (203–270) Neoplatonist philosopher

First Ennead, Book VI, as translated by Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation https://books.google.com/books?id=vEt0LaOue8IC (1891) pp. 43-44.
The First Ennead (c. 250)

“The soul follows the progress of the body, as it does the progress of education.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

“Having left us with thought (not a soul), and extension (not a body), [Descartes] does not know how to account for the union of soul and body.”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Methodical Realism

“Socrates: The shoemaker, for example, uses a square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: But the tool is not the same as the cutter and user of the tool?
Alcibiades: Of course not. …
Socrates: Then what shall we say of the shoemaker? Does he cut with his tools only or with his hands?
Alcibiades: With his hands as well.
Socrates: He uses his hands too?
Alcibiades: Yes. …
Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?
Alcibiades: Certainly.
Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?
Alcibiades: True.
Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?
Alcibiades: That is the inference.
Socrates: What is he, then?
Alcibiades: I cannot say.
Socrates: Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: And the user of the body is the soul?
Alcibiades: Yes, the soul.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Alcibiades I

“The highest part of the human soul, which is called the intelligence and which is not the act of any body and does not need for its proper operation a corporeal instrument—this intelligence, if it were not obscured and weighed down by the mass of the body, would itself have complete knowledge from the irradiation received from the superior light without the help of sense, just as it will have when the soul is drawn forth from the body, and as perhaps those people have who are free from the love and the imaginings of corporeal things.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

“Ancient scriptures tell us that man is more than the physical body. In fact, we have two bodies: the physical and the astral, or subtle. But we are the soul! According to the ancient Vedic scriptures of India, the size of the soul is 1/10,000 the tip of a strand of hair. It is located in the heart region and is the actual life force. The physical, as well as the astral or subtle body, acts as a covering or costume that the soul wears in its journey throughout the material sphere. As we pass from costume to costume or from body to body through the process known as reincarnation, the impressions of previous lives imprint themselves on the subtle body and are carried with us during each lifetime. In the dream state, activity in the subtle body becomes more dominant than activity in the physical body. Our dream experiences are often impressions accumulated from many lifetimes.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 18-19

“If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Thoughts in Solitude

“One may call the world a myth, in which bodies and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

III. Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: One may call the world a myth, in which bodies and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden. Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the Gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to practice philosophy.

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Plotinus 15

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