I want to keep this short to maximize responses. What exactly is the soul? I've been considering that maybe we do have a soul, though it is preceded by the physical brain and still ceases after death. Just our deepest self perhaps. Emotions are non-physical and caused by the brain, yet we accept they exist. Maybe it's the same with the soul?
Thoughts?
The type of soul you describe is essentially my worst case scenario. I am unwilling to abandon the idea of a soul, and so whatever energy my body contains within its normal processes essentially becomes the default answer until something more 'soulish' is discovered (not that it ever will be). I like to think that there is much more to it than this, however I can't really demonstrate that belief beyond pure speculation. I will indulge that speculation shortly...
Okay, so we know that energy is contained within our bodies in various forms and from various sources. The same can be said of all life and really all matter as well. I think that a vast majority of this energy could be said to have its source in the Earth, with a fair part of the rest coming from the Sun (ultimately the energy from the Earth would be from the Sun as well but that's less relevant to life, I think).
Anyway, when we die the energy contained in us disperses back to the Earth from whence it came. Worms eat us, birds eat worms, cats eat birds, etc blah blah. The circle of life as it were. I don't think that whatever we are now has any bearing on that soul. We will not even be a whole being any longer and will become bits and pieces of other things so much so that it would be insane to maintain any coherent thought anyway even if such a thing were possible.
Now, I also believe that there must be some way to remove yourself from this cycle. I don't think its very easy, as I've been trying everything I can think of for some time and had no conceivable results. Basically, I assume that in order to maintain a coherent soul after death, you must be able to maintain a soul outside of your body before death. If I ever accomplish this particular feat, I should go down in history as I will likely share the method with everyone I can on some network talk show or another. It seems that most people that have out-of-body experiences do so on accident and are always close to death which means they have no clue how they did it (which doesn't help me at all). Similarly, there are accounts of Buddhist monks in Tibet being able to do this after decades of meditation which is a process I'm completely unwilling to undertake. I'm not interested in the idea enough to dedicate my entire life to it. They are also pretty close-lipped about the actual method, so I am forced to work on my own and just try whatever comes to mind when it comes to mind. Good chance I'll never figure it out. I'll keep trying though!