THE SOUL

On the night he died, Alex told Irene Pepperberg, a professor, "You be good. I love you."

Alex was a parrot.

"Alex could pronounce over 100 words; could count to six; and understood abstract concepts...

"When he wanted to stop his laboratory tests and rest at a window overlooking the garden he would say 'Wanna go tree.'

"When other parrots mispronounced words he would correct them: 'Talk clearly.' 

Animal minds | The Economist

Sounds like parrots have got souls?

Phineas Gage.

Phineas Gage, born in 1823, had an accident which destroyed much of his brain's left frontal lobe.

He changed from being well-behaved to antisocial.

This leads to questions about 'the self' and 'the soul'.

René Descartes, born in 1596, believed that man has a soul which is separate from the body.

Thomas Hobbes, born eight years before Descartes, did not believe in such a 'soul'.

(Psychiatry professor George Makari, in Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind, refers to Phineas Gage. Lost soul | The Economist)

The 'personality' may be temporary. But what about the 'soul'?

Eleanor died. Over the next few days various elephants visited her.

Elephants mourn their dead.

Animal minds | The Economist

One cat has become a Guardian Angel for other sick animals

This cat almost died and now spends her days caring for other animals who are sick.

...

According to Amit Goswami:

"When the material body dies, the learned tendencies of the subtle body survive as nonlocal memory, and will reincarnate in another physical body in the future.

"In between death and rebirth, we survive as a “soul”, a reservoir of accumulated character aspects or propensities that Easterners describe using the Sanskrit words karma and sanskara."[1]

At 'Under the Tree' we read:

"The Buddha points out we are not the body, not material objects, and not the things to which we become attached.

"The Buddha taught there are things which are 'not self' and 'not soul.'

"A spiritual Self exists that is not equivalent to any material fabrication."