Toward Ecosophy

Greetings, JMG! I wanted to follow up on last week’s discussion of soul and spirit. I’ve been meditating on this for quite some time and have read many of your writings on bodies but the terminology is still confusing to me. I’ve tried to map them to planes to sort this out. A “body”, as best I can tell, is actually composed of physical matter, plus etheric energy holding it together in a form held on the astral plain. It’s maybe an over simplification of your writings on bodies, and I offer my apologies if I’ve taken too much liberty here. It also seems consistent across different traditions that there is an enduring spirit that joins a body at various points in time (the details I won’t pretend to understand). Then there’s the matter of a soul, which I take to include at least the astral and mental planes. The most artistic version of all this would be a spirit that would encompass the planes of spirit, causal, and divine, and a soul would encompass the astral, mental, and mental planes. I picture three interlocking circles. Could you offer any clarity on terminology here? And what would be a good resource to investigate the differences (and relationships) of body, soul, and spirit?