Development of social-communication-cognitive skills in populations of living organisms of many varieties, led to the development of increasing levels of awareness, observation and the creation of cognitive maps of the outer world shared by members of social groups. Thus the combination of physiological and social evolution led to the generation of that which we call "mind", that aspect of the individual which observes and analyzes changing conditions and situations of life, imagines possible outcomes of different types of actions, and makes decisions and choices. With these developments, mind then begins its own trajectory of evolutionary development.
Just as physiological evolutionary changes brought about the natural development of social-communication-cognitive skills, from which the mind is constructed, so the evolutionary development of mind has in turn given rise to innumerable abstract worlds of thought mediated by language, reason, creativity and imagination. These interactive attributes developing in tandem have exploded in the human species into galaxies and universes of thought-worlds.
The human capacity for observation has evolved from simple mental surveillance of the external physical environment to multiple complex observations of countless mental environments. It is this ongoing incessant activity of interior observation by millions of generations and populations of humans, that has generated an awareness of inner states of being, states of consciousness, states of self.
As humans we experience our individual and collective lives as biological animals in living ecosystems of our world. We also experience ourselves as parts of a variety of social communities from our families to our schools, work places, geographic regions, and language groups. But we experience our humanity in our cognitive worlds of thought and in our evolved capacity for fully conscious involvement with all these worlds we inhabit.
Our consciousness itself has become an environment in which we are living and evolving. Each stage of evolution produces a higher level of consciousness which can observe, examine and articulate lower levels. When we began to witness our selves as selves, ego emerged to integrate the many cognitive functions of the mind. When we began to witness ego, to identify and consciously utilize cognitive skills of reason and logic, to engage in the purely mental activities of imagination and creativity, another level of consciousness had emerged.
Different societies and cultures have different names and definitions for this level of consciousness. The ancient Greeks named it the psyche, ancient sages of India called it the atman, in English we use the word soul to identify this level of consciousness.
In some cultures it is said we have more than one soul and in others that it is independent from the body and can come and go at will. In the worlds of consciousness, thinking something, observing something, evaluating, defining, characterizing something brings it into conscious reality. Soul is a very real evolved aspect of our conscious universes.
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