Most Christians understand the soul as an ontological reality distinct from, yet integrally connected with, the body.

However, the new being is continuous with the being that died – in the same way that the 'you' of this moment is continuous with the 'you' of a moment before, despite the fact that you are constantly changing. Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the being that is reborn is neither entirely different from, nor exactly the same as, the being that died. When the body dies, Buddhists believe the incorporeal mental processes continue and are reborn in a new body. Conscious mental states simply arise and perish with no 'thinker' behind them. Just as the body changes from moment to moment, so thoughts come and go, and there is no permanent state underlying the mind that experiences these thoughts, as in Cartesianism. Instead, Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent entity that remains constant behind the changing corporeal and incorporeal components of a living being. If the word 'soul' simply refers to an incorporeal component in living things that can continue after death, then Buddhism does not deny the existence of the soul. Thus, the conventional translation of anatta as 'no-soul' can be confusing. Buddhism does not deny the existence of 'immaterial' entities, and it (at least traditionally) distinguishes bodily states from mental states. The anatta doctrine is not a kind of materialism. At his defense trial, Socrates even summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence ( Apology 30a–b). Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, understood that the soul (ψυχή psūchê) must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions.

Some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. Thus if we see a tiger then there is a self-conscious identity residing in it (the soul), and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) hold that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves (Atman, jiva) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world.

Bill me rahne vale jeev