Consciousness … I would say this is an attribute of Existence, Being, God, Self. I agree the term can be used on different levels but than it loses it’s meaning.
The term “soul” is often used as the untouchable part of the body-soul duality, especially in the west.
Yoga philosophy and direct spiritual experience says that the picture is more complex.
The physical body is mineral in nature, and the laws of this reign should apply to it. This happens when death occurs, but what stops these laws to function in case of a living body ? Yoga says, the vital body or pranamaya kosha. This is more subtle, so there is no evidence of it in the sensorial world. Materialist science does not accept this, and believes that life is describable in physics’, chemistry’s terms entirely. But the physical is just the vital/subtle manifested in the mineral reign.
This is not what usually meant by soul. This is just the life-body, the vital-body, called also etheric in antroposophy or western esoteric tradition in general. Plants also have this “body”, end nothing else. They live, but they do not have feelings, emotions, desires, will, actions-reactions of their own. They can be seen as if they are sleeping always. A man sleeping a dreamless sleep is plantlike. So first step is from dead to living, second from sleeping to awake, third, from awake to conscious. Three bodies under the Self. Physical, vital, mental.
This is still a symplistic approach … and it lacks context and historic perspective. Important to know is that approximately 2000 BC was the turning point in history when descent into matter reached it’s climax and would have continued if not the Christ event.
There are beings who have passed the human level (free will and ego) earlier and they are quite unimaginable to us. These also have their hierarchies, depending on their level, called devas, demons, angels, devils, spirits, depending on cultural circumstance. No physical bodies needed for these. We, humans needed the descent into matter, so the unity of the spiritual world was veiled to us. This made possible the development of the sense of individuality, the development of ego. We did succed in this. Now it is time to head back, and be responsible but free denizens of the spiritual world.
Just this time, as it is Christmas, and all this is not unrelated to that blessed birth two thousand years ago.
with Love