and hold onto it tightly, sir!!! -- j
.

"spiritual" often means something about music also, with the
meaning behind it -- essential, deep and strong and undefeatable,
in my humble opinion. . this is also a source of "soul music"
for me, to the extent that I understand it. -- j
.

I liked the first answer. I even liked the music.

As to the second, based on that definition being something distinct and separate from the body--No.
Even though AR used the word, I don't think she meant that.

Interesting that the word's origin appears to be proto-Germanic from ancient Northern Europe meaning 'from the lake' or sea.

Rand perceived and understood the existence of a "spirit" or "soul" but she never spent much time on the essential problem. And it may be truly essential in the Aristotlean sense.

Rand pointed out that the mystics who deny material pleasures and material success view humans as beings of spirit without substance, which is the definition of a ghost. The materialists reduce people to beings of matter without spirit, which the definition of a zombie.

Rand spoken of the human spirit without attempting to reduce it. In The Fountainhead, Roark built The Temple of the Human Spirit.

"“Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one’s highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man’s birthright. He tho...ught that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation.” -- Good Reads (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29082...)

By "soul" if you mean something that "lives" after you "die" there is no answer for that. That is what is meant by essential: irreducible; primary.

part of a genre of music which was created by an assortment
of groups in the sixties and seventies -- good stuff!
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp3JO... -- j

p.s. http://dictionary.com says, "the principle of life,
feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded
as a distinct entity separate from the body, and
commonly held to be separable in existence from
the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct
from the physical part." . I am interested in the
objectivist view -- probably a null set.
.

What's a soul, john?