Your soul is your true nature.  Thought=essence.  Descartes said "I think therefore I am," when trying to decide what was real, what was proveable what the "I" is in me.  When seen in this light, the soul is our conscious awareness of the universe.  It can not be lost.  The soul is powerfully creative; we can achieve wonderous things, experiment, learn, love - my friend Dave calls us (our souls) "co-creators" with God.

That being the said, we sometimes play "hide and seek," with our true natures and/or explore the darkness.  Some people fool themselves into thinking they are evil, irredeemable.  We have all seen it before - these souls spiral downward on a self destructive path.  There are lessons that they need to learn in doing so.  In pursuing a self-destructive path, they are constantly offered a way out - but they need to see it for themselves, or they are bound (though they don't realize this is self-imposed).

Bruce and others on this site do retrievals on lost souls, people who die and believe there is nothing else.  Earthbound spirits, people whose thought is so closed, that they willingly close off their normal spiritual path.  But these people can be helped by other souls, incarnate and in spirit.  They must give up hindering belief systems and open their minds to help and love.

So the long and short of it, I believe is that the soul is not something to be lost, either to a devil, or in any other way.  But if our thought is indulged in negative and destructive ways, people may enter hells of their own making.  If they realize that there is a way out, then the walls of their self imposed prison melt away, as if they were never there.  

Bruce has mentioned that he has rarely encountered something that might considered the death of a soul - my understanding of this is that it would be very very rare if it happens at all.  To my understanding, with the conservation of matter and energy, oblivion does not really fit well into universal law.

Matthew

Curious George:

I know the answer, but I'm kinda busy now, and won't be able to tell you until about 10 trillion years from now.

If you no longer need the answer then, please just humor me by asking "are you sure?"

Well put Matthew and Dave.

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

I hate to break it to you, but body heat is caused strictly by physical systems in the body. Physical death is when our systems stop working.  Since those systems aren't producing heat, the dead body becomes cold.
My spirit leaves my body a few times a week, but it never looses its life, and the only lack of heat is due to the normal sleep systems.
Just some facts for ya, Our consiousness causing heat seemed just a little silly