Below is provided, a bit of longish and belletristic, but entirely Biblical and philosophical insight with hopefully helpful examples to prove and demonstrate that **soul, that is to say, the inner core of our personality, survives the death of body and is alive and conscious in the afterlife state,** moreover that both Biblically and philosophically the claim that a person and his soul co-perish with his body cannot stand.

Closest to God in us are not bodily perceptions, pleasures and pains, neither sense of beauty, i.e. aesthetic perceptions, but understanding of what is good and what is evil. We do not do that by body, but by something else in us, which we can call alternatively, "soul", "spirit", "mind", "intellect", "the inner core our our personality", "the inner man", "the conscience". And it is invisible, not visible or tangible. One can ask, can it or does it feel pain? Yes, of course, but not a bodily one, but incomparably, other-dimensionally more painful pain. 

Maybe you remember a soup-opera-type masterpiece film "Once upon a time in America", with Robert de Niro as a main character of "Noodles". By the end of this movie a friend who betrayed a friend throws himself into a garbage truck that minces garbage with iron blades, killing himself in such an ugly manner. Not a good decision to be sure, but it was more unbearable for him to carry the pain of a traitor than a death-inflicting pain of the garbage-mincing mechanical blades. That is what a non-earthly pain be inflicted on our inner core. Or, one can say "no" to a boss who asks him to advertise a harmful product, and he may be fired, with a loss of a lucrative salary. Painful, but this pain is eclipsed by the serene joy of that "inner man" for not acting ignobly and doing what was aught. This pain for which a man threw himself to the mincing blades, and that joy born from the pain and discomfort of losing a well-paid job for a right cause are not bodily and even temporal things. Kant in his divinely graced vision says that such things do not even belong to a phenomenal-empirical world defined by and subject to space and time, and that this in us survives body and goes to the presence of God at our death. Moreover, it cannot not survive the body, as Plato convincingly has proven in the "Republic", for everything dies, i.e. is destroyed, according to its specific malady, like iron dies, i.e. rusts by exposure to air and water, and our body dies by its proper versatile maladies; however, the "inner invisible core" mentioned above has as its malady only injustice and sin, but we see that even a most sinful man still continues to live, with the pain in him for sins smoldering silently in him; thus, if even its own malady does not destroy the inner invisible core, the soul or spirit of a sinful man, then how on earth a malady of a body can destroy a soul/spirit of a just man? This will be illogical according to Plato, who just conveys a common sense here.    

In Old Testament we have glimpses of the immortality of soul, cf. Ecclesiastes 12:7, which says that after man dies his spirit goes to God who gave it, and this is "spirit" - unless it stands not for an individual spirit but for the Holy Spirit, which is counterintuitive - must denote something created, not uncreated, and this created something is invisible, intangible, incorporeal, but still a more important thing in us than body, for the latter goes to earth, whereas the former to God. But nothing more is said here. In Psalm 103:15-17 it is said that man's life's days are like hay and flower of field, which disappear with the blow of wind, but in contrast with the hey and flowers, God's grace lasts forever on those who fulfill His commandments, which clearly means that those on whom the grace of God lasts forever must be conscious, for how otherwise will they perceive this grace to say nothing of enjoying it? To say that God's grace continues working on them who are no more is an *oxymoron* in the very literal sense of this word - an "acute stupidity". Or in Psalm 49:14-17 where it is said to a righteous man not to envy an unrighteous man, for the latter's blessing will last only during his life, whereas a righteous is given a promise that he will be redeemed from the realm of the dead. If life and conscience, the inner invisible core of our personality ends with the death of the body, then there will not be any redeeming either, but only a re-creation of that what is dead. But there is an abyss of difference between re-creation and redeeming, for re-creation means a *creatio ex nihilo* second time while redeeming implies that someone redeemed is not a *nihil*. In the New Testament it is clearly stated, in fact, that God of Abraham, Isaak etc. is God of living and that Abraham, Isaak *et al*. all are living with Him, and that Sadducees thinking they are not, are in a grave error (as is the legion of modern-day Sadducees for that matter) (Mark 12:27). Abraham and the other two deceased men are even depicted in the Lord's parable as living and conscious in their afterlife, before the General Resurrection at the Second Coming (Luke 16:19-31). While, without parable Moses and Elijah directly encounter and converse with Him on mount Tabor (Matthew 17:3) - (one can say that Elijah did not even die and he was granted a special departure, in body, on a fiery chariot, but Moses died physically and both were living in God after the end of their historical lives).

Moreover, when Paul says that he far more desires to die, or literally as he says, "depart from body" and through this departure to be with Christ than to be in body, but still to be alive and in body is beneficial for his disciples (Philippians 1:22-26) unless he means that after death his person will enjoy a greater intensity of being together with Christ, then this statement makes no sense, and who can be as preposterous as to accuse Paul of being a senseless or mislead in things like that?   

A great calumny on God is to say that He allows human person to die entirely, without survival of his personal identity consciously (we can term this conscious identity traditionally as 'soul' or 'spirit'), but re-creates this person out of memory in the Last Day, because a sinful man will then be resurrected together with his sinfulness, but then God will be a creator of sinfulness, which is both absurd and evil calumny on God who not only does not but ontologically cannot create sin and evil. What remains, is that either God does not resurrect sinners at all, which is outright wrong according to Scriptures, or that sinners, after death, continue their existence and even can benefit from prayers of their beloved ones still living historical lives in this visible universe. And surely the second is Biblically, and also philosophically and ontologically plausible, whereas the first is not. 

Not only the Holy Scriptures, but also so many cultures have this deep and correct insight of soul being more principal than body and of soul's survival of body. But modern Western civilization has forgotten both the eternity and soul, even God has become redundant for the West and this materialistic climate influences with its poisonous breath also the Biblical hermeneutics practiced at this site so pervasively.

Thus, after death to God goes our most important aspect, the aspect through which we know what is good and what is bad, our conscious soul, or the conscience-endowed soul, which can be tormented by this conscience, or painfully be pinched by the same conscience. That's why the Lord says not to be afraid of those who kill our bodies, but of the one who can put one to hell after death, and this one can be either the Lord Himself or our conscience or both together, for unrepented deceased soul is tormented in presence of God.