I think the soul is external. I think the khandhas are internal.
I think you just gave the best explanation I have ever read of ‘God’ and ‘soul’. This entire conversation has blown my mind. 
Ok, but just offering that’s not how they’re described and taught in the suttas.
Hi Jasudho, Thank you very much for the reply. Can you provide a link about how they are described in the suttas? 
In the suttas the khandhas (aggregates) are the “components” that comprise all aspects of conditional human experience. Form, perceptions, feelings, volition/intentions, and consciousness encapsulate and comprise our lives. Nothing “outside” them in any of our experiences, so to speak.
Same for the senses.
Here are some sutta references. Also, you can use the search function for many entries regarding the khandhas. 
And many others… 
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IMO, what one needs to realize that the sense of ‘Self’ or ‘Me’ is an emergent result of a process of I- making and Mine - making, based on the underlying tendency to postulate an observer of any particular aspect of Experience whether internal or external (SN22.91).
This sense of ‘Self’ can be compared to a rainbow. It would be foolish to categorically deny the existence of a rainbow. Even saying that a rainbow is not real may not be easily acceptable to many (“What do you mean? I can see it right here! 
” ). However, the truth is that rainbows come about because of certain underlying conditions… when those underlying conditions cease, the rainbow disappears (MN72). The ‘Self’, just like a rainbow is not Really Real. Its an emergent phenomenon based on the functioning of an impersonal system of aggregates - in many ways like Siri!
The most difficult to let go of aggregates are the mental ones, especially Intentional Action and Consciousness. This is because it is difficult to imagine that these can be without an ‘Agent’. The ancients developed an entire system (Abhidhamma) to explain how ‘Mind’ works dependent on ‘cetasikas’. In much the same way, modern researchers talk about ‘Neural Nets’ and ‘weights’. None of these are permanent. None of these is one’s ‘Self’.
It is possible that viewing the ever changing Mindstream of past moments of Conscious Experience, one might think that this impermanent, changing process is somehow eternal/ constant (“Change is the only constant?!”). That too is not the case. Craving is the seamstress that stiches these moments together - when that is let go of, all that’s left is Now - Timeless, Deathless, the Supreme Sanctuary - Nibbana.
Can I humbly suggest you may wish to read the link I posted about Stephen Wolfram’s explanation of how neural nets work, and exactly what role is played by the weights. It is quite different from the Abhidhamma consciousness process consisting of mind moments with cittas and associated cetasikas. Although the Abhidhamma also comes to the conclusion that effectively “consciousness” is an artefact of how the mind works and is not permanent, it literally disappears upon death. So there is nothing that “carries it forward” into the next life, just the karmic resultants linking the dying mind moment to the rebirth mind moment.
This makes complete sense, since we may not be reborn as a human being, but could be a completely different form of existence with no senses etc.
facjidoc1 can I ask your thoughts about - All self view is given up at stream entry. The self blows out like a candle-flame, but then it re-ignites. The sense of self comes back after the stream entry experience. But the sotapanna can never again believe that anything is self.
I read this at - https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=33826 - my perceived soul awakening a few months ago seems to be consistent with my sense of self coming back from a very deep meditation experience I had over 15 years ago.
No.
There are 10 fetters. (AN10.13)
It is sakkayaditthi ("Identity View’ - the first fetter) that is given up at stream entry. (SN22.7)
This is the view that “I am the < insert one or more of the five aggregates >” .
Another good translation would be ‘Embodiment view’.
A sneaky sense of self however remains right up till the the idea of ‘I am!’ is finally given up by breaking the last 3 fetters - Conceit, Restlessness and Ignorance. (SN22.89)
Let go of it. Such thoughts are more often than not the work of Mara. They lead to anxiety and stress. (SN22.7) It is better instead to focus on one’s ethics (AN9.28).
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[Ven. Sariputta:] “A monk who has attained stream-entry should attend in an appropriate way to these five clinging-aggregates as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a dissolution, an emptiness, not-self. For it is possible that a monk who has attained stream-entry, attending in an appropriate way to these five clinging-aggregates as inconstant… not-self, would realize the fruit of once-returning.”
Hi Alex,
I think @Jasudho and @faujidoc1 have pointed you in the right direction. You might wish to consider the Sabbavagga SN 35.23 - SN 35.32 (more than just SN 35.23 Jasudho gave you) and note that experience (in a complete sense) is sometimes referred to as khandhāyatanadhātuyo.
It is interesting that you are apparently attempting to equate the concept of ‘ātman’ with the word ‘soul’
However they are two different concepts. A soul, in the popular Western sense of it, is an embodied spirit that people supposedly have in them (so it makes sense to speak about whether I have a soul, I dont have a soul etc). This implicitly means thay the soul and the person who has them are two different concepts, so it makes sense to argue if the former has (or conceptually can possibly have, or not have) the latter.
Ātman (Pāli attan), on the other hand isn’t what a person can have (or not have), it is not about having at all. It is that which a sentient person cannot not be i.e. themselves.
It is that without which a sentient being wont be able to call themselves “I” or “me” or “my” i.e. the core of their own self-identity i.e. their self-identifiable personhood.
For someone to not be ātman i.e. themselves (observe the word “be”, not “have”) means to not recognize any self-identity, which means the Buddha doesnt view himself as himself i.e. he doesnt consider himself a Buddha or have any other form of identifiableness or characteristics or attribute that would differentiate him from anyone else. In fact that would mean he denies his own identity to himself. That would be a hopeless illogical catch-22 conceptual mess.
So when early Buddhism says the physical body’s skandhas are anātman, it is saying that the body or its skandhas is not who you are… they are not your self.
It is not saying ‘you are not youself’ (i e. ‘you are not ātman’) because that would be meaningless.
What the Buddha was advising - is to not have attadiṭṭhi (Sanskrit: ātmadṛṣṭi) i.e. to theorize about what the ātman is or is not (because practically everyone who theorize are theorizing from their ignorance, and in their ignorance they are superimposing aspects of the external world i.e. anātman - on themselves i.e. ātman - conceptually). So theorizing leads not to knowledge but to the propagation of ignorance and unnecessary mental-stress and pointless fatigue.
He was asking his followers to abandon theorizing about the nature and origin of their core identities, and to cease identifying/equating their-self identity with anything else. So when he says everything that can be grasped with the five senses is anātman, he means that you cannot grasp your self-identity with your senses, and anything which you can so grasp isn’t your self-identity.
He was not asking them to not believe in the idea of themselves (i.e. to disbelieve the concept ātmatva or self-identity).
Just curious, are you familiar with K. N. Jayatilleke of ‘Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge’ fame and student of Ludwig Wittgenstein? Do you agree with his work? The gist of it I mean.
A soul also means a substance in western thought. A Dravyasat which grounds the sense of self. This is similar to what the Buddha’s contemporaries were teaching. The Buddha was essentially critiquing substance metaphysics and Rationalism, the Atman being a type of substance.
I have only glanced through it, it appears to be rigorously researched and I like it. I will read through it and respond.
That is what I am calling a misinterpretation. A soul may be a substance in Western thought, but the ātman is not. There are some interpretations of ātman that interpret it as a substance, but that isn’t (and wasn’t) the mainstream or the most respected position. The Buddha’s contemporaries were not all teaching the same thing, nor were all their conceptions of ātman the same either. What we find in the Pali canon are mostly hagiographical parodies of the other systems (some of which are transparently strawman-ish in character). So by reading the hagiographical parodies of the other systems from the Pali canon, how would one gain a real and historical perspective of the tenets of those other systems (or even of historical early-Buddhism)? My view is there is no shortcut to reading more widely than the Pali canon to get a fair idea of co-eval non-Buddhist traditions.
Perhaps you can share your thoughts on this and the Bahiya sutta on the following thread.
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Interesting. I have been looking at the Aitareya Upaniṣad and this very subject came up in one of the few secondary sources I have been able to find on the Upaniṣad.
I-iii-12: By that door (dvārā) he (ātma) entered, rending this suture of the skull (sīmānam) asunder (vidāryaitayā).
The author produced parallels in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad
In this space within the heart is the immortal, golden person who is made up of the mind. … Bursting through the halves of the skull at the parting of the hair, he establishes himself in the fire by chanting bhūr, in the wind by chanting bhuvas, in the sun by chanting suvar, and in brahman by chanting mahas.
And the Kaṭha Upaniṣad
One hundred and one are the veins of the heart. One of them flows up to the top of the head. Going up by that, one reaches the immortal.
She also noted elsewhere that the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad is “anti Rgvedic” and produced a reference to ātman that shows development in the direction of purva-mimasa orthodoxy. I assume the author means its naive or mimetic realist view of language as ontologically identical to phenomenal (real) existence.
In the beginning, there was just a single ātman in the form of a man (puruṣa). He looked around and saw only himself. The first thing he said was “Here I am,” and therefore the name I (aham) came to be.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.1.
To me the BU sounds closer to what you are talking about, whereas the TU and KU include fragments of what looks like a simple belief in something akin to the soul.
I haven’t got to the third āraṇyaka in the Aitareyāraṇyaka, but apparently it contains a philosophical break down of what is essentially nama-rupa to demonstrate that it is constructed.
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It certainly is in Jainism, Vaiśeṣika and Ājīvikism. I would argue it is for the Upanishads too.
Yes it is differently interpreted in each philosophy (and maybe you could even argue that each Upaniṣad has its own conception of it). But that is not the point.
The point is about which conception of ātman is it that the Buddha means in the word anātman (or Pāli: anattā).
Why is it invariably mentioned in the singular only in the Pāli canon if it is a discrete substance in the Buddha’s conception of the term?
Why isn’t there any discussion in the Pāli canon about different conceptions of ātman and/or anātman and their implications in the understanding of early-Buddhism (not just for our benefit, but even for the characters who were listening to the Buddha preach about it)?
Sorry, I am having trouble understanding what you are asking. A basic problem with substance is the universal (All) and the particular (One). I think it’s fair to say the Aitareyāraṇyaka attempts to solve this problem by creating an immanent particular (One) in the universal (All). Obviously it uses certain devata: Indra, Prajapati, and Brahma (which I think could be vac, prana …) to express the all.
Myself, I am still working on what atma is in this upanisad, because I don’t fully understand its Mahāvākya"prajñānam brahma." It’s been translated as pure consciousness, but it’s clearly in a mode. It’s light and it’s winking. In the most figurative sense, then, it’s a star. In terms of a mode, I would lean toward pure potentiality, but it’s supposed to be unfettered, guiltless or innocent, I guess would be the proper term.
The second question is whether atma’s creation is through perception, which is what most scholars argue, or through divine impulse (love, I think it is). This is one of the reasons why I think the Aitareya Upaniṣad is identified as proto-theistic. Obviously pointing to Isvara.
I covered off some of this in mentioning the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) in another post. As well, apparently in the AN Book of Threes 3.2.2.1 Buddha calls out Isvara “issaranimmāṇahetu.”
In the West our great philosophers have a profound understanding of their tradition, I have no reason not to give the same type of academic courtesy to Buddha.