[kkindt]

The soul is present even when a person is unconscious and not-aware of his own existence. At the moment of conception when two become one flesh it is the soul God insures is united with that one flesh union that now manifests itself through the DNA of that new person. The soul God gives is unique for each person and that soul is united to the body in a way we are not told but which is 'natural' for a man. A man is a soul/body united creature. The unnatural state for the soul is to be bodiless - hence the resurrection. It is when the soul is separated from the body in death that God some how causes the person to be yet conscious though his brain is dead. This mystery is not explained but we are told by the Lord Jesus that the dead do have a conscious existence - just one example would be the poor man Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham and the consciousness the Lord says he has. So consciousness can be a part of the soul's existence even without a body but it is also true the soul exists without consciousness when it is, by God's design, manifesting or expressing itself through the DNA to which it has been joined by God.

[William Terrell]

I don't think the soul is ever unconscious. I have a tendency to believe that the soul occupies a body in the construction stages and that it preceeds and succeeds the body. The soul being immortal, it would have to work both ways. If it is not immortal before the body then it must not exist before the body, and that implies that it is built with the body. I don't buy that. An immortal soul is an immortal soul.