The Human Bodies
Gouph
Gouph is the physical and densest body, created to be able to work and evolve on the physical plane.
Nephesh
Nephesh is the “animal soul” that vivifies Gouph, the physical body. Nephesh can be seen as what is known as the etheric body. Nephesh collects the energies of sun and moon, and transforms them into different kinds of useable energies for the physical body. So, Nephesh is actually a body composed out of energy flows. Nephesh is the carrier of all passions, instincts and lusts. On this level man is only conscious of his own needs.
Ruah
Ruah is called “the human soul”, the spirit, the intellect. It is the breath of life which drives the emotions. It corresponds with the astral body. Ruah provides for the warmth of life, the desire for a sensual existence. It also wants to be a ego, but the ego is a construct.
People with low developed consciousness have a very dense ruah body and will have lower astral or lower emotional tendencies. Man must stop to identify himself with his personality, or ego, and liberate himself from the lower emotional, and also animal, passions. By purifying himself, man will discover that ruah also has moral virtues, and knowledge to distinguish between good and bad.
Neshamah
Neshamah is the seat of the higher thoughts, corresponding to to the mental body. The mental body is usually divided into two: the lower mental body which is concrete thinking and the higher mental body which is abstract thinking, sometimes also called causal body. (In the causal body resides all the causes of what happens to all the lower bodies.)
Hayyah
Hayyah is the pure existence of the individuality. It is not really a body but a state of being. It is the state of consciousness where one has a notion of being an essential being with a sense of “I”. Here one experiences or is aware of the Divine continuously creating the World.
Yechidah
Yechidah, “the Only One”, is being One in the one. There is no sense of an “I”. It comprises the unlimited, transcendental idea of the Absolute.