body and soul

Ive decided to order a couple of books on all this to bring me a bit more up to date in my investigations. I've narrowed it down to 5 and my 3 favourites at the moment are Dean Radin's "The Conscious Universe", which seems to follow on from Randall's "Parapsychology and the Nature of Life" which was really insightful. Secondly maybe Paul Davies "The Mind of God" and thirdly, mainly because it sounds so entertaining and he sounds so charismatic and fascinating, Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking!".
As most of my knowledge is based on a combination of intuition and very old books I've picked up serendipitously in second hand bookshops it seems a good idea to brush up on current developments. Also I would like a bit of basic knowledge of popular science, at the moment I am re ally ignorant.
When I was looking through the book lists today on Amazon, I noticed how often sort of "quackery" type books come up alongside anything connecting science and philosophy. Its really irritating. I don't mean to dismiss other people's beliefs but I'm sorry, I think most of us are not spontaneously all knowing and we do need to work things out, through intellectual study and/or exercises like yoga and meditation, and it just seems sort of lazy and stupid to accept some ready made explanation of everything, whether its scientific, religious, or cult-ish.
After yesterday I kept finding myself up against this confusion about the self and the separation of the self from the body. I don't think it is separate. its more that the body is like an expression on the face of the true self. Oh dear! Whenever I try to think about this I get more far out and more bewildered. What I think I mean is that the body is a collection of atoms which, with my rudimentary and probably erroneous scientific knowledge, I think means it is fundamentally a pattern of waves and particles, immaterial at a microsscopic level and not grounded in space-time or any concrete Newtonian sort of reality. So, why shouldn't the true self, call it the "Overself", be one with the body. I think it is one, body, emotions, intellect etc are all one, but everything that can be named is like a sort of movie being projected onto a bare blank wall, and that blank wall is the unnameable and is the underlying truth of being.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking when I started writing this, but already it seems obvious that this is a particular and limited view.
God, no wonder scientists struggel with this even with all their expert knowledge and intellectual prowess! No wnder most people ignoer it altogether or if they do try to engae eit hthese question sin their lives do so from teh standpoint of faith - I believe what i beleive because i do!