Interdependence

Are atoms or souls ontologically independent? No. Everything from subatomic particles to conscious organisms is interdependent. Therefore, "emptiness" (absence of any permanent underlying substance) and monism (oneness) are closer approximations to truth than atomism or soul pluralism.

The independent soul of Jainism and Samkhya-Yoga is a conceptualization of liberated consciousness but with unwarranted implications of immateriality and immortality. Dependent existence is conditional and transient. Particles are created and annihilated in a vacuum. Consciousness depends on complex, sensitive organisms which depend on changing environmental conditions. Therefore, nothing is immortal or indestructible.

Who Drives The Bus?

"'Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend - a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathise with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.'"
-CS Lewis, The Great Divorce (London, 1982), p. 114.

So Who drives the bus that transports the Ghosts from the grey town?

Although I do not share Lewis' belief in a hereafter, I note that his belief differs from that of the Evangelicals. The saved are those who have made a right moral choice, not necessarily those who have undergone an Evangelical conversion.

Patanjali And CS Lewis

Sutras
Yoga is control of thoughts.
Then man abides in his real nature.
Otherwise, he remains identified with thoughts.
They are controlled by practice and non-attachment.

For Patanjali, "real nature" was a soul but there are other understandings.

In CS Lewis' The Great Divorce, "Ghosts" can travel by bus from the gray town that is Hell to the foothills of Heaven but often opt to return. One Ghost carries on his shoulder a lizard whispering pleasurable dreams that will require him to return to the town. However, when, with the Ghost's permission, an angel kills the lizard, the Ghost becomes a man and the lizard becomes a horse which the man rides into the mountains.

Lewis' gray town and mountains correspond to Patanjali's thoughts and real nature.