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Exactly so. You have hit it on the head, all the way around.

Just as when you're super-absorbed in a video game, you "lose consciousness" a bit of your true surroundings and greater life (the room, sofa, family, friends, nature, etc), so is our mind/soul (not sure about where the exact distinction lies) so preoccupied with the business of "living" that it's not focusing on its greater whereabouts. When the game is up, it reawakens to its surroundings in the fantastic and far, far greater spiritual realm. And the degree to which the soul thrived and grew in spirituality, kindness, courage, etc while living determines how well-formed a soul it is now, after bodily death.

On this point, 'Abdu'l-Baha also explained the state of the soul as being much like a baby in the womb: being formed for a greater life. The degree of the perfections, nourishment, and development that the infant receives while in the womb greatly determines its future abilities in the larger world, once it is born. So it is with our souls: our experience here and our actions are forming and nourishing it, or harming and failing to nourish it.

If this is true reality, you can see that it's quite an urgent matter that people learn to live well and with goodness. God's Manifestations sending us the teachings of religion are an intervention to ensure not only our individual and collective happiness here, but most importantly to help the souls develop well, and to stem a tide of deformed and undeveloped souls on the "other side". Ain't no light business. And so that's why Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, the Bab, Baha'u'llah, et al agreed to live lives of suffering or martyrdom while patiently trying to educate humanity and bring them this good guidance. It was a great Hero's Mission. :)

Here are more links to Baha'i texts on the nature of the soul. Everything I've linked you to are bits from the authentic sacred Writings, so they're "core/original text", not an individual's explanation. There are really neat books that look deeper at the nature and journey of the soul via compilation of Source Text: of the ones currently in print I like The Journey of the Soul: Life, Death, and Immortality, here in its older edition and here in its re-release.

In my opinion the Bhagavad Gita is a great place to start. It is one of Hinduism's central and most sacred texts, but it's honestly very, very accessible for newcomers and rather short. Eknath Easwaran's version is especially good for westerners (and it includes a good introduction and great commentary on each of the chapters).

If you need any assistance getting a copy, please feel free to pm me your mailing address and I'll be more than happy to send one out to you.

What you are going through is actually pretty typical given your age and environment.

Something similar happened to me. I grew up in a liberal Catholic home and then when I became a teenager I started to think it was all non-sense. Then I studied Buddhism, and after that Hinduism because both of these religions allowed me to find spiritual meaning without the question of the existence or non-existence of God. This went on for the majority of my adult life, and I considered myself agnostic the whole time. Then a couple of years ago I started having experiences within Islam. Now, I do believe in God, and it's something that's important to me (I haven't quite converted to Islam - there's a major rule I don't think I can follow) and I work on. So don't let it stress you - in the long it'll help you discovered a lot of cool and meaningful things.

But to answer you question directly check out the book Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit. It's a good balance between Eastern and Western spirituality. And if you want to study Buddhism on its own I highly recommend What the Buddha Taught - it's probably the best primer on Buddhism that I've ever read.

• [Web] Quran - The Noble Quran in various translations.
  
  
• [Book] The Message of the Qur'an - Muhammad Asad, if you're looking for the Quran in book form, this has helpful commentary to provide a thorough understanding.
  
  
• [Book] Quran - Abdel Haleem, another Quran in book form, this one is written in extremely clear modern English that makes it easy and pleasurable to read.
  
  
  
• [Web] English Tafsir -Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, English commentary of each chapter of the Quran in clear English. Extra link
  
  
• [Audio] Bayyinah Quran Commentary Podcast -Nouman Ali Khan, highly recommended audio commentary of the last 37 chapters of the Quran. Entire Quran commentary with BayyinahTV purchase.
  
  
• [Book] Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations - Michael Anthony Sells, captures the complexity, power and poetry of the last chapters of the Quran.
  
  
• [Web] Tafsir Ibn Kathir - Ibn Kathir, classic commentary written by 14th-century scholar. Extra link.
  
  For more resources

Two commonly recommended books for those interested in reading about the Bahá'í Faith are A Short History of the Bahá'í Faith by Peter Smith, and A Short Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith by Moojan Momen. If you want a very quick foretaste of both books, you can check out this combined review. Smith has also published a newer book, An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith, which you might want to consider as well.

I don't know about your library, but this is an excellent copy you can purchase.

The Third Book of Nephi. It has the thematic climax of the book where Jesus Christ appears to people on the American continent and establishes his church there.

I usually recommend Oxford's "A Very Short Introduction" series to people who want to learn more about Mormonism or The Book of Mormon, but who are not necessarily interested in conversion. They're short, like 100 pages, and scholarly though written by believers.

I recommend this book a lot, it's all about the daily life of Adam and Eve. The book is post-Christ but only by a few hundred years, so it's fairly old. No one really knows if any of it is true or not, but it doesn't really contradict any scripture either that I am aware of.

For about 3 years now. I had heard about it through being on the Left Hand Path for about 7 years prior but never gave it much stock. Then I had an intense religious experience involving Set that caused me to look into Setianism, and I found the evidence and logic for the position to be sound. I actually just published my first book which is on Setianism.