The Nature of the Soul

'Irfan

2011-06-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

Recognition of the new Manifestation for today is the duty of all on this Earth. But being one of those, I question that I had any action in this matter. It seems that some power raised me up from a pitiful position and pressed the truth in my face. 'Take it or leave it.'

Well truth looked like the proper direction to go. Only despair lay in any other locations.

Now it has come to my attention what is happening to those that ignored the divine search.

It is plain in all the scriptures. The wayward are living their lives as if only the physical is real and nothing lays beyond nor is higher. This leads persons to take physical pleasure to the extreme, a very powerful drug it is, and this leads to the death and destruction of many. People are using each other more and more leading to sad events. They will arrive in the next world unprepared, squandering their time in this world not knowing the pleasures of real love and the rewards of service.

A.G.W.

THE FLOODGATES OPEN IN THE "END DAYS"

2010-02-01T19:16:00.000-08:00

What happens when you kick the sides of the universe?
This is from Chap. 2 in Understanding Death by John Hatcher.

THE FLOODGATES OPEN IN THE "END DAYS"

Days and weeks passed, and nothing got any better. They could hear the music at regular intervals now, almost as if the ruler of the universe was piping it in just for them. Not that the music was unpleasant. Actually it was quite beautiful. But it also seemed very serious and, for the three Sullivan brothers, such seriousness seemed to portend some impending disaster, some further alteration in their lives, possibly the end of their lives, or even yhe end of the universe itself!

While the music was playing, they weren't so nervous. The music was inspiring, uplifting, and even seemed to offer hope. But when the music wasn't playing, they would speculate about what it meant, especially as they became more and more cramped and it became obvious to all three that some major transformation was about to occur. It was unavoidable, what with space contracting and the three of them expanding. It was a mathematical certainty, or so Sammy said.

Roger feared that they were doomed. He was sure of it. Surely if the universe collapsed, their cords would go with it, and they would be without any of the fluid that kept them alive - Harry had proved that. And Harry, though clearly the bravest of the three, was not much more positive. "Look," he would say sometimes to
console his brothers, 'at least we've had a good life together, haven't we? We've had everything we needed, and we have lived a really long time. We've watched ourselves evolve from little creatures that weren't even aware of themselves to really sophisticated beings with arms, legs, fingers..."

'And toes, Harry. You always liked the toes, remember?" said Roger.

"Yeah, and toes," Harry smiled. 'And let's not forget that opposable thumb!"

"That's why I want to continue living!" said Sammy, not at all consoled by Harry's pep talk. "I really enjoy all this... just... existing, you know? Just moving around and then stopping and thinking about stuff. I find it really rewarding, especially when we discover laws of the universe - that's my favorite thing of all. I will really miss it.

"And I'll miss our conversations," said Roger in a glum tone.

"Hey," said Harry, patting Sammy on the back, "How are you going to miss it if you don't even exist?"

"Geez," said Sammy. "That's even worse! I don't want to disappear! Sure, I'm glad we've had a nice long life full of surprises - fingers, toes, the whole thing. But that makes me want to have more, to be more, to learn more. I mean, what sort of ruler of the universe would create us just so we could become so special, could learn all this stuff just so we could end up becoming nothing? Does that make sense to you?"

"He's right, Harry," said Roger. "It doesn't make sense."

"Well, perhaps it somehow makes sense to the ruler of the universe," said Harry.

"Look," said Sammy, "If the ruler of the universe made us, then the ruler has to be at least as smart as we are, right? I mean isn't that logical?"

"Sure," agreed Harry. "I see what you mean."

"OK, then. Would you create beings that become more and more complex, smarter and smarter and smarter, just to let them explode and become nothing?"

"Of course I wouldn't," confessed Harry, "but then..."

"But nothing!" said Sammy. "If there is a ruler of the universe, then there's got to be a plan for us, a plan that makes sense."

"Unless the ruler of the universe enjoys watching stuff explode!" said Harry, now growing a bit nervous himself

"Hey, let's not talk about exploding," said Roger drearily. "Exploding does not sound like fun at all. Maybe we should never have kicked the side of the universe after all."

"Well, perhaps we can start all over again," said Harry. "I mean, we came this far, didn't we? Why couldn't we just start the whole thing over again?"

'And just how do you propose we do that?" asked Sammy.

"I don't know," said Harry. "I was just trying to make Roger perk up a little."

Suddenly it seemed that for a moment the universe contracted! "Hey, did you feel something change?" asked Sammy.

"Yeah," said Roger, "as if the universe sort of squeezed us."

"Maybe it's a nice friendly hug," offered Harry.

Suddenly there was another squeeze, and it was clear at once to all three that this was no hug, or if it was, it was a great big bear hug, not a cuddly expression of endearment. The three became frightened, even Harry. "Join hands!" he hollered as a grumbling, deafening noise began.

"This is it!" shouted Roger. "Just as I feared - it's the end of everything!"

"No, no, there's still hope," said Harry. "Just hold on to each other!!"

"My hand is... my hand is slipping!" screamed Sammy. "I don't want to die!"

All three felt a quick jolt and then a shifting as the fluid in which they had floated their entire lives suddenly began to swish toward some lesion in the universe. "The universe, the universe has been rent asunder!" screamed Sammy, as his hand slipped out of the grasp of Roger's hand. 'Aaahhh!" screamed Sammy as
his head suddenly shifted toward the great cleaving in the universe, which began to collapse around him as if he had been devoured by some monstrous python.

"Harry! Haaarrryyy! Can you still hear me?" cried out Roger with incredible difficulty. "Sammy's gone! He's done for! The universe has sucked him out! All I can see are his legs! He's kicking like crazy! I think the universe must be eating him head first!"

"O great ruler of the universe," said Harry who now could see only Roger's legs, "I do not know who or what you are or even if you exist, but if you hear me, please assist us in this, our time of utmost grief and peril!"

"What did you say?" said Roger, barely audible amidst the squeezing and rushing.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" screamed a high pitched voice in great agony from outside the universe as the universe squeezed ever more tightly.

"Think that was Sammy?" asked Roger. "The universe must be eating him for sure!"

"Not his voice!" yelled Harry, struggling to wrench himself free from the constricting universe, or at least to shift himself into a more comfortable position.

"Think he's dead?" asked Roger.

"There's always hope!" said Harry.

"You think so?" said Roger, appreciating some reassurance, even though the contracting universe began to exert such force that he felt his own head being forced downward and the universe squeezing him ever tighter. "It's got me, Harry! It's eating my head! Grab my toes if you can!!"

"No can do, Roger. My arms are pinned to my sides!"

"It's been swell, Harrrryyy!" said Roger in an ever fainter voice. Then he was heard no more. Harry, alone and afraid, was occupied with trying to extricate himself from the ever more powerful forces of the universe propelling him irretrievably downward. He had no time to bid adieu to his brother, no time to think or reflect.

His senses reeled as the universe sucked him ever down the dark channel toward what he instinctively sensed was certain disaster, death, or perhaps something much, much worse than his imagination could fathom, and he silently uttered one last plea to the ruler of the universe to spare him, to love him, even as he had grown to love Sammy and Roger.

End

The Soul and the Afterlife

2009-07-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

I thought this quote by a philosopher 'Guy Murchie' on the afterlife bitingly true.

Faith of course can be bolstered by religion and reason, since not only have all the great Prophets of God promised life beyond death, but reasonable philosophy also offers us a hearteningly positive answer to the classic query of "To be or not to be?" It is logical, you see, to conclude that there is nothing in nothingness or, which is the same thing, that not being cannot be. Doesn't the phrase say so itself rather plainly: it cannot be that something cannot be? Put another way, life is an inherently positive existence which has no such negative capacity as would be required if it were ever not to exist. Besides, the inscrutable wisdom of the universe, usually called God, has let us be. If nothingness were our divine destiny, how in heaven's name could we be here? How could we know of our own existence - or have an existence to know of? What meaning, what profit in a fleeing flash of positiveness if it is to be followed by an eternal negative? Obviously the answer is affirmative, we are meant "to be," and existence is our prime and positive destiny. We call ourselves "beings" because living is being and there is nothing without being.

Or, looking at it through the eyes of a gambler, might I not say that the most skeptical speculator could consider eternal life a safe bet. For in fact eternal life is a bet one cannot lose. When you come right down to it, any outcome of the bet constitutes life and victory. If there were no life after death, that would be no outcome and there would be no one around to lose the bet. So all beings must be winners and the mere fact of being is the victory.

To those who believe, as I do, that this is a positive world of unlimited potentiality and very probably infinite dimensions, it is natural and easy to accept life beyond death. The logic of it is that, in a world as potential as this - and I am thinking of the world in the broadest sense I know of, comprising the universe materially, mentally and spiritually - anything can happen if there is only sufficient room and patience or, in more fundamental terms, enough space and time. And if anything can happen, then it follows that everything must happen or must have happened somewhere in the infinities of space, time and other dimensions. The British novelist T. H. White went so far as to propose that "anything not forbidden is compulsory" on the unstated but implicit assumption that time goes on and on without limit. One could as easily say that "everything conceivable must eventually happen," for, if there are enough hours and millenniums and minds and dreams to conceive of something, there logically must be enough space and time for the same conception to be real in (reality being basically conception in definable form) - and, if everything conceivable happens, life after death (which is conceivable) must also happen sometime in some continuum or in some division or combination of consciousnesses.

The concept of probability also, surprisingly enough, cannot help but be a factor in the equation of immortality. Physicists have discovered a number of elementary particles by looking for them on the premise that, if no good reason why one can't exist has been discovered, the probabilities favoring its existence must amount to enough to make that existence an ultimate certainty. If this line of logic seems shaky as ground for hoping that something real will pop up out of nowhere, let me say it works nonetheless with everything from quarks to quasars - and it gave physicists provable results in the subatomic neutrino in conformance with the elementary law of nature that categorically declares that all events (real or imaginary) have some degree of probability unless some principle (known or unknown) specifically prohibits their happening. In other words: anything that can happen does happen. And therefore, in the absence of any law forbidding consciousness after death, consciousness has a continuing measure of probability that, however small, adds and adds and adds ... ad infinitum.

Perhaps now you will protest that an immortality compounded of eternal probabilities is cool comfort to the dying, that, if one has to wait a billion years for resurrection, one might as well forget it. But the billion years is of course relative and inherently illusory, for, without consciousness, the long sleep seems to its Rip Van Winkle to pass instantaneously and whether Rip "wakes up" in a minute or a billion years should make no difference to him - at least no conscious difference.

Besides, what evidence is there that time in any way exists as a dimension beyond our present life? Not only did Einstein contend that neither time nor space is fundamental but many mystic sources corroborate him with suggestions that the most profound of influences are eternal and infinite - that is, outside of time-space as in Jesus' tense-twisted declaration that "Before Abraham was, I am."

Religions are Progressive

2009-04-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Messengers bring the Word of God to the peoples of their time. They know that men will sometimes interpret their writings and without authority they will corrupt the writings through insistence on following meanings which were never meant. Prophets will come in another time to bring man back to the original meanings and will also change laws that need adjustment for the times.

This return of the Messenger will test the civilization that they appear in. So was Iran and Iraq tested in 1844 and 1863.

They can only recover their past glory by accepting the Baha'is and realizing that Baha'u'llah is the fulfillment of the prophecies of Muhammad.

(from the Qur'an)
3:81 AND, LO, God accepted, through the prophets, this solemn pledge [from the followers of earlier revelation]: "If, after all the revelation and the wisdom which I have vouchsafed unto you, there comes to you an apostle confirming the truth already in your possession, you must believe in him and succour him. Do you" - said He - "acknowledge and accept My bond on this condition?"

They answered: "We do acknowledge it." Said He: "Then bear witness [thereto], and I shall be your witness. (3:82) And, henceforth, all who turn away [from this pledge] - it is they, they who are truly iniquitous!" (i.e. perverse, evil, base)

3:83 Do they seek, perchance, a faith other than in God, although it is unto Him that whatever is in the heavens and on earth surrenders itself, willingly or unwillingly, since unto Him all must return?

(from the Baha'i writings)
"...they that tread the path of faith, they that thirst for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of all that is earthly — their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain imaginings, their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from that which perisheth. They should put their trust in God, and, holding fast unto Him, follow in His way. Then will they be made worthy of the effulgent glories of the sun of divine knowledge and understanding, and become the recipients of a grace that is infinite and unseen, inasmuch as man can never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the All-Glorious, can never quaff from the stream of divine knowledge and wisdom, can never enter the abode of immortality, nor partake of the cup of divine nearness and favour, unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets."

A preface to

2008-04-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

The Will and Testament of Arthur Wendover
In the year 2008.

What I have witnessed up to now.

I had hoped that this world would come around. For I found what Jesus was talking about.
I discovered that there is another world where we can be happy. A spiritual world
which is right here. Most people are unaware of it. Many people will stop listening
because they think I am rambling-on or lying.

Christ left us His word. It is up to us to investigate and discover what He was talking
about. No one can do that for us. We are God's creation. We are souls with bodies, not
bodies with souls.

From the time we are born we mistake the body which we see with our own self. Wrong!!!
That is just the material animal that gives us a ride in this world. We should be
in control of the beast! We should be praying to God to help us see the truth.

In a Christian magazine these words were found.

Things are not as they seem. The thought keeps coming around. Things are not as they
seem... not as they seem. Behind the faces, front doors, and casual relationships of
our neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches is an underworld of personal pain and
embarrassment. Untold stories of alcoholism, anger, anxiety, addiction, abortion,
affairs, alienation, and abuse are epidemic. Under the surface we are fast becoming
a people like those of Isaiah's day:

"... beaten and bruised in heart, mind, and body, from the top of our heads to the
bottom of our feet (Isa. 1: l-6)..."

So where is man headed if he does not know who he is, as a person?

You have seen for yourself that the world has abandoned belief in God.
There are many examples in the Bible of what happened in the past because of
man's turning away from God.

The only true happiness is spiritual happiness. It is like living in a house with
the heavy drapes pulled shut. Outside the sun has risen and is shining brightly but
we go all unaware that it is time to step outside and greet the day. There is
happiness outside so open the curtains and go out the door.

Maybe someone in the house is trying to tell us the sun has risen but we do not
take him seriously.

I wish you all well and I go on to another house and, with God's help, a better place.
Be sure I am happy to be here and I will meet with everyone who wishes to see me.
Grama and Grampa Lyle, brother Steven and Uncle Art and now Dad and anyone
else who has gone on before me.

And I will be telling them about God's creation and His new Messenger, Baha'u'llah.
At least I will give it a try. We will have a good cup of tea, aunt Ruby and I.

It is good when a person understands his purpose and the Baha'i Faith has made that
clear to me. 'To know and worship God'.

We are here in this world to observe and try to understand God's creation. This world
is a mirror of God's own Self.

People who strive to obey God and understand will be given understanding.
He is fair and is waiting just for the first turning of our souls to Him.

I will be watching to see how things are going here. But I expect He will
keep me busy with all that has to be done over there. It will be good to
get rid of a weak and complaining body.

Love Arthur

Some Thoughts on the Soul

2007-09-06T09:16:00.001-07:00

Could it be that the human soul is in relation to the body,
operating by remote control? At a distance in a realm where
distance has no meaning. That it shines, as Baha'u'llah says,
upon the heart of the body with a unique signature.
One soul, one body! The soul is born at the same time as the
body is conceived. It is assigned, in our case, to the realm of
Earth in this early 21st century.

The soul lives in a garden undisturbed when the body is awake.
It wakes when the body sleeps to investigate a world hidden
within this world and within ourselves. We continue to interact
with others both on Earth and in the deep dream state. We
continue to learn and experience. Our powers of focus and wisdom
grow as we pass through all the worlds of learning.

The Soul and the Afterlife

2007-08-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

From a Chapter on the Soul and the Afterlife
(The Spirit of Islam)

The popular Christian notion, fostered by ecclesiasticism, that Mohammed denied souls to women, is by this time, we believe, exploded. It was a calumny concocted to create an aversion against Islam. But the idea that the Arabian Prophet promised his followers a sensual paradise with hooris and a graduated scale of delights, still lingers. It is a sign alike of ignorance and ancient bigotry. There is no doubt that in the Suras of the intermediate period, before the mind of the Teacher had attained the full development of religious consciousness, and when it was necessary to formulate in language intelligible to the common folk of the desert, the realistic; descriptions of heaven and hell, borrowed from the floating fancies of Zoroastrian, Sabaean, and the Talmudical Jew, attract the attention as a side picture, and then comes the real essence the adoration of God in humility and love. The hooris are creatures of Zoroastrian origin, so is paradise,[1] whilst hell in the severity of its punishment is Talmudic. The descriptions are realistic, in some places almost sensuous; but to say that they are sensual, or that Mohammed, or any of his followers, even the ultra-literalists accepted them as such, is a calumny.The wine "that does not inebriate" and the attendants "that come not nigh"[1] can hardly be said to represent sensual pleasures!

1 In Persian, firdous.

The chief and predominating idea in Islam respecting a future life is founded upon the belief that, in a state of existence hereafter, every human being will have to render an account of his or her actions on earth, and that the happiness or misery of individuals will depend upon the manner in which they have performed the behests of their Creator. His mercy and grace are nevertheless unbounded, and will be bestowed alike upon His creatures. This is the pivot on which the whole doctrine of future life in Islam turns, and this is the only doctrinal point one is required to believe and accept. All the other elements, caught up and syncretised from the floating traditions of the races and peoples of the time, are mere accessories. Setting aside from our consideration the question of subjectivity involved in all ideas of future rewards and punishments, we may say, in all ideas of a life after death, we must bear in mind that these ideas have furnished to the moral teachers of the world the most powerful instrument for influencing the conduct of individuals and nations. But though every religion, more or less, contains the germ of this principle of future accountability in another state, all have failed thoroughly to realise its nature as a continuous agency for the elevation of the masses. Virtue, for its own sake, can only be grasped by minds of superior development; for the average intellect, and for the uneducated, sanctions, more or less comprehensible, will always be necessary.

To turn now to the nature of these sanctions, it must be remembered that it is scarcely ever possible to convey an idea of spiritual pleasure or spiritual pain to the apprehensions of the generality of mankind without clothing the expressions in the garb of tangible personalities, or introducing sensible objects into the description of such pleasure or pain. Philosophy has wrangled over abstract expressions, not dressed in tangible phraseology. Such expressions and conceptions have seen their day, have flourished, and have died without making themselves felt beyond a restricted circle of dreamers, who lived in the indefinable vagueness of their own thoughts.

Mohammed was addressing himself not only to the advanced minds of a few idealistic thinkers who happened to be then living, but to the wide world around him engrossed in materialism of every type. He had to adapt himself to the comprehensions of all. To the wild famished Arab, what more grateful, or what more consonant to his ideas of paradise than rivers of unsullied incorruptible water, or of milk and honey; or anything more acceptable than unlimited fruit, luxuriant vegetation, inexhaustible fertility?

He could conceive of no bliss unaccompanied with these sensuous pleasures. This is the contention of that portion of the Moslem world which, like Sanai and Ghazzali, holds that behind the descriptions of material happiness portrayed in objects like trees, rivers, and beautiful mansions with fairy attendants, lies a deeper meaning; and that the joy of joys is to consist in the beatific visions of the soul in the presence of the Almighty, when the veil which divides man from his Creator will be rent, and heavenly glory revealed to the mind untrammelled by its corporeal, earthly habiliments. In this they are upheld by the words of the Koran as well as the authentic sayings of the Prophet.

"The most favoured of God," said Mohammed, "will be he who shall see his Lord's face (glory) night and morning, a felicity which will surpass all the pleasures of the body, as the ocean surpasses a drop of sweat." One day, talking to his friend, Abu Huraira, the Prophet said, "God has prepared for His good people what no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of any one," and then recited the following verse of the Koran: "No soul knoweth the joy which is secretly prepared for it as a reward for that it may have wrought"[1] Another tradition[2] reports that Mohammed declared the good will enjoy the beatific vision of God, to which reference, he said, is made in the following verse of the Koran: "And God inviteth unto the dwelling of peace.... For those who do good there is excellent reward and superabundant addition."[3]

1 Koran xxxii. 17; Mishkut, bk. xxiii. chap. xiii. pt. i.
2 From Suhaib.
3 Koran x. 27. Consult here Zamakhshri (the Kashshaf), Egyp. ed, pt. i. p. 244; he gives the fullest references to the opinions of the different theologians and schools, and especially mentions the doctrines of the Mush-habbahas and the Jabarias.

As to the parabolical nature of the Koranic expressions, this school of thinkers bases its convictions on the following passage of the inspired book: "It is He who hath sent down unto thee the Book." Some of the signs (verses) are firm (i.e. perspicuous or clear to understand) these are the basis (or fundamental part) of the book and others are figurative."[l]

Another section looks upon the joys and pains of the hereafter as entirely subjective. It holds that as extreme mental pain is far more agonising than physical pain, so is mental pleasure of the higher type far more rapturous than any sensuous pleasure; that as, after physical death, the individual soul merges "returns," in the Koranic expressions) in the Universal Soul, all the joys and pains, portrayed in vivid colours by the inspired teacher to enable the masses to grasp the truth, will be mental and subjective. This section includes within its bosom some of the greatest philosophers and mystics of the Moslem world.

Another, and by far the largest class, however, believe in the literal fulfilment of all the word-paintings of the Koran. Without venturing to pass any opinion on these different notions, we may take this occasion to state our own belief with regard to the Koranic conception of future rewards and punishments.

1 Koran iii 5.

A careful study of the Koran makes it evident that the mind of Mohammed went through the same process of development which marked the religious consciousness of Jesus, Mohammed and Jesus are the only two historic teachers of the world, and for this reason we take them together. How great this development was in Jesus is apparent, not only from the idealised conception towards the end of his earthly career regarding the Kingdom of Heaven, but also from the change of tone towards the non-Israelites. Thoroughly exclusive at first,[1] with a more developed religious consciousness wider sympathies awaken in the heart.

As with Jesus so with Mohammed. The various chapters of the Koran which contain the ornate descriptions of paradise, whether figurative or literal, were delivered wholly or in part at Mecca. Probably in the infancy of his religious consciousness, Mohammed himself believed in some or other of the traditions which floated around him. But with a wider awakening of the soul, a deeper communion with the Creator of the Universe, thoughts, which bore a material aspect at first, became spiritualised. The mind of the Teacher progressed not only with the march of time and the development of his religious consciousness, but also with the progress of his disciples in apprehending spiritual conceptions. Hence in the later suras we observe a merging of the material in the spiritual, of the body in the soul. The gardens "watered by rivers," perpetual shade,[3] plenty and harmony, so agreeable to the famished denizen of tlie parched, shadeless, and waterless desert, at perpetual discord with himself and all around him, these still form the groundwork of beautiful imageries; but the happiness of the blessed is shown to consist in eternal peace and goodwill in tlie presence of their Creator.

1 Matt x. 5, xv. 22 -26.
2 Matt, xxviii. 19, etc.; comp. throughout Strauss, New Life of Jesus (1865), vol. i. p. 296 et seq.
3 Koran xiii. 34, xlvii, 16, 17. Comp. also chaps, ix., x., and xiv.

"But those," says the Koran, "who are pious shall dwell in gardens, amidst fountains; (they shall say unto them), 'Enter ye therein in peace and security;' and all rancour will we remove from their bosoms; they shall sit as brethren, face to face,[1] on couches; weariness shall not affect them therein, neither shall they be repelled thence for ever."[2]

What can be nobler or grander in its conception or imagery, or give a better idea of the belief in Mohammed's mind, (at least towards the latter period of his career,) concerning the nature of the present and future life, than the following passage: "It is He who enableth you to travel by land and by sea; so that ye go on board of ships, which sail on with them, with favourable breeze, and they rejoice therein. But if a tempestuous wind overtake, and the waves come on them from every side, and they think they are encompassed therewith, they call on God, professing unto Him sincere religion; (saying) wouldst Thou but rescue us from this, then we will ever be indeed of the thankful. But when We have rescued them, Behold! they commit unrighteous excesses on the earth. O men! verily the excesses ye commit to the injury of your own souls are only for the enjoyment of this earthly life; soon shall ye return to Us, and We will declare unto you that which ye have done. Verily, the likeness of this present life is not otherwise than the water which We send down from heaven; and the productions of the earth, of which men and cattle eat, are mixed therewith, till the earth has received its beautiful raiment, and is decked out, and they who inhabit it imagine they have power over it!

1 i.e. with peace and goodwill in their hearts.
2 Koran xv. 44.

"(But) Our behest cometh unto it by night or by day, and We make it as if it had been mown, as though it had not teemed (with fertility) only yesterday. Thus do We make our signs clear unto those who consider. And God inviteth unto the abodes of peace, and guideth whofti He pleaseth into the right way.[1]

"For those who do good is excellent reward and super-abundant addition of it; neither blackness nor shame shall cover their faces. These are the inhabitants of paradise; therein do they abide for ever. But those who have wrought evil shall receive the reward of evil equal thereunto; [2] and shame shall cover them (for there will be none to protect them against God) as though their faces were covered with a piece of the night of profound darkness."[3]

Then again, what can be purer in its aspirations than the following:

1 Baidhawi explains the expression "whom He pleaseth," as " those who repent" (p. 67, n. I, chap. iv.).
Compare Zamakhshri (the Kashshai).
2 Observe the reward of virtue will not be confined to an exact measure of man's works; it will far exceed his
deserts; but the recompense of evil will be strictly proportioned to what one has done.
3 Koran x. 23-28.

"Who fulfil the covenant of God and break not their compact; and who join together what God hath bidden to be joined; and who fear their Lord and dread an ill-reckoning; and who, from a sincere desire to please their Lord,[1] are constant amid trials, and observe prayers and give alms, in secret and openly, out of what We have bestowed on them; and turn aside evil with good: for them there is the recompense of that abode, gardens of eternal habitation, into which they shall enter, together with such as shall have acted rightly from among their fathers, their wives, and their posterity; and the angels shall go in unto them by every portal, (saying), 'Peace be with you! because ye have endured with patience. Excellent is the reward in that abode!"[2]

Enough has been said to show the utter falsehood of the theory that Mohammed's pictures of future life were all sensuous. We will conclude this chapter with the following passage from the Koran to show the depth of spirituality in Islam, and the purity of the hopes and aspirations on which it bases its rule of life: "thou soul which are at rest, return unto thy Lord, pleased and pleasing Him; enter thou among my servants; and enter thou my garden of felicity."[3]

1 This may also be translated as "from a desire to see the face (glory) of their Lord."
2 Koran xiii. 20-24. Compare throughout Zamaklishri (the Kashshaf).
3 Koran Ixxxix. 27-30.

Every Soul Born Pure

2007-06-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

Know thou that every soul is fashioned after the nature of God, each being pure and holy at his birth. Afterwards, however, the individuals will vary according to what they acquire of virtues or vices in this world. Although all existent beings are in their very nature created in ranks or degrees, for capacities are various, nevertheless every individual is born holy and pure, and only thereafter may he become defiled. And further, although the degrees of being are various, yet all are good. Observe the human body, its limbs, its members, the eye, the ear, the organs of smell, of taste, the hands, the fingernails. Notwithstanding the differences among all these parts, each one within the limitations of its own being participateth in a coherent whole. If one of them faileth it must be healed, and should no remedy avail, that part must be removed. (swa, p.190)

Residents of the Supreme Concourse

... another friend referred to the communing of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah; and 'Abdu'l-Bahá said: "The faithful are ever sustained by the presence of the Supreme Concourse. In the Supreme Concourse are Jesus, and Moses, and Elijah, and Bahá'u'lláh, and other supreme Souls: there, also, are the martyrs." (abl, p.97)

Jain and Soul

2007-06-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

(from http://www.jainstudy.org/QfromS-RatnlKnwl-1.01.htm)

I am presenting a comprehensive knowledge of soul as differentiated
from external objects, based on my understanding and experience.
Accept it if (in your estimation) it satisfies the condition of
authenticity (PRAMAAN). But if I fail in my description, reject it.

One who is desirous of spiritual progress,
through scriptural readings and discourses,
differentiates between the auspicious path and the ominous one;
considers the options and nurtures propitious behavior.

The individual, inspired by rational knowledge, becomes settled
in rational perception, penance, vows and self-restraint;
consequently, the individual enjoys pristine qualities of self,
and remains resolute and intent throughout one's lifetime.

As one becomes absorbed in the study of scriptures,
with inimitable interest and immeasurable enthusiasm,
one becomes immersed in the stream of conviction,
and, thus, step by step, the sage attains supreme bliss.

Just as a needle with a thread attached to it,
fallen into a heap of trash, does not get lost,
similarly, endowed with the knowledge of scriptures,
a worldly soul does not lose sight of its estimable goal.

One who possess the knowledge of scriptures;
but who is devoid of the jewel of rationalism,
and is without devotion to genuine virtues,
perpetuates one's cycles of birth and death.

Though having an extensive knowledge of scriptures,
one who has even an iota of passions,
such as attachment, aversion and the like,
remains totally ignorant of the nature of soul.

Ignorance of the pristine nature of soul
accompanies lack of knowledge of external entities;
being devoid of such insightful discernment,
an individual does not attain rationalism.

That which entails the knowledge of aspects of reality,
that which leads to self-restraint of mental activities,
that which brings about the purification of self,
according to the teachings of JIN, that is rational knowledge.

According to the Jain scriptures, rational knowledge
redeems a worldly soul from bonds of attachment;
it generates an affinity for auspiciousness,
and, ingrains feelings of amity towards all.

One who realizes that the soul is distinct from body and karmas,
knows that the self is unique and independent of external entities,
believes that soul is eternal, without beginning or end,
such an individual espies the spirit of the entire Jain teaching.

One who knows the self as fundamentally different
from the defiled physical existence of a worldly soul,
realizes nature of the self - full of perception and knowledge,
possesses the understanding of the entire Jain scripture.

One who comprehends that the intrinsic nature of soul is pure
perception and knowledge, attains spiritual progress;
one who does not have such self-realization and thinks
that soul is impure, remains contaminated with karmas.

One who comprehends the nature of inner self
inherently knows the external world;
conversely, one who knows the external world
certainly appreciates spirituality.

An individual who knows one - one's soul,
knows all that exists in the universe;
a person who knows all aspects of reality
accurately comprehends his/her real self.

The sagacious ones remain immersed in rational knowledge;
they obtain satisfaction in knowing attributes of a pure soul;
they treasure the contentment derived from enlightenment;
thus they get inimitable happiness and enjoy supreme bliss.

One who knows the supreme human beings (ARAHANTs),
from the viewpoints of substance, attributes and transformations,
such an individual attains self-realization - knowledge of soul;
he/she undoubtedly breaks the shackles of unwholesome delusion.

Just as a person enjoys the fruits of his endeavors,
spending his life with his relatives and friends,
similarly, a person having the gift of rational knowledge
enjoys the self by minimizing indulgence in external objects.

Hell Melts Away

2007-05-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

There is a description of the Hell of Islam as it melts away. It is described by a western Muslim writer.

"The most important and controversial question, however, is whether the Muslim hell is 'eternal', and here - as so often - we encounter problems of terminology. Coomaraswamy and others have stressed the essential difference between 'eternity' (beyond any form of time or duration) and 'perpetuity' (indefinite duration). If we accept these definitions, it can be said that God alone is eternal because He alone is Absolute Reality, and the Quran certainly supports this view. Perpetuity might seem to go on 'for ever and ever', but there is an escape from it upwards, towards the eternal, just as there is an escape from dreaming in waking. The damned may see no end to their suffering, but God sees an end to it. Moreover, His mercy 'takes precedence over His wrath', and to suggest that it could be entirely absent from hell would be to suggest that hell has an independent and self-sufficient existence, beyond the reach of His all-pervading mercy, and this is unacceptable to the Muslim.

"It is hardly surprising, therefore, that we read in the traditional sources that a 'green tree' (or, in other versions, 'water-cress') will grow in the fields of hell as time draws to its close; and indeed the imagery of 'scouring' and 'melting' employed in the Qur'an implies a process of purification, rather than punishment for punishment's sake. All this suggests, in Christian terms, Purgatory rather than a hell in which all hope is to be abandoned, although no lesser an authority than St Thomas Aquinas said that there is no true eternity in hell, but only time; and time must have a stop.

"Equally significant is the fact that intercession still operates. According to a hadith recorded by both Bukhari and Muslim, the two most respected authorities, the believers who have come safely to Paradise will plead for their brethren in hell and will be allowed to bring out those they recognize. Their faces will be protected from the Fire, and they will bring out a great number of people. They will then be told by their Lord to go back and bring out any 'in whose hearts you find so much as a dinar of good'. They will do so, but will be commanded to return a third time and bring out any in whose hearts you find so much as an atom of good', and this they will do, though the angels and the prophets will already have rescued an incalculable number from the Fire. Then God will say: 'The angels have interceded, the prophets have interceded, the believers have interceded, and only the Most Merciful of the merciful now remains'; and He Himself will bring out a 'handful' - and there is nothing that could ever fill His 'hand' - of people who never did any good and who have been turned into charcoal. He will cast them into a river called the River of Life, and they will emerge like seeds from rubbish that is carried away in a flood, and they will emerge 'like pearls'. After this we may be allowed to wonder how many remain in hell till the bitter end.

"In another hadith from the same sources we are told that the very last man to be brought out of hell, when God has given him all that he wished for and more - although not without some argument between them - finds his way to his dwelling in Paradise 'more easily than he did to the dwelling he owned in the world'. After a lifetime on earth, after the trauma of death and after the seemingly endless torments of the Fire (which turned him to charcoal), he has come home and recognizes his home without a moment's hesitation.

"It is almost as though he had never been away.

"We can draw but one conclusion. Wherever it may find itself and however far it may wander, the human soul is at home only in Paradise. Elsewhere it is in exile. And yet it must not be forgotten that what was brought out from the 'rubbish', or from the charred remains, was a 'seed' (which then 'sprouted' in the water of Life). The nucleus within us which seeks
Paradise and is at home there is not the outward personality busy with the affairs of this world and separated from its essence, although that too, in its way and unwittingly, is in search of a consummation it can never find here; it is the innermost essence of each being - the 'spirit' - that longs for home-coming and can never be satisfied until it reaches home. Whatever there may be in our nature that does not accord with our essence is dross to be burned away; and whosoever believes that this dross is himself - his 'true self' - will be burned with it." (Islam And The Destiny Of Man by Gai Eaton)

The Nature of All Worlds

2007-05-15T16:39:00.001-07:00

85. Since therefore the Lord God the Creator is essential love and essential wisdom, and from him was created the universe, which thence is as a work proceeding from him, it must needs be, that in all created things there is somewhat of good and of truth from him; for whatever is done and proceeds from any one, derives from him a certain similarity to him. That this is the case, reason also may see from the order in which all things in the universe were created; which order is, that one exists for the sake of another, and that thence one depends upon another, like the links of a chain: for all things are for the sake of the human race, that from it the angelic heaven may exist, through which creation returns to the Creator himself, in whom it originated: hence there is a conjunction of the created universe with its Creator, and by conjunction everlasting conservation. Hence it is that good and truth are called the universals of creation. That this is the case, is manifested to every one who takes a rational view of the subject: he sees in every created thing something which relates to good, and something which relates to truth.

Our Temporary Selves

2007-05-09T05:54:00.000-07:00

A Muslim View of Our Temporary Selves

From the beginning of time man has struggled with himself and his relation to God. Now in our time he usually denies God in his heart or asks Him why is there all this suffering? Our temperary life in this world is but a beginning and a test. Each event is a lesson from God. He knows that we are here for a short time and wants us to learn quickly. But we fight Him. We pretend that we are in control. In Islam and the Destiny of Man, Gai Eaton tells us the Muslim slant on what our attitude has become and what it should be.

"The evidence is all around us. There are a thousand ways in which our existence may be terminated between one moment and the next; a simple drug will transform the most intelligent among us into an idiot, or the bravest among us into a coward; and we know from our reading if not from experience that techniques of torture, more widely practised today than at any time in the past, can destroy every vestige of human dignity in a very short time. Such human dignity as we may have and the Viceregent of God is indeed a figure of great dignity - is a robe loaned to us, just as a woman's beauty is loaned to her, just as our skills, whether hereditary or acquired, are on loan, as are our strengths and our virtues. We can claim nothing as being truly ours except for our weaknesses and our vices, together with the ill we do in the world; for the Qur'an assures us that all good comes from God, all ill from man. We do not even control the breath of life within us, and: 'No soul knoweth what it will earn tomorrow nor doth any soul know in what land it will die. Truly Allah is the Knower, the Aware!'(Q.31.34).

"Existence is pure gift. Consciousness is pure gift. Our eyes and ears, our hands and our feet are gifts, as are our sexual organs. Mountains and rivers and the blue sea are gifts, as is the air we breathe; so too is light, and the darkness given us for rest. The nourishment which comes from the earth, or which - by a very special concession to our weakness - we are permitted to take from the bodies of the animal creation and from the fish of the sea, is a gift. But above all, the awareness which brings these together in consciousness and in enjoyment, and the power we are given to acknowledge their source and to give praise, are divine gifts.

"To be ungrateful is to close ourselves off from the supreme gift, greater than all these; the gift of the divine Mercy and, ultimately, of Paradise, where all such gifts are incalculably magnified. In a mortal body and in a dying world, we praise and give thanks. It is for this, says the Muslim, that we were created.

"Occidental man does not deny this dependence in principle. If he is a Christian, he knows himself to be a wretched sinner, fit only for damnation unless redeemed by Christ's blood. If he is an agnostic and believes that 'scientific' theories are a comprehensive form of knowledge, he sees himself as a chance agglomeration of particles and energies - monkey, son of monkey - and certainly of no account. Yet still, even in raging darkness, he has his stubborn pride; he thinks himself the conqueror of nature and therefore, ultimately, of the God in whom he does not necessarily believe. This indeed is the Promethean heritage, a sickness that has come down through the centuries from a Graeco-Roman world which had lost its soul. There are some very strange skeletons in the cupboard of the occidental mind.

"But gratitude on a fine day in a happy family is one thing, gratitude in the face of loss and suffering is quite another. Suffering has been with us for a long time, to say the least, but the 'problem of suffering' as the dominant theme of religious and philosophical debate is of fairly recent origin. It becomes a problem on this scale only when a great number of people begin to feel that it should not exist and that human beings have some kind of right to perpetual happiness. There are still good Christians who, in the face of bitter loss, are able to say, 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord!', rejoicing in the gift and accepting the loss, but they are in a minority; for most people in the West today, a God who allows us to suffer is not a God in whom it is easy to believe.

What is the Secret?

2007-05-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

We must turn to God.
Turn away from the person that wishes
all the pleasures of this world.
Ourselves.
What a waste to obtain the riches of
this place and lose the rewards of the next.

God will see to our enjoyment if we turn to Him.
But it must not be our goal.
Secrets are those things that people
refuse to discuss, to investigate.

How is it that a prophet comes and
no one listens?
How is it that guidance is given
and no one follows?

What is it with this world and these people?
They rush forward into life
without asking the questions.
Never could I understand persons living
without knowing their purpose.

A life circling and spiralling in a tailspin
Only asking, making some last minute cry
as life comes to a crash.

We are souls.
Can you not feel the convulsions as it seeks
to free itself of the dirt of the city
Freeing itself of a society of darkness.

It wants the pleasures of deep union
Lowliness before God and
oneness with other like souls.
Ah, the Secret!

Entrance into the Kingdom

2007-05-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Eternal Life and Entrance into the Kingdom of God

(The soul is in a place that is provided by God. A place that is continually educating that spirit of man, in the ways of the kingdom of the One True God. It is not of the physical but of an even more substantial realm. One and many higher worlds, built there of materials that will not break down or disintegrate. Even as a dream can have a reality as strong as this world, God's other kingdoms will be more strongly in focus if our spiritual eyes are open and our mind is sharp and excited by learning the mysteries of creation.)

You question about eternal life and the entrance into the Kingdom. The outer expression used for the Kingdom is heaven; but this is a comparison and similitude, not a reality or fact, for the Kingdom is not a material place; it is sanctified from time and place. It is a spiritual world, a divine world, and the center of the Sovereignty of God; it is freed from body and that which is corporeal, and it is purified and sanctified from the imaginations of the human world. To be limited to place is a property of bodies and not of spirits. Place and time surround the body, not the mind and spirit. Observe that the body of man is confined to a small place; it covers only two spans of earth. But the spirit and mind of man travel to all countries and regions -- even through the limitless space of the heavens -- surround all that exists, and make discoveries in the exalted spheres and infinite distances. This is because the spirit has no place; it is placeless; and for the spirit the earth and the heaven are as one since it makes discoveries in both. But the body is limited to a place and does not know that which is beyond it.

For life is of two kinds: that of the body and that of the spirit. The life of the body is material life, but the life of the spirit expresses the existence of the Kingdom, which consists in receiving the Spirit of God and becoming vivified by the breath of the Holy Spirit. Although the material life has existence, it is pure nonexistence and absolute death for the holy saints. So man exists, and this stone also exists, but what a difference between the existence of man and that of the stone! Though the stone exists, in relation to the existence of man it is nonexistent.

The meaning of eternal life is the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the flower receives the gift of the season, the air, and the breezes of spring. Consider: this flower had life in the beginning like the life of the mineral; but by the coming of the season of spring, of the bounty of the clouds of the springtime, and of the heat of the glowing sun, it attained to another life of the utmost freshness, delicacy and fragrance. The first life of the flower, in comparison to the second life, is death.

The meaning is that the life of the Kingdom is the life of the spirit, the eternal life, and that it is purified from place, like the spirit of man which has no place. For if you examine the human body, you will not find a special spot or locality for the spirit, for it has never had a place; it is immaterial. It has a connection with the body like that of the sun with this mirror. The sun is not within the mirror, but it has a connection with the mirror.

In the same way the world of the Kingdom is sanctified from everything that can be perceived by the eye or by the other senses -- hearing, smell, taste or touch. The mind which is in man, the existence of which is recognized -- where is it in him? If you examine the body with the eye, the ear or the other senses, you will not find it; nevertheless, it exists. Therefore, the mind has no place, but it is connected with the brain. The Kingdom is also like this. In the same way love has no place, but it is connected with the heart; so the Kingdom has no place, but is connected with man.

Entrance into the Kingdom is through the love of God, through detachment, through holiness and chastity, through truthfulness, purity, steadfastness, faithfulness and the sacrifice of life.

These explanations show that man is immortal and lives eternally. For those who believe in God, who have love of God, and faith, life is excellent -- that is, it is eternal; but to those souls who are veiled from God, although they have life, it is dark, and in comparison with the life of believers it is nonexistence.

For example, the eye and the nail are living; but the life of the nail in relation to the life of the eye is nonexistent. This stone and this man both exist; but the stone in relation to the existence of man is nonexistent; it has no being; for when man dies, and his body is destroyed and annihilated, it becomes like stone and earth. Therefore, it is clear that although the mineral exists, in relation to man it is nonexistent.

In the same way, the souls who are veiled from God, although they exist in this world and in the world after death, are, in comparison with the holy existence of the children of the Kingdom of God, nonexisting and separated from God. ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p.243)

Means of Progress in the Next Kingdom

2007-04-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

The wealth of the other world is nearness to God. Consequently, it is certain that those who are near the Divine Court are allowed to intercede, and this intercession is approved by God. But intercession in the other world is not like intercession in this world. It is another thing, another reality, which cannot be expressed in words.

If a wealthy man at the time of his death bequeaths a gift to the poor and miserable, and gives a part of his wealth to be spent for them, perhaps this action may be the cause of his pardon and forgiveness, and of his progress in the Divine Kingdom...

It is even possible that the condition of those who have died in sin and unbelief may become changed -- that is to say, they may become the object of pardon through the bounty of God, not through His justice -- for bounty is giving without desert, and justice is giving what is deserved. As we have power to pray for these souls here, so likewise we shall possess the same power in the other world, which is the Kingdom of God. Are not all the people in that world the creatures of God? Therefore, in that world also they can make progress. As here they can receive light by their supplications, there also they can plead for forgiveness and receive light through entreaties and supplications. Thus as souls in this world, through the help of the supplications, the entreaties and the prayers of the holy ones, can acquire development, so is it the same after death. Through their own prayers and supplications they can also progress, more especially when they are the object of the intercession of the Holy Manifestations. ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p.231)

Man's Supreme Station

2007-04-23T18:41:00.001-07:00

A man should pause and reflect and be just: his Lord, out of measureless grace, has made him a human being and honored him with the words: "Verily, We created man in the goodliest of forms" -- and caused His mercy which rises out of the dawn of oneness to shine down upon him, until he became the wellspring of the words of God and the place where the mysteries of heaven alighted, and on the morning of creation he was covered with the rays of the qualities of perfection and the graces of holiness. ('Abdu'l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p.19)

The Kingdom of Heaven

O thou who seekest the Kingdom of heaven! This world is even as the body of man, and the Kingdom of God is as the spirit of life. See how dark and narrow is the physical world of man's body, and what a prey it is to diseases and ills. On the other hand, how fresh and bright is the realm of the human spirit. Judge thou from this metaphor how the world of the Kingdom hath shone down, and how its laws have been made to work in this nether realm. Although the spirit is hidden from view, still its commandments shine out like rays of light upon the world of the human body. In the same way, although the Kingdom of heaven is hidden from the sight of this unwitting people, still, to him who seeth with the inner eye, it is plain as day.

Wherefore dwell thou ever in the Kingdom, and be thou oblivious of this world below. Be thou so wholly absorbed in the emanations of the spirit that nothing in the world of man will distract thee. ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, p.192)

the life of the spirit

2007-04-05T06:01:00.000-07:00

Behold, all the people are imprisoned within the tomb of self,
and lie buried beneath the nethermost depths of worldly desire!
Wert thou to attain to but a dewdrop of the crystal waters
of divine knowledge, thou wouldst readily realize that true life
is not the life of the flesh but the life of the spirit.

For the life of the flesh is common to both men and animals,
whereas the life of the spirit is possessed only by the pure in heart
who have quaffed from the ocean of faith
and partaken of the fruit of certitude.

This life knoweth no death,
and this existence is crowned by immortality.
Even as it hath been said:
“He who is a true believer liveth
both in this world and in the world to come.”

Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/KI/ki-4.html#pg120.

Entering Paradise

2007-04-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

Verily, on the First Day We flung open the gates of Paradise unto all the peoples of the world, and exclaimed: 'O all ye created things! Strive to gain admittance into Paradise, since ye have, during all your lives, held fast unto virtuous deeds in order to attain unto it.' Surely all men yearn to enter therein, but alas, they are unable to do so by reason of that which their hands have wrought. Shouldst thou, however, gain a true understanding of God in thine heart of hearts, ere He hath manifested Himself, thou wouldst be able to recognize Him, visible and resplendent, when He unveileth Himself before the eyes of all men. (swb, p.144)

Such a Vapor

2007-03-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

This is the way many churches teach us to think of the next life. Our physical bodies are restored to us on judgment day.

"Who, that is willing, cannot see from reason, that a man after death is not a mere vapor, of which no idea can be formed but as of a breath of wind, or of air and ether, and that such vapor constitutes or contains in it the human soul, which desires and expects conjunction with its body, in order that it may enjoy the bodily senses and their delights, as previously in the world? We cannot see, that if this were the case with a man after death, his state would be more deplorable than that of fishes, birds, and terrestrial animals, whose souls are not alive, and consequently are not in such anxiety of desire and expectation? Supposing a man after death to be such a vapor, and thus a breath of wind, he would either fly about in the universe, or according to certain traditions, would be reserved in a place of confinement, or in the limbo of the ancient fathers, until the last judgement." (Swedenborg, On Conjugial Love)

A Soul's Condition

2007-03-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Messengers are our chance to do right.

Luke

16:19 'There was once a rich man, who dressed in purple and the finest linen, and feasted in great magnificence every day. At his gate, covered with sores, lay a poor man named Lazarus, who would have been glad to satisfy his hunger with the scraps from the rich man's table. Even the dogs used to come and lick his sores. One day the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up; and there, far away, was Abraham with Lazarus close beside him.

24 "Abraham, my father," he called out, "take pity on me! Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue, for I am in agony in this fire." But Abraham said, "Remember, my child, that all the good things fell to you while you were alive, and all the bad to Lazarus; now he has his consolation here and it is you who are in agony. But that is not all: there is a great chasm fixed between us; no one from our side who wants to reach you can cross it, and none may pass from your side to us."

"Then, father," he replied, "will you send him to my father's house, where I have five brothers, to warn them, so that they too may not come to this place of torment?" But Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen to them." "No, father Abraham," he replied, "but if someone from the dead visits them, they will repent." Abraham answered, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will pay no heed even if someone should rise from the dead."'

Backbone

2007-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Statement
Oh, how sorry we are for you Baha'is
How boring to spend your days in futile study
of obscure writings that mislead and depress.

Response
It is good of you to be so concerned for us.
We are swimming in an ocean of sweetness
Will you not give it a try?
Like any true scientist you must test a system
Over and over until it pleases you or fails.

Statement
But why would I do that?
This world offers me great pleasures and fame.
Where would I be if others saw me as I see you?

Response
We will always be here.
Moving from strength to strength.
The world is a souring lake, overcrowded
with persons without backbone
Flapping like a flag in the winds of change.

On the Loss of a Son

2007-03-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

On her be My blessings, and My mercy, and My praise, and My glory. I Myself shall atone for the loss of her son -- a son who now dwelleth within the tabernacle of My majesty and glory, and whose face beameth with a light that envelopeth with its radiance the Maids of Heaven in their celestial chambers, and beyond them the inmates of My Paradise, and the denizens of the Cities of Holiness. Were any eye to gaze on his face, he would exclaim: "Lo, this is no other than a noble angel!" (gln)

Find the Inner Self

2007-03-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

We can provide an experiment. Each day several times a day ask yourself a question. 'Is this an action of my body or of my soul?' Then we have to evaluate the answer. What is the nature of the soul operating in our daily life?

The soul cares about its own development. It is also concerned about the souls about it. It will not allow the material world to mask heavenly delights. It sees a joke in small things and nothing is too small to show a kind eye and a radiant face. A soul will stop and become meditative when stress starts to take control.

The Nature of Heaven

2007-03-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

Degrees are discrete.

In the world of heaven it seems from reading Swedenborg
that heaven is divided into discrete levels or degrees.
These are degrees of refinement which corresponds to
the idea I have of the many worlds of God.
Each world is inhabited by beings of different spiritual
development, some more gross and others more refined.
This would not mean that there would not be diversity on
each level.

The air, the water, the land of heaven would be unique for
each level of spirit-man. Each element would be completely influenced
by the sun of heaven which is God, Himself. The greatest heat
and light would fall to the most refined of souls.

There would be a distict transition when a soul progressed up
the spiritual ladder. In some ways death is the same kind of
transition.

"This I may mention, that
the angels are in grief for the darkness on the earth; saying that they
see light hardly anywhere, and that men eagerly lay hold of fallacies
and confirm them, thereby multiplying falsities upon falsities; and to
confirm fallacies men search out, by means of reasonings from falsities
and from truths falsified, such things as cannot be controverted, owing
to the darkness in respect to causes and the ignorance respecting truths.
The angels lament especially over confirmations respecting faith separate
from charity and justification thereby; also over men's ideas about God,
angels and spirits, and their ignorance of what love and wisdom are."

Heavenly Joy And Happiness

2007-03-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

(from Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg)

395. Hardly anyone at present knows what heaven is or what heavenly joy is. Those who have given any thought to these subjects have had so general and so gross an idea about them as scarcely to amount to anything. From spirits who have come from the world into the other life I have been able to learn fully what idea they had of heaven and heavenly joy; for when left to themselves, as they were in the world, they think as they then did.

There is this ignorance about heavenly joy for the reason that those who have thought about it have formed their opinion from the outward joys pertaining to the natural man, and have not known what the internal and spiritual man is, nor in consequence the nature of his delight and blessedness. Therefore, even if they had been told by those in spiritual or inward delight what heavenly joy is, they could have had no comprehension of it, for it would have fallen only into an idea unknown to them, thus not into their perception.

It would, therefore, have been among the things that the natural man had rejected. Yet everyone can know that when a man leaves his external or natural man he comes into the internal or spiritual man. Consequently, he can know that heavenly delight is internal and spiritual, not external and natural; and being internal and spiritual, it is more pure and exquisite, and affects the interiors of man which pertain to his soul or spirit.

From these things alone, everyone can conclude that his delight is such as the delight of his spirit has previously been and that the delight of the body, which is called the delight of the flesh, is in comparison not heavenly. Also whatever is in the spirit of man when he leaves the body remains after death, since he then lives a man-spirit.
see http://arthurwendover.com/arthurs/religion/heavenhell10.html

Spiritual Life the True Life

2007-03-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Wert thou to attain to but a dewdrop of the crystal waters of divine knowledge, thou wouldst readily realize that true life is not the life of the flesh but the life of the spirit. For the life of the flesh is common to both men and animals, whereas the life of the spirit is possessed only by the pure in heart who have quaffed from the ocean of faith and partaken of the fruit of certitude. This life knoweth no death, and this existence is crowned by immortality. Even as it hath been said: "He who is a true believer liveth both in this world and in the world to come." If by "life" be meant this earthly life, it is evident that death must needs overtake it. (iqan)

Light After Death

2007-03-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

This is a quote from a book by Alan Bryson called 'Light After Death'.

In order to avoid a possible misunderstanding, the Bahá'í teaching don't relegate believers and non-believers to the realms of "heaven" or "hell" in, for example, the fundamentalist Christian sense. All souls will move on to a common spiritual world, however, their spiritual development on this earthly plane will determine the degree of their spiritual reality in the next world. "Hell" is not so much a "place" as it is a state of mind, or more precisely, a state of spiritual deprivation. One needn't die in order to be in "hell" or "paradise"; as spiritual beings we can occupy these states while in our bodies.

"In the same way, the souls who are veiled from God, although they exist in this world and in the world after death, are in comparison with the holy existence of the children of the Kingdom of God, nonexisting and separated from God." 'Abdu'l-Bahá

"The rewards of the other world are peace, the spiritual graces, the various spiritual gifts in the Kingdom of God, the gaining of the desires of the heart and the soul, and the meeting of God in the world of eternity. In the same way the punishment of the other world--that is to say, the torments of the other world--consist in being deprived of the special, divine blessings and the absolute bounties, and falling into the lowest degree of existence. He who is deprived of these divine favors, although he continues after death, is considered as dead by the people of truth." 'Abdu'l-Bahá

"As to the soul of man after death, it remains in the degree of purity to which it has evolved during life in the physical body, and after it is freed from the body, it remains plunged in the ocean of God's mercy.!

"From the moment the soul leaves the body and arrives in the heavenly world, its evolution is spiritual, and that evolution is: The approaching unto God."

"...The soul does not evolve from degree to degree as a law--it only evolves nearer to God, by the mercy and bounty of God." 'Abdu'l-Bahá

Respect for the Body

2007-03-07T09:58:00.000-08:00

As this physical frame is the throne of the inner temple, whatever occurs to the former is felt by the latter. In reality that which takes delight in joy or is saddened by pain is the inner temple of the body, not the body itself. Since this physical body is the throne whereon the inner temple is established, God hath ordained that the body be preserved to the extent possible, so that nothing that causeth repugnance may be experienced. The inner temple beholdeth its physical frame, which is its throne. Thus, if the latter is accorded respect, it is as if the former is the recipient. The converse is likewise true.

Therefore, it hath been ordained that the dead body should be treated with the utmost honour and respect. (swb, p.94)

The Day of Resurrection

2007-03-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

The Day of Resurrection is a day on which the sun riseth and setteth like unto any other day. How oft hath the Day of Resurrection dawned, and the people of the land where it occurred did not learn of the event. Had they heard, they would not have believed, and thus they were not told! (swb, p.78)

... what is meant by the Day of Resurrection is this, that from the time of the appearance of Him Who is the Tree of divine Reality, at whatever period and under whatever name, until the moment of His disappearance, is the Day of Resurrection.

For example, from the inception of the mission of Jesus -- may peace be upon Him -- till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Moses. For during that period the Revelation of God shone forth through the appearance of that divine Reality, Who rewarded by His Word everyone who believed in Moses, and punished by His Word everyone who did not believe; inasmuch as God's Testimony for that Day was that which He had solemnly affirmed in the Gospel. And from the inception of the Revelation of the Apostle of God -- may the blessings of God be upon Him -- till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Jesus -- peace be upon Him -- wherein the Tree of divine Reality appeared in the person of Muhammad, rewarding by His Word everyone who was a believer in Jesus, and punishing by His Word everyone who was not a believer in Him. (swb, p. 106)

Man, a Spiritual Being

2007-02-28T05:34:00.000-08:00

Man -- the true man -- is soul, not body; though physically man belongs to the animal kingdom, yet his soul lifts him above the rest of creation. Behold how the light of the sun illuminates the world of matter: even so doth the Divine Light shed its rays in the kingdom of the soul. The soul it is which makes the human creature a celestial entity!

By the power of the Holy Spirit, working through his soul, man is able to perceive the Divine reality of things. All great works of art and science are witnesses to this power of the Spirit. The same Spirit gives Eternal Life. ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Paris Talks, p. 85)

On the Nature of Your Interest

2007-02-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

Why should I struggle to understand the prophets
and read the word of God for myself?

Do you think that this subject and this language is
beyond you? If you could see me and my weaknesses
you would think differently. You would say this is just
a man like others and he has barely kept his head
above water in this life. You can study the prophets
because you are a normal human being and your life
and your future are important to you. You want to
be a better person for your family's sake. You will be able to
pass on good advise and not just throw your hands up and
shrug your shoulders implying that you do not understand
anything.

Do not send your children off to religious leaders who are
paid to be experts. Your children will be more impressed with
what you have to say.

When a crisis comes you will know who to turn to. If you can't trust
God then who can you trust. He will inspire your thoughts and help
anyone out of tight situations. It does not matter how much you feel
that you have failed. Everyone of us fails, even when we are at the top
of our game.

A Rich Man

2007-02-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

358. It should be said to begin with that a man may acquire riches and accumulate wealth as far as opportunity is given, if it is not done by craft or fraud, that he may enjoy the delicacies of food and drink if he does not place his life therein, that he may have a palatial dwelling in accord with his condition, have intercourse with others in like condition, frequent places of amusement, talk about the affairs of the world, and need not go about like a devotee with a sad and sorrowful countenance and drooping head, but may be joyful and cheerful; nor need he give his goods to the poor except so far as affection leads him; in a word, he may live outwardly precisely as a man of the world; and all this will be no obstacle to his entering heaven, provided that inwardly in himself he thinks about God as he ought, and acts sincerely and justly in respect of his neighbour. For a man is such as his affection and thought are, or such as his love and faith are, and from these all his outward acts derive their life, since acting is willing, and speaking is thinking, for he acts from the will, and speaks from the thought. ( from Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg)

Heaven and Hell: another look

2007-02-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Now punishments and rewards are said to be of two kinds: first, the rewards and punishments of this life; second, those of the other world. But the paradise and hell of existence are found in all the worlds of God, whether in this world or in the spiritual heavenly worlds. Gaining these rewards is the gaining of eternal life. That is why Christ said, "Act in such a way that you may find eternal life, and that you may be born of water and the spirit, so that you may enter into the Kingdom."

The rewards of this life are the virtues and perfections which adorn the reality of man. For example, he was dark and becomes luminous; he was ignorant and becomes wise; he was neglectful and becomes vigilant; he was asleep and becomes awakened; he was dead and becomes living; he was blind and becomes a seer; he was deaf and becomes a hearer; he was earthly and becomes heavenly; he was material and becomes spiritual. Through these rewards he gains spiritual birth and becomes a new creature. He becomes the manifestation of the verse in the Gospel where it is said of the disciples that they "were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" -- that is to say, they were delivered from the animal characteristics and qualities which are the characteristics of human nature, and they became qualified with the divine characteristics, which are the bounty of God.

This is the meaning of the second birth. For such people there is no greater torture than being veiled from God, and no more severe punishment than sensual vices, dark qualities, lowness of nature, engrossment in carnal desires. When they are delivered through the light of faith from the darkness of these vices, and become illuminated with the radiance of the sun of reality, and ennobled with all the virtues, they esteem this the greatest reward, and they know it to be the true paradise. In the same way they consider that the spiritual punishment -- that is to say, the torture and punishment of existence -- is to be subjected to the world of nature; to be veiled from God; to be brutal and ignorant; to fall into carnal lusts; to be absorbed in animal frailties; to be characterized with dark qualities, such as falsehood, tyranny, cruelty, attachment to the affairs of the world, and being immersed in satanic ideas. For them, these are the greatest punishments and tortures.

Likewise, the rewards of the other world are the eternal life which is clearly mentioned in all the Holy Books, the divine perfections, the eternal bounties and everlasting felicity. The rewards of the other world are the perfections and the peace obtained in the spiritual worlds after leaving this world, while the rewards of this life are the real luminous perfections which are realized in this world, and which are the cause of eternal life, for they are the very progress of existence. ... (saq, p.223)

Special Powers

2007-02-12T05:46:00.000-08:00

Chapter IV

And what of other events. These are the ones you might not believe.

You have travelled widely and experienced the feeling of places long empty of people. Places where people once lived and prospered. It is a confused feeling not pleasant, there in that empty unlived land, not positive and after a number of years you know what it is. But will anyone believe you? The dead have a presence here. Their sadness lives on behind them and some have refused to move on. They even come and wake you in the middle of the night but you refuse to open your eyes. You repeat a powerful prayer for their souls.

Two people have found each other. Their joy is a constant. Their surprise is predictable because things are happening between them that no book has ever recorded. For them their joy is the joining of hearts and the physical is a distant third. You could say that they now understand how heaven could be a land of joy and sex not be a part of it.

There is power that is within the soul and only when man has a certain level of detachment from the cares of this world can these extra-sensory powers be revealed. One person by himself would find it hard to judge his own feelings but when two souls share their love for each other and have a truly spiritual love then new powers are revealed. They can affirm the others suspicions. I will not say much about the powers here because I feel that in such relationships the powers are specific to each couple and may not be duplicated in another couple. I know that whatever talents each person has will be amplified. i.e. if one has healing powers the other will revive their health. They will know what each other is feeling even at a distance. They might even start to learn the others talents.

People need to spend time doing other things beside scratching out a living. They need to set aside time for themselves and each other. They must study the scriptures of religions and meditate daily so that they are in a state to be a true help to others. This world is not concerned for the welfare of the individual. You can be, when you allow yourself prayer time.

Get together with others in prayer and study as well. If your motives are sincere then you will understand mysteries and see miracles.

(below is a quote from the "Mission of Baha'u'llah" by George Townshend)

We of the western world may be unable to trace in human affairs about us the providence of God, may not see His path opening before our feet, may not be aware of His activity and presence in our midst, we may be divided one against another, may be full of fears, devoid of love, laden with deepening doubt.

But here are men and women, boys and girls who through faith reborn became possessed of a knowledge to which we are strangers, entered into an experience which we hardly believe to exist, whose eyes were opened to the Light from heaven, who had ears to hear the voice of God, and being changed from their old selves, transformed into new creatures, translated to a new degree of life, were by divine grace endowed with a courage, an energy, a blissfulness which has no likeness on the earth and which no earthly privation can impair.

They had none of these things through which we of the West give expression to our religion: they had no systems of theology and ethics, no traditions, dogmas, creeds, institutions. Love and obedience and joy (love for God and His prophet, the joy of obeying the divine summons, even to the extent of sacrificing for love's sake all they had and all they were) these and these only were the marks of their religion.

Chapter III Special Powers

2007-02-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

Chapter III

What are some of the special powers that are not seen by the most of us? Well we will speak of a few that do register on our horizons.

Dreams: Something happens in a dream and two years later that thing happens in real life, deja vu. It sends shivers down our spine. If we investigate on the spot we will find a link to ourselves. There is a reason for the dream and the event. God wants us to learn something. We could go on with dreams and write a book, but others have, so I won't.
Or you have dreams of living your life without that husband or that friend is gone. Then soon they die and you knew it would happen. Others are upset because you are not in tears. You had already shed your tears weeks ago.

A feeling: We see someones face in our mind. That is likely a time to phone or email that person. Perhaps they are already phoning you and you get an open line because the other person is already there and you had picked up the phone before it rang.

A voice: Someone speaks in your ear and says that the person you are looking at is the one you will marry. A calm clear voice. A year later you marry that person.

Doubles: People on the bus look like friends of yours. This keeps happening until just about every friend you have turns out to have many doubles or at least persons that remind you of them. Do people come in types or are we suppose to be concerned with our friends?

Meetings: We are thinking of someone and as we leave our abode there they are. They do not even live in the same city! You tell me what this is? I think it is many things. Perhaps our hearts are joined as the childs 'can telephone' with the tight string between them. Or are our guardians manipulating our steps?

Tests: We are in an accident and get a few cuts that sends us to a distant hospital. We curse our pain and the situation. But we regain our composure and there is an old friend passing through the waiting room.

In just about everything we do, something is happening outside of our five senses. An we can only describe these happenings as feeling, metaphors are used as a pointing finger to that thing which many of us know but few are willing to admit.

On the day of your wedding the limousine service fails you but a lost uncle turns up with a car and offers his car and himself as a chauffeur. You never see him again.

There are stories I could tell but you would say I am making it up. So I will not.

The stranger

2007-02-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

Special Powers
Chapter II

When we lived closer to nature out on the farm or in towns so small you could see the country, the rivers, the woods and fields, we were not as distracted from the spiritual aspect. Persons could see that nature was a finger pointing at a greater truth. Now we are a majority, living in cities designed for vehicles and not for the walking human and certainly not for the soul.

Public spaces remind us of the wrongs that we in the city perpetrate. The homeless bed out in the heat of summer and the deepfreeze of winter, because they fear the shelters we provide for them. Violence and desease prevail and threaten to spread now among the general public. We are told daily by what we see that the spirit is dead.

The stranger is not given warm hospitality but a cold shoulder. In the past families took care of their own. For millions of years people cared for their friends and family and shared what they had, sacrificing their own welfare. Now people shun the idea to bring a stranger into their homes, but seventy years ago persons would have done something, given food, a place to sleep on the porch, some work to help the household manage. We have built our homes so that strangers cannot come near us.

All this and war and disaster must draw us away from thoughts of love and charity. Where are the signs of the spirit for a man in the city? How can special powers manifest themselves in a sterile environment? Do we have to rebuild our cities so that people cannot be so isolated and forgotten? Do we reduce road use to public vehicles and man powered wheels?

There are new 'road maps' for our time. But some wish to reject these new guidelines and insist that we use the old ones. And there is a stronger energy flowing in from the heavens of God's realms, making it easier for us to see the way of the future.

We have to be smart enough to recognize that there are persons who only seek their own fortunes. The spirit, through prayer and meditation, allows us to get smarter. Every time we step back from an ugly situation and try to see what is really happening, when we meditate, when we pray silently for God's guidance, we become much smarter. Our IQ, goes up. Every kind of IQ goes up, social, spiritual, or emotional.

Because we are learning detachment. Patience is the result and patience is needed in this time.

Special Powers

2007-02-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

Special Powers by Arthur Wendover

Senses: eyes, ears, taste, touch and smell. I will call them 'the five'. These can be enhanced, biologically and electronically. But this is not the true special powers that I would like to talk about.

What of other senses? What of other worlds and the connection with life after this or parallel with this? What if we can really read each other without the five? What if we can really anticipate an event, knowing the future enough to change it?

I will imply that there are powers that are connected with the fact that we are not the physical body but souls substantial, in characteristics and solid reality, always existing in a different world. Healing by prayer, personal radiation, the laying on of hands are very much still a viable way of mending the ills of man.

Now we have science, medicine. Surely we can use both methods for healing. There are also people paired in love and devotion who operate as two hands of a single body. This is an excellent example of people who can read each other. They think from two different sets of facts but with one unified heart.

The soul of man is out there in that other world and does not enter the physical except as a controller of the physical body that it is assigned. Even as we can control a remote car or airplane, the soul can totally manipulate the body and from the moment it starts, it has lost most of its awareness that it is not the body.

As a child grows, so does its attachments to the things of this world. Unless it receives instruction and meditates on this information, the soul does not look outside the physical world for its own world. That spiritual world is the soarce of all reality. Nothing in this world is more than a shadow of that world of the soul.

The soul shines its rays upon the heart of the body and as a mirror the body reflects what strikes it. When the body dies, the rays are still shining and the soul is unaffected. But now it has become aware that the body is something lesser. If it cannot accept this fact, that the earth was a field of learning and only a shadow, then that soul becomes a person refusing to progress.

The five senses of the body were a limited example of the much greater senses of a persons body in heaven. The spiritual eyes see the glorious light and have enhanced abilities. The spiritual ears, tongue, nose and skin awaken other dimensions of perceiving. The spiritual senses are always there throughout our lives and these are the soarce of our special powers!

Of course the body and the universe also has many secrets to reveal over the next few billion years. We are just getting started. God has set everything up for our enlightenment. We are just getting started.

I am a spiritual investigator and everything I state here is a result of a very intense life's journey. I claim no authority and attended no university except the higher school of life. Some people came to my help when I was young and innocent and they indicated that this world was not what it seemed.

Our bodies were not the centre of reality but just a starting vehicle on an eternal voyage. The messengers guided me, once I started to realize what their function was. And anything I say here is less than nothing when compared to their elequence.

My knowledge is nothing when compared to theirs. When the sun rises the stars fade and are forgotten.

Earthly Treasure as Distraction

2007-02-04T17:05:00.001-08:00

We see you rejoicing in that which ye have amassed for others and shutting out yourselves from the worlds which naught except My guarded Tablet can reckon. The treasures ye have laid up have drawn you far away from your ultimate objective. This ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it. Wash your hearts from all earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the Kingdom of your Lord, the Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the world to tremble and all its peoples to wail, except them that have renounced all things and clung to that which the Hidden Tablet hath ordained. (gln)

The Spirit in Darkness

2007-01-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

We see this every day how men and children turn to the most uncivil behavior. They never show any fear of annoying or even hurting others. Now those outbursts may change into understanding but there is another attitude that is more like black steel. A man chooses to serve only his darkest desires and systematically pounds on 'the good' of this world to make it weak in mens' eyes.

"But on the other hand, when man does not open his mind and heart to the blessing of the spirit, but turns his soul towards the material side, towards the bodily part of his nature, then is he fallen from his high place and he becomes inferior to the inhabitants of the lower animal kingdom. In this case the man is in a sorry plight! For if the spiritual qualities of the soul, open to the breath of the Divine Spirit, are never used, they become atrophied, enfeebled, and at last incapable; whilst the soul's material qualities alone being exercised, they become terribly powerful - and the unhappy, misguided man, becomes more savage, more malevolent than the lower animals themselves. All his aspirations and desires being strengthened by the lower side of the soul's nature, he becomes more and more brutal, until his whole being is in no way superior to that of the beasts that perish. Men such as this, plan to work evil, to hurt and to destroy; they are entirely without the spirit of Divine compassion, for the celestial quality of the soul has been dominated by that of the material." ('Abdu'l-Bahá'í, Paris Talks 97)

The Road to Understanding

2007-01-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

If we do not seek the truth and ignore the fact that we are spiritual beings then one thing will insistantly remind us. We age and the body breaks down. No one can see that inside we feel the the same as always and are the same mixed up person we always were. We observe through dreams and life encounters that there is another world taking place within us. What if it is as real as the physical world slipping away from us.

(below from the Purpose of Physical Reality by John Hatcher)

We are told in the holy writings of all religions that one of the most dangerous impediments to spiritual advancement is the love of self. Metaphorically, this love is expressed through attachment to the vehicle for the self, the physical body. When we become obsessed with our physical appearance, we may be forgetting that our essential reality is our soul, which
temporarily expresses itself through the body. If we love the vehicle for itself or see the vehicle as synonymous with the tenor, we disregard the intended metaphorical purpose of physical reality.

To safeguard against just such a misuse, the Creator has provided us with a number of metaphorical reminders of our true nature. The most intriguing of these is the aging process. At almost the precise point our physical body has reached its peak of perfection, we are as intellectual and spiritual beings only beginning to develop. As we begin to strive for spiritual growth, our metaphorical self begins to crumble before our eyes. If we have missed the point of our earthly assignment and have become too attached to this metaphorical vehicle, the divinely ordained aging process will eventually teach us that our attachment is doomed. In due time we will become detached from our metaphorical self whether we like it or not.

But if we follow our lessons well in this "Great Workshop," the deterioration of our physical selves together with the decrease in our ability to utilize the physical classroom will parallel a corresponding increase in our spiritual faculties so that at the moment of transition from the terrestrial world to the "real world," our final detachment from the
worn-out metaphor will occur at the precise instant that we can no longer use it anyway:

The purpose underlying their revelation hath been to educate all men, that they may, at the hour of death, ascend, in the utmost purity and sanctity and with absolute detachment, to the throne of the Most High. (Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings 157)

The Middle Way

2007-01-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

7. Lament not in your hours of trial, neither rejoice therein; seek ye the Middle Way which is the remembrance of Me in your afflictions and reflection over that which may befall you in future. Thus informeth you He Who is the Omniscient, He Who is Aware. (sca, pg15)

On the Loss of a Son

... On her be My blessings, and My mercy, and My praise, and My glory. I Myself shall atone for the loss of her son -- a son who now dwelleth within the tabernacle of My majesty and glory, and whose face beameth with a light that envelopeth with its radiance the Maids of Heaven in their celestial chambers, and beyond them the inmates of My Paradise, and the denizens of the Cities of Holiness. Were any eye to gaze on his face, he would exclaim: "Lo, this is no other than a noble angel!" (gleanings, LXIX.)

Fate and Predestination

2007-01-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

O thou who art the fruit of My Tree and the leaf thereof! On thee be My glory and My mercy. Let not thine heart grieve over what hath befallen thee. Wert thou to scan the pages of the Book of Life, thou wouldst, most certainly, discover that which would dissipate thy sorrows and dissolve thine anguish.

Know thou, O fruit of My Tree, that the decrees of the Sovereign Ordainer, as related to fate and predestination, are of two kinds. Both are to be obeyed and accepted. The one is irrevocable, the other is, as termed by men, impending. To the former all must unreservedly submit, inasmuch as it is fixed and settled. God, however, is able to alter or repeal it. As the harm that must result from such a change will be greater than if the decree had remained unaltered, all, therefore, should willingly acquiesce in what God hath willed and confidently abide by the same.

The decree that is impending, however, is such that prayer and entreaty can succeed in averting it. God grant that thou who art the fruit of My Tree, and they that are associated with thee, may be shielded from its evil consequences. (gleanings LXVIII)

The Soul and How I am seeing it.

2007-01-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

It seems strange that man has been so slow to
accept the soul as the very essence of man.
The body is as a remote controlled car which
the soul directs with cameras and other sensors
mounted on it, allowing the controller to perceive
from the cars perspective. The problem becomes
that the controller has forgotten that he has
another body and that body needs to be cared for.
The car has some programmed functions but is totally
dependent on the soul.

When the car crashes or the batteries die, the soul
just keeps working the controls with no results.
He needs a tap on the shoulder to remind him of
his other body. When the car rests (charges) he goes
about in what he thinks are dreams, then returns
forgetting all. The soul has much greater abilities
than the car and an eternal life.

More Hidden Words

2007-01-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

And we are drowning in a sea of mercy. Will we not
turn to the help that is being offered on every side?
Hell is as much here and now as in the future and
in another place.

70. O SON OF WORLDLINESS!

Pleasant is the realm of being, wert thou to attain thereto; glorious is the domain of eternity, shouldst thou pass beyond the world of mortality; sweet is the holy ecstasy if thou drinkest of the mystic chalice from the hands of the celestial Youth. Shouldst thou attain this station, thou wouldst be freed from destruction and death, from toil and sin. (phw)

75. O CHILDREN OF NEGLIGENCE!

Set not your affections on mortal sovereignty and rejoice not therein. Ye are even as the unwary bird that with full confidence warbleth upon the bough; till of a sudden the fowler Death throws it upon the dust, and the melody, the form and the color are gone, leaving not a trace. Wherefore take heed, O bondslaves of desire! (phw)

6. O SON OF BEING!

Thy Paradise is My love; thy heavenly home, reunion with Me. Enter therein and tarry not. This is that which hath been destined for thee in Our kingdom above and Our exalted dominion. (ahw)

23. O SON OF THE SUPREME!

To the eternal I call thee, yet thou dost seek that which perisheth. What hath made thee turn away from Our desire and seek thine own? (ahw)

33. O SON OF SPIRIT!

With the joyful tidings of light I hail thee: rejoice! To the court of holiness I summon thee; abide therein that thou mayest live in peace for evermore. (ahw)

34. O SON OF SPIRIT!

The spirit of holiness beareth unto thee the joyful tidings of reunion; wherefore dost thou grieve? The spirit of power confirmeth thee in His cause; why dost thou veil thyself? The light of His countenance doth lead thee; how canst thou go astray? (ahw)

35. O SON OF MAN!

Sorrow not save that thou art far from Us. Rejoice not save that thou art drawing near and returning unto Us. (ahw)

63. O SON OF MAN!

The light hath shone on thee from the horizon of the sacred Mount and the spirit of enlightenment hath breathed in the Sinai of thy heart. Wherefore, free thyself from the veils of idle fancies and enter into My court, that thou mayest be fit for everlasting life and worthy to meet Me. Thus may death not come upon thee, neither weariness nor trouble. (ahw)

29. O SON OF BOUNTY!

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things. Thus, ere thou didst issue from thy mother's womb, I destined for thee two founts of gleaming milk, eyes to watch over thee, and hearts to love thee. Out of My loving-kindness, 'neath the shade of My mercy I nurtured thee, and guarded thee by the essence of My grace and favor. And My purpose in all this was that thou mightest attain My everlasting dominion and become worthy of My invisible bestowals. And yet heedless thou didst remain, and when fully grown, thou didst neglect all My bounties and occupied thyself with thine idle imaginings, in such wise that thou didst become wholly forgetful, and, turning away from the portals of the Friend didst abide within the courts of My enemy. (phw)

39. O OFFSPRING OF DUST!

Be not content with the ease of a passing day, and deprive not thyself of everlasting rest. Barter not the garden of eternal delight for the dust-heap of a mortal world. Up from thy prison ascend unto the glorious meads above, and from thy mortal cage wing thy flight unto the paradise of the Placeless. (phw)

73. O MY FRIEND!

Thou art the daystar of the heavens of My holiness, let not the defilement of the world eclipse thy splendor. Rend asunder the veil of heedlessness, that from behind the clouds thou mayest emerge resplendent and array all things with the apparel of life. (phw)

Hidden Words

2007-01-14T17:23:00.000-08:00

Selections from the Hidden Words

14. O SON OF MAN!

Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not; wherefore fearest thou thy perishing? Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished; why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn. Abide then in thy love for Me, that thou mayest find Me in the realm of glory. (ahw)

32. O SON OF THE SUPREME!

I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom? (ahw)

61. O SON OF MAN!

Ascend unto My heaven, that thou mayest obtain the joy of reunion, and from the chalice of imperishable glory quaff the peerless wine. (ahw)

69. O YE SONS OF SPIRIT!

Ye are My treasury, for in you I have treasured the pearls of My mysteries and the gems of My knowledge. Guard them from the strangers amidst My servants and from the ungodly amongst My people. (ahw)

37. O MY SERVANT!

Abandon not for that which perisheth an everlasting dominion, and cast not away celestial sovereignty for a worldly desire. This is the river of everlasting life that hath flowed from the well-spring of the pen of the merciful; well is it with them that drink! (phw)

40. O MY SERVANT!

Free thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more. (phw)

41. O SON OF MY HANDMAID!

Didst thou behold immortal sovereignty, thou wouldst strive to pass from this fleeting world. But to conceal the one from thee and to reveal the other is a mystery which none but the pure in heart can comprehend. (phw)

44. O COMPANION OF MY THRONE!

... Live then the days of thy life, that are less than a fleeting moment, with thy mind stainless, thy heart unsullied, thy thoughts pure, and thy nature sanctified, so that, free and content, thou mayest put away this mortal frame, and repair unto the mystic paradise and abide in the eternal kingdom for evermore. (phw)

(from Baha'u'llah)

Little Children In Heaven

2007-01-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

From Swedenborg we hear about the treatment of children in heaven and their innocense.

329. It is a belief of some that only such little children as are born within the Church come into heaven, and that those born out of the Church do not. This, they say, is because the children within the Church have been baptized and by baptism have bcen initiated into the faith of the Church. Such are not aware that no one has heaven or faith through baptism; for baptism is merely for a sign and memorial that man is to be regenerated, and that those born within the Church can be regenerated because the Word is there, and in the Word are the Divine truths by means of which regeneration is effected, and there the Lord Who regenerates is known. Let them know therefore that every little child, wherever born, whether within the Church or outside it, whether of pious or impious parents, is received when he dies by the Lord and educated in heaven, and in accordance with Divine order taught and imbued with affections of good, and through these with cognitions of what is true. Afterwards, as he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom he is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel. Every one who thinks from reason can be sure that no one has been born for hell, but all are born for heaven, and if man comes into hell he himself is culpable; but little children cannot be held culpable as yet.

330. Little children who die are just as much little children in the other life, having a like infantile mind, a like innocence in ignorance, and a like tenderness in all things. They are merely in the rudiments of a capacity to become angels, for little children are not angels but become angels. For every one passing out of this world is in a state like that of his life, a little child in the state of a little child, a boy in the state of a boy, a youth, a man, an old man, in the state of a youth, a man, or an old man; but subsequently each one's state is changed. Moreover, the state of little children excels the state of the rest in that they are in innocence, and evil has not yet been rooted in them by actual life; and innocence is such that all things of heaven can be implanted therein, for it is a receptacle of the truth of faith and of the good of love.

O Maid of Heaven

2007-01-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

Say: Step out of Thy holy chamber, O Maid of Heaven, inmate of the Exalted Paradise! Drape thyself in whatever manner pleaseth Thee in the silken Vesture of Immortality, and put on, in the name of the All-Glorious, the broidered Robe of Light. Hear, then, the sweet, the wondrous accent of the Voice that cometh from the Throne of Thy Lord, the Inaccessible, the Most High. Unveil Thy face, and manifest the beauty of the black-eyed Damsel, and suffer not the servants of God to be deprived of the light of Thy shining countenance.

Grieve not if Thou hearest the sighs of the dwellers of the earth, or the voice of the lamentation of the denizens of heaven. Leave them to perish on the dust of extinction. Let them be reduced to nothingness, inasmuch as the flame of hatred hath been kindled within their breasts. Intone, then, before the face of the peoples of earth and heaven, and in a most melodious voice, the anthem of praise, for a remembrance of Him Who is the King of the names and attributes of God. Thus have We decreed Thy destiny. Well able are We to achieve Our purpose.

Beware that Thou divest not Thyself, Thou Who art the Essence of Purity, of Thy robe of effulgent glory. Nay, enrich Thyself increasingly, in the kingdom of creation, with the incorruptible vestures of Thy God, that the beauteous image of the Almighty may be reflected through Thee in all created things and the grace of Thy Lord be infused in the plenitude of its power into the entire creation.

If Thou smellest from any one the smell of the love of Thy Lord, offer up Thyself for him, for We have created Thee to this end, and have covenanted with Thee, from time immemorial, and in the presence of the congregation of Our well-favored ones, for this very purpose. Be not impatient if the blind in heart hurl down the shafts of their idle fancies upon Thee. Leave them to themselves, for they follow the promptings of the evil ones.

Cry out before the gaze of the dwellers of heaven and of earth: I am the Maid of Heaven, the Offspring begotten by the Spirit of Bahá. My habitation is the Mansion of His Name, the All-Glorious. Before the Concourse on high I was adorned with the ornament of His names. I was wrapt within the veil of an inviolable security, and lay hidden from the eyes of men. Methinks that I heard a Voice of divine and incomparable sweetness, proceeding from the right hand of the God of Mercy, and lo, the whole Paradise stirred and trembled before Me, in its longing to hear its accents, and gaze on the beauty of Him that uttered them. (gln)

The Hidden Glory

2007-01-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

Persevere thou conscientiously in the service of the Cause and, through the power of the Name of thy Lord, the Possessor of all things visible and invisible, preserve the station conferred upon thee. I swear by the righteousness of God! Were anyone apprised of that which is veiled from the eyes of men, he would become so enraptured as to wing his flight unto God, the Lord of all that hath been and shall be. (Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 232)

14. O SON OF MAN!

Being Born Again

2007-01-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

Even as Jesus said: "Ye must be born again." Again He saith: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The purport of these words is that whosoever in every dispensation is born of the Spirit and is quickened by the breath of the Manifestation of Holiness, he verily is of those that have attained unto "life" and "resurrection" and have entered into the "paradise" of the love of God. And whosoever is not of them, is condemned to "death" and "deprivation," to the "fire" of unbelief, and to the "wrath" of God. In all the scriptures, the books and chronicles, the sentence of death, of fire, of blindness, of want of understanding and hearing, hath been pronounced against those whose lips have tasted not the ethereal cup of true knowledge, and whose hearts have been deprived of the grace of the holy Spirit in their day. (iqan)

A State of Love

2007-01-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

You need not take Swedenborg as seriously as I do. But I think of myself as a 'spiritual scientist' and any information is better than none. If a man says he saw something and then goes ahead and explains it in a nautral and logical way then I will believe him. That is until I come upon something even more logical. Heaven and Hell as a book has always rung true for me.

155. Angels are not constantly in the same state as to love, and consequently not in the same state as to wisdom for all their wisdom is from, and according to love. Sometimes they are in a state of intense love, sometimes in a state of love not intense. The state decreases by degrees from its greatest to its least intensity. When in their greatest degree of love, they are then in the light and warmth of their life, or in a clear and delightful state, but when in their least degree, they are in shade and cold, or in their obscure and undelighiful state. From this last state they return again to the first, and so on, these alternations following one after another with variety. There is a sequence of these states like the varied states of light and shade, of heat and cold, or like morning, noon, evening and night, day after day in the world with unceasing variety throughout the year. There is also a correspondence, morning corresponding to the state of their love in its clearness, noon to the state of their wisdom in its clearness, evening to the state of their wisdom in its obscurity, and night to a state of no love and wisdom. But it should be known that there is not correspondence of night with the states of life of those in heaven, although there is what corresponds to the dawn that precedes morning. The correspondence of night is with those who are in hell.

Days of Blissful Joy

2007-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

O My servants! Sorrow not if, in these days and on this earthly plane, things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes. You are destined by Him, in this world and hereafter, to partake of their benefits, to share in their joys, and to obtain a portion of their sustaining grace. To each and every one of them you will, no doubt, attain. (gln)

A Glimpse of Paradise

As to Paradise: It is a reality and there can be no doubt about it, and now in this world it is realized through love of Me and My good-pleasure. Whosoever attaineth unto it God will aid him in this world below, and after death He will enable him to gain admittance into Paradise whose vastness is as that of heaven and earth. Therein the Maids of glory and holiness will wait upon him in the daytime and in the night season, while the day-star of the unfading beauty of his Lord will at all times shed its radiance upon him and he will shine so brightly that no one shall bear to gaze at him. Such is the dispensation of Providence, yet the people are shut out by a grievous veil. Likewise apprehend thou the nature of hell-fire and be of them that truly believe. For every act performed there shall be a recompense according to the estimate of God, and unto this the very ordinances and prohibitions prescribed by the Almighty amply bear witness. For surely if deeds were not rewarded and yielded no fruit, then the Cause of God -- exalted is He -- would prove futile. Immeasurably high is He exalted above such blasphemies! However, unto them that are rid of all attachments a deed is, verily, its own reward. Were We to enlarge upon this theme numerous Tablets would need to be written. (Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 189)

My light is in thee

2007-01-06T12:30:00.000-08:00

O SON OF BEING!
Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee.

The Station of a True Believer

2007-01-05T07:57:00.001-08:00

As to those that have tasted of the fruit of man's earthly existence, which is the recognition of the one true God, exalted be His glory, their life hereafter is such as We are unable to describe. The knowledge thereof is with God, alone, the Lord of all worlds. (gln)

Trapped by Desire

2007-01-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

... Ye are even as the bird which soareth, with the full force of its mighty wings and with complete and joyous confidence, through the immensity of the heavens, until, impelled to satisfy its hunger, it turneth longingly to the water and clay of the earth below it, and, having been entrapped in the mesh of its desire, findeth itself impotent to resume its flight to the realms whence it came. Powerless to shake off the burden weighing on its sullied wings, that bird, hitherto an inmate of the heavens, is now forced to seek a dwelling-place upon the dust. (gln)

Functioning of heaven

2007-01-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

Try this description of the functioning of heaven.

17. All experience in heaven testifies to the
Divine going forth from the Lord, which affects
the angels and makes heaven, being love.
For all who are there are forms of love and charity,
and appear in ineffable beauty with love shining forth
from their faces, their speech and every particular of
their life. Moreover, there are, emanating from and
surrounding every angel and every spirit, spiritual
spheres of life by which their qualities, in respect
of the affections of love, are known, sometimes at a
considerable distance. For those spheres flow forth from
the life of any one's affection and consequent thought,
or from the life of his love and consequent faith.

The spheres that go forth from angels are so full of love
as to affect the inmost things of life of those with whom
they are. They have frequently been perceived by me and
they have so affected me. That it is from love that angels
have their life was further evident from the fact that,
in the other life, everyone turns himself in accordance
with his love. Those who are in love to the Lord and
in love towards the neighbour constantly turn themselves
to the Lord, while those who are in the love of self turn
themselves constantly away from the Lord.

This takes place in every turning of their body.
For, in the other life, spaces conform to the states
of their interiors, and so do the quarters,
which are not determined as in the world but are
determined according to which way they are looking.
Yet it is not the angels who turn themselves to the Lord,
but the Lord Who turns to Himself those who love to do
the things that are from Him.
(from Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell)

The Noblest of All Creatures

2007-01-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

Everything we have heard from Christ, Muhammad and Baha'u'llah is good news. Now what do we do with that knowledge of being a soul with such power and potential?

'Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God, inasmuch as within every atom are enshrined the signs that bear eloquent testimony to the revelation of that Most Great Light. Methinks, but for the potency of that revelation, no being could ever exist. How resplendent the luminaries of knowledge that shine in an atom, and how vast the oceans of wisdom that surge within a drop!

'To a supreme degree is this true of man, who, among all created things, hath been invested with the robe of such gifts, and hath been singled out for the glory of such distinction. For in him are potentially revealed all the attributes and names of God to a degree that no other created being hath excelled or surpassed. All these names and attributes are applicable to him. Even as He hath said: "Man is My mystery, and I am his mystery."

'Manifold are the verses that have been repeatedly revealed in all the Heavenly Books and the Holy Scriptures, expressive of this most subtle and lofty theme. Even as He hath revealed: "We will surely show them Our signs in the world and within themselves." Again He saith: "And also in your own selves: will ye not, then, behold the signs of God?"

'And yet again He revealeth: "And be ye not like those who forget God, and whom He hath therefore caused to forget their own selves." In this connection, He Who is the eternal King -- may the souls of all that dwell within the mystic Tabernacle be a sacrifice unto Him -- hath spoken: "He hath known God who hath known himself."

'... From that which hath been said it becometh evident that all things, in their inmost reality, testify to the revelation of the names and attributes of God within them. Each according to its capacity, indicateth, and is expressive of, the knowledge of God. So potent and universal is this revelation, that it hath encompassed all things visible and invisible. Thus hath He revealed: "Hath aught else save Thee a power of revelation which is not possessed by Thee, that it could have manifested Thee? Blind is the eye which doth not perceive Thee."

'Likewise hath the eternal King spoken: "No thing have I perceived, except that I perceived God within it, God before it, or God after it." Also in the tradition of Kumayl it is written: "Behold, a light hath shone forth out of the morn of eternity, and lo, its waves have penetrated the inmost reality of all men."

'Man, the noblest and most perfect of all created things, excelleth them all in the intensity of this revelation, and is a fuller expression of its glory. And of all men, the most accomplished, the most distinguished, and the most excellent are the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth. Nay, all else besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of Their Will, and move and have their being through the outpourings of Their grace'.
(Gleanings)

Supreme Destiny

2007-01-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Destiny of the True Believer

Man is a soul with a body and not a body with a soul. That soul must not be so preoccupied with this world that when it passes on it can not detach itself to walk freely in the realms of the Almighty.

"It is clear and evident that when the veils that conceal the realities of the manifestations of the Names and Attributes of God, nay of all created things visible or invisible, have been rent asunder, nothing except the Sign of God will remain -- a sign which He, Himself, hath placed within these realities. This sign will endure as long as is the wish of the Lord thy God, the Lord of the heavens and of the earth. If such be the blessings conferred on all created things, how superior must be the destiny of the true believer, whose existence and life are to be regarded as the originating purpose of all creation.

"Just as the conception of faith hath existed from the beginning that hath no beginning, and will endure till the end that hath no end, in like manner will the true believer eternally live and endure. His spirit will everlastingly circle round the Will of God. He will last as long as God, Himself, will last. He is revealed through the Revelation of God, and is hidden at His bidding. It is evident that the loftiest mansions in the Realm of Immortality have been ordained as the habitation of them that have truly believed in God and in His signs. Death can never invade that holy seat. Thus have We entrusted thee with the signs of thy Lord, that thou mayest persevere in thy love for Him, and be of them that comprehend this truth." (gln)

Man's Creation

2007-01-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

And now, concerning thy question regarding the creation of man. Know thou that all men have been created in the nature made by God, the Guardian, the Self-Subsisting. Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth. (gln)

The World Of Dreams

2006-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

The World Of Dreams as Evidence of the Afterlife

One of the created phenomena is the dream. Behold how many secrets are deposited therein, how many wisdoms treasured up, how many worlds concealed. Observe, how thou art asleep in a dwelling, and its doors are barred; on a sudden thou findest thyself in a far-off city, which thou enterest without moving thy feet or wearying thy body; without using thine eyes, thou seest; without taxing thine ears, thou hearest; without a tongue, thou speakest. And perchance when ten years are gone, thou wilt witness in the outer world the very things thou hast dreamed tonight.

Now there are many wisdoms to ponder in the dream, which none but the people of this Valley can comprehend in their true elements. First, what is this world, where without eye and ear and hand and tongue a man puts all of these to use? Second, how is it that in the outer world thou seest today the effect of a dream, when thou didst vision it in the world of sleep some ten years past? Consider the difference between these two worlds and the mysteries which they conceal, that thou mayest attain to divine confirmations and heavenly discoveries and enter the regions of holiness.

God, the Exalted, hath placed these signs in men, to the end that philosophers may not deny the mysteries of the life beyond nor belittle that which hath been promised them. For some hold to reason and deny whatever the reason comprehendeth not, and yet weak minds can never grasp the matters which we have related, but only the Supreme, Divine Intelligence can comprehend them: (seven valleys)

The Dependence of the Body

2006-12-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Dependence of the Body on the Rational Soul

Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. Examine thine own self, and behold how thy motion and stillness, thy will and purpose, thy sight and hearing, thy sense of smell and power of speech, and whatever else is related to, or transcendeth, thy physical senses or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty. So closely are they related unto it, that if in less than the twinkling of an eye its relationship to the human body be severed, each and every one of these senses will cease immediately to exercise its function, and will be deprived of the power to manifest the evidences of its activity. It is indubitably clear and evident that each of these afore-mentioned instruments has depended, and will ever continue to depend, for its proper functioning on this rational faculty, which should be regarded as a sign of the revelation of Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all. Through its manifestation all these names and attributes have been revealed, and by the suspension of its action they are all destroyed and perish.

It would be wholly untrue to maintain that this faculty is the same as the power of vision, inasmuch as the power of vision is derived from it and acteth in dependence upon it. It would, likewise, be idle to contend that this faculty can be identified with the sense of hearing, as the sense of hearing receiveth from the rational faculty the requisite energy for performing its functions.

This same relationship bindeth this faculty with whatsoever hath been the recipient of these names and attributes within the human temple. These diverse names and revealed attributes have been generated through the agency of this sign of God.

Immeasurably exalted is this sign, in its essence and reality, above all such names and attributes. Nay, all else besides it will, when compared with its glory, fade into utter nothingness and become a thing forgotten.

Wert thou to ponder in thine heart, from now until the end that hath no end, and with all the concentrated intelligence and understanding which the greatest minds have attained in the past or will attain in the future, this divinely ordained and subtle Reality, this sign of the revelation of the All-Abiding, All-Glorious God, thou wilt fail to comprehend its mystery or to appraise its virtue.
(Gleanings, LXXXIII)

Soul's Independence

2006-12-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Soul's Independence of Physical Infirmities

... Know thou that the soul of man is exalted above, and is independent of all infirmities of body or mind. That a sick person showeth signs of weakness is due to the hindrances that interpose themselves between his soul and his body, for the soul itself remaineth unaffected by any bodily ailments.

Consider the light of the lamp. Though an external object may interfere with its radiance, the light itself continueth to shine with undiminished power. In like manner, every malady afflicting the body of man is an impediment that preventeth the soul from manifesting its inherent might and power. When it leaveth the body, however, it will evince such ascendancy, and reveal such influence as no force on earth can equal. Every pure, every refined and sanctified soul will be endowed with tremendous power, and shall rejoice with exceeding gladness. Consider the lamp which is hidden under a bushel. Though its light be shining, yet its radiance is concealed from men. Likewise, consider the sun which hath been obscured by the clouds. Observe how its splendor appeareth to have diminished, when in reality the source of that light hath remained unchanged. The soul of man should be likened unto this sun, and all things on earth should be regarded as his body. So long as no external impediment interveneth between them, the body will, in its entirety, continue to reflect the light of the soul, and to be sustained by its power.

As soon as, however, a veil interposeth itself between them, the brightness of that light seemeth to lessen. Consider again the sun when it is completely hidden behind the clouds. Though the earth is still illumined with its light, yet the measure of light which it receiveth is considerably reduced. Not until the clouds have dispersed, can the sun shine again in the plenitude of its glory. Neither the presence of the cloud nor its absence can, in any way, affect the inherent splendor of the sun. The soul of man is the sun by which his body is illumined, and from which it draweth its sustenance, and should be so regarded. ... (Gleanings LXXX)

Distinction Bestowed Upon Man

2006-12-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

All praise and glory be to God Who, through the power of His might, hath delivered His creation from the nakedness of non-existence, and clothed it with the mantle of life. From among all created things He hath singled out for His special favor the pure, the gem-like reality of man, and invested it with a unique capacity of knowing Him and of reflecting the greatness of His glory. This twofold distinction conferred upon him hath cleansed away from his heart the rust of every vain desire, and made him worthy of the vesture with which his Creator hath deigned to clothe him. It hath served to rescue his soul from the wretchedness of ignorance.

This robe with which the body and soul of man hath been adorned is the very foundation of his well-being and development. Oh, how blessed the day when, aided by the grace and might of the one true God, man will have freed himself from the bondage and corruption of the world and all that is therein, and will have attained unto true and abiding rest beneath the shadow of the Tree of Knowledge! (Gleanings)

Man's Unique Distinction

2006-12-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty. (Gleanings)

The Nature of the Soul

2006-12-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

Never before have we been given the insight that is now revealed
through the Baha'i Faith. The soul is now acknowledged in its
overwhelming presence.

"Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul.
Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God,
a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men
hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute,
can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things
to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize
His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration
before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light,
and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however,
in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim
to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths.

"Whoso hath, in this Day, refused to allow the doubts and fancies
of men to turn him away from Him Who is the Eternal Truth, and
hath not suffered the tumult provoked by the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities to deter him from recognizing His Message,
such a man will be regarded by God, the Lord of all men, as one
of His mighty signs, and will be numbered among them whose names
have been inscribed by the Pen of the Most High in His Book.
Blessed is he that hath recognized the true stature of such a soul,
that hath acknowledged its station, and discovered its virtues.

"Much hath been written in the books of old concerning
the various stages in the development of the soul,
such as concupiscence, irascibility, inspiration, benevolence,
contentment, Divine good-pleasure, and the like; the Pen of the
Most High, however, is disinclined to dwell upon them. Every soul
that walketh humbly with its God, in this Day, and cleaveth unto Him,
shall find itself invested with the honor and glory of all goodly
names and stations.

"When man is asleep, his soul can, in no wise, be said to have been
inherently affected by any external object. It is not susceptible of
any change in its original state or character. Any variation in its
functions is to be ascribed to external causes. It is to these
external influences that any variations in its environment,
its understanding, and perception should be attributed. ...

"Thou hast, moreover, asked Me concerning the state of the soul
after its separation from the body. Know thou, of a truth,
that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will,
assuredly, return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved.
By the righteousness of God! It shall attain a station such as
no pen can depict, or tongue describe. The soul that hath remained
faithful to the Cause of God, and stood unwaveringly firm in His
Path shall, after his ascension, be possessed of such power that
all the worlds which the Almighty hath created can benefit through him. ...

"As to thy question whether the physical world is subject to any
limitations, know thou that the comprehension of this matter dependeth
upon the observer himself. In one sense, it is limited; in another,
it is exalted beyond all limitations. The one true God hath everlastingly
existed, and will everlastingly continue to exist. His creation,
likewise, hath had no beginning, and will have no end. All that is
created, however, is preceded by a cause. This fact, in itself,
establisheth, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the unity of the Creator."
(Gleanings of the Writings of Baha'u'llah)

The Worlds of God

2006-12-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

What we have is a embarrassment of wealth. God is offering us a universe without end here and an unending succession of worlds in the next. So as logical persons we chose to deny it all and even claim that this universe is limited. Then we claim that God can only do what we feel He should do. What would a father do to such a misbehaving child?

"As to thy question concerning the worlds of God. Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. None can reckon or comprehend them except God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

"Consider thy state when asleep. Verily, I say, this phenomenon is the most mysterious of the signs of God amongst men, were they to ponder it in their hearts. Behold how the thing which thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized. Had the world in which thou didst find thyself in thy dream been identical with the world in which thou livest, it would have been necessary for the event occurring in that dream to have transpired in this world at the very moment of its occurrence. Were it so, you yourself would have borne witness unto it. This being not the case, however, it must necessarily follow that the world in which thou livest is different and apart from that which thou hast experienced in thy dream. This latter world hath neither beginning nor end. It would be true if thou wert to contend that this same world is, as decreed by the All-Glorious and Almighty God, within thy proper self and is wrapped up within thee. It would equally be true to maintain that thy spirit, having transcended the limitations of sleep and having stripped itself of all earthly attachment, hath, by the act of God, been made to traverse a realm which lieth hidden in the innermost reality of this world.

"Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise. Do thou meditate on that which We have revealed unto thee, that thou mayest discover the purpose of God, thy Lord, and the Lord of all worlds. In these words the mysteries of Divine Wisdom have been treasured." (Gleanings)

No Tomorrow.

2006-12-19T07:52:00.000-08:00

'All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places,
Worn out faces,'

The children are crying out for renewal
Blessed are they that teach them
with spirit and truth.

'Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere,
Going nowhere,'

The messages of the apostles are
reverberating about the halls
of heavenly schools, rilling brooks
quenching the dried throats.

'Their tears are filling up their glasses,
No expression,
No expression,'

Such were the methods of the old schools
They have lost their love
and their fingers fail to touch
outstretched hands waiting for guidance.

'Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow,
No tomorrow.'

So they have a need to feel eternity
They wait for the message of this time
The new apostle with all that was left
Unsaid, because a people were too deaf.

'And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had,'

There is no life is this old house
This place where the appliances
no longer operate with assurance.

'I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It's a very very,
Mad world, mad world.'

The spiral of madness is
spinning as wide as the universe
Wherever the children look they see
Madness, a kind of blindness

'Children waiting for the day they feel good,
Happy birthday, Happy birthday,'

They see the old very clearly
As something torn and tattered
A garment from long distant
Birthday parties, birthday parties
they wait for the renewal.

'And I feel the way that every child should,
Sit and listen,
Sit and listen,'

We must love the children and
see that mine of gems waiting
to be unearthed and polished.

'Went to school and I was very nervous,
No one knew me,
No one knew me,'

They must now be welcomed
into the new school
raised in the school of love and
understanding the rainbow colours.

'Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson,
Look right through me,
Look right through me.'

I am a creation of God.
He has wished me to display
my talents and acquire the
attributes of the Kingdom.

I am a child of the kingdom.

With lyrics interwoven of song 'Mad World by Tears for Fears'

Conciousness After Death

2006-12-18T06:43:00.001-08:00

And now concerning thy question whether human souls continue to be conscious one of another after their separation from the body. Know thou that the souls of the people of Bahá, who have entered and been established within the Crimson Ark, shall associate and commune intimately one with another, and shall be so closely associated in their lives, their aspirations, their aims and strivings as to be even as one soul. ...

The people of Bahá, who are the inmates of the Ark of God, are, one and all, well aware of one another's state and condition, and are united in the bonds of intimacy and fellowship. Such a state, however, must depend upon their faith and their conduct. They that are of the same grade and station are fully aware of one another's capacity, character, accomplishments and merits. They that are of a lower grade, however, are incapable of comprehending adequately the station, or of estimating the merits, of those that rank above them. Each shall receive his share from thy Lord. Blessed is the man that hath turned his face towards God, and walked steadfastly in His love, ...

It is clear and evident that all men shall, after their physical death, estimate the worth of their deeds, and realize all that their hands have wrought. ... They that are the followers of the one true God shall, the moment they depart out of this life, experience such joy and gladness as would be impossible to describe, while they that live in error shall be seized with such fear and trembling, and shall be filled with such consternation, as nothing can exceed. ...
(Gleanings)

The Soul After Death

2006-12-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

And now concerning thy question regarding the soul of man and its survival after death. Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter.

It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty. The movement of My Pen is stilled when it attempteth to befittingly describe the loftiness and glory of so exalted a station. The honor with which the Hand of Mercy will invest the soul is such as no tongue can adequately reveal, nor any other earthly agency describe.

Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples of the world. Such a soul liveth and moveth in accordance with the Will of its Creator, and entereth the all-highest Paradise. The Maids of Heaven, inmates of the loftiest mansions, will circle around it, and the Prophets of God and His chosen ones will seek its companionship. With them that soul will freely converse, and will recount unto them that which it hath been made to endure in the path of God, the Lord of all worlds.

If any man be told that which hath been ordained for such a soul in the worlds of God, the Lord of the throne on high and of earth below, his whole being will instantly blaze out in his great longing to attain that most exalted, that sanctified and resplendent station....

The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother. When the soul attaineth the Presence of God, it will assume the form that best befitteth its immortality and is worthy of its celestial habitation. Such an existence is a contingent and not an absolute existence, inasmuch as the former is preceded by a cause, whilst the latter is independent thereof. Absolute existence is strictly confined to God, exalted be His glory. Well is it with them that apprehend this truth. (gln)

Next Life Better

2006-12-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

And finally this is the remainder of passages found
about the nature of the soul in the Koran. See other
days in my blog for the rest. It is very comprehensive.
Taken from the book 'Writings on the Glorious Journey' by Hushidar Hugh Motlagh.

"Happy shall be the man who keeps himself pure, who remembers the name of his Lord and prays. Yet you prefer this life, although the life to come is better and more lasting."

28:60 What you have been given is but the pleasure and the gaudy show of this present life. Better is God's recompense and more lasting. Have you no sense to reason with? Can he who has received Our gracious promise, and will see it fulfilled, be compared with him to whom We have given the enjoyment of this life and who will be summoned on the Day of Resurrection?

57:20 Know that the life of this world is but a sport and a diversion, a show and an empty boast among you, a quest for greater riches and more children. It is like the plants that flourish after rain: the husbandman rejoices to see them grow; but then they wither and turn yellow, soon becoming worthless stubble.

Waste of Precious Gifts

46:18 There are rewards for all, according to their deeds, so that He may duly requite them for their works. They shall not be wronged. The day the unbelievers are exposed before the Fire, We shall say to them: 'You squandered away your precious gifts in your earthly life, and took your fill of pleasure. ...'

18:46 Coin for them a simile about the life of this world. It is like the vegetation of the earth that thrives when watered by the rain We send down from the sky, soon turning into stubble which the wind scatters abroad. God has power over all things. Wealth and children are the ornament of this life. But deeds of lasting merit are better rewarded by your Lord and hold for you a greater hope of salvation.

Next Life Greater in Grades

17:20 On all -- on these and those -- We bestow the bounty of your Lord: none shall be denied the bounty of your Lord. See how We have exalted some above others. Yet the life to come has greater honours and is more exalted. Serve no other deity besides God, lest you incur disgrace and ruin.

True Wisdom

28:60 What you have been given is but the pleasure and the gaudy show of this present life. Better is God's recompense and more lasting. Have you no sense to reason with? Can he who has received Our gracious promise, and will see it fulfilled, be compared with him to whom We have given the enjoyment of this life and who will be summoned on the Day of Resurrection?

The Bounty of God

2006-12-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

Many of my thoughts as a child were aimed at the emptiness
of my days. The world had raised me and I was a product
of its propaganda. Not a soul came to lead me to the truth.

Or I don't remember anyone showing me what I know now.
I was a desperate child and would have listened.
I was the heart of loneliness and would have welcomed
a friend with a comforting message.

But the time came to leave home and see something of
the world. I am sure that God kept me informed in
dreams and directed my steps away from the city so
I could see and meet the most interesting of people.

What I want to say now is that God has never left us alone.
He is always there and ready to answer our prayers.
But two things we must do!

First we must say prayers from our heart, our soul,
then we must be very vigilant to spot the answer.
We must develop a God consciousness. He has never left
us alone but we have forgotten Him.

Watchful are the eyes that see. God has given us spiritual
eyes and other senses that are completely undeveloped
because we have seldom used them. There is an ocean of
wonders ready for our discovery if only we make the effort.

(now from Gleanings)

"My divinely ordained Revelation may be likened unto an ocean
in whose depths are concealed innumerable pearls of great price,
of surpassing luster. It is the duty of every seeker to
bestir himself and strive to attain the shores of this ocean,
so that he may, in proportion to the eagerness of his search
and the efforts he hath exerted, partake of such benefits
as have been pre-ordained in God’s irrevocable and hidden Tablets.
If no one be willing to direct his steps towards its shores,
if every one should fail to arise and find Him,
can such a failure be said to have robbed this ocean
of its power or to have lessened, to any degree, its treasures?

"How vain, how contemptible, are the imaginations
which your hearts have devised, and are still devising!
O My servants! The one true God is My witness! This most great,
this fathomless and surging Ocean is near, astonishingly near,
unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life-vein!
Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it,
reach and partake of this imperishable favor,
this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift,
this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty."

Do all for the glory of God

2006-12-12T14:41:00.000-08:00

Malachi 3:3 says: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."

This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered
what this statement meant about the character and nature of God.

One of the women offered to find out about the process of refining
silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an
appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything
about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about
the process of refining silver.

As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over
the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one
needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the
flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then
she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner
and purifier of silver." She asked the silversmith if it was true
that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the
silver was being refined.

The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding
the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire
time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long
in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith,
"How do you know when the silver is fully refined?"

He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it."

(Anon from the internet)

How Strange

2006-12-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

Strange that in early days of the followers
They expected Him at any time to return
It took little to excite them
And many were led astray by anti-christs
Early in the faith, false prophets
Denying the physical presence of Christ
The historical Jesus?

How strange that they rejected Him
When He appeared in an unknown place
Claiming Ismail as the sacrifice
His feet marked the sands and
His Spirit transformed the world

But He cannot be our Christ
Not an Arab of the lowly desert
God is with us not out there
with heathens and animals
We will spend the next thousand years
Depriving our children of education
Because Muhammad said to 'read'*

How strange that now again He returns
And again the leaders of Christians
Deny their people even to read the bible
They claim to be the interpreters.
No other understanding is allowed.

But it has brought about their downfall
Christ's kingdom has passed on the spirit
It can not live in a house where denial dwells
Muslims kingdom has passed on the spirit
It can not live where they kill the faithful.

* No one in the desert of Europe
would rise to any insight until
1734 when Sale translated the Koran.
(by Arthur Wendover)

Receiving One's Desires

2006-12-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

If I said that it is possible to receive what you most wish both in this world and in the next, would you believe me?

That is why we have messangers. They live and demonstrate with their lives why we can believe them. All we have to do is read their words and history allowing our heart to sense the wind of their spirit.

now from the Koran

42:21 But those that have faith and do good works shall dwell in the fair gardens of Paradise, and shall receive from their Lord all that they desire. Surely that will be the supreme boon. Such is God's promise to His servants who believe and do good works.

Various Gardens

3:15 Say: 'Shall I tell you of better things than these, with which the righteous shall be rewarded by their Lord? Gardens watered by running streams, where they shall dwell for ever: spouses of perfect chastity: and grace from God.'

3:138 These shall be rewarded with forgiveness from their Lord and with gardens watered by running streams, where they shall dwell for ever. Blessed is the reward of those who do good works.

3:195 Those that fled their homes or were expelled from them, and those that suffered persecution for My sake and fought and were slain: I shall forgive them their sins and admit them to gardens watered by running streams, as a recompense from God; God dispenses the richest recompense. Do not be deceived by the fortunes of the unbelievers in the land.

5:65 If the People of the Book accept the true faith and keep from evil, We will pardon them their sins and admit them to the gardens of delight. If they observe the Torah and the Gospel and what has been revealed to them from their Lord, they shall enjoy abundance from above and from beneath. There are some among them who are righteous men; but there are many among them who do nothing but evil.

10:10 Rivers will run at their feet in the Gardens of Delight. Their prayer will be: 'Glory be to You, Lord!' and their greeting: 'Peace!' 'Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds' will be the burthen of their plea.

13:20 Truly, none will take heed but the wise: those who keep faith with God and do not break their pledge; who join together what God has bidden to be united; who fear their Lord and dread the terrors of an evil reckoning; who for the sake of God endure with fortitude, attend to their prayers, and give alms in private and in public; and who ward off evil with good. These shall have the recompense of Paradise. They shall enter the gardens of Eden, together with the righteous among their fathers, their spouses, and their descendants. From every gate the angels will come in to them, saying: 'Peace be to you for all that you have steadfastly endured. Blessed is the recompense of Paradise.'

16:31 They shall enter the gardens of Eden, where rivers will roll at their feet; and there shall they have all that they desire. Thus shall God recompense the righteous, whom the angels will reclaim, in all their virtue, saying: 'Peace be on you. Come in -- to Paradise, the reward of your labours.'

The Meager Fruits of this Life

9:38 Are you content with this life in preference to the life to come? Few indeed are the blessings of this life, compared with those of the life to come.

29:64 The life of this world is but a sport and a diversion. It is the life to come that is the true life: if they but knew it.

10:24 Take your enjoyment in this life: to Us shall you then return, and We will declare to you all that you have done. This present life is like the rich garment with which the earth adorns itself when watered by the rain We send down from the sky. Crops, sustaining man and beast, grow luxuriantly: but, as the earth's tenants begin to think themselves its masters, down comes Our scourge upon it, by night or by day, laying it waste, as though it did not blossom but yesterday. Thus do We make plain Our revelations to thoughtful men. God invites you to the Home of Peace. He guides whom He will to a straight path.

Keeping the Covenant

16:95 You shall not barter God's covenant for a trifling price. God's reward is better for you, if you but knew it. Your worldly riches are transitory, but God's reward is everlasting.

16:96 We shall recompense the steadfast according to their noblest deeds. Be they men or women, to those that embrace the Faith and do what is right. We will surely grant a happy life; We shall reward them according to their noblest deeds.

9:110 Who is a better man, he who founds his house on the fear of God and His good pleasure, or he who builds on the brink of a crumbling precipice, so that his house will fall with him into the fire of Hell? God does not guide the wrongdoers.

The Soul's Destiny

2006-12-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

(from the Koran)

89:27 O serene soul! Return to your Lord, joyful, and pleasing in His sight. Join My servants and enter My Paradise.

Choosing One's Harvest Field

42:19 Whoever seeks the harvest of the world to come, to him We will give in great abundance; and whoever desires the harvest of this world, a share of it shall be his: but in the world to come he shall have no share at all.

Punishment of the Unjust

42:42 When they face the scourge, you shall see the wrong-doers exclaim: 'Is there no way back?' You shall see them ranged before the Fire. Awed and humiliated, they shall look upon it with furtive glances. The true believers will say: 'The losers are those who forfeited their souls and all their kindred on the Day of Resurrection.' The wrongdoers shall surely suffer everlasting torment. They shall have no friends besides God to help them. He whom God confounds shall be lost indeed.

Terrible Retribution

39:47 If the wrongdoers possessed all the treasures of the earth and as much besides, they would gladly offer it to redeem themselves from the harrowing scourge on the Day of Resurrection. For God will show them what they have never reckoned with. The evil of their deeds will manifest itself to them, and that which they derided will encompass them.

Joys for the Good

32:16 No mortal knows what bliss will be in store ... Can he, then, who is a true believer, be compared to him who is an evil-doer? Surely they are not equal. Those that have faith and do good works shall be lodged in the gardens of Paradise in recompense for their labours.

Gardens for the Faithful

14:28 As for those that have faith and do good works, they shall be admitted to gardens watered by running streams, in which, by their Lord's leave, they shall abide for ever. Their greeting shall be: 'Peace!' Do you not see how God compares a good word to a good tree? Its root is firm and its branches are in the sky; It yields its fruit in every season by God's leave. God speaks in parables to men so that they may take heed.

The Obedient and the Prophets Together

4:71 He that obeys God and the Apostle shall dwell with the prophets and the saints; the martyrs and the righteous men whom God has favoured. Gracious companions will be those. Such is the bounty of God. Sufficient is God's infinite knowledge.

Just Balance

21:48 We shall set up just scales on the Day of Resurrection, so that no man shall in the least be wronged. Actions as small as a grain of mustard seed shall be weighed out. Our reckoning shall suffice.

The Reward of the Blessed

11:110 As for the blessed, they shall abide in Paradise as long as the heavens and the earth endure, unless your Lord ordain otherwise. Theirs shall be an endless recompense.

What does Paul Say about the Soul?

2006-12-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

"But someone may ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what
kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does
not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not
plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat
or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined,
and to each kind of seed he gives its own body ... There also
are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the
splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour
of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendour;
the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from
star in splendour.

"So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that
is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable... it is sown
a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So
it is written: 'The first man Adam became a living being'; the
last Adam, a life-giving spirit... The first man was of the dust
of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly
man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from
heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have
borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the
likeness of the man from heaven.

"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the
imperishable" (I Cor. 15:35-50 NIV)

Descriptions of Heaven and Hell

2006-12-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

Peace in the Garden of Eden
from the Koran

19:62 But those that repent and embrace the Faith and do what is right shall enter Paradise and shall in no way be wronged: the gardens of Eden, which the Merciful has promised on trust to His servants. His promise shall be fulfilled. There they shall hear no idle talk, but only the voice of peace. And their sustenance shall be given them there morning and evening. Such is the Paradise which We shall give the righteous among our servants to inherit.

Deeds that Lead to Paradise

51:14 The righteous shall dwell amidst gardens and fountains, and shall receive what their Lord will give them. For they have done good works, sleeping but little in the night-time, praying at dawn for God's pardon, and sharing their goods with the beggars and the deprived. On earth, and in yourselves, there are signs for firm believers. Can you not see? Heaven holds your sustenance and all that you are promised.

An Image of Paradise

13:35 Such is the Paradise which the righteous have been promised: it is watered by running streams: eternal is its fruit, and eternal is its shade. Such shall be the end of the righteous. But the Fire shall be the end of the unbelievers.

Who will Dwell in Paradise?

7:42 As for those that have faith and do good works We never charge a soul with more than it can bear they are the heirs of Paradise, and there they shall abide for ever.

We shall take away all hatred from their hearts. Rivers will roll at their feet and they shall say: 'Praise be to God who has guided us hither. Had He not given us guidance we would have strayed from the right path. Our Lord's apostles have surely preached the truth.' And a voice will cry out to them, saying: 'This is the Paradise which you have earned with your labours.'

7:44 Then the heirs of Paradise will cry out to the inmates of the Fire: 'What our Lord promised we have found to be true. Have you, too, found the promise of your Lord to be true?'

The Abode of the Pious

15:46 But the righteous shall dwell among gardens and fountains; in peace and safety they shall enter them. We shall remove all hatred from their hearts, and they shall take their ease on couches face to face, a band of brothers. Toil shall not weary them, nor shall they ever be driven out.

Faith and Good Deeds Required for Entering Paradise

65:11 He that believes in God and does good works shall be admitted to gardens watered by running streams, where he shall dwell for ever. A rich provision God has made for him.

47:13 God will admit those who embrace the true Faith and do good works to gardens watered by running streams. ...

47:15 Such is the Paradise which the righteous have been promised: Therein shall flow rivers of water undefiled, and rivers of milk for ever fresh; rivers of wine delectable to those that drink it, and rivers of clarified honey. There shall they eat of every fruit, and receive forgiveness from their Lord.

42:21 But those that have faith and do good works shall dwell in the fair gardens of Paradise, and shall receive from their Lord all that they desire.

And there are Angels

2006-12-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

(from the Koran)

82:10 Surely there are guardians watching over you, noble recorders who know of all your actions. The righteous will surely dwell in bliss. But the wicked shall burn in Hell upon the Judgement-day: nor shall they ever escape from it.

21:18 Indeed, We will hurl Truth at Falsehood, until Truth shall triumph and Falsehood be no more. Woe betide you, for all the falsehoods you have uttered. His are all who dwell in the heavens and on earth. Those who stand in His presence do not disdain to worship Him, nor are they ever wearied. They praise Him night and day, tirelessly.

41:30 As for those who say: 'Our Lord is God,' and take the straight path to Him, the angels will descend to them, saying: 'Have no fear, and do not grieve. Rejoice in the Paradise you have been promised. We are your guardians in this world and in the world to come. There you shall find all that your souls desire and all that you can ask for: a rich provision from a forgiving and a merciful God.'

6:61 'He reigns supreme over His servants. He sends forth guardians who watch over you and claim your souls without fail when death overtakes you. Then are all men restored to God, their true Lord. His is the Judgement, and most swift is His reckoning.'

13:12 Each has guardian angels before him and behind him, who watch him by God's command. God does not change a people's lot unless they change what is in their hearts. If God seeks to afflict them with a misfortune, none can ward it off. Besides Him, they have no protector.

16:2 By His will He sends down the angels with the Spirit to those among His servants whom He chooses, bidding them proclaim: 'There is no god but Me: therefore fear Me.'

79:1 By those who snatch away men's souls, and those who gently release them; by those who float at will, and those who speed headlong; by those who govern the affairs of this world!

66:6 Believers, guard yourselves and guard your kindred against a Fire fuelled with men and stones, in the charge of stern and mighty angels who never disobey God's command and who promptly do His bidding. They will say to the unbelievers: 'Make no excuses for yourselves this day. You shall be rewarded according only to your deeds.'

86:1 By the heaven, and by the nightly visitant! Would that you knew what the nightly visitant is! It is the star of piercing brightness. For every soul there is a guardian watching it. Let man reflect from what he is created.

33:42 Believers, be ever mindful of God: praise Him morning and evening. He and His angels bless you, so that He may lead you from darkness to the light. He is ever merciful to true believers.

43:18 They regard as females the angels who are God's servants. Did they witness their creation?

35:1 Praise be to God, Creator of the heavens and the earth! He sends forth the angels as His messengers, with two, three or four pairs of wings. He multiplies His creatures according to His will. God has power over all things.

The Soul's Reluctance to Review Bad Deeds

3:28 The day will surely come when each soul will be confronted with whatever good it did. As for its evil deeds, it will wish they were a long way off. God admonishes you to fear Him. God is compassionate towards His servants.

The Day of Reckoning

16:112 ... on the day when every soul will come pleading for itself, when every soul will be requited for its deeds. None shall be wronged.

The Day of Reward

2:281 Fear the day when you shall all return to God; when every soul shall be paid back for what it did. None shall be wronged.

A Prayer for Forgiveness

14:42 'Lord, make me and my descendants steadfast in prayer.' Lord, accept my prayer. 'Forgive me, Lord, and forgive my parents and all the faithful on the Day of Reckoning.'

On the Nature of the Soul

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As Explained by Muhammad

God's Bounties for Martyrs

3:169 Never think that those who were slain in the cause of God are dead.
They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord; pleased with His
gifts and rejoicing that those they left behind, who have not yet joined
them, have nothing to fear or to regret; rejoicing in God's grace and
bounty.

Humans Accountable

16:90 Had God pleased, He could have made you one people: but He caused whom He will to err, and whom He will He guideth: and you shall assuredly be called to account for your doings.

Purity

35:19 He that keeps himself pure has much to gain. To God shall all return. The blind and the seeing are not equal, nor are the darkness and the light.

A Prayer

40:7 'Lord, You embrace all things with Your mercy and Your knowledge. 'Forgive those that repent and follow Your path. Shield them from the scourge of Hell. Admit them, Lord, to the gardens of Eden which You have promised them, together with all the righteous among their fathers, their spouses, and their descendants. 'You are the Almighty, the Wise One. Shield them from all evil. He whom You will shield from evil on that day will surely earn Your mercy. That is the supreme triumph.'

Unto Him shall Ye Return

31:14 ... follow the path of those who turn to Me. To Me shall you return, and I will declare to you all that you have done.

10:4 To Him shall you all return: God's promise shall be fulfilled. He brings the Creation into being and will then restore it, so that He may justly recompense those who have believed in Him and done good works.

Attaining Old Age

16:72 And God hath created you; by and bye will he take you to himself; and some among you will he carry on to abject old age, when all that once was known is known no longer. Aye, God is Knowing, Powerful.

A Home in Heaven

29:56 You that are true believers among My servants, My earth is vast. Therefore serve Me. Every soul shall taste death, and then to Us shall you be recalled. Those that embrace the true Faith and do good works We shall lodge for ever in the mansions of Paradise, where rivers will roll at their feet. Blessed is the reward of those who labour patiently and put their trust in their Lord.

God's Nearness to the Dying

56:83 When under your very eyes a man's soul is about to leave him (We are nearer to him than you, although you cannot see Us),

Sovereignty of God

19:40 We Ourself shall inherit the earth and all who dwell upon it. To Us they shall return.

On the Day of Resurrection

19:93 There is none in the heavens or on earth but shall return to the Merciful in utter submission. He has kept strict count of all His creatures, and one by one they shall approach Him on the Day of Resurrection. The Merciful will cherish those who accepted the true faith and were charitable in their lifetime.

All Deeds Recorded

36:11 You(Muhammad) shall forewarn none but those who observe Our precepts and fear the Merciful, though they cannot see Him. To these give news of pardon and a rich reward. It is We who will resurrect the dead. We record the deeds of men and the marks they leave behind: We note all things in a glorious book.

18:46 Wealth and children are the ornament of this life. But deeds of lasting merit are better rewarded by your Lord and hold for you a greater hope of salvation. Tell of the day when We shall blot out the mountains and make the earth a barren waste; when We shall gather all mankind together, leaving not a soul behind.

They shall be ranged before your Lord, and He will say to them: 'You have returned to Us as We created you at first. Yet you supposed We had not set for you a predestined time. Their book will be laid down, and you shall see the sinners dismayed at the content. They will say: 'Woe betide us! What can this book mean? It omits nothing small or great: all is noted down!' and they shall find their deeds recorded there. Your Lord will wrong none.

17:15 The fate of each man We have bound about his neck. On the Day of Resurrection We shall confront him with a book spread wide open, saying: 'Here is your book: read it. Enough for you this day that your own soul should call you to account.' He that seeks guidance shall be guided to his advantage, but he that errs shall err at his peril. No soul shall bear another's burden. Nor do We punish until We have sent forth a messenger.

17:72 The day will surely come when We shall summon each community with its leader. Those who are given their books in their right hands will read their recorded doings, and shall not in the least be wronged. But those who have been blind in this life shall be blind in the life to come and more misguided.

58:6 Those that oppose God and His Apostle shall be brought low, as have been those before them. We have sent down clear revelations. Shameful punishment awaits the unbelievers. On the day when God restores them all to life He will inform them of their actions. God has counted these, although they have forgotten them; God is witness of all things.

24:64 Surely to God belongs what the heavens and the earth contain. He has knowledge of all your thoughts and actions. On the day when they return to Him, He will declare to them all that they have done. God has knowledge of all things.

21:94 Men have divided themselves into factions, but to Us shall they all return. He that does good works in the fullness of his faith, his endeavours shall not be lost: We record them all.

78:40 We have forewarned you of an imminent scourge: The day when man will look upon his works and the unbeliever cry: 'Would that I were dust!'

9:106 Say: 'Do as you will. God will behold your works, and so will His Apostle and the faithful; then shall you return to Him who knows alike the unknown and the manifest, and He will declare to you all that you have done.'

Personal Accountability

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The Soul and its Accountability

From the Koran

39:9 No soul shall bear another's burden. To your Lord shall you return and He will declare to you what you have done. He knows your innermost thoughts.

Knowledge of Afterlife

27:66 Say: 'Show us your proof, if what you say be true!' Say: 'No one in the heavens or on earth has knowledge of what is hidden except God. Nor shall men ever know when they will be raised to life.' Have they attained a knowledge of the life to come? By no means! They are in doubt about it and their eyes are sealed.

Meeting the Lord

32:9 They say: 'Once lost into the earth, shall we be created afresh?' Indeed, they deny they will ever meet their Lord. Say: 'The angel of death in charge of you will reclaim your souls. Then to your Lord shall you be recalled.' Would that you could see the wrongdoers when they hang their heads before their Lord!

God, the Forgiving

4:109 Yes, you may plead for them in this life, but who will plead for them with God on the Day of Resurrection? Who will be their defender? He that does evil or wrongs his own soul and then seeks God's pardon, will find God forgiving and merciful. He that commits sin commits it against his own soul. God is all-knowing and wise.

Freedom of Choice

3:139 No one dies unless God wills. The term of every life is fixed. He that desires the reward of this world shall have it; and he that desires the reward of the life to come shall have it also. We will surely recompense the thankful.

Deniers Afflicted by Delusion

67:6 We have prepared the scourge of the Fire for these, and the scourge of Hell for those who deny their Lord: an evil fate!

When they are flung into its flames, they shall hear it roaring and seething, as though bursting with rage. And every time a multitude is thrown therein, its keepers will say to them: 'Did no one come to warn you?' 'Yes,' they will reply, 'he did come, but we rejected him and said: "God has revealed nothing: you are in grievous error."' And they will say: 'If only we listened and understood, we should not now be among the inmates of the Fire.' Thus shall they confess their sin. Far from God's mercy are the inmates of the Fire.

Turning to God

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About the Nature of the Soul

In the Koran, Muhammad has revealed somewhat more than we had before about the spiritual nature of the soul.

66:8 'Believers, turn to God in true repentance.' Your Lord may forgive you your sins and admit you to gardens watered by running streams, on a day when the Prophet and those who believe with him will suffer no disgrace at the hands of God. Their light will shine in front of them and on their right, and they will say: 'Lord, perfect our light for us and forgive us. You have power over all things.'

The Great Bounty

57:12 The day will surely come when you shall see the true believers, men and women, with their light shining before them and on their right hands, and a voice saying to them: 'Rejoice this day. You shall enter gardens watered by running streams in which you shall abide for ever.' That is the supreme triumph.

Making an Exclusive Claim to Paradise

Say: 'If God's Abode of the Hereafter is for yourselves alone, to the exclusion of all others, then wish for death if your claim be true!' But they will never wish for death, because of what they did; for God knows the evil-doers. Indeed, you will find they love this life more than other men:

Death at a Fixed Time, Dreams are a Sign

39:42 God takes away men's souls upon their death, and the souls of the living during their sleep. Those that are doomed He keeps with Him, and restores the others for a time ordained. Surely there are signs in this for thinking men.

Life Review

6:60 'It is He that claims your soul by night, knowing what you have done by day, and then awakens you to fulfil your allotted span of life. Then to Him shall you return, and He will then declare to you all that you have done. 'He reigns supreme over His servants. He sends forth guardians who watch over you and claim your souls without fail when death overtakes you. Then are all men restored to God, their true Lord. His is the Judgement, and most swift is His reckoning.'

What is the Soul?

17:85 They put questions to you about the Spirit. Say: 'The Spirit is at my Lord's command. Little indeed is the knowledge vouchsafed to you.'

From Imam Ali: "It is a divine energy, a substance, simple, and self-subsistent ... it is the Most Sublime Essence of God" (Ali was the appointed interpreter of Muhammad's words)

God the Refuge

6:40 Say: 'Do but consider. When God's scourge smites you and the Hour of Doom suddenly overtakes you, will you call on any but God to help you? Answer true, if you are truthful! No, on Him alone you will call; and, if He please, He will relieve your affliction.'

The Greatfulness of the People of Paradise

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We may complain that every item in this world is tempting us away from God. But the signs are large and well definded the path is straight and narrow and the rewards are great. Well after it is all over where do you really want to be?

35:31 They will say: 'Praise be to God who has taken away all sorrow from us. Our Lord is forgiving and bountiful in His rewards. Through His grace He has admitted us to the Eternal Mansion, where we shall endure no toil, no weariness.'

The Conversation Between the People of Paradise and Hell

57:13 On that day the hypocrites, both men and women, will say to the true believers: 'Wait for us, that we may borrow some of your light.' But they will be told: 'Go back, and seek some other light!'

A wall with a gate shall be set before them. Inside there shall be mercy, and without, to the fore, the scourge of Hell. They will call out to them, saying: 'Were we not on your side?' 'Yes,' they will reply, 'but you tempted yourselves, you wavered, you doubted, and were deceived by vain desires until God's will was done and the Dissembler misled you about God. Today no ransom shall be accepted from you, or from the unbelievers. The Fire shall be your home: you have justly earned it, an evil end!'

The Impassable Barrier

25:22 On the day when they behold the angels, the evil-doers will not rejoice that day. The angels will say to them: 'You shall never cross that barrier.' Then We shall turn to that which they have done and tender it as vain as scattered dust.

Being Charitable Before Losing the Chance

63:10 Give, then, of that which We have given you before death befalls you and you say: 'Reprieve me, Lord, awhile, that I may give in charity and be among the righteous.' But God reprieves no soul when its term expires. God has knowledge of all your actions.

On the Day of Resurrection

60:4 On the Day of Resurrection neither your kinsfolk nor your children shall avail you. God will separate you. He is cognizant of all your actions.

31:34 You people! Fear your Lord, and fear the day when no parent shall avail his child nor any child his parent. God's promise is surely true. Let the life of this world never deceive you, nor let the Dissembler trick you about God.

19:87 None has power to intercede for them save him who has received the sanction of the Merciful.

The Stubborn Doubters

22:55 Yet will the unbelievers never cease to doubt it, until the Hour of Doom overtakes them unawares, or the scourge of a baleful day descends upon them. On that day God will reign supreme. He will judge them all. Those that have embraced the true Faith and done good works shall enter the gardens of delight; but the unbelievers who have denied Our revelations shall receive an ignominious punishment.

Vying for Pardon and Paradise

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From the Koran

57:21 The life of this world is but a vain provision.
Therefore strive for the pardon of your Lord, and for
a Paradise as vast as heaven and earth, prepared for
those who believe in God and His Apostles. Such is
the grace of God: He bestows it on whom He will.
God's grace is infinite.

The Way of Paradise

34:36 Neither your riches nor your children shall bring you one jot nearer to Us. Those that have faith and do what is right shall be doubly rewarded for their deeds: in the High Pavilions they shall dwell in peace:

4:35 If you avoid the enormities you are forbidden, We shall pardon your misdeeds and usher you in with all honour. Do not covet the favours by which God has exalted some among you above others. Men shall be rewarded according to their deeds, and women shall be rewarded according to their deeds. Rather implore God to bestow on you His gifts.

The State of the People of Paradise

10:9 As for those that believe and do good works, God will guide them through their faith. Rivers will run at their feet in the Gardens of Delight. Their prayer will be: 'Glory be to You, Lord!' and their greeting: 'Peace!' 'Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds' will be the burthen of their plea.

Blind Here and Hereafter

17:72 The day will surely come when We shall summon each community with its leader. Those who are given their books in their right hands will read their recorded doings, and shall not in the least be wronged. But those who have been blind in this life shall be blind in the life to come and more misguided.

Return from Next Life Impossible

23;101 When death comes to a wrongdoer, he will say: 'Lord, let me go back, that I may do good works in the world I have left behind.' Never! These are the very words which he will speak. Behind them there shall stand a barrier till the Day of Resurrection.

The Desire to Return to this World

32;12 Would that you could see the wrongdoers when they hang their heads before their Lord! They will say: 'Lord, we now see and hear. Send us back and we will do good works. Now we are firm believers.'

35:36 As for the unbelievers, the fire of Hell awaits them. Death shall not deliver them, nor shall its torment ever be eased for them. Thus shall We reward the thankless. There they will cry out: 'Lord, remove us hence! We will live a good life and will not do as we have done.' But He will answer: 'Did We not make your lives long enough for anyone who would be warned to take warning?'

40:84 And when they beheld Our might they said: 'We now believe in God alone. We deny the idols which We served besides Him.' But their new faith was of no avail to them, when they beheld Our might: such being the way of God with His creatures; and there and then the unbelievers lost out.

The Soul as Muhammad Explains

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God Will Quicken the Dead

30:49 Behold then the tokens of God's mercy; how He resurrects the
earth after its death. It is He who will resurrect the dead. He
has power over all things.

Birth into the Next Life

29:19 Do they not see how God conceives Creation, and then renews
it? That is easy enough for God. Say: 'Roam the earth and see how
God has brought the Creation into being. Then will God initiate
the Latter Creation. God has power over all things; He punishes
whom He will and shows mercy to whom He pleases. To Him shall
you be recalled.'

Death Inevitable

4:75 Wherever you be, death will overtake you: though you put
yourselves in lofty towers.'

75:30 On that day there shall be mournful faces, dreading some
great affliction. But when a man's soul is about to leave him
and those around him cry: 'Will no one save him?' When he knows
it is the final parting and the pangs of death assail him, on
that day to your Lord he shall be driven.

Life and Death in God's Hands

10:4 To Him shall you all return: God's promise shall be fulfilled.
He brings the Creation into being and will then restore it, so
that He may justly recompense those who have believed in Him and
done good works.

3:139 No one dies unless God wills. The term of every life is fixed.
He that desires the reward of this world shall have it; and he
that desires the reward of the life to come shall have it also.
We will surely recompense the thankful.

The Future Home

29:64 The life of this world is but a sport and a diversion. It
is the life to come that is the true life: if they but knew it.

28:83 As for the abode of the hereafter, We shall assign it to
those who seek neither grandeur on the earth nor evil-doing.
The righteous shall have a blessed end. He that does good shall
be rewarded with what is better. But he that does evil shall be
requited according only to his deeds. He who has committed the
Koran to your keeping will surely bring you home again.

see afterlife

Teachings of the Qur'an about the Afterlife

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Much more enlightening is the Koran. It speaks of the
afterlife in terms that are more glowing and assuring.

This World Created for a Serious Purpose

30:6 They know the outward show of this nether life,
but of the life to come they are heedless. Have they
not pondered within their own minds that God created
the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them
only for a worthy end, and for an appointed term?
Yet many deny they will ever meet their Lord.

10:5 It was He that gave the sun his brightness and the
moon her light, ordaining her phases that you may learn
to compute the seasons and the years.

God created them only to manifest the Truth. He makes plain
His revelations to men of knowledge. In the alternation of
night and day, and in all that God has created in the heavens
and the earth, there are signs for righteous men.

This Life a Test

3:184 You shall be sorely tried in the matter of your
possessions and your persons, and will hear much that is
hurtful from those who were given the Scriptures before you,
and from the pagans.

21:35 No man before you have We made immortal. If you yourself
are doomed to die, will they live on for ever? Every soul shall
taste death. We will prove you all with evil and good. To Us
shall you return.

Everything Will Come to Light

31:15 'My son, God will bring all things to light,
be they as small as a grain of mustard seed, be they hidden
inside a rock or in the heavens or the earth. Gracious is God
and all-knowing. 'My son, be steadfast in prayer, enjoin
justice, and forbid evil. Endure with fortitude whatever
befalls you. That is a duty incumbent on all.

Little Children in Heaven

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All little children, of whom a third part of heaven is formed,
are initiated into the acknowledgment and faith that the Lord is
their Father, and afterwards that He is the Lord of all, therefore
God of heaven and earth. It will be seen in the following pages that
little children grow up in the heavens and, by means of cognitions,
are perfected even to angelic intelligence and wisdom.
(see Swedenborg)

Meaning of Life and Death

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Luke

15:10 'I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God
over one sinner who repents.'

15:11 Again he said: 'There was once a man who had two sons; and
the younger said to his father, "Father, give me my share of the
property." So he divided his estate between them. A few days later
the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash and left
home for a distant country, where he squandered it in reckless
living. He had spent it all, when a severe famine fell upon that
country and he began to feel the pinch. So he went and attached
himself to one of the local landowners, who sent him on to his
farm to mind the pigs. He would have been glad to fill his belly
with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him
anything. Then he came to his senses and said, "How many of my
father's paid servants have more food than they can eat, and here
am I, starving to death! I will set off and go to my father, and
say to him, 'Father, I have sinned, against God and against you;
I am no longer fit to be called your son; treat me as one of your
paid servants.'" So he set out for his father's house. But while
he was still a long way off his father saw him, and his heart went
out to him. He ran to meet him, flung his arms round him, and kissed
him. The son said, "Father, I have sinned, against God and against
you; I am no longer fit to be called your son." But the father said
to his servants, "Quick! fetch a robe, my best one, and put it on
him; put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. Bring the fatted
calf and kill it, and let us have a feast to celebrate the day. For
this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost
and is found." And the festivities began.

Eternal Life

Luke

20:36 'The men and women of this world marry; but those who have
been judged worthy of a place in the other world and of the
resurrection from the dead, do not marry, for they are not subject
to death any longer. They are like angels; they are sons of God,
because they share in the resurrection.

Rebirth

John

3:3 'In truth, in very truth I tell you, unless a man has been born
over again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' 'But how is it possible',
said Nicodemus, 'for a man to be born when he is old? Can he enter his
mother's womb a second time and be born?' Jesus answered, 'In truth
I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born
from water and spirit. Flesh can give birth only to flesh; it is
spirit that gives birth to spirit. You ought not to be astonished,
then, when I tell you that you must be born over again. The wind blows
where it wills; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where
it comes from, or where it is going. So with everyone who is born
from spirit.'

Role of Angels

Hebrews

1:14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for
the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?

Brevity of this Life

I Peter

1:24 For, All flesh is as grass, And all the glory thereof as the flower
of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth: But the word of
the Lord abideth for ever. And this is the word of good tidings which
was preached unto you.

Loosing One's Soul

Matthew

16:26 What will a man gain by winning the whole world, at the cost of his
true self? Or what can he give that will buy that self back? For the Son
of Man is to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he
will give each man the due reward for what he has done.

Seeking the Eternal

John

6:27 'You must work, not for this perishable food, but for the food that
lasts, the food of eternal life. This food the Son of Man will give you,
for he it is upon whom God the Father has set the seal of his authority.'

Matthew

13:44 'The kingdom of Heaven is like treasure lying buried in a field.
The man who found it, buried it again; and for sheer joy went and sold
everything he had, and bought that field.

'Here is another picture of the kingdom of heaven. A merchant looking out
for fine pearls found one of very special value; so he went and sold
everything he had, and bought it.

'Again the kingdom of Heaven is like a net let down into the sea,
where fish of every kind were caught in it. When it was full, it
was dragged ashore. Then the men sat down and collected the good fish
into pails and threw the worthless away. That is how it will be at
the end of time.'

Detachment

Luke

9:61 'I will follow you, sir; but let me first say good-bye to my people
at home.' To him Jesus said, 'No one who sets his hand to the plough and
then keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.'

Seeking God's Kingdom

Luke

12:31 No, set your mind upon his kingdom, and all the rest will come
to you as well. Have no fear little flock; for your Father has chosen
to give you the Kingdom. Sell your possessions and give in charity.
Provide for yourselves purses that do not wear out, and never-failing
treasure in heaven, where no thief can get near it, no moth destroy it.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew

16:25 Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let
himself be lost for my sake, he will find his true self. What will a
man gain by winning the whole world, at the cost of his true self?
Or what can he give that will buy that self back?

Romans

14:8 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die,
we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the
Lord's.

That Waiting Spot

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Is like a slice out of heaven
Green and shady, cool and sheltered
White house, large front porch
Awaiting the souls of Baha
Providing a place calming
There for meditating and prayer
Making plans for the future
Young girls and old parrots come to visit
Ghosts, curious and needy.

It is a direction to the lost
A comfort to me knowing that it stands
Strong, in a quiet clearing
Looking out on a leg of the sea.


Springing from the Heart

What is my faith?
It is a springing, a gushing, of joy from my heart
A welling of tears from my eyes
It is the inspiration of a slowly developing understanding
It is remembering to read the Word
It is the deliberate teaching of the Word
It is the love which grows as each day unfolds
Watching the signs of God, so clear, as the old world rolls up

Many Mansions

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Jesus gets very specific about the soul in these passages.

John

14:1 'Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God always;
trust also in me. There are many dwelling-places in my Father's
house; if it were not so I should have told you; for I am going
there on purpose to prepare a place for you. And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I shall come again and receive you to
myself, so that where I am you may be also; and my way there is
known to you.' Thomas said, 'Lord, we do not know where you are
going, so how can we know the way?' Jesus replied, 'I am the way;
I am the truth and I am life; no one comes to the Father except
by me.

Humility the Key to Heaven

Matthew

18:3 'I tell you this: unless you turn round and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Let a man
humble himself till he is like this child, and he will be the
greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.

5:3 'How blest are those who know their need of God; the kingdom
of Heaven is theirs. 'How blest are the sorrowful; they shall
find consolation.

Mark

10:15 'Let the children come to me; do not try to stop them; for
the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you, whoever
does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter
it.'

An Eternal House in Heaven

II Corinthians

5:1 For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to be
clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven:

Wicked will not Inherit the Kingdom

I Corinthians

6:9 Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom
of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor
thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners,
shall inherit the kingdom of God.

The First shall be Last

Luke

13:24 'Struggle to get in through the narrow door; for I tell you that
many will try to enter and not be able. 'When once the master of the
house has got up and locked the door, you may stand outside and knock,
and say, "Sir, let us in!", but he will only answer, I do not know where
you come from." Then you will begin to say, "We sat at table with you and
you taught in our streets." But he will repeat, "I tell you, I do not
know where you come from. Out of my sight, all of you, you and your wicked
ways!" There will be wailing and grinding of teeth there, when you see
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God,
and yourselves thrown out. From east and west people will come, from north
and south, for the feast in the kingdom of God. Yes, and some who are
now last will be first, and some who are first will be last.'

Book of Life

Revelation

20:14 I could see the dead, great and small, standing before the
throne; and books were opened. Then another book was opened, the
roll of the living. From what was written in these books the dead
were judged upon the record of their deeds.

Avoiding Hell

Mark

9:47 ... it is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye
than to keep both eyes and be thrown into hell, where the devouring
worm never dies and the fire is not quenched.

The Impassable Chasm

2006-11-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

The truth of the next life is demonstrated by the words
and sacrifice of Jesus. Would He have given up His life
if He was speaking falsely? Would He have lived a life of
deliberate poverty if what He had to say was only invention?
The afterlife is spiritual and that starts for us even as
we are enlightened by the messengers.

Luke

16:19 'There was once a rich man, who dressed in purple
and the finest linen, and feasted in great magnificence
every day. At his gate, covered with sores, lay a poor man
named Lazarus, who would have been glad to satisfy his hunger
with the scraps from the rich man's table. Even the dogs
used to come and lick his sores. One day the poor man died
and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The
rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, where he was
in torment, he looked up; and there, far away, was Abraham
with Lazarus close beside him.

24 "Abraham, my father," he called out, "take pity on me! Send
Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue,
for I am in agony in this fire." But Abraham said, "Remember, my
child, that all the good things fell to you while you were alive,
and all the bad to Lazarus; now he has his consolation here and it
is you who are in agony. But that is not all: there is a great
chasm fixed between us; no one from our side who wants to reach you
can cross it, and none may pass from your side to us." "Then,
father," he replied, "will you send him to my father's house, where
I have five brothers, to warn them, so that they too may not come
to this place of torment?" But Abraham said, "They have Moses and
the prophets; let them listen to them." "No, father Abraham," he
replied, "but if someone from the dead visits them, they will repent."
Abraham answered, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets
they will pay no heed even if someone should rise from the dead."'

Nearness to Christ Must be Earned

Mark

10:35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him and said,
'Master, we should like you to do us a favour.' 'What is it you
want me to do?' he asked. They answered, 'Grant us the right to sit
in state with you, one at your right and the other at your left.'
Jesus said to them, 'You do not understand what you are asking. Can
you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism I
am baptized with?' 'We can', they answered. Jesus said, 'The cup
that I drink you shall drink, and the baptism I am baptized with
shall be your baptism; but to sit at my right or left is not for
me to grant; it is for those to whom it has already been assigned.'

Consequence Inevitable

Matthew

16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; what
you forbid on earth shall be forbidden in heaven, and what you
allow on earth shall be allowed in heaven.' He then gave his
disciples strict orders not to tell anyone that he was the
Messiah. ...

19:23 Jesus said to his disciples, 'I tell you this: a rich man
will find it hard to enter the kingdom of Heaven. I repeat, it
is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' The disciples were
amazed to hear this. 'Then who can be saved?' they asked. Jesus
looked at them, and said, 'For men this is impossible; but
everything is possible for God.'

Eternal Life Dependent on Faith and Good Deeds

Matthew

19:21 But - if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments ...

John

3:15 This Son of Man must be lifted up as the serpent was lifted
up by Moses in the wilderness, so that everyone who has faith in
him may in him possess eternal life.

5:24 'In very truth, anyone who gives heed to what I say and puts
his trust in him who sent me has hold of eternal life, and does
not come up for judgement, but has already passed from death to
life. In truth, in very truth I tell you, a time is coming, indeed
it is already here, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son
of God, and all who hear shall come to life. For as the Father has
life-giving power in himself, so has the Son, by the Father's gift.

8:51 I do not care about my own glory; there is one who does care,
and he is judge. In very truth I tell you; if anyone obeys my
teaching he shall never know what it is to die.'

11:25 'I am the resurrection and I am life. If a man has faith in me,
even though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive
and has faith shall ever die.

Galatians

6:8 For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit
reap eternal life.

Revelation

2:10 Only be faithful till death, and I will give you the crown of
life. Hear, you who have ears to hear, what the Spirit says to the
churches! He who is victorious cannot be harmed by the second death.

God's Sight

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The statements about 'judgment day' indicate a living soul.

Hebrews

4:12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it
divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is
able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked
and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must
render an account.

Day of Judgment

Revelation

20:13 The sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave
up the dead in their keeping; they were judged, each man
on the record of his deeds. Then Death and Hades were flung
into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death;
and into it were flung any whose names were not to be found
in the roll of the living.

Judgment Seat

Romans

14:10 But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? or thou again,
why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand
before the judgment-seat of God. For it is written, As I live,
saith the Lord, to me every knee shall bow, And every tongue shall
confess to God. So then each one of us shall give account of
himself to God.

The Day of Reckoning

II Corinthians

5:10 For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat
of Christ; that each one may receive the things [done] in the
body, according to what he hath done, whether [it be] good or
bad.

Looking at the Eternal

2006-11-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

This collection of writings from the New Testament ends
with Paul's desciption of the nature of the soul.

II Corinthians

4:16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature
is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us
for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,
because we look not at what can be seen
but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary,
but what cannot be seen is eternal.

Essence of Life

James

2:26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead,
so faith without works is also dead.

Matthew

10:28 Do not fear those who kill the body,
but cannot kill the soul.
Fear him rather who is able to destroy
both soul and body in hell.

Heavenly Bodies

I Corinthians

15:32 If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals
at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it?
If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die. "Do not be deceived:
"Bad company ruins good morals."

34 Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more;
for some people have no knowledge of God.
I say this to your shame.

35 But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised?
With what kind of body do they come?" Fool!
What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body
that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat
or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as
he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for
human beings, another for animals, another for birds,
and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies
and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is
one thing, and that of the earthly is another.
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars;
indeed, star differs from star in glory.

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead.
What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
Thus it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being";
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical,
and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth,
a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust;
and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

From the New Testament

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So now we have the words of Christ and the disciples.
More is revealed of the nature of the soul.

Fulfilling One's Mission

Philippians

1:23 I am hard pressed between the two:
my desire is to depart and be with Christ,
for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh
is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this,
I know that I will remain and continue with all of you
for your progress and joy in faith ...

At Home with the Lord

II Corinthians

5:6 So we are always confident; even though we know
that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord -
for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Reunion in Paradise

Luke

23:39 One of the criminals who hung there with him taunted him:
'Are not you the Messiah? Save yourself, and us.'
But the other rebuked him:

41 'Have you no fear of God? You are under the same sentence as he;
For us it is plain justice; we are paying the price for our misdeeds;
but this man has done nothing wrong.
And he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come to your throne.'
He answered, 'I tell you this: today you shall be with me in Paradise.'

True Source of Life

I Corinthians

15:50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

John

6:63 The spirit alone gives life; the flesh is of no avail;
the words which I have spoken to you are both spirit and life.
And yet there are some of you who have no faith.

Psalms 84

2006-11-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

What could be more beautiful than this as an
expression of the soul.

'How dear is thy dwelling-place,
thou Lord of Hosts!
I pine, I faint with longing
for the courts of the LORD's temple;
my whole being cries out with joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow has her nest,
where she rears her brood beside thy altars,
O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God.
Happy are those who dwell in thy house;
they never cease from praising thee.
Happy the men whose refuge is in thee,
whose hearts are set on the pilgrim ways!
As they pass through the thirsty valley
they find water from a spring;
and the LORD provides even men who lose their way
with pools to quench their thirst.
So they pass on from outer wall to inner,
and the God of gods shows himself in Zion.

'O LORD God of Hosts, hear my prayer;
listen, O God of Jacob.
O God, look upon our lord the king
and accept thy anointed prince with favour.

'Better one day in thy courts
than a thousand days at home;
better to linger by the threshold of God's house
than to live in the dwellings of the wicked.
The LORD God is a battlement and a shield;
grace and honour are his to give.
The LORD will hold back no good thing
from those whose life is blameless.

'O LORD of Hosts, happy the man who trusts in thee!'

See Psalms 84

On the Living Soul

2006-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

I have written of how little was revealed to the people
of the Old Testament. It must have been enough or God
could not be called just. If you have anything to add please
contact me at mail@arthurwendover.com .

Psalms

89:19 Then you spoke in a vision to your faithful one,
and said: "I have set the crown on one who is mighty,
I have exalted one chosen from the people.

49:16 Do not be afraid when some become rich, when the
wealth of their houses increases. For when they die they
will carry nothing away; their wealth will not go down
after them. Though in their lifetime they count themselves
happy - for you are praised when you do well for yourself -
they will go to the company of their ancestors, who will
never again see the light.

All Perish Except Those Who Love and Trust God

Psalms

49:1 Hear this, all you peoples; give ear, all inhabitants
of the world, both low and high, rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak wisdom; the meditation of my heart
shall be understanding. I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.

Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity
of my persecutors surrounds me, those who trust in their
wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches? Truly,
no ransom avails for one's life, there is no price one can
give to God for it. For the ransom of life is costly, and
can never suffice, that one should live on forever and
never see the grave.

When we look at the wise, they die; fool and dolt perish
together and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are
their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations,
though they named lands their own. Mortals cannot abide in
their pomp; they are like the animals that perish.

Such is the fate of the foolhardy, the end of those who are
pleased with their lot. ... Mortals cannot abide in their
pomp; they are like the animals that perish.

Obedience

Proverbs

19:16 He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul;
but he that despiseth his ways shall die. He that hath pity
upon the poor, lendeth to the LORD; and that which he hath
given will he pay him again.

God's Love for Everyone

Ezekiel

18:31 I will judge every man of you on his deeds.
Turn, turn from your offences, or your iniquity will
be your downfall. Throw off the load of your past
misdeeds; get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
Why should you die, you men of Israel? I have no
desire for any man's death.

Who may Dwell in Divine Sanctuary

Psalms

15:1 ... who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell
in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh
righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that
backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor,
nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor. In whose eyes
a vile person is contemned; but he honoreth them that fear the
Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. He
that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward
against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never
be moved.

Blessed the Pure in Spirit

Psalms

32:1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin
is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

84:4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be
still praising thee... For a day in thy courts is better than
a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my
God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

Before the Silver Cord is Severed

Ecclesiastes

12:6 Or ever the silver cord shall be loosed, or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or
the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to
the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who
gave it.

see also Life After Death

Heaven and Hell

2006-11-16T08:38:00.000-08:00

There are others who seem to have a clear insight into
the afterlife and one is Emanuel Swedenborg, a genius of
many talents.

The Lord Is The God Of Heaven by Emanuel Swedenborg

2. The first essential is to know who the God of heaven is,
since everything else depends upon that.
Throughout the whole of heaven no other than the Lord alone
is acknowledged as the God of heaven.
There they declare as He Himself taught,

'That He is one with the Father; that the Father is in Him
and He in the Father, that he who sees Him sees the Father,
and that everything that is holy goes forth from Him. -- '
(John x. 30, 38; XIV. 10, is; xvi. 13-15.)

I have quite often talked with angels on this matter
and they have constantly declared that in heaven they are
unable to distinguish the Divine into three,
because they know and perceive that the Divine is One
and that it is one in the Lord. They even said that people
who come from this world from the Church having an idea of
three Divine beings cannot be admitted into heaven because
their thought wanders from one to another, and it is not
allowable there to think of three and say one. This is because
everyone in heaven speaks from the thought, for there they
have a cogitative speech or thought speaking.

Consequently, those who in this world have distinguished
the Divine into three and have adopted a separate idea of each,
and have not made that idea one in the Lord and centred it
there, cannot be received. For in heaven, they have a
communication of the thoughts of all, so that if anyone came there,
thinking of three and saying one, he would immediately be
discovered and rejected. It ought to be known, however, that
all those who have not separated truth from good, or faith from
love, receive, when instructed in the other life, the heavenly
idea of the Lord, that He is the God of the universe.
It is indeed otherwise with those who have separated faith from
life, that is, who have not lived in accordance with the precepts
of a true faith.

see Heaven and Hell

No Information but God will Guide Us

2006-11-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

He Restores My Soul

Psalms

23:1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name's sake.
Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shades of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Eternal Pleasures

Psalms

16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;
neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life:
in thy presence is fullness of joy;
at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

One Way Journey

II Samuel

12:23 But now he is dead, Why should I fast?
can I bring him back again?
I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.
(David, about his son)

Job

7:6 My days are swifter than a shuttle
and come to an end as the thread runs out.
Remember, my life is but a breath of wind;
I shall never again see good days.
Thou wilt behold me no more with a seeing eye;
under thy very eyes I shall disappear.
As clouds break up and disperse,
so he that goes down to Sheol never comes back;
he never returns home again,
and his place will know him no more.

10:20 Let me be, that I may be happy for a moment,
before I depart to a land of gloom,
a land of deep darkness, never to return,
a land of gathering shadows, of deepening darkness,
lit by no ray of light, dark upon dark.

The Old Testament

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What of the writings of the Old Testament?
They say much, but in only a few words of the
Soul and the afterlife.

Genesis

2:7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust
of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life. Thus the man became a living creature.

A Time

Ecclesiastes

3:1 For everything there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;

7:1 A good name is better than precious oil;
and the day of death, than the day of one's birth.

The Glory of Being Human

Psalms

8:3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
and crownest him with glory and honor.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:

The Glory of Being Human

The Old Testament continues on its careful revelation
with few words to describe the afterlife.

Psalms

8.0 O LORD our sovereign,
how glorious is thy name in all the earth!
Thy majesty is praised high as the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes, of infants at the breast,
thou hast rebuked the mighty,
silencing enmity and vengeance to teach thy foes a lesson.
When I look up at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars set in their place by thee,
what is man that thou shouldst remember him,
mortal man that thou shouldst care for him?
Yet thou hast made him little less than a god,
crowning him with glory and honour.
Thou makest him master over all thy creatures;
thou hast put everything under his feet:
all sheep and oxen, all the wild beasts,
the birds in the air and the fish in the sea,
and all that moves along the paths of ocean.
O LORD our sovereign,
how glorious is thy name in all the earth!

Naked to this World

5:15 As he came forth from his mother's womb,
naked shall he go again as he came,
and shall take nothing for his labor,
which he may carry away in his hand.

Job

1:20 Naked came I out of my mother's womb,
and naked shall I return thither: Jehovah gave,
and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah.

The Return

Genesis

3:19 You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground; for from it you were taken.
Dust you are, to dust you shall return.

Ecclesiastes

3:20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust,
and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man,
whether it goeth upward,

12:7 ... the dust returneth to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity.

Ezekiel

18:3 Every living soul belongs to me;
father and son alike are mine.
The soul that sins shall die.

I Samuel

28:19 ... and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me:
(Samuel, after his death, to Saul)

Spiritual Progress

2006-11-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

(from the book by John Hatcher, The Purpose of Physical Reality)

'... the Baha'i writings affirm that human spiritual progress is not
confined to the physical world. Progress in the Kingdom of Names(this world)
is distinct in several ways from progress in the spiritual realm, but in
either world there is no single point of salvation. All progress is
relative; all spiritual attainment is relative. What might be exalted
spiritual advancement for one soul might be regressive for another.
Since each of us advances in relation to a myriad influences, opportunities,
and obstacles, a true assessment of spiritual achievement must perforce
be veiled to all except an infinitely knowledgeable being.

'If our awareness, our individuality, and our development continue in the
spiritual realm from where we leave off in the physical world, there is no
point at which the spiritual evolution of the human soul is completed. There
may be stages of attainment - the gaining of certitude, for example. But the
human soul is capable both in this life and in the next of infinite progress,
even though there is never change in our essential nature - the human
soul will always remain a human soul:'

'Both before and after putting off this material form, there is progress
in perfection but not in state. So beings are consummated in perfect man.
There is no other being higher than a perfect man. But man when he has
reached this state can still make progress in perfections but not in state
because there is no state higher than that of a perfect man to which he can
transfer himself. He only progresses in the state of humanity, for the
human perfections are infinite.' ('Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions 237)

2006-11-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Nature of the soul is a mystery.
But our purpose in this life is not.
Just like the child born into this life
needs limbs and eyes, that he develops in
the womb, so we in this life must develop
virtues to function in the worlds of God.
Virtues such as truthfulness and
tender-heartedness. To arrive in the next
world without some virtues is true hell.

They asked Muhammad about the soul, his
enemies asked him:

17:85 "They ask thee concerning the spirit.
Say: The spirit (was created) at the command
of my Lord. But you have no knowledge given
unto you except a little."

He chose to say little and they ridiculed him.
It was much beyond their understanding and God
did not reveal to Muhammad any verse so he took
the abuse of the ignorant.

Our time is different and we have been granted a
treasure of revealed verses on the subject of the
afterlife and the soul.

I intend, as time permits, to quote these verses,
those of Christ and Muhammad.

Adib Taherzadeh writes:
'In this Dispensation, however, Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha
shed much light on the subject. In many Tablets they testify
to the existence of the soul, describe it as an unknowable
spiritual reality, acknowledge its exalted station, refer to
it as a 'mighty sign of God', and reveal a great deal about
its qualities and attributes, its immortality, its condition
and its progress in the afterlife. So vast is the range of
these Writings that a large volume could be compiled of all
their utterances on the subject. Indeed, Baha'u'llah's
explanations of the human soul are among the great
contributions that He has made to religious knowledge,
revealed in proportion to the capacity of the people of
this age.