Day 10 "Human Soul and Spirit"

We began the section called "Understanding the Human Soul and Spirit" on p. 58 within part 3 of the book and read till p. 65. Bahá’u’lláh explained how the human soul is "a testimony that beareth witness to the existence of a world that is contingent, as well as to the reality of a world that hath neither beginning nor end." He gave the example of how a dream is after the lapse of a few years finally played out in real life. This example highlights the fact that in the world of dreams our soul witnesses events beyond time. Therefore that world is without a beginning or an end. On the other hand, when we are awake events come to pass in a linear fashion because this world has a timeline.

Bahá’u’lláh also describes how all our physical senses (i.e. sight, hearing, smell) and spiritual perceptions (i.e. will and purpose) derive from one faculty--the rational faculty, which is "a sign of the revelation of Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all" and "all else besides it will, when compared with its glory, fade into utter nothingness and become a thing forgotten." This faculty, He explains, is the basis of everything our body depends on and without it the human body would cease to function.

Later the three aspects of human beings are introduced: body, mind, and soul (also called spirit). This great rational faculty that Bahá’u’lláh extols in the paragraph above is probably the mind. In the words of Shoghi Effendi, "the mind forms a link between the soul and the body, and the two interact on each other". It seems to me that this link is like a passageway between the invisible and visible realms, between that aspect of us which emanates from God and that which is born of the flesh.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá brings up the example of the state of sleep also, but this time it is used to explain how the human spirit comprehends things in two ways; one is through the instruments and organs (i.e. eyes, ears) and the other, in dreams, without them. The latter means that "it is evident that this spirit is different from the body" for it acts independently of it. This also means that if the body is destroyed then the spirit will remain unaffected just like "if the pen is abandoned or broken, the writer remains living and present; if a house is ruined, the owner is alive and existing."