A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
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Body and Soul |
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The Bahá’í teachings with regard to body and soul, and the
life after death, are quite in harmony with the results of psychical
research. They teach, as we have seen, that death is but a
new birth—the escape from the prison of the body into a
larger life, and that progress in the afterlife is limitless.
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A large body of scientific evidence has gradually been accumulating
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which in the opinion of impartial but highly critical
investigators is amply sufficient to establish beyond all question
the fact of a life after death—of the continued life and
activity of the conscious “soul” after the dissolution of the
material body. As F. W. H. Myers says in his Human
Personality, a work which summarizes many of the investigations
of the Psychical Research Society:—
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Observation, experiment, inference, have led many inquirers,
of whom I am one, to a belief in direct or telepathic
intercommunication, not between the minds of
men still on earth only, but between minds or spirits
still on earth and spirits departed. Such a discovery opens
the doors also to revelation. … We have shown that amid much deception and self-deception, fraud and illusion, veritable manifestations do reach us from beyond the grave. … By discovery and by revelation certain theses have been provisionally established with regard to such departed souls as we have been able to encounter. First and chiefly, I, at least, see ground to believe that their state is one of endless evolution in wisdom and in love. Their loves of earth persist, and most of all, those highest loves which find their outlet in adoration and worship. … Evil to them seems less a terrible than a slavish thing. It is embodied in no mighty Potentate; rather it forms as isolating madness from which higher spirits strive to free the distorted soul. There needs no chastisement of fire; self-knowledge is man’s punishment and his reward; self-knowledge and the nearness or the aloofness of companion souls. For in that world love is actually self-preservation; the Communion of Saints not only adorns but constitutes the Life Everlasting. nay, from the laws of telepathy it follows that that communion is valid to us here and now. Even now the love of souls departed makes answer to our invocations. Even now our loving memory—love is itself a prayer—supports and strengthens those delivered spirits upon their upward way. 209 |
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