Hazrat Inayat Khan’s explanation of the journey of the soul now begins to give insight into certain aspects of heredity, or the acquisition of qualities and impressions from those souls returning from life on earth. The previous post in the series is here.
When the soul starts from its original point, it comes first to the world of the Farishta, the angels, and is impressed with the angelic qualities. The angels are absorbed in the hunger for beauty and the thirst for song. They do not distinguish good and bad, high and low. The infant, who represents the angel on earth, always turns to what appears to it radiant and beautiful. There are two sorts of angels, those who have never manifested as man, and those spirits who upon their way back to the infinite have reached the world of the angels. Love, light, and lyric are the attributes of the latter, and from them the soul receives these impressions. Devotion, service, and worship are the attributes of the former. The angels are masculine and feminine; the former are called Malak, the latter, Hur.
In the world of the angels, the soul for years and years enjoys these experiences. When the desire for more experiences urges it on, it goes forth and comes to the world of jinns, which is the astral plane. In the Bible we read that Adam was driven out of paradise; this means that the wish for more experience makes the soul leave the world of the angels and go to the astral plane and the physical plane.
The occupation of the jinns is to imagine, reason, and think. The jinns are of two sorts: there are those who have never manifested physically, and there are those spirits who have left the earth with all the load of their actions and experiences upon them. The jinns also are masculine and feminine, and are called Ghilman and Peri. From the first sort of jinns, those who have not manifested physically, the soul receives the impressions of imagination and thought.
The soul that leaves the earth can take to the world of the angels only whatever love, good feelings, and kindness it may have. Even its love and kindness and its good feelings it cannot take higher than the world of the angels; these are still too heavy for the higher plane, for there is a higher plane, and on that plane there is no individuality, nothing but the infinite consciousness. All the rest the soul must leave in the astral plane, and until it can leave behind all the evil that it has gathered it must remain there, as it is too heavy to go higher. It is like milk that is put over the fire: when all the watery part has evaporated, the cream, the good, the essential part of the milk remains. This plane is just like a street where someone is walking with a bundle. He says to a soul, ‘Will you take this bundle?’ The soul is inexperienced, and so it says, ‘Yes, is it a nice bundle? Has it a good sound or a good perfume?’ It takes the bundle, and receives all the impressions that go with it.
Every soul possesses the best qualities. However wicked a person may be, be assured that his soul possesses the best qualities as a spiritual inheritance, though they are covered up by all that has been gathered afterwards. And there is always a possibility of spiritual progress for every soul, even for the most wicked.
The soul, on its journey from the unseen to the seen world, receives impressions from the souls which are on their return journey from the seen to the unseen. In this way the soul collects the first merits and qualities. It is this which forms a line for the soul to follow, and it is this line that leads it to the parents from whom it inherits its later attributes. The soul receives the impressions of another soul if it is attuned to that other soul. For instance a soul meeting the soul of Beethoven receives the impression of Beethoven’s music, and then is born with the musical qualities of Beethoven. The upholders of the theory of reincarnation say that he is the reincarnation of Beethoven; the Sufi says that if they mean that Beethoven’s mind is reincarnated in him, it may be so; but as the spirit comes from the unlimited, he says it need not necessarily be called reincarnation. Therefore a person of poetical gifts may be born in the family of a statesman where there never was a poet before.
The soul of a saint or murshid has remained long in the world of the angels, and being more impressed by it, it brings with it the angelic qualities of that world.
To be continued…