After his description of the sphere of the Jinn, Hazrat Inayat Khan now turns his attention to the current of divine breath that ‘runs through all the planes of life.’
The soul is a current. We may call it an electric current, yet one unlike the electric current we know on this physical plane, different from it in its power and phenomena; a current which runs more speedily then anything we know; a current which is beyond time and space; a current which runs through all the planes of life. If manifestation is the breath of God, souls are breaths of God. According to the conception of the yogi, there is one Breath, and there are many breaths. The one, or central, Breath is called by yogis prana, and all other breaths which have a certain part to play in the mechanism of the human body are lesser breaths; and again prana and all other breaths when put together make one Breath, which man calls life. Souls therefore are the different breaths of God. This idea may be pictured as a tree which has a stem and various branches; each branch in its place representing the stem.
The elements of every sphere are different, just as the air, the water and the earth of every part of the world are different in their effect upon the human being. So the atoms of every plane are different; their nature and character are as different as their effect. Therefore the form of the angel cannot be compared in any way with the form of the jinn; neither can the form of the jinn be compared with the form of man, for the atoms of which the jinn is made belong to another sphere.
A man who is accustomed to physical forms cannot very well grasp the idea of the forms of the jinns. This shows us that the soul shoots forth and functions in a body which that particular sphere offers it. The heavens, for instance, offer that luminous body to the soul which in the Sufi term is called nur, because heaven consists of luminous atoms; it is all illumination. It was recognition of that angelic body in the Buddha which caused his disciples to make the statue of Buddha in gold. Often artists have had the conception of painting angels in gold, for gold represents light.
The soul that goes as far as the sphere of the jinn as a current coming from the heavens functions in a body of the sphere of jinn. The question is, a soul which comes from the heavens, through the world of angels, does it come to the world of the jinns without a body? It comes with a body, the angelic body; yet it becomes necessary for the soul coming with the angelic body into the world of jinns to adopt a body of that particular world in order to withstand the weather of that plane. Animals which live in cold countries have a different skin from those that live in a tropical climate. That is the condition for going into any other sphere. Even if a person were journeying, going from a tropical country to another tropical country, and on the way he had to pass through a cold climate, he would need suitable garments for that climate. The body is a garment of the soul; the soul wears this garment in order to stand the conditions of that particular sphere.
To be continued…