Hazrat Inayat Khan continues to give some insight into the experience of the spirit after departing from this world. The previous post in the series is here.
Do the spirits always learn from the earth? or do they teach those on the earth? Both; they learn, and they also teach. Are there any spirits who care little for the life they have left behind? Many, and among them good ones who are only concerned with the journey onwards. It is those as a rule whose heart is still attached to life on the earth, and in whose heart interest for the journey onward has not yet been kindled, who are inclined to keep in communication with the earth. Yet there are exceptions, there are spirits, who out of kindness to one, to a few or to many, wish still to keep in connection with the earth in order to serve and to be useful. The spirits of this latter kind still go on advancing towards the goal instead of being detained when they communicate with the people on the earth.
What connection have the returning spirits with the inhabitants of the sphere of the jinns? They are as far removed from them as one planet is from the other, and yet are in the same universe. Do they meet with the inhabitants of that sphere? They do, but only such spirits as are not closed in or imprisoned in their own world: those who have gained strength and power even while on earth to break the ropes that bind them, and have liberated themselves from any situation, however difficult. But how do these brave ones arrive at this stage? By rising above themselves. If this limited self which makes the false ego is broken, and one has risen above the limitations of life on all the planes of existence, the soul will break all boundaries, and will experience that freedom which is the longing of every soul.
The soul, which functions in different bodies on its way to manifestation and covers itself thus with one body over another, has a power which it uses to a smaller or greater degree in the renewing of the tissues of the body, or in healing it. The child born into a family in which there are physical infirmities is often born already healed from hereditary conditions and with its tissues renewed. The reason is that the soul is the divine Breath; it purifies, revivifies and heals the instrument in which it functions.
On its return journey the soul shows the same phenomenon in a different way; freed from all the impressions of illness, sadness and misery which it has experienced while on the earth, and has taken into the spirit world, it heals its own being, and renews the tissues of that body, which still remains with it after it has left the physical form. It purifies itself from all illness and the impression of illness, and thus renews the life in the spirit world in accordance to its grade of evolution. But apart from evolution, it is the tendency of the soul to repel all that is foreign to it, either from the physical body, or from the mental body which it still has in the spirit world. The soul is on a continual journey, on whatever plane it is; it is journeying all the time, and on this journey it has a purpose to accomplish, many purposes contained and hidden in one purpose.
There are objects which remain unfulfilled in one’s lifetime on earth; they are accomplished on the further journey in the spirit world. For nothing that the human heart has once desired remains unfulfilled. If it is not fulfilled here, it is accomplished in the hereafter. The desire of the soul is the wish of God; small or great, right or wrong, it has a moment of fulfillment. If that moment does not come while the soul is on the earth-plane it comes to the soul in the spirit world.
The soul proves its divine origin on all the planes of existence, in creating for itself all it desires, in producing for itself the wish of its heart, in attracting and drawing to itself all that it wants. The source of the soul is perfect, and so is its goal; therefore even in its limitation the soul has the spark of perfection. The nature of perfection is that no want remains. The limitation that the soul experiences is on the earth, where it lives the life of limitation; yet its one desire is perfection. So every want is supplied, for the reason that the Perfect One, even in the world of variety, does everything possible to experience perfection.
To be continued…