Hazrat Inayat Khan now gives a brief picture of the ultimate stage of the journey to the goal. The previous post in the series is here.
The crying of an infant is very often the expression of its longing for the angelic heavens; the smiles of an infant are a narrative of its memories in heaven and of the spheres above. Does the returning soul who meets with the new-coming soul receive anything? It does not require much; it is full of joy in its approach to the culmination of life, the goal of its journey. Yet the purity that the new-coming soul brings with it a new life and light that gives ease to the soul striving towards the goal, and illuminates its path.
The sizes of the bodies in the sphere of the jinn, and in the heaven of the angels, are as numerous as on the earth-plane. The size of the body that the soul brings from the sphere of the jinn is much larger than the size of the physical body, and the size of the body brought by the soul from the angelic heavens is larger still. When the soul dons the body from the sphere of the jinn, that body not only covers the physical body, but also enters into it. And so the body brought from the angelic heavens covers both the body of the sphere of the jinn and that of the physical plane, and yet enters into the innermost part of man’s being. In this way the angelic and the jinn bodies not only surround the physical body, but exist within it.
There is almost too much that a soul has to do on the earth; there is also much that it has to accomplish in the spirit world or plane of the jinns. But there is much less to be done in the heaven of the angels; for as the soul proceeds forward, so its burden becomes lighter. The only condition of proceeding forward and drawing closer to the goal is that of throwing away the heavy burden which the soul has taken upon itself throughout its journey. If one may say that the soul lives in the spheres of the jinns for thousands of years, for the sake of convenience one may use the expression millions of years in speaking of the time that the soul passes in the heavens of the angels; until at last there comes the moment when the soul is most willing to depart, even from that plane of love, harmony and beauty, in order to embrace the source and goal of love, harmony and beauty which has attracted it through all the planes. As the soul approaches nearer, so it has been drawn closer, It is the throwing off of that radiant garment which is its body in the angelic heavens that brings the soul to its real destination, the goal which it has continually sought either consciously or unconsciously.
What will be the mystery hidden behind the accomplishment of all desire in the next world to the earth-plane? Will power, with optimism. It is the conviction called Yaqin by the Sufis that will be the guiding light on the path of the soul in the spiritual world. What will hinder the progress of the spirits is the lack of this, though it is not necessary that the soul who has been pessimistic here should remain pessimistic in the next world. It is possible that its journey onward will bring about a change once the soul becomes acquainted with the mysteries of hopefulness.
In what way will the spirits communicate with one another? All spirits will not necessarily communicate; only those spirits who wish to communicate will do so. In what language? In their own language. If spirits did not know one another’s language in the spirit world there would be the same difficulty as on the earth; but there is one common language of that plane, a language which is the language of the spirit.
To be continued…