The Immortality of the Soul

Part Four of Some Answered Questions includes a sequence of chapters on the immortality of the spirit. 'Abdu'l-Bahá opens the first of them plainly: "Having shown that the spirit of man exists, we must prove its immortality." The immortality of the spirit, He notes, is mentioned in the Holy Books; it is "the fundamental basis of the divine religions." In that chapter He describes the rewards of this life as "the real luminous perfections which are realized in this world, and which are the cause of eternal life," and likens that progress to the passage of a man "from the embryonic world to the state of maturity."

In the next chapter His proofs draw on ordinary experience. The spirit acts in two ways: through instruments and organs, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, speaking with the tongue; and without them, as in sleep, when "without eyes it sees; without an ear it hears; without a tongue it speaks; without feet it runs." The body, He says, is like the cage and the spirit like the bird, which flies without the cage in the world of sleep. And when an instrument is laid aside, the one who used it goes on: "if the pen is abandoned or broken, the writer remains living and present; if a house is ruined, the owner is alive and existing."

He compares the connection of the spirit with the body to that of the sun with a mirror. When the mirror becomes broken or dusty, it can no longer reflect the rays of the sun. The spirit itself, He says, "neither becomes ill from the diseases of the body nor cured by its health." Nor is it lodged inside the body, so as to need a new dwelling-place when it leaves: "The spirit never entered this body."

In a later chapter He takes up the progress of man after death. Human perfections are infinite. "Thus, however learned a man may be, we can imagine one more learned." And so:

Hence, as the perfections of humanity are endless, man can also make progress in perfections after leaving this world.

A retelling based on Some Answered Questions. For the fuller account, see the original.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1908). *Some Answered Questions*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/some-answered-questions/