The Spirit and Its Identity.Part5

Judge: When did you commit the crime?

Defendant: One year ago.

The judge announces the verdict: Since the murder was committed a year ago and the defendant’s cells, including those of his trigger finger, have been completely replaced, and since it is therefore impossible to punish the actual murderer, the jury has voted for acquittal.

How can anyone be no more than a physical entity, just their movements, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and decisions the results of the brain’s biochemical processes? Such assertions are untenable. The main part of our being is our living and conscious spirit. This part of our body feels, thinks, believes, wills, decides, and uses the body to enact its decisions.

The spirit is the basis of human life. God acts in this world through causes. However, there are many other worlds or realms: the world of ideas, symbols or immaterial forms, the inner dimensions of things, and spirits, where God acts directly and where matter and causes do not exist. The spirit is breathed into the embryo directly, making it a direct manifestation of the Divine Name the All-Living, and therefore the basis of human life. Like natural laws, which issue from the same realm as the spirit, the spirit is invisible and known through its manifestations.

In this world, matter is refined in favor of life. A lifeless body, regardless of size, such as a mountain, is lonely, passive, and static. But life enables a bee to interact with almost the entire world so that it can say: “This world is my garden, and flowers are my business partners.” The smaller a living body is, the more active, astonishing, and powerful life is. Compare a bee, a fly, or even a micro-organism with an elephant. The more refined matter is, the more active and powerful a body. For example, wood produces flame and carbon when it burns, and water vaporizes when heated. We come across electrical energy in the atomic and subatomic worlds. We cannot see it, but we are aware of its presence and power though its manifestations. This means that existence is not limited only to this world; rather, this world is only the apparent, mutable, and unstable dimension of existence. Behind it lies the pure, invisible dimension that uses matter to be seen and known. As the spirit belongs to that dimension, it is therefore pure and invisible.

The arguments for the spirit’s existence also point to the Creator’s existence. They are as follows:

• Just as our body, which God creates from elements, needs the spirit to command and govern it, the universe (and what it contains) needs God to bring it into existence and to command and govern it.

• Each body has one spirit that makes it alive and governs it. So, there must be a single Lord, without partner, to create and govern the universe. Otherwise, disaster and confusion is inevitable.

• The spirit is not located in any specific place or part of the body. It may even leave the body and, as in the case of dreams, continue its relation with the body by means of a specific cord attached to the body. Likewise, God Almighty is not contained by time or space. He is always present everywhere and nowhere, whereas the spirit is in the body and is contained by time and space.

• There is only one sun, and the world is very far from it. However, the sun is present everywhere through its heat and light, and via reflection can even be in every transparent thing. Therefore, we can say that the sun is nearer to things than things are to themselves. The spirit has the same relation with the body, as well as with all of its separate cells. This analogy may help us to understand God’s relation with existence. He controls and directs all things at the same time like a single thing, and although we are infinitely distant from Him, He is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

• The spirit is invisible, and its nature is unknown. In the same way, we cannot think of or imagine God as He really is, for His Essence cannot be known. Like the spirit, God Almighty is known via the manifestations of His Names, Attributes, and Essence.

Our spirit has its own cover. When the spirit leaves the body at death, it retains this cover, which is like a body’s “negative” It is called by many names: the envelope of light, the person’s ethereal figure, energetic form, second body, astral body, double (of that person), and phantom.