(347) Whatever the soul will do while it is in (the) body, it has as witnesses when it goes into judgment.

(70) And be mingled together like soul and body." Body is like a string tied to sod's foot, The soul is the frog in the water of ecstatic bliss; Escaping from the mouse of the body, it is in bliss. The mouse of the body drags it back with that string; Ah! what sorrow it tastes through being dragged back If it were not dragged down by that insolent mouse, On the last day, when you shall awake from sleep, You will learn the rest of this from the Sun of truth!

(9) But we must examine how soul comes to inhabit the body- the manner and the process- a question certainly of no minor interest.

The entry of soul into body takes place under two forms.

Firstly, there is the entry- metensomatosis- of a soul present in body by change from one frame to another or the entry- not known as metensomatosis, since the nature of the earlier habitacle is not certainly definable- of a soul leaving an aerial or fiery body for one of earth.

Secondly, there is the entry from the wholly bodiless into any kind of body; this is the earliest form of any dealing between body and soul, and this entry especially demands investigation.

What then can be thought to have happened when soul, utterly clean from body, first comes into commerce with the bodily nature?

It is reasonable, necessary even, to begin with the Soul of the All. Notice that if we are to explain and to be clear, we are obliged to use such words as "entry" and "ensoulment," though never was this All unensouled, never did body subsist with soul away, never was there Matter unelaborate; we separate, the better to understand; there is nothing illegitimate in the verbal and mental sundering of things which must in fact be co-existent.

The true doctrine may be stated as follows:

In the absence of body, soul could not have gone forth, since there is no other place to which its nature would allow it to descend. Since go forth it must, it will generate a place for itself; at once body, also, exists.

While the Soul is at rest- in rest firmly based on Repose, the Absolute- yet, as we may put it, that huge illumination of the Supreme pouring outwards comes at last to the extreme bourne of its light and dwindles to darkness; this darkness, now lying there beneath, the soul sees and by seeing brings to shape; for in the law of things this ultimate depth, neighbouring with soul, may not go void of whatsoever degree of that Reason-Principle it can absorb, the dimmed reason of reality at its faintest.

Imagine that a stately and varied mansion has been built; it has never been abandoned by its Architect, who, yet, is not tied down to it; he has judged it worthy in all its length and breadth of all the care that can serve to its Being- as far as it can share in Being- or to its beauty, but a care without burden to its director, who never descends, but presides over it from above: this gives the degree in which the kosmos is ensouled, not by a soul belonging to it, but by one present to it; it is mastered not master; not possessor but possessed. The soul bears it up, and it lies within, no fragment of it unsharing.

The kosmos is like a net which takes all its life, as far as ever it stretches, from being wet in the water, and has no act of its own; the sea rolls away and the net with it, precisely to the full of its scope, for no mesh of it can strain beyond its set place: the soul is of so far-reaching a nature- a thing unbounded- as to embrace the entire body of the All in the one extension; so far as the universe extends, there soul is; and if the universe had no existence, the extent of soul would be the same; it is eternally what it is. The universe spreads as broad as the presence of soul; the bound of its expansion is the point at which, in its downward egression from the Supreme, it still has soul to bind it in one: it is a shadow as broad as the Reason-Principle proceeding from soul; and that Reason-Principle is of scope to generate a kosmic bulk as vast as lay in the purposes of the Idea which it conveys.

(2) The Soul which has its Original out of God's first Principle, and was breathed from God into Man, into the third Principle, (that is, into the syderial and elementary birth) that sees further into the first Principle of God, out of, in and from the Essence and Property of which it is proceeded. And this is not marvellous, for it does but behold itself only in the Rising of its Birth; and thus it sees the Whole Depth of the Father in the first Principle.

(48) When the soul was joined to the body it was part of the all: never has there been so marvellous a talisman. The soul had a share of that which is high, and the body a share of that which is low; it was formed of a mixture of heavy clay and pure spirit. By this mixing, man became the most astonishing of mysteries. We do not know nor do we understand so much as a little of our spirit. If you wish to say something about this, it would be better to keep silent. Many know the surface of this ocean, but they understand nothing of the depths; and the visible world is the talisman which protects it. But this talisman of bodily obstacles will be broken at last. You will find the treasure when the talisman disappears; the soul will manifest itself when the body is laid aside. But your soul is another talisman; it is, for this mystery, another substance. Walk then in the way I shall indicate, but do not ask for an explanation.

(5) For the Soul which is out of the first Principle (out of the Band of the Eternity) was breathed into the Element of the Body, to [be] the Image of God, out of the strong Might of God, and enlightened from the divine Light, so that it has received an angelical Source [or Quality;] but when it went forth out of the Light of God into the Spirit of this World, then there sprung up in it the Source of the first Principle; and it neither saw nor felt the Kingdom of God any more, till that the Heart of God set itself in the Midst again; into that the Soul must enter again, and be born anew.

(50) 'Tis soul effects this transmutation with water of life. Such is the power of the soul, O man of right views! Then what is the power of the Soul of souls? (God). Bread is the food of the body, yet consider, How can it be the food of the soul, O son? Flesh-born man by force of soul The might of Ferhad's soul cleft a hill; The might of the Soul's soul cleaves the moon; If the heart opens the mouth of mystery's store,

(2) The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By "heart" I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God.

(21) Carnal reason deceives us; do thou contradict it, O God, show us all things in this house of deception, Show them all as they really are!" It is said in the Hadis that on the last day The command, "Arise," will come to every single body. The blast of the last trump will be God's command The souls, also, of each will return to their bodies, On that morn each soul will recognize its own body, The soul of the goldsmith will not enter the tailor; The soul of the wise will enter the body of the wise,

(3) He who, dwelling in speech, yet is other than speech, whom the speech does not know, whose body the speech is, who controls the speech from within — He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal. 1 8. He who, dwelling in the eye, yet is other than the eye, whom the eye does not know, whose body the eye is, who controls the eye from within — He is your Soul, the Inner Con- troller, the Immortal.

(1) That my outward form may not mislead you, Many are they who have been captured by form, Who aimed at form, and found Allah. After all, soul is linked to body, The power of the light of the eye is mated with fat, Joy harbors in the kidneys and pain in the liver, The lamp of reason in the brains of the head; Smell in the nostrils and speech in the tongue, These connections are not without a why and a how,

(57) But seeing the soul, all the while the body had been in death, remained hidden in the word, and seeing the same word also holdeth the earth in the astral birth in the love, therefore it [the soul] qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth through the word, all the time of its hiddenness and secrecy, also with its mother the body, according or as to the astral birth or geniture in the earth, and so body and soul in the word were never separated the one from the other, but live jointly and equally together in God.

(132) But the wisdom of God prevents this speedy end, He says, "O parts, the appointed time is not yet; It is useless for you to take wing before that day." But as each part desires reunion with its original, How is it with the soul who is a stranger in exile? It says, "O parts of my habitation here below, My absence is sadder than yours, as I am heaven-born. The body loves green pastures and running water, The love of the soul is for life and the living one, The love of the soul is for wisdom and knowledge,

(24) Now comes the question of the soul leaving the body; where does it go?

It cannot remain in this world where there is no natural recipient for it; and it cannot remain attached to anything not of a character to hold it: it can be held here when only it is less than wise, containing within itself something of that which lures it.

If it does contain any such alien element it gives itself, with increasing attachment, to the sphere to which that element naturally belongs and tends.

The space open to the soul's resort is vast and diverse; the difference will come by the double force of the individual condition and of the justice reigning in things. No one can ever escape the suffering entailed by ill deeds done: the divine law is ineluctable, carrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of its doom. The sufferer, all unaware, is swept onward towards his due, hurried always by the restless driving of his errors, until at last wearied out by that against which he struggled, he falls into his fit place and, by self-chosen movement, is brought to the lot he never chose. And the law decrees, also, the intensity and the duration of the suffering while it carries with it, too, the lifting of chastisement and the faculty of rising from those places of pain- all by power of the harmony that maintains the universal scheme.

Souls, body-bound, are apt to body-punishment; clean souls no longer drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are, by their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free, containing nothing of body- there where Essence is, and Being, and the Divine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a soul must be.

If you still ask Where, you must ask where those Beings are- and in your seeking, seek otherwise than with the sight, and not as one seeking for body.

(3) 'This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living Self has left it; the living Self dies not. 'That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art it.' 'Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son. 'Be it so, my child,' the father replied.

(15) But how did this intruder find entrance?

It had a certain aptitude and it grasped at that to which it was apt. In its nature it was capable of soul: but what is unfitted to receive soul entire- present entire but not for it- takes what share it may; such are the members of the animal and vegetal order. Similarly, of a significant sound, some forms of being take sound and significance together, others only the sound, the blank impact.

A living thing comes into existence containing soul, present to it from the Authentic, and by soul is inbound with Reality entire; it possesses also a body; but this body is not a husk having no part in soul, not a thing that earlier lay away in the soulless; the body had its aptitude and by this draws near: now it is not body merely, but living body. By this neighboring it is enhanced with some impress of soul- not in the sense of a portion of soul entering into it, but that it is warmed and lit by soul entire: at once there is the ground of desire, pleasure, pain; the body of the living form that has come to be was certainly no unrelated thing.

The soul, sprung from the divine, lay self-enclosed at peace, true to its own quality; but its neighbour, in uproar through weakness, instable of its own nature and beaten upon from without, cries, at first to itself and afterwards upon the living total, spreading the disorder at large. Thus, at an assembly the Elders may sit in tranquil meditation, but an unruly populace, crying for food and casting up a host of grievances, will bring the whole gathering into ugly turmoil; when this sort of people hold their peace so that a word from a man of sense may reach them, some passable order is restored and the baser part ceases to prevail; otherwise the silence of the better allows the rabble to rule, the distracted assembly unable to take the word from above.

This is the evil of state and of council: and this is the evil of man; man includes an inner rabble- pleasures, desires, fears- and these become masters when the man, the manifold, gives them play.

But one that has reduced his rabble and gone back to the Man he was, lives to that and is that Man again, so that what he allows to the body is allowed as to something separate.

There is the man, too, that lives partly in the one allegiance and partly in the other; he is a blend of the good that is himself with the evil that is alien.

(14) Tat: Tell me, O father: This Body which is made up of the Powers, is it at any time dissolved? Hermes: Hush, [son]! Speak not of things impossible, else wilt thou sin and thy Mind's eye be quenched. The natural body which our sense perceives is far removed from this essential birth. The first must be dissolved, the last can never be; the first must die, the last death cannot touch. Dost thou not know thou hast been born a God, Son of the One, even as I myself?

(16) It is the same for them who go out from the body. For when the soul withdraws into itself, the spirit doth contract itself within the blood, and the soul within the spirit. And then the mind, stripped of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgement and whatever chastisement it hath deserved. Tat: What dost thou, father, mean by this? The mind is parted from soul and soul from spirit? Whereas thou said'st the soul was the mind's vesture, and the soul's the spirit.

(105) And this Word should enlighten the Soul, and at the Departure of the Body be the Light of the Soul, and bring the Soul through the Gate of the Darkness into Paradise, before the bright Countenance of God, into the second Principle, into Element, where there is no Pain.

(71) Seeing then, beloved, that knowledge is the mark of soul, The world of souls is itself entirely knowledge, When knowledge is lacking in a man s nature, Primal Soul is the theatre of God's court, All the angels were pure reason and soul, Yet when the new soul of Adam came, they were as its body. When in joy they crowded round that new soul, Fear of men's censure the greatest obstacle to acceptance of the true faith. O Husamu-'d-Din, I might tell some of thy many virtues, From evil eyes and malice-empoisoned breaths