Respected teacher, I have a few questions about the soul’s flight.
1. Why does the soul take flight? Why does it leave the body? Is this generally a good thing, or is it related to physical or spiritual weakness?
2. When the soul takes flight, does it enter a safe realm? I ask because evil spirits also exist. To explain what I mean: when someone leaves home and is late returning, we call to ask why they are delayed, where they are, whom they are with, and so on. When a person’s soul—which belongs to them—leaves the body, is it like one of the body’s members that has gone away, so that we need to keep track of it until it returns? Or does it know how to find its own way back?
3. If the soul’s flight is a good thing, how can we set all four souls in flight? If there is anything else I haven’t thought to ask, please explain further.
Answer 2859
1. The soul is always in flight, in every circumstance and at every moment. There is no condition in which it can be said to have ceased its flight. What matters is the level it reaches and the realm in which it flies. A person absorbed in worldly life cannot fly beyond the world; but the wings of a soul attuned to the spiritual realm can span the world of the unseen. The more worthy a person becomes, the higher the soul soars.
2. The universe is not left to itself. In whatever realm they may be, souls remain under the watch of God’s appointed guardians. Under certain conditions, when a person becomes captive to their own lower desires, strays from the straight path and stains themselves with sin, their soul may be taken captive by devils. Those who involve themselves in magic, whether traditional or modern, likewise place themselves in the service of devils. There are no wandering evil spirits seeking to take other souls captive, because the souls of the dead are under the close supervision of God’s appointed guardians. The jinn and human devils are the mysterious forces that take astray and sinful people captive.
When the soul leaves the body in states such as sleep or meditation, this does not mean it is severed from the body. Rather, it branches out from the body into what lies beyond it: the soul’s radiance extends into the outer world, while its root and source remain established in the body.
3. The more subtle and purified a person’s heart becomes, and the more it is filled with lofty spiritual knowledge, the more that person takes flight as a sublime world. In this way, they set the souls, as well as the other inner faculties, organs and higher powers, in flight.