A Letter to a Dear One — Page 104
104 Letter to a Dear One spiritual development or indeed regression takes place. At the time of death, each person’s spirituality has developed according to the circumstances of his/her life. Some reach excellence, some achieve a little less and some regress and thus in these states the soul enters a new exquisite domain. It enters this new realm in a state of oblivion just as a newborn baby comes in this world. According to the exquisite realm the soul has appropriate senses and powers just as the human body has at birth. The soul has a similar sense of the new realm and experiences it and observes it just as the body does in this world. The soul then develops an ‘essence’ in the new realm and another connection between body and soul is formed. The soul of this world is then, as if the ‘body’ in the new realm with apposite senses and qualities. This ‘body’ has a spiritual body within and a most exquisite soul is developed and this combination of body and soul perceives its exquisite and spiritual environment much more acutely than our bodies feel the nature of this life. Thus the human soul starts a new life in the spiritual world where there is room for infinite development. In short the condition and state of that life is such that our present senses and capacities cannot fully decipher it. As I mentioned before, some souls leave this world and enter the new in a state of excellence, some in a lesser state and some in a degenerative state. The souls that start the new life in a state of perfection are happy from the beginning—as they develop further and advance in spirituality. They go through stages to attain nearness of the Creator with velocity. The souls with some defect or drawback have to first endure stages where reformation takes place—as a result of this the same conditions that cause rapture and pleasure for the souls in excellent state are a source of pain and torment for the flawed souls. However, as their reformation takes place, their pain gradually decreases and they eventually reach an integral stage. It is then that the same prevailing conditions cause them happiness and rapture. One way to understand this is to take an example of a human eye with a defect, which causes pain. Sunlight can be bothersome for an affected eye and it helps the sore eye to avoid the light for a while. Until such a time that the eye is properly healed, the sufferer has to miss out on sunlight. While afflicted, the very sunlight becomes a source of torment for him, as opposed to a healthy person for whom that very sunlight is a blessing in countless ways. Indeed deprivation of sunlight is a torment for the healthy person. Similarly, if a person has a mouth