Body and soul

“ Soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they were! ”

“ The soul makes the body, as the wise Spenser teaches:—
"So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make." ”

“ The soul says, ‘Eat;’ the body would feast. The soul says, ‘The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul;’ the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, ‘Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue;’ the body would have the power over things to its own ends. ”

“ Sense-bearing motion along the vitals springs.
For lurks this essence far and deep and under,
Nor in our body is aught more shut from view,
And 'tis the very soul of all the soul.
And as within our members and whole frame
The energy of mind and power of soul
Is mixed and latent, since create it is
Of bodies small and few, so lurks this fourth,
This essence void of name, composed of small,
And seems the very soul of all the soul,
And holds dominion o'er the body all. ”

“ Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body, as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of the soul—that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat to and fro in one corner of his brain. ”

“ For when 'tis seen to drive the members on, To snatch from sleep the body, and to change The countenance, and the whole state of man To rule and turn,—what yet could never be Sans contact, and sans body contact fails— Must we not grant that mind and soul consist Of a corporeal nature?—And besides Thou markst that likewise with this body of ours Suffers the mind and with our body feels. ”

“ The awakened one, the knowing one, saith: "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body." 35
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. ”

“ And when we think of the body, which we identify with ourselves from the moment that we have taken it up and walked by its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the undying person that the soul is, shudders, and can only be comforted by learning to conceive itself wholly detached from the decay, and housed within the bosom of Him who is the Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have learnt to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process of living in human relations. ”

“ To one and all, I say, cultivate each heaven-given faculty, remembering too that the body cannot be divorced from the mind, that in the perfect man the body must be perfected as well as the soul, that the body should be not merely the setting of the soul but the expression of it. ”

“ Meanwhile, the very fact that we lament so sincerely this dire and man-caused fate serves to illustrate the view we inevitably take that the earth-body is not only a means of manifestation but is a real servant of the soul,—that flesh can in some sense help spirit as spirit can undoubtedly help flesh,—and that while its very weaknesses are serviceable and stimulating, its strength is exhilarating and superb. ”

“ By thinking upon the things that pertain to the spiritual selfhood, and consciously ruling and harmonizing the bodily instrument. The body is a living epistle, setting forth the quality of the life, mind, and soul, of which it is the visible result and correspondence. ”

“ And, first of all, Sir Oliver Lodge shall tell us what he understands by the Soul. "The soul is that controlling and guiding principle which is responsible for our personal expression and for the construction of the body, under the restrictions of physical condition and ancestry. In its higher developments it includes also feeling and intelligence and will, and is the storehouse of mental experience. The body is its instrument and organ, enabling it to receive and to convey physical impressions, and to affect and be affected by matter and energy." ”

“ But with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at all; it can enter the body and is important—who dares say how important?—to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. ”

“ For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading ”

“ Then out comes the Idea, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual—every lovely organ of her life—then the clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body—shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate—this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the poco più—the little more which makes immortal,—more full of life, and all this submitted to—the eye and prospect of the soul. ”

“ And if they should arise in a soul which is united to an healthful body, either from the natural union between the body and soul, or from any of ten thousand changes, which may occur in those organs of the body, that minister to thought: in any of these cases they are as perfectly innocent as the causes from which they spring. ”

“ What Scripture teaches as to the intimacy of the connection between the body and spirit, physiology confirms. What appear at first merely physical transgressions leave a stain and have a degrading influence on the soul, and through it drag down the spirit. And on the other side, spiritual sins, sins of thought and imagination and disposition, pass through the soul into the body, fix themselves in the nervous constitution, and express themselves even in the countenance and the habits or tendencies of the body. ”

“ The body finds its full meaning and so its possibilities, only when the soul has discovered itself and claimed its liberty. It is then alone that a whole army of anxieties and fears is scattered, leaving the body free and joyously adventurous, ready to identify its movements with those of the soul. ”

“ And were we not saying long ago that the soul, when using the body as an instrument of perception, ... is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence. ”

“ To know anything—the least little thing—about the soul, you must know everything—everything you can know—about the body. So that you're wrong even about your soul. Being a physiologist tells me that your sort of body—a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious body—goes with a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious soul. ”

“ And if the body shall be thus employed, oh, how shall the soul be taken up! As the bodily senses have their proper aptitude and action, so doth the soul in its own action enjoy its own object--by knowing, by thinking, by remembering, by loving. ”

“ But why should the soul take to itself a body? For the same reason that I take a looking-glass — to see myself. Thus, in the body, the soul is reflected. The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within himself, and each one must show his divinity sooner or later. If I am in a dark room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter — I must light a match. ”

“ That the soul can, at times, act independent of the body, I am firmly convinced. We see daily proofs of it in the mesmerist's art, in mental telegraphy, and in various other ways; this has long been an accepted fact. How often do we suddenly think of a person, who instantly thereafter enters our presence, his spiritual part having preceded the physical! How often do we visit places during sleep which, in other days, we recognize externally! ”

“ And, if you give heed, you will find that those who have set their hearts and affections upon seeking after the perfection of the sciences, have forgotten not only the lust of the flesh, but even the most needful matters, such as food and drink; for so long as the soul is stirred within the body, so long does the flesh continue as though insensible. ”

“ As man’s health, usefulness, and happiness here depend on the perfection and utility of the physical body he inhabits, and its maintenance in health and harmony, have we the least reason to imagine that the same individual, dwelling on the spiritual plane, will not be under the same of analogous laws and relations there, since we have assumed the persistence and conscious identity of the soul there as here? ”

“ The Platonists say there are two kinds of knots which link the soul to the body. One is a certain vivifying action which from the soul descends into the body, like a ray; the other is a certain vital quality, which is produced from that action in the body. Now this active and most noble number, which is the soul, in what way do you understand that it may be severed from the ignoble number, which is the body? ”

“ The body, by its organs of sense, as eyes, ears, nose, palate, and various members, communicates with the soul, and conveys to it that intelligence, which the soul administers in procuring well-being to the body, and constantly directs it to the objects of pleasure, and warns it against those of pain. ”

“ The body, however, is not the Life; it is merely the material agency that enables the Life to manifest in a material universe for a certain, though not necessarily a given, period of time. It is the Life, or the Soul, or the Personality that uses, and that in using shapes and moulds, the body and that also determines its strength or its weakness. ”

“ But our bodily organs are much more than any artificial tools can be, they are part of our very being. The body is part of the constitution of man. We are not spirit or soul alone,—though it is sometimes necessary to emphasise the fact that we are soul at all,—we are in truth soul and body together. ”

“ In the case of soul and body, which are of natures contemporary and naturally united, we are accustomed to make this distinction, describing the soul as simple, reasonable, and immortal, but the body as complex, passible, and mortal. ”

“ The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology. ”

“ But the Soul or Vital principle corresponds rather with the function of sight, or the capacity for cutting which {207} the axe has, the body, on the other hand, standing in a relation of potentiality to it. Now just as the eye may mean both the actual organ or pupil, and also the function of sight, so also the living creature means both the body and the soul. We cannot, therefore, think of body apart from soul, or soul apart from body. ”

“ They believed the soul to be closely connected with the breath, and to have its seat in general in the blood. Sensation, thought, and volition are functions of the living being, i.e. of the complex of soul and body, not of the soul alone. ”

“ The spiritualization of the natural body is not to be looked for in an astral or angel body, but in the gait and gesture, the significance and dignity, that make the body of the civilized man the outward image of his soul, and distinguish him from the savage as from the animal. ”

“ That the corporeal soul is the immediate subject of the rational soul, of which seeing it is the act, perfection, complement and form, also by it the rational soul is made or becometh the form and act of the humane body. ”

“ I counsel you that you study earnestly the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, so that, God helping you, you may in deed and truth become Bahá’ís.
CONCERNING BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT 4 Avenue de Camöens, Paris,
Friday morning, November 17th
There are in the world of humanity three degrees; those of the body, the soul, and spirit.
The body is the physical or animal degree of man. From the bodily point of view man is a sharer of the animal kingdom. The bodies alike of men and animals are composed of elements held together by the law of attraction. ”

“ But when the soul has formed a brain, heart and lungs, and a body, the soul dwells in fulness and power in the ultimate body. The soul or mind is supreme and the first. It proceeds by intermediates, the brain, heart, and lungs, to form the body, and then resides therein in fulness and power to perform uses. ”

“ How these influences of the mind on the body are accomplished is a portion of that larger mystery of the influence of mind, or soul, or principle of life, on the material elements of which our body is composed. ”

“ First, I desired that I might do or find something to exalt the soul, something to enable it to live its own life, a more powerful existence now. Secondly, I desired to be able to do something for the flesh, to make a discovery or perfect a method by which the fleshly body might enjoy more pleasure, longer life, and suffer less pain. ”

“ In books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, it is customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as a simple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is in me a principle which thinks, wills, and feels.... Now this implies a begging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth that there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I think, will, and feel. And I—the I that thinks, wills, and feels—am immediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it sustains. ”