Universal soul

“ Now Universal Mind or Universal Spirit is wholesomeness and love, harmony and power. Realise that when your soul breathes in the atmosphere in which it lives it breathes in wholesomeness and56 love, harmony and power. But it is possible, in the exercise of the free will with which you are in the nature of the case endowed, to fill up the soul with morbidness and selfishness, disunity and weakness, so that there is no room in it for God’s wholesomeness and love, His harmony and power. ”

“ For the little soul that cries aloud for continued personal existence for itself and its beloved, there is no help. For the soul which knows itself no more as a unit, but as a part of the Universal Unity of which the Beloved also is a part ”

“ But what, indeed, can or could overset the doctrine laid down in these same Ûpanishads, of a Universal Soul, a Universal Self, which is--to use the very words of the text:--
"Myself within the heart smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than the kernel of a canary seed: myself within the heart greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven. Lo! He who beholds all beings in this Self, and Self in all beings, he never turns away from it. ”

“ If the understanding is a part of the human soul and this soul an evident and positive part of the universal life, then, clearly, everything partaking of this life, such as pieces of wood and stones scattered around, is related to this soul. Individual human souls, national souls, animal souls, pieces of wood, lumps of stone, world bodies, are all children of the same common universal nature. ”

“ But to Him it appears, that they are superficially informed of the Frame and Tenor of the human Mind, who think that mere Reason (as it exists in Man) is more than a Power of discerning and chusing the properest Means for obtaining his desired Ends, whether these Ends be Good or Evil. The Passions, pre-established Habits, and infused Principles of the Soul are the universal Motives to human Action. ”

“ Have we any difficulty to comprehend the force of humanity or benevolence? Or to conceive that the very aspect of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure; while pain, suffering, sorrow, communicate uneasiness? Here we have an unmistakeable, powerful, universal sentiment of human nature to build upon. ”

“ It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and universal as in the material world. ”

“ For these reasons we may sum up the Substantive Being of the All-originating Spirit as Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty, and Joy; and its Active Power as that of Initiative and Selection. These, therefore, constitute the basic laws of the underlying universal mentality which sets the Standard of Normal Personality--a standard which, when seen in this light, transcends the utmost scope of our thought, for it is nothing else than the Spirit of the Infinite Affirmative conceived in Human Personality. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. ”

“ Perhaps a more correct way to state the author’s position is to say that the individual shares the self-conscious, or, otherwise expressed, the spiritual life which transcends nature, the individual, and society. This world-pervading and world-transcending self-conscious life—the Independent Spiritual Life—may be regarded as an absolute or universal life. The pursuit of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty carries us far beyond considerations of the welfare of the individual, or the society, or even humanity as a whole. ”

“ From the point of view of the world-condition this self-revelation of particular individuals appears as the passing of its universality into the distinct embodiments of living individuality, an aggregate over which universal forces still assert the mastery. ”

“ This influence of individual subjects will be all the greater, of course, the nearer and more intimately they are united with the true centre of the universal spiritual life, the spirit of spirits, about which the universe gravitates, whether with or without the conscious will of the individual. ”

“ Thou shalt speak the truth as thou seest it, without fear, in the spirit of kindness to all thy fellow-creatures, dealing with the manifold interests of life and the typical characters of history.
Nature shall be to thee as a symbol. The life of the soul, in conscious union with the Infinite, shall be for thee the only real existence. ”

“ The man rightly practiced in all noble exercises of life—in moral fidelity, in reverence and sympathy, in observation and conformity to the actual conditions of the world about him—will find pouring in upon him a beauty, a love, a divinity, which fill the soul with a heavenly vision. ”

“ One alone, the incomprehensible Author of all things, is self-subsisting in his perfect Unity.
We shall now endeavour to establish the following proposition: namely, that the Pleasures in question have their true source in One Intuitive Universal Principle or living Power, and that the three Ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, which we assume to represent the perfect in the physical, intellectual, and moral worlds, are but the several realized phases of this sovereign principle, which we shall call Harmony. ”

“ It is my hope that through the bounties and favours of the Abhá Beauty thy countenance may be illumined, thy disposition pleasing, and thy fragrance diffused, that thine eyes may be seeing, thine ears attentive, thy tongue eloquent, thy heart filled with supreme glad-tidings, and thy soul refreshed by divine fragrances, so that thou mayest arise among that race and occupy thyself with the edification of the people, and become filled with light. ”

“ We must, however, thirdly, conceive the universal, which supplies the content of human emotion and action as self-subsistent, intrinsically complete where it is, and constituting as such in itself a definitive and exclusive world. ”

“ Where the realist falsely sunders the what and the that, the outer world and the individual soul, the theoretical and the practical interests, the mystic sees the unity of life’s business, identifies the needful and the true, unites the moral Ought with the theoretical Ideal, teaches that the absolutely Real, by virtue of its very function as the Real, must also be the absolutely Good, gives life a genuine coherence of meaning, and defines the whole duty of man as simple fidelity to that meaning. ”

“ The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic power in the arteries of life; it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts are boundless sea, and the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.... ”

“ The outer universal which I have been taught to will as my will, and which I have grown to find myself in, is now presented by me inwardly to myself as the universal which is my true being, and which by my will I must realize, if need be, against my will as this or that man. So this inner universal has the same content as the outer universal, for it is the outer universal in another sphere; it is the inside of the outside. There was the whole system as an objective will, including my station, and realizing itself here and now in my function. ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ If we refuse to believe in One Ruling, Organizing, Creative Mind, One Living, Universal Mind and Will and Providence, which works through all, we must endow each separate being, or at least each form of life, with creative energy, illimitable and all-answering sensibility and sympathy, unerring44 wisdom, and veritable will. ”

“ May we, as a nation, be of one mind in resisting every species of immorality, in studying the happiness of our fellow creatures—of one mind in obtaining a knowledge of the character of our Creator, in studying his parental and benign government, and his divine attributes and unchanging perfections—and be of one mind in acquainting ourselves with his beautiful works that swarm around us and afford us so many rational delights. ”

“ And, since this is so, the primary affirmative factor can only be the Feeling and the Thought of the Universal Spirit.* Now, by the hypothesis of the case, the Universal Spirit must be the Pure Essence of Life, and therefore its feeling and thought can only be towards the continually increasing expression of the livingness which it is ”

“ And if we realize that above and beyond all this we want something still greater and more enduring, the building-up of character and unfolding of our powers so that we may expand into fuller and yet fuller measures of joyous and joy-giving Life, still the same rule holds good: convey to the Universal Mind the suggestion of the desire, and by the law of relation between subjective and objective mind this too will be fulfilled. ”

“ The initial step, then, consists in determining to picture the Universal Mind as the ideal of all we could wish it to be both to ourselves and to others, together with the endeavour to reproduce this ideal, however imperfectly, in our own life ”

“ Wherefore, O loving friends, strive with heart and soul and strength to make the Tarbíyat School a center of enlightenment, and a well-spring of truth, that the children of God may shine with the rays of boundless learning, and that these tender plants of the divine garden may grow and flourish in the grace that showereth down from the clouds of knowledge and true understanding, and advance to such a degree as to astonish the company of those who know. ”

“ That is most necessary which nourishes the highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists, enlightened minds and great characters are indispensable. The animal and the savage, without much difficulty, find what satisfies appetite; but God appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above every other kind of earthly existence. ”

“ These manifold principles, which constitute the greatest basis for the felicity of mankind and are of the bounties of the Merciful, must be added to the matter of universal peace and combined with it, so that results may accrue. Otherwise the realization of universal peace by itself in the world of mankind is difficult. As the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are combined with universal peace, they are like a table provided with every kind of fresh and delicious food. Every soul can find, at that table of infinite bounty, that which he desires. ”

“ Let us name the higher and the purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, the spirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, which each uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to as a judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this struggle between these two principles that turns the greater part of each man's moral history. ”

“ Through the power of intelligence he becomes simple; through the great power of reason and understanding and not through the power of weakness he becomes sincere. When he attains to the state of perfection, he will receive these qualities; his heart becomes purified, his spirit enlightened, his soul is sensitized and tender—all through his great strength. This is the difference between the perfect man and the child. ”

“ Those are fundamental feelings, planted in all mankind, not accidental exceptions. They are surely a part of the all-wise design, an essential part of your purpose in being here.
The finest types of men, the leading spirits of humanity, in all ages and climes, from the earliest savages to the most advanced civilization, have always had that kind of feeling and responded to it. It is a fundamental fact of the soul life, which leaves no room for doubt. ”

“ The part of man which is not body I will call the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, distribute these faculties of the human spirit into four classes: the intellectual,—including the aesthetic,—moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, and understanding; Conscience shall be the short name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and Soul for the religious faculties. ”

“ The instruction of these children is even as the work of a loving gardener who tendeth his young plants in the flowering fields of the All-Glorious. There is no doubt that it will yield the desired results; especially is this true of instruction as to Bahá’í obligations and Bahá’í conduct, for the little children must needs be made aware in their very heart and soul that “Bahá’í” is not just a name but a truth. Every child must be trained in the things of the spirit, so that he may embody all the virtues and become a source of glory to the Cause of God. ”