NDEs and our spiritual nature - the Baha'i view

Andrew9

Member
I was going through some old shows and it was apparent that while there are references to various religious traditions there was no mention of the Baha'i teachings on death, the soul and so on. The purpose of this thread is to let readers know that there are (very) many such references with clear statements about the nature of the soul and what happens at and after death. There is a great amount of agreement with NDE reports, which is why I bring it up. Just so you know... :)

A good starting point is at the primary Baha'i website http://www.bahai.org/beliefs/life-spirit/human-soul/

Here a few of posts about NDEs specifically:
Barney Leith Part 1
Barney Leith Part 2
The Remarkable Consistency of Near-Death Experiences

I know some of you may not follow lots of links so I have summarised a few of the basic teachings below:
- all people have souls which are immortal and non-physical
- the soul is the origin of our individuality and mental abilities, not the body
- the purpose of life is to develop spiritual qualities which are needed after death
- at death the soul leaves the body behind and enters the spiritual worlds
- in this world we are not able to properly understand the next world

I don't plan to get into a general discussion about the Baha'i Faith here. However I would suggest making no assumptions - there is no clergy, no churches. The oneness of mankind is the most important teaching. And independent investigation of truth is a major principle. See the first link above for more.
 
I was going through some old shows and it was apparent that while there are references to various religious traditions there was no mention of the Baha'i teachings on death, the soul and so on. The purpose of this thread is to let readers know that there are (very) many such references with clear statements about the nature of the soul and what happens at and after death. There is a great amount of agreement with NDE reports, which is why I bring it up. Just so you know... :)

A good starting point is at the primary Baha'i website http://www.bahai.org/beliefs/life-spirit/human-soul/

Here a few of posts about NDEs specifically:
Barney Leith Part 1
Barney Leith Part 2
The Remarkable Consistency of Near-Death Experiences

I know some of you may not follow lots of links so I have summarised a few of the basic teachings below:
- all people have souls which are immortal and non-physical
- the soul is the origin of our individuality and mental abilities, not the body
- the purpose of life is to develop spiritual qualities which are needed after death
- at death the soul leaves the body behind and enters the spiritual worlds
- in this world we are not able to properly understand the next world

I don't plan to get into a general discussion about the Baha'i Faith here. However I would suggest making no assumptions - there is no clergy, no churches. The oneness of mankind is the most important teaching. And independent investigation of truth is a major principle. See the first link above for more.
Andrew,

Thanks for this!

I hadn't heard about the Baha'i Faith before you mentioned it. Do you yourself belong to this faith?

Do you happen to know if they believe in re-incarnation? There seems to be some remarkable evidence that people re-incarnate many times (Ian Stevenson's work, hypnotic regression, etc)

David
 
Yes - after some years of investigating various beliefs from psi and UFOs to mysticism, Sufism, yoga and TM. It was the one which resolved the issues for me. I have found the community welcoming, honest, visionary and free of hypocrisy. You probably have a group in some nearby town or city.

Reincarnation. To me this is a difficult subject probably due to our difficulty understanding the nature of the next world.

The Baha'i perspective is that at death our soul moves on into the spiritual worlds and does not return here. These other worlds are much better than this one and we would not benefit from returning. Our soul is compared with a bird in a cage which flies away once the cage is broken open.

NDEers seems to agree that the next world is much preferable to this. Bruce Greyson and Howard Storm have some relevant comments on this subject but did not find any great links.
 
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