When the human life as a whole is taken into consideration this fact is revealed that all the feelings, sentiments, emotions, all the demands responsible for the smooth functioning of life and the various styles depicting life in different forms are the eventual outcome of information’s perceived. At times we are informed that it is cold and at time the information comes it is hot. Hunger, thirst, pain, delight, love, hatred, pity, cruelty and any other need experienced in life is based upon information’s or in other words information’s are perceived and expressed in the form of different needs, emotions, sentiments and feelings.
After settling upon this point that life is a conglomeration of information’s it becomes necessary that we should find out 1) what is the source of these information’s or from where these information are coming, 2) where is the receiving station located which perceives these information’s, 3) which agency ascribes meanings to the information perceived, 4) which machine is giving us the printouts of phenomena after the information are ascribed meanings, 5) what is the nature of that matter which is being used in this printing process and 6) when information, after passing through various stages, become manifested phenomena why and where do they vanish as if they never existed.
In the elementary stages of spiritual science it is explained that this body of flesh and bones is not the real man rather this physical body which is composed by muscles, tissues, flesh and bones is merely a cloak of the real man in it. Just as clothes of wool, leather or cotton are used for the protection of this physical body similarly this physical body is an attire of the soul; the real man as called by Allah, the most High.
When someone intends to learn spiritual science on a regular basis according to its rules and regulations then this belief is required to be firmly established in him that the physical body of flesh and bones is hypothetical and fictional. When this belief is strongly adopted and takes its roots deeply in ones mind that this physical body is perishable so it is fiction, then very naturally the mind starts receding from the hypothetical senses and when this retraction of mind from the hypothetical life takes place, the journey towards reality begins because reality and fiction both cannot rally at one point. The most prominent and distinguishing feature of hypothetical senses and objects both is that they suffer change, variation, deterioration and annihilation whereas reality remains invariant, unchanged, lasting and imperishable. Reality which is independent self-existing, self-subsisting and permanently flowing towards its center is explored, resulting in the efforts of that man, who has been called the soul by the Holy Quran.
But then the soul has its own gradations. Due to lack of knowledge usually the soul is considered to be a human being just like the one which we see in the form of physical body of flesh and bones. Soul is such a reality which is an indivisible entity, self-subsisting and unwaveringly related and established only with its own self. It has this unique quality of demonstrating itself in a variety of forms and shapes remaining perpetually kinetic and subsisting. It is one of its main characteristics that it never exhibits itself in hypothetical and fictional senses, though it uses them as its robe. But since to remain perpetually kinetic is one of its attributes therefore it makes itself manifested in various dresses. Sometimes its manifestation is in the form of a goat; sometimes it expresses itself as a cow, sometimes it is a jinn and at times the angels.
Spiritual scientists have pointed out the existence of about eleven and half thousand species on this planet earth and indicated that each species is an integral part of the soul. One of the definitions of the soul is that on one hand it selects species’ dress for its manifestation and on the other it designs dresses for itself in the form of the individuals of the species.
For the sake of understanding this working of the soul, we can say that the manifestation of the soul in species’ dress is the negative and the individuals of that species are the positives of that negative. It is an amazingly wonderful system under which the soul keeps on creating its dresses of species and the individuals of the species, and these dresses keep on wearing down just as ordinary clothes of wool and cotton do.
It is not very difficult to understand this. When the real person or man; the soul makes a beginning of its dress, this dress appears in the form of a beautiful, tender and charming baby and then this dress keeps on replacing by a new one at every second. Every second one dress is taken off and the other is put on. In each change of the dress some variation also takes place. At times the printing ink is more and at times it is in lesser quantity. The same one picture is being printed on the same one machine using the same materials but still the impression of each print of the picture differs.
Replacement of dresses one after the other finally reaches that stage when exhaustion starts overpowering and this dress (carnal body of man) perishes. Exhaustion and inability to change the dress is termed as old age. This law has been stated so that it could be clarified for our comprehension that soul remains kinetic perpetually. Movement of every second towards the other, in fact, is a dress of the soul. This very dress is that thing which we see in the form and shape of one or the other manifestation.