Knowing the Spirit

Chapter Seven: The (Spirit’s) Return by Way of the Process of Perfection

Chapter Seven The (Spirit’s) Return by Way of the Process of Perfection General Principles Those who believe in the Return by way of the process of perfection are in general those people who say: “Now it is self-evident that God, the Creator of all the creatures, has not created and does not create any creature without a purpose, since He is absolutely Wise and All-Knowing. Therefore when He brought into existence all the different created beings by means of their ultimate and immediate causes and effects, He established by nature a beginning and a goal for every being in every case, in accordance with His all-encompassing Wisdom. For only God is absolutely without any beginning or end. Otherwise, everything God has created is without exception subject to this rule: they must all reach their ultimate goal by passing through the stages between the two points of their beginning and their end. Therefore in everything that concerns Religion1 as well, the ultimate goal of every being is to pass through certain specific stages between its coming into existence and its place of Return (to God) so that it can attain the Goal of its Returning in the other world, in the eternal realm of the Return.” Now the expression “the Return” (ma‘åd), which means “the place of Returning” in Persian, has two different meanings. 83 84 Knowing the Spirit 1. The first is the exoteric, technical sense that has already been mentioned in the preceding chapters on the bodily, spiritual, and harmonized (both bodily and spiritual) notions of the Return. 2. The second meaning is that of the actual process of perfection: that is to say, (the spirit’s) passing through various stages in order to reach its final goal, which is the stage of Perfection, the ultimate spiritual station of reunion with God, the Truly Real. This is attested to in the verse: They said: “We are from God, and surely to Him we are returning.” (2:156) So according to the proponents of the process of perfection, when the spirit leaves the body (at death), it does not return to that initial, material body, except for a few exceptional cases.2 Indeed even among those who believe in a purely bodily Return—whether through the reuniting of the body’s parts or the restoration of (another similar) body—the majority still hold that this takes place through the establishment of a new, composite body resembling the preceding body or through the likeness of an “imaginal form” that is embodied and raised up through the influence of the surviving spirit—not through the original material body that has died and disappeared. In any case, we must also take into account the following point. Just as the various things that exist are all different with respect to their essential created dispositions, so they also differ among themselves with respect to their process of perfection: each particular group of existent creatures is given its own particular beginning and ultimate end in a way that is specific to that particular group. Now among groups of creatures are the beings on this planet, who are the subject of this book. Their own specific process of perfection is subject to certain conditions, in the following manner. Every existent thing that comes into being out of nothingness through the emanation of the overflowing Grace of the Necessary Being must necessarily become established, as a result of the vertical (creative) process of emanation,3 at its own initial point of emergence in existence that has been determined to be appropriate for it. Then it begins its own process of perfection starting from that point. However, those who have reflected on this matter are of two different opinions regarding the place and stage of existence where each (creature) is initially established after emerging from the process of emanation: 1. The first point of view is that since the process of bringing the existent things into being involves differing factors of cause-and-effect The (Spirit‘s) Return by Way of the Process of Perfection 85 and temporal and spatial priority and posteriority, this necessarily gives rise, at the initial stage of their existence, to different degrees of distance or closeness to the Source, and to a greater or lesser intensity of their initial individual potential. However these (differences due to the particular) causes and effects do not involve any unjust discrimination...