Life After Death

The Coat Left on the Floor

Death is the soul laying aside the body and entering another world.

Folding her mother’s coat. Imaged by AI

Someone at a Bahá’í school or gathering was scheduled to give a talk on death and dying.

The speaker entered the room wearing a coat. Without saying anything, he removed the coat, dropped it on the floor, and left the room. I remember something about his opening a window and climbing out through it. A little later, he returned and explained that he had just demonstrated death and dying.

The meaning seems plain enough.

The coat represented the physical body. The man inside it represented the soul. By dropping the coat, he showed the soul relinquishing its physical garment. Leaving through the window suggested passing into a realm beyond ordinary sight. The coat remained on the floor, but the person was no longer in the room.

A version of his explanation may have sounded something like this:

“You saw me leave my coat behind and depart through an opening you did not expect me to use. The coat is not me. It was something I wore. Death is the soul laying aside the body and entering another world.”

The Bahá’í teachings explain that at death the body returns to the material world from which it came. At the same time, the soul continues its progress in the spiritual worlds of God. The body has served as the soul’s instrument during earthly life, allowing us to learn, choose, love, suffer, forgive, and grow. When the body can no longer serve, it is laid aside with respect, much as a worn garment is removed.

The soul does not cease to exist.

It carries the spiritual qualities developed here into the next world. Love, faith, courage, compassion, truthfulness, and humility are not buried with the body. They become part of the soul’s continuing life and progress toward God.

Bahá’u’lláh tells us, “The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother.”

A child in the womb cannot imagine sunlight, open air, music, or the faces of those waiting to welcome it. In much the same way, we cannot fully imagine the world awaiting the soul after death. We are trying to picture a greater existence while still confined within the conditions of a smaller one.

Heaven or Hell?

My understanding is that heaven, at least in part, is a state of nearness to God, while what is called hell is a state of remoteness from Him. Neither needs to be thought of merely as a physical place. Each may be understood as a natural consequence of the soul’s spiritual condition.

Nearness grows through love, truthfulness, humility, service, prayer, and obedience to the guidance brought by the Manifestations of God. Remoteness follows when spiritual growth is neglected or resisted. God’s Messengers have shown humanity the path, but each soul must decide whether to follow it.

Beyond these broad truths, the exact nature of the afterlife remains a mystery. Perhaps the coat lying on the floor is about as much as we can understand from where we now stand.

[embed]The Look Before Goodbye Here’s what I saw. You decide what it means.medium.com

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Retired now, with more than four decades of experience as an addiction counselor walking alongside men and women in recovery, I like to write about faith, human dignity, aging, and the fact that every struggle hides a longing for meaning.

I am a member of the Baha’i Faith and believe that unity and compassion are essential to healing. I write about addiction to substances, recovery, and the thistles of the soul. Human rights are God-given rights.

If you’ve worked with addiction or lived through it, I’d be glad to hear what you’ve learned.