Baha'i afterlife? (ritual, hell, eternal, scriptures, spiritual)

[Sunstone]

What does the Baha'i faith teach about the afterlife?

[BruceDLimber]

Originally Posted by Sunstone

What does the Baha'i faith teach about the afterlife?

Greetings yet again! :-)

The Faith teaches many things, but here are a few of the most important:

We have a dual purpose in this life:

1) To acquire the spiritual virtues we'll need both here and in the Next Life, and

2) To carry forward an ever-advancing, spiritually-based civilization.

EVERYONE goes on to the Next Life, and indeed, once conceived, our souls will endure eternally! The body is merely a temporary vehicle during this life.

Just as a fetus in its mother's womb is developing the physical tools it will need in this life (eyes, legs, etc.), so here and now we are to develop the spiritual tools for the next! And just as a baby who fails to develop physically in the womb will be handicapped in this life, so any failure to develop spiritually here and now will impair us then.

We don't have a lot of details about the Next Life, but the Baha'i scriptures assure us that it will be inexpressibly wonderful, especially the farther ahead we go! :-)

Now, our exact circumstances after death are in fact self-determined, a product of the free will we have in this life!

Heaven and hell are spiritual conditions, not places. Heaven is nearness to God; hell, separation.

And our situation after death will be a direct result of how well we've acquired these spiritual virtues in this life! (A list of some of these is in the Bible, in Galatians. They include such things as love, peace, patience, longsuffering, etc..) Those of us who have successfully acquired these virtues will feel spiritually near to God (the definition of Heaven, please note!). Those who have failed to do so will feel spiritually remote from Him, and this will seem a hell in comparison to where we could have been. We thus "judge ourselves" by our very own actions.

Our scriptures assert, too, that God, through His All-merciful and All-loving nature, will assist all of us in the Next Life so that eventually, all of us, even those of us who are the least spiritual, are "cured" of any defects and draw ever closer to Him! So even hell is not a permanent situation....

We really can't say much more than this about Life After Death because we simply don't know.

But I hope this gives you at least some taste of what is in store for all of us!

Regards, :-)

Bruce