Spirit or Soul?

Who am I? What am I? What is the soul? Are we really just a mass of organic matter without it? These are the questions whose answers are as much a mystery today as they were at the time of birth of man. However, there are some traces of knowledge about the thing we call soul. In this writing, I will elaborate on the Islamic context.

The Holy Qur’an, which is considered to be the word of God by the Muslims, has touched this topic briefly. The word used by the Qur’an is Rooh, which is translated as spirit instead of soul. So we first have to look at the difference between the two.

Spirit: When God made man, He took soil and blew spirit into it. So spirit can be considered as heavenly matter. The soil has earthly properties because of which it makes us behave like worldly creatures. We eat, drink, sleep, walk etc. The spirit, being heavenly, distinguishes us humans from animals by doing good deeds. It hosts morality. Angels, being heavenly creations, are made completely from spirit. Hence, they cannot do evil. So, it is a balance between the two that keeps us humans. With more and more meditation, man allows the spirit to dominate the soil.

Soul: It is the self-aware essence, unique to a particular living being. It is the totality of our wishes, emotions and experiences. In other words, it is our personality. All our desires are generated by the soul. That is why it is believed that success lies in controlling the soul. Qur’an uses the term Nafs.

Now that we know the difference between the two, we can look at where they came from. It is believed that God has created three places.

1. Aalam-e-Arwah
2. Earth (or Universe)
3. Aalam-e-Barzakh

God first created all the spirits. He gathered them in the Aalam-e-Arwah and made an Ehd, which means to hold witness. It is called the Ehd-e-Alast. He questioned the spirits, “Who is your God?” All replied “You are”. At present, it is believed that the spirits of the ones yet to be born are present here.

On Earth, when a human is still in the womb of the mother, God takes one particular spirit from the Aalam-e-Arwah and assigns it to that body. It combines with the body and gives life to a new born baby. The fate of that baby (place and time of birth and death) has already been decided. The human is ready to live his life on earth doing whatever he wishes. He has been given free will till death. During that time, the spirit remains within the body.

After death, the spirit being separated now from the body goes to a place called Aalam-e-Barzakh leaving behind the dead body. In Aalam-e-Barzakh, the spirit gets an idea through the surrounding whether the person to whom it belongs to will go to heaven or hell. Since man is what he is because of his personality and lives because of the spirit, it is believed that the spirit and soul don’t die. It is also believed that since it is the essence of life, so whatever the spirit experiences in Aalam-e-Barzakh is also experienced by the human to whom it belongs. So it can be concluded that man is actually the combination of spirit and soul. On Earth he had been given a body and free will to learn and do whatever he wished. Now he has to wait for the outcome of whatever he did. In Aalam-e-Barzakh, the spirits will remain till the Day of Judgment.

There are still many questions unanswered. Since soul and spirit are out of the reach of scientific phenomenon, they will remain unanswered. We will only know them through experience after death. However, at that moment, repentance will not be an option.