IB World Religions 1.10.3. Where Are We Going? Paradise and Hell as States, Not Places Notes

1.10.3. Where Are We Going? Paradise and Hell as States, Not Places

Death and the soul's release

1. Bahá'ís describe death as the soul's release from the body rather than as an ending. Bahá'u'lláh writes in the Hidden Words that he has made death a messenger of joy, and asks the reader why they grieve.
2. The soul keeps its identity through the change. The person who has died is held to be the same person, without the body they used here.
3. Bahá'ís do not teach that the soul travels anywhere. The writings describe the next life as a condition of the soul rather than as a country it moves to.
4. Grief is not treated as a failure of faith. Bahá'í prayers for mourners ask for comfort plainly, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote letters of consolation to bereaved families throughout his life.
5. What a person carries forward is character. Wealth, rank and physical strength are held to stay behind with the body that acquired them.
6. The next world is described as beyond imagining from this one, in the way the world outside the womb cannot be pictured by the child still inside it.

Nearness to God

1. Paradise in Bahá'í teaching is a state and not a place. It is described as nearness to God, harmony with his will, and the perfection of what a soul was made to become.
2. That state begins in this life. Bahá'ís hold that a person who knows God and lives by his teachings is already in paradise, and that death only removes the veil over it.
3. Perfection here means completeness rather than faultlessness. A soul that has developed the divine attributes is described as having become what it had in it to be.
4. Nearness is not held to be a payment for good conduct. Bahá'ís describe it as the natural result of turning towards God, in the way warmth is the result of standing near a fire.
5. The joy of paradise is therefore described as knowledge and love rather than as physical pleasure. Gardens, rivers and banquets are not read as literal features of it.

Remoteness from God

1. Hell in Bahá'í teaching is the matching state: imperfection, remoteness from God and conflict with his will.
2. Bahá'í teaching is specific about how a soul reaches that condition. It comes by denying God and his plan for humanity, and by doing evil.
3. Hell also begins now. A life spent in cruelty or self-absorption is described as already remote from God, whatever the person's outward circumstances look like.
4. Bahá'ís do not teach eternal torment or a tormentor. There is no devil in the system, and the suffering described is a soul's own awareness of what it failed to become.
5. Remoteness is not held to be permanent either. Bahá'ís teach that God's mercy stays available after death, so a soul in that condition can still turn towards him.
6. The absence of hellfire does not make the teaching mild. Bahá'ís describe the regret of a soul that finally understands its own waste as real and severe suffering.

Progress in the worlds beyond

1. Bahá'ís teach that the soul goes on developing after death. The writings speak of worlds of God through which a soul advances without ever reaching a last one.
2. There is no return to this world. Bahá'ís reject reincarnation, holding that a soul moves forward through those worlds rather than back into another body here.
3. Progress after death is not earned in the way it is earned in life. The writings say a soul can advance through God's mercy, through the prayers of the living and through good done in its name.
4. That gives the living something to do. Bahá'ís pray for their dead, and donations to charity are often made in a dead person's name.
5. Souls in the next world are also held to assist the living, so the relationship runs in both directions rather than only one.
6. The progress is described as endless. Because God is infinite, Bahá'ís hold that no soul ever exhausts what there is to know of him.

Reading the older imagery

1. Earlier scriptures describe heaven and hell in physical terms, and Bahá'ís read that language as symbolic rather than as description.
2. Fire in those texts is read as the soul's separation from God, and the garden as its nearness to him. The images are held to be accurate about the condition and not about the furniture.
3. Bahá'u'lláh applies the same method to other prophetic language in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, arguing that terms such as resurrection and judgement carry spiritual meanings.
4. The resurrection of the body is therefore not part of Bahá'í teaching. What continues is the soul, and the body returns to the earth it was made from.
5. This places Bahá'ís at a distance from the literal readings held by many Muslims and Christians, and closer to the symbolic readings held within those traditions by some theologians and mystics.
6. Bahá'ís do not present the symbolic reading as a softening. They argue that a state of the soul is the heavier idea, because nothing can move a person out of it except a change in themselves.

The destiny of humanity

1. Bahá'ís give a second answer to the question of where we are going, about the human race as a whole rather than the individual soul.
2. Bahá'u'lláh taught that humanity is passing from its adolescence into maturity, and that maturity means a single unified global society rather than a collection of rival states.
3. Bahá'ís call that outcome the Most Great Peace, a world order in which war has been given up and the resources of the planet are shared.
4. They distinguish it from the Lesser Peace, a political settlement between governments that they expect to come first and to be secular in character.
5. The destination is held to be certain but not automatic. Bahá'ís teach that the direction of history is set, while the cost of arriving there depends on what people choose.
6. Bahá'ís therefore treat community building, education and social action as work on that destination, rather than as charity done alongside the religion.