People are composed of a spirit, a body and a soul.
‘The body’ is the material from which the human is made. God created it from soil, which is a part of this material universe, in order to find agreement and correlation between the body and the elements of the earth, so that it will be harmonious, in accordance, and coexistent with them. The body obtains its nourishment from those elements and depends on them for its life. Within the body, the soul spreads to generate this life and its power in its various forms.
Concerning ‘the soul’, it is the support of the Godly light which flows into the blood. The heart is its center, and the life of the body depends on it.
As for ‘the spirit’, it is the essential element of man and his immaterial, conscious self. It is a type of Godly light and its centre is the chest. Its rays spread to all parts of the body so that it can know the things that surround it through its senses. It sees with the eye, hears with the ear, tastes flavors with the tongue, etc.
This spirit, our immaterial conscious identity, is that which held the Trust that wishes to win paradises on our behalf. God says: “We offered the Trust to the heavens, earth and mountains and they refused to bear it for they feared it; Man bore it. Man was unjust to himself and ignorant of its results!”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 33, Al-Ahzab (The Combined Clans), verse 72
That was Man in Al-Azal world: the pre-material Man. He was an abstract spirit without a body. The spirit is so-called because the word is derived in Arabic from the word meaning ‘magnificent value’.
It is the centre of existence, and it is charged to follow the straight path. God says: “And (look at) the spirit and (wonder about) who has perfected it, inspired it with knowledge of sin and piety. Successful is he who has made it pure, and unsuccessful is he that has corrupted it.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 91, Ash-Shams (The Sun), verse 7-10
The spirit is that which was prepared by the Almighty to bear witness to His lights, to take mind of His Supreme Attributes, and to view reality through His light (Glory and loftiness to Him) by means of the noble messenger (cpth). He (cpth) is the shining lamp which illuminates the spirit and shows it those of God’s lights and those of His supreme Names that are proportional to its status, its deeds, its confidence and its nearness to Him. Yet this is something that could not be accomplished except through communication with God.
Moreover, the spirit is eternal; that is, it could never cease to exist. Its taste of death is only a tasting. God says: “Every spirit shall taste death…”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 29, Al-’Ankabut (The Spider), verse 57
After death, the cessation of existence occurs only in terms of its garment, the body, which shall not be recreated until the Day of Resurrection.
In Arabic, the Day of Resurrection means the day of rising. It is so-called because bodies will rise again on this day to be put inside the spirits, so they will be in a state contrary to their state in the present life where they surround the spirits.
The spirit, then, is the centre of emotion, feeling and sensation. It deals with the worldly life and the material of this life through its body, through which it enjoys its own yearnings and desires, whether they are high or low. In addition to this, it is the absolute master that directs the body’s systems through the nerves, wherein the rays of the spirit flow.
It expresses its feelings and sensations through the body, and its center is in the chest. God says: “…He is Omniscient of that which centers in chests.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 11, Hud (Hud), verse 5
He also says: “Say: I seek refuge in the Provider of oblivious people … from the evil of the sneaking whisperer, who whispers evil in the chests of oblivious mankind, of jinns and of oblivious mankind.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 114, An-Nas (Oblivious Mankind, Oblivious Jinn-kind), verse 4-6
The rays of the spirit spread through the nerves, and when the nerves are anesthetized, the spirit retreats from the anesthetized part, and therefore the patient does not feel any pain even if one of its limbs is being amputated. For another example, let us go back to the story of the women who cut their hands in the story of the prophet Joseph (pth). In the Holy Qur’an, God says: “When she heard of their cunning (their malicious talk), she sent for them and prepared a banquet; she gave each of them a knife and said to Joseph: ‘Come out before them’. When they saw him, they did glorify him and (in their amazement) cut their hands; they said: God is blameless! No mortal is this! This is none but a pure (noble) angel.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 12, Yusuf (Joseph), verse 31
The women cut their hands because their spirits were shocked when they saw Joseph’s beauty (peace is through him). In this case, the spirits left their bodies and headed for prophet Joseph. So they were able to cut their hands without feeling anything, because they were ravished at the sight of his beauty and distracted from feeling any pain.
Their conscious selves left their bodies, flowing outwards through their sense of sight, until they became absented from the other senses, just as happens in the case of anesthesia when consciousness disappears, only to return after the spirit returns to the anesthetized limb.
You notice that a man who is quarreling does not feel something that befalls him during his quarrels, or any other sudden event, even if it was the stab of a knife. That is because his spirit is occupied with another concern during the event. However, after its return to its body, the spirit moans and suffers a pain it did not feel at the time that it was inflicted, in spite of the existence of the physical injury.
And here is a real event that occurred in one of the American states. This event allows us to notice how the spirit can travel and how it can leave its body to flow outwards through our sense of vision, exactly as happened in the story of the women who cut their hands mentioned above.