Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope! Through the spirit of power confirm Thou me in Thy Cause, O my Best-Beloved, and by the light of Thy glory reveal unto me Thy path, O Thou the Goal of my desire!  Through the power of Thy transcendent might lift me up unto the heaven of Thy holiness, O Source of my being, and by the breezes of Thine eternity gladden me, O Thou Who art my God! –Baha’u’llah, Baha’i Prayers, p. 141.

Every day of our lives, a choice stands before each of us – deciding on the degree to which we will live in the material world or in the spiritual world. In this plane of our existence, each of us has a physical body and a material life — but we can begin to transcend that state of consciousness by making the spiritual world a priority in our daily lives.

To live for the world of the spirit is to drink from the river of everlasting life. Baha’u’llah wrote:

O My Servant! 

Abandon not for that which perisheth an everlasting dominion, and cast not away celestial sovereignty for a worldly desire.  This is the river of everlasting life that hath flowed from the well-spring of the pen of the merciful; well is it with them that drink! – Hidden Words, p. 35.

O Son of Worldliness! 

Pleasant is the realm of being, wert thou to attain thereto; glorious is the domain of eternity, shouldst thou pass beyond the world of mortality; sweet is the holy ecstasy if thou drinkest of the mystic chalice from the hands of the celestial Youth.  Shouldst thou attain this station, thou wouldst be freed from destruction and death, from toil and sin. – Hidden Words, p. 46.

Can you imagine what would happen if a fetus in the womb had free will, and decided not to develop its capabilities there?  You can probably understand the logic – “I’m warm and well-fed and comfortable here – why should I grow arms and legs and eyes and my brain?  Why do I need those things in this place?”

In the same way, all of us who live here on Earth, in this material plane of existence, live in our spiritual womb.  Our eternal spiritual lives stretch out ahead of us, filled with wonders, delights and experiences we cannot perceive or even imagine.  And we have an advantage over that nascent, developing child in the womb – we know we will soon leave this plane of existence.  A baby has no idea it will eventually be born into this huge, wide world of possibilities and potential.  But we know.  No human being has ever stayed in this material life forever, so it’s inevitable that we will all depart for the next world.  Abdu’l-Baha puts it this way:

May the light of divine advancement shine upon you. This is the glory and progress of man. This is eternal life….  Here we comprehend according to environment and adaptation. This world is not much of a place for the realization of truth. This world is but the womb of the world of reality. – Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 112.

“The womb of the world of reality,” the Baha’i teachings call this world.  Soon, that womb will deliver all of us into a sea of light.

Adapted from One With All The Earth, © Kalimat Press 2003, All Rights Reserved.

Have you ever had an ineffable experience—one you simply couldn’t describe in words?

In the accounts of the subjects who had near-death experiences in Raymond Moody’s study, particularly in the accounts of those who seem to have had an extended experience, several parallels between the NDE and the description of our entrance into the afterlife in the Baha’i writings are evident. For example, all of Moody’s subjects acknowledge the ineffable nature of their near-death experiences. They find language totally inadequate to convey the reality of that existence:

Now, there is a real problem for me as I’m trying to tell you this, because all the words I know are thee-dimensional. As I was going through this, I kept thinking, “Well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more.” And, of course, our world—the one we’re living in now—is three-dimensional, but the next one definitely isn’t. And that’s why it’s so hard to tell you this. I have to describe it to you in words that are three-dimensional. That’s as close as I can get to it, but it’s not really adequate. I can’t really give you a complete picture. – Raymond Moody, Life After Life, p. 26.

Baha’u’llah likewise indicates the indescribable difference between physical and spiritual life—the two planes of human existence. He further notes that even were it possible to describe this experience, he would not do it because it would be unwise for him to give us this insight:

The nature of the soul after death can never be described, nor is it meet and permissible to reveal its whole character to the eyes of men … 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. – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 156.

The Purpose of Life

Moody’s subjects and the Baha’i writings are also in accord regarding the purpose of our physical experience and the progress of the human soul. That primary purpose—achieving incremental spiritual development through a process of learning—Moody discusses more elaborately in Reflections on Life After Life.

One of Moody’s subjects states that in the course of his experience he came to understand that, according to the “being of light,” the attainment of knowledge is the purpose of life:

He seemed very interested in things concerning knowledge, too. He kept on pointing out things that had to do with learning, and he did say that I was going to continue learning, and he said that even when he comes back for me (because by this time he had told me that I was going back) that there will always be a quest for knowledge. He said that it is a continuous process, so I got the feeling that it goes on after death. – Raymond Moody, Life After Life, pp. 67-68.

The Baha’i writings emphasize education as one of the primary purposes of physical reality. The Baha’i definition of justice for the individual is to know and then to do. As we have also noted, the sort of knowledge and learning that is most praiseworthy is that which leads to spiritual progress. In fact, Baha’u’llah states that the acquisition of knowledge is essential if the soul is to fulfill its potential:

Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom. – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 260.

What is more, there are many statements in the Baha’i writings indicating that our education continues in the next stage of our existence in the realm of the spirit:

Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. – Ibid., p. 155.

Abdu’l-Bahá likewise affirms that during such progress, the departed souls will discover the “mysteries of which man is heedless in this earthly world.” – Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha, Volume 1, p. 205.

Number four on the list of 5 Astounding Hellacious Things: Hell is a real place. You can visit.

Well, at least hell used to be a real place. Okay, maybe several places.

The word “hell” comes from either the Old Norse or proto-German word “hel” – although several other languages have a similar word. The Anglo-Saxons used the Old English words hel and helle, which both referred to the world of the dead. The same meaning applied to lots of related words from the Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, High German, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish vocabularies. They all described a real place, or at least a mythic place everyone thought was real: Hel.

In Norse mythology, you went to Hel when you died of sickness or old age—as opposed to dying nobly as a warrior in battle, which earned you a one-way ticket to Valhalla. In fact, the ancient curse “Go to Hel” originates from the Viking idea that the only honorable death came in combat. In the myths, Hel was presided over by a woman, also named Hel, the daughter of the legendary trickster Loki. The Norse God Odin appointed Hel to rule over vast mansions in a part of the kingdom called Niflheim, another icy cold place fed by frozen rivers.

This concept of Hel took a significant hold on the far-flung lands the Vikings conquered, and spread widely until it became accepted belief. Then the mythological, pagan concept of Hel slowly transferred to Christian theology and its vocabulary as Europe gradually Christianized over several centuries.

The Judeo-Christian tradition already had its own hell, though, originally called Gehenna—a real place, with very little mythology involved. If you travel to Israel, you can visit hell/Gehenna—it’s located at the base of Mount Zion near a town called Bir Ayyub. I’m told it’s an idyllic little valley today.

Out beyond the city walls of ancient Jerusalem, and identified in the Hebrew Bible as a valley where the son of a man named Hinnom lived, Gehenna reportedly housed apostates and idol-worshippers who sacrificed their own children by fire. This terrible image, hopefully mythical, made the entire valley a cursed landscape where fire consumed the souls of the dead—and that’s how the Aramaic and Hebrew word Gehenna got translated into the Anglo-Saxon word Hell in the King James version of the Bible. Jesus used the word Gehenna many times, describing it symbolically as the opposite to life in God’s kingdom, a place where body and soul burned in “unquenchable fire.” –Mark 9:43. This same place name in Arabic translates as Jahannam, and the Qur’an contains hundreds of references to Gehenna or Jahannam, identifying it as the Islamic hell, a place where sinners receive their eternal punishment.

You can probably see, just by studying and understanding the derivation and origin of these words, places and concepts, how the idea of a hell came about. Originally intended to serve as a metaphor that stood for a bleak, terrible place of the punishment of the dead, and meant as a purely spiritual condition that indicated the torpor of the soul, the clergy of many different religions slowly transformed the cautionary idea of hell from symbolic to real as a way to frighten and control people. Children, the uneducated and the superstitious, who made up the great mass of the populace at the time when many of the ancient religions flourished, understood the stark fear the idea of hell inspired. Religious leaders then used the fear of hell to initially enforce the moral laws of their Faiths, and then, as their religions declined, for their own ends.

But this use of the concept of hell also had some beneficial outcomes at different points in history. Knowing the difference between good and bad, between reward and retribution, is essential to every child’s upbringing. Developing a human moral code which differentiates between conduct that helps others and actions that injure others has always been the purview of religion, and in the historical periods when few people had any education a literal heaven and hell likely gave motivation to many.

The Baha’i writings say that this method of spiritual education always had a wise original intent:

Even the materialists have testified in their writings to the wisdom of these divinely-appointed Messengers, and have regarded the references made by the Prophets to Paradise, to hell fire, to future reward and punishment, to have been actuated by a desire to educate and uplift the souls of men. – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 155.

Today, though, most of us don’t need to believe in a literal hell or heaven. We’ve matured. We typically have the education and intelligence to see those concepts purely as symbols of the soul’s relation to God. To Baha’is, heaven and hell describe a spiritual reality, not a physical one. In this poetic passage describing the new Baha’i revelation from Abdu’l-Baha, heaven and the “Stygian dark” of hell take on that new symbolic meaning:

When the Sun of Reality shed its endless bounties from the Dawning-Point of all desires, and this world of being was lit with that sacred light from pole to pole, with such intensity did it cast down its rays that it blotted out the Stygian dark forever, whereupon this earth of dust became the envy of the spheres of heaven, and this lowly place took on the state and panoply of the supernal realm. The gentle breeze of holiness blew over it, scattering abroad sweet savours; the spring winds of heaven passed by it, and over it, from the Source of all bestowals, were wafted fruitful airs that carried boundless grace. Then the bright dawn rose, and there came tidings of great joy. The divine springtime was here, pitching its tents in this contingent world, so that all creation leapt and danced. – Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, pp. 7-8.

During this unprecedented time in history, I find myself reflecting on my life’s purpose and my mortality. 

More than ever, I feel the need to focus on preparing myself for the next realm of my existence. In searching the Baha’i writings for guidance, I discovered five steps to help in this process:

1. Don’t be afraid

The Baha’i teachings assure us that if we live our lives in accordance with the spiritual guidance the Faith gives us, the world to come is a wonderful place with joys that we could never imagine. In The Hidden Words, Baha’u’llah wrote:

I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom? 

Baha’u’llah’s writings also promise that “Days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes.”

RELATED: The Survival of the Soul after Death

2. Practice mindfulness in my daily thoughts and actions

Mindfulness is not my strong suit! When all the esoteric explanations of mindfulness are said and done, the best way for me to understand and practice mindfulness is to simply pay attention. What am I thinking, feeling, and doing right now? How am I speaking and relating to others in any given moment?  

Referring to our future transition to the next world, Baha’u’llah advises us to be conscious and accountable for our actions each day and every minute, so that when our time of return comes, we are prepared to stand in the Creator’s presence:

Set before thine eyes God’s unerring Balance and, as one standing in His Presence, weigh in that Balance thine actions every day, every moment of thy life. Bring thyself to account ere thou art summoned to a reckoning, on the Day when no man shall have strength to stand for fear of God, the Day when the hearts of the heedless ones shall be made to tremble. 

3. Focus on loving, connection, and service

Our world is in turmoil. Rather than concentrating on the chaos, though, the Baha’i teachings tell me that I can be part of the solution: unity. I can help do that by focusing on developing meaningful relationships in my community and serving others. All that I will take with me after I pass on are the loving connections I fostered in this world, and all that will matter is the love I gave while here on Earth. Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

It is incumbent upon the loved ones of God to exercise the greatest care and prudence in all things, whether great or small, to take counsel together and unitedly resist the onslaught of the stirrers up of strife and the movers of mischief. They must endeavor to consort in a friendly spirit with everyone, must follow moderation in their conduct, must have respect and consideration one for another and show loving-kindness and tender regard to all the peoples of the world. 

The fleeting hours of man’s life on earth pass swiftly by and the little that still remaineth shall come to an end, but that which endureth and lasteth for evermore is the fruit that man reapeth from his servitude at the Divine Threshold.

4. Cultivate spiritual qualities

In the life beyond, the Baha’i teachings and the teachings of many other Faiths tell us, our inner virtues become our most important qualities. The more I can deepen, polish, and develop my virtues in this world, the richer I will be in the next. 

RELATED: The Hidden Nature of Life After Death

Just as the fetus grows arms and legs inside the womb in order to thrive here on Earth, we cultivate the spiritual qualities in this material world necessary to navigate the life ahead. The more spiritual virtues I develop here, the better prepared I will be to flourish in the life to come. These virtues include compassion, truthfulness, justice, love, and faith, among many others, as Baha’u’llah said in The Hidden Words:

My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.

Holy words and pure and goodly deeds ascend unto the heaven of celestial glory. Strive that your deeds may be cleansed from the dust of self and hypocrisy. 

5. Nurture my relationship with God

Each person has their own personal relationship with God. This precious gift, unique to every soul, means that fostering this bond with our Creator, now, is the best preparation for the life to come. This can be accomplished through prayer and meditation and by listening to our intuition—that “small still voice” (1 Kings 19:12) inside. Trust in God, communion, and love for God are our greatest connections with Him, as Baha’u’llah wrote: 

Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.

O moving form of dust! I desire communion with thee, but thou wouldst put no trust in Me. The sword of thy rebellion hath felled the tree of thy hope. At all times I am near unto thee, but thou art ever far from Me. Imperishable glory I have chosen for thee, yet boundless shame thou hast chosen for thyself. While there is yet time, return, and lose not thy chance.

If I can follow my own advice, and try my best to care for and develop my own inner spiritual life using these five steps, I feel confident that my “second birth” into the next world will happen in a joyful, loving way.

According to the Sleep Foundation, most people dream for around two hours every night. Dreaming is a universal experience, regardless of whether or not you remember them upon waking. 

RELATED: A Spiritual Guide to the Dream World

From understanding our spiritual reality to healing from our traumatic experiences, here are nine spiritual and scientific reasons why we have good and bad dreams.

1. We Have Dreams to Understand Our Spiritual Reality

Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, explained that the human spirit has “two modes of operation and understanding. One mode is through the mediation of bodily instruments and organs.” For example, the spirit uses the ears to hear and the eyes to see the physical world. 

Spiritual traveling, our spirit’s second mode of operation, doesn’t require these organs and limbs. For example, we still hear, taste, touch, feel, see, and move in our dreams without our physical bodies. The dream world helps us understand the abilities and immortality of the human spirit and the freedom we will have once we leave this physical realm. Abdu’l-Baha said:

This body is even as the cage and the spirit is like the bird: We observe that this bird, unencumbered by its cage, soars freely in the world of sleep. Therefore, should the cage be broken, the bird would not only continue to exist but its senses would be heightened, its perception would be expanded, and its joy would grow more intense.

2. We Have Dreams to Connect With Our Angels and Ancestors

As we spiritually travel in the dream world, we can also connect with the spirits of our loved ones who have passed away. 

RELATED: What Does It Mean When You Dream of Dead People?

“Again, for instance, a person is dead, is buried in the ground,” Abdu’l-Baha explained. “Afterward, you see him in the world of dreams and speak with him, although his body is interred in the earth. Who is the person you see in your dreams, talk to and who also speaks with you? This again proves that there is another reality different from the physical one which dies and is buried.” 

3. We Have Dreams to Solve Problems

The Baha’i writings encourage us to pray for our loved ones who have passed away because when we are in a receptive attitude, they can make suggestions to us when we are in difficult situations. This sometimes happens while we are sleeping.

Abdu’l-Baha said:

The soul journeys, perceives, senses. It often happens that a man in a state of wakefulness has not been able to accomplish the solution of a problem, and when he goes to sleep, he will reach that solution in a dream.

That is what happened to Dimitry Mendeleev, the chemist who devised the periodic table. He was having trouble creating a pattern that connected the chemical elements until he came up with the idea in his dreams. 

He wrote, “I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper…”

Dreams have led to numerous scientific discoveries throughout history, such as the structure of the atom, the development of insulin, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Studies have shown that dreams offer solutions and insights “the night after a triggering event, and also six to seven days later.” So, the next time you need help solving a problem, you might want to sleep on it.

4. We Have Bad Dreams to Heal From Trauma

“Dreams provide a form of overnight therapy,” said Matthew Walker, the professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. “It’s not time that heals all wounds. It’s time during dream sleep that provides emotional convalescence.”

In an interview for the Lex Fridman Podcast, he explained how dreams act like a “nocturnal soothing bomb” that takes the edge off of difficult and painful experiences so we can feel better about them the next day. “It’s not just that you dream. It’s what you dream about that also matters,” he said.

Professor Walker said they’ve discovered that people who dreamed of their painful experiences gained “resolution to their clinical depression one year later, whereas people who were dreaming just as much but not dreaming about the trauma itself did not go on to gain as much clinical resolution to their depression.”

He explained that dreaming about “emotional events allows mental-health resolution, keeping our minds safe from the clutches of anxiety and reactive depression.”

5. We Have Good Dreams, Bad Dreams, and Nightmares to Spark Our Creativity

“When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think… I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision — I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together,” recounted author Mary Shelley. It was a nightmare that inspired her to write one of the most famous science fiction novels, “Frankenstein.”

She said, “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. …Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke upon me. ’I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.’”

Frankenstein isn’t the only novel that was inspired by a bad dream. Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed of the plot for his fantasy thriller novel, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” His wife could hear him screaming from a nightmare. When she woke him up, he said, “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” His final draft was finished in just six days.

Of course, good dreams have inspired many creative works too. Paul McCartney dreamed of the entire melody for the Beatles’ hit song “Yesterday” in a dream, and the surrealist artist Salvador Dali described his paintings as “hand-painted dream photographs.” 

6. We Have Bad Dreams and Nightmares to Warn Us of Potential Threats

In addition to making us more creative, nightmares can also make us more alert. Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett believes that nightmares are the brain’s way of alerting our attention to issues that we need to address.

“Nightmares probably evolved to help make us anxious about potential dangers,” Barrett said, as told by Live Science. “Even post-traumatic nightmares, which just re-traumatize us, may have been useful in ancestral times when a wild animal that had attacked you, or a rival tribe that had invaded might well be likely to come back.” She explained that conscious awareness of the concerns that are raised in your dreams may be enough to stop dreaming about them.

7. We Have Good, Bad, and Confusing Dreams to Process Our Memories and Information

Sleep experts believe that dreaming strengthens our memory and recall of information, lets go of erroneous or unnecessary information, and reviews or analyzes events we’ve recently experienced.

For example, Abdu’l-Baha said, “during the day a man becomes engaged in a quarrel and dispute. Later, in the world of the dream, these same circumstances appear to him. This is a confused dream. It has no interpretation and contains no discoveries. Before the person dreamed, he was overcome with delusions.”

8. We Have Bad Dreams and Nightmares if We’re Fatigued or Fearful

Nightmares can be triggered by many factors, including sleep deprivation, stress, anxiety, medications, and even scary movies.

After a conversation with Abdu’l-Baha, Mrs. May Maxwell, an early American Baha’i, explained that dreams that result from these influences are examples of the body influencing the soul, as opposed to the Holy Spirit influencing the soul, which is what prophetic dreamers experience.

9. We Have Good and Bad Dreams to Predict the Future

According to Ward Hill Lamon, President Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner and friend, Lincoln dreamed of his assassination. 

RELATED: Prophetic Dreams: Understanding Their Meaning and Insights

In the dream, “he walked into the East Room of the White House to find a covered corpse guarded by soldiers and surrounded by a crowd of mourners. When Lincoln asked one of the soldiers who had died, the soldier replied, ‘The president. He was killed by an assassin.’”

As the Baha’i writings say:

Awake, the eye sees only a short distance, but in the realm of dreams one who is in the East may see the West. Awake, he sees only the present; in sleep he beholds the future.

Now, I don’t want you all to get too scared if you have dreamed of yourself or a loved one dying. Sometimes, those dreams serve as warnings. 

For example, seven years ago, I dreamed that my father had a heart attack and died. While still in the dream, I “woke up” shaken and told my mother about it. Surprisingly, she calmly responded, “Good, that means we can prevent it.” Then I finally woke up. Naturally, I felt very confused and distressed. I told my mother about my dream within a dream, and to my shock and amazement, she said the exact same thing that her dream self had said: “Good, that means we can prevent it.” 

Around a year later, my father had a severe hemorrhagic stroke. His doctor told my mother that his chances of surviving were slim. But, with the power of hundreds of prayers, he survived. Although my dream did predict his serious health scare, we were able to prevent him from dying. 

And, of course, I’ve had good dreams that have come true too. I hope you all find healing, discoveries, insights, and spiritual connections in the fascinating world of dreams.