If it has effected that capture...

If it has effected that capture, it is not a grief but rather a relief to be able to lay those weapons aside, and to dismount from that weary steed. Therefore the Prophet said, "Death is a welcome gift of God to the believer." But .alas for that soul which loses its steed and hunting-weapons before it has captured the prize! Its misery and regret will be indescribable. A little further consideration will show how entirely distinct the human soul is from the body and its members.

Limb after limb may be paralysed and cease working, but the individuality of the soul is unimpaired. Further, the body which you have now is no longer the body which you had as a child, but entirely different, yet your Personality now is identical with your personality then. It is therefore easy to conceive of it as persisting when the body is done with altogether, along with its essential attributes which were independent of the body, such as the knowledge and love of God.

This is the meaning of that saying of the Koran, "The good things abide." But if, instead of carrying away with you knowledge, you depart in ignorance of God, this ignorance also is an essential attribute, and will abide as darkness of soul and the seed of misery.

Therefore the Koran says, "He who is blind in this life, will be blind in the next life, and astray from the path." The reason of the human spirit seeking to return to that upper world is that its origin was from thence, and that it is of angelic nature.

It was sent down into this lower sphere against its will to acquire knowledge and experience, as God said in the Koran: "Go down from hence, all of you; there will come to you instruction from Me, and they who obey the instruction need not fear, neither shall they be grieved." The verse, "I breathed into man of My spirit," also points to the celestial origin of the human soul.

Just as the health of the animal soul consists in the equilibrium of its component parts, and this equilibrium is restored, when impaired, by appropriate medicine, so the health of the human soul consists in a moral equilibrium which is maintained and repaired, when needed, by ethical instruction and moral precepts. As regards its future existence, we have already seen that the human soul is essentially independent of the body.

All objections to its existence after death based on the supposed necessity of its recovering its former body fall, therefore, to the ground.