Posted by Rob (209.63.189.108) on March 05, 2002 at 22:40:24:

In Reply to: Re: Reincarnation posted by Jonah Winters on February 27, 2002 at 18:31:56:

I would agree that the departed souls definitely exert some influence upon us in this plane of existence, perhaps to the point of influencing the mind to connect to a past life to the point of believing (erroneously) that it was their life.

The Baha'i Writings affirm that each person has but one soul and this is created at the moment of conception and endures in some spiritual condition after the passing of the body into dust. The exception to this, which I think is somewhat similar to reincarnation (in the sense of a soul returning in another body) is the Return of the Spirit in the body of the Manifestations of God. The Writings of the Baha'i Faith state that this particular Spirit pre-exists the Messenger's bodily conception. In fact, the Writings indicate that this Soul is the Return of all the Messengers, and that they are One and the Same Soul. Often, in the Writings, we read where Baha'u'llah indicates "We" when speaking of Himself and all His previous Manifestations. We are told in the writings that each Messenger also has an unique individual human personality, but that the Soul or Spirit without beginning or end, is a Universal One shared by all the Manifestations.

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