Three Kinds of Human Souls for Spiritual Perception

As far as this process of spiritual perception, human souls are of three kinds.

1. Those too weak by nature to arrive at spiritual perception.

It is satisfied to move downwards towards:

• the perceptions of the senses and imagination
• the formation of ideas with the help of memory and thinking, according to limited rules and a special order.

In this manner, people acquire perceptive and apperceptive knowledge, which is the product of thinking in the body.

All this is the result of the power of imagination and limited in extent, since from the way it starts it can reach the primary (intelligibilia) but cannot go beyond them.

If they are corrupt, everything beyond them is also corrupt.

This, as a rule, is the extent of human corporeal perception. It is the goal of the perceptions of scholars.

2. Those that can move towards spiritual intellection through thinking

These moves towards perception that does not need the bodily organs because of the soul’s innate preparedness.

The perceptions of this kind of soul:

• extend beyond the primary (intelligibilia) to which primary human perception is restricted, and
• cover the ground of inward observations, which are all intuitive.

They are unlimited as to their beginning and their end.

They are the perceptions of saints, of men of mystical learning and divine knowledge. The blessed obtain them after death, in Purgatory (barzakh).

3. Those that by nature is suited to exchange both corporeal and spiritual humanity for angelicality of the highest stage

This soul may actually:

• become an angel in the flash of a moment
• glimpse the highest group within their own stage
• listen to essential speech and divine address during that moment.

Individuals possessing this kind of soul are prophets.

God implanted and formed in them the natural ability to slough off humanity in that moment which is the state of revelation. God freed them from the lets and hindrances of the body, by which they were afflicted as human beings.

He did this by means of ‘ismah (immunity from sin and error, infallibility) and straightforwardness.

He implanted these in them to give them that particular outlook.

He centered in them a desire for divine worship which converges from all sides towards that goal.

They thus move towards the angelic stage, sloughing off humanity at will, by virtue of their natural constitution, and not with the help of any acquired faculty or craft.

The prophets move in that direction, slough off their humanity, and, once among the highest group of angels, learn all that may there be learned.

They then bring what they have learned back down to the level of the powers of human perception, as this is the way in which it can be transmitted to human beings.

At times, this may happen in the form of a noise the prophet hears.

It is like indistinct words from which he derives the idea conveyed to him. As soon as the noise has stopped, he retains and understands the idea.

At other times, the angel who conveys the message to the prophet appears to him in the form of a man who talks to him, and the prophet comprehends what he says.

Learning the message from the angel, reverting to the level of human perception, and understanding the message conveyed to him - all this appears to take place in one moment, or rather, in a flash.

It does not take place in time, but everything happens simultaneously. Therefore, it appears to happen very quickly. This is why it is called wahy (“revelation”), because the root why has the meaning “to hasten.”