(Extract, letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, June 7th, 1946)
SCOUTING (81)
As to the Scout movement, they afford a great disciplinary lesson to the young boys and girls provided they are not prepared directly for the army. In some towns here we have in some of the schools Scout troops who are also students of the Colleges and it has proved to be a great educational scheme for helping the development of the children but they are never taught to carry arms or even the use of firearms. And furthermore they are often taught the evils of war rather than encourage them to become in future active soldiers with imperialistic designs. This of course is my own personal view.
(Extract, letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, December 30th, 1925)
SOUL, MIND AND SPIRIT (82)
When studying at present, in English, the available Bahá’í writings on the subject of body, soul and spirit, one is handicapped by a certain lack of clarity because not all were translated by the same person, and also there are, as you know, still many Bahá’í writings untranslated. But there is no doubt that spirit and soul seem to have been interchanged in meaning sometimes; soul and mind have, likewise, been interchanged in meaning, no doubt due to difficulties arising from different translations. What the Bahá’ís do believe though is that we have three aspects of our humanness, so to speak, a body, a mind and an immortal identity--soul or spirit. We believe the mind forms a link between the soul and the body, and the two interact on each other.