No. 33 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The Spirit
When we call upon God as The Spirit, we reach toward the living breath that underlies every heartbeat, every thought, and every act of healing.
I call on Thee O Spirit, O Light, O Most Manifest One! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer
Plain meaning · Spirit
1. Air set in motion by breathing; breath; hence, sometimes, life itself. [Obs.] "All of spirit would deprive." Spenser. The mild air, with season moderate, Gently attempered, and disposed eo well, That still it breathed foorth sweet spirit. Spenser. 2. A rough breathing; an aspirate, as the letter h; also, a mark to denote aspiration; a breathing. [Obs.] Be it a letter or spirit, we have great use for it. B. Jonson. 3. …
Definition from Webster's Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain). When these Writings were translated into English, the translator relied on Webster's New International Dictionary, 1934 edition, of the same Webster's tradition. source
What “The Spirit” means
The meaning above is the plain dictionary definition of the word. What follows reflects on it as a name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.
The word 'spirit' carries one of the oldest freight-loads in human language. Across cultures and centuries it has pointed to breath, to wind, to the invisible animating force that makes the difference between a living being and mere matter. When Bahá'u'lláh invokes God by this name in the Long Healing Prayer, He is not reaching for a vague metaphor. He is addressing the very source of whatever it is that makes anything truly alive, the origin of awareness, motion, feeling, and will. To call God 'The Spirit' is to acknowledge that life itself is not self-explanatory; it has a wellspring beyond the physical.
This name also gestures toward intimacy. A spirit is not remote in the way a law or a force might feel remote. We tend to speak of spirit in connection with presence, with breath shared between beings, with the sense that something living is near. When the prayer lines up 'The Spirit' alongside 'The Light' and 'The Most Manifest One,' the implication seems to be that God's spiritual nature is not hidden from us, it is the very medium through which we perceive anything at all. Our own inner life, the fact that we can wonder and hope and pray, may itself be a trace of that divine Spirit at work in creation.
There is a strand of reflection in the Bahá'í writings suggesting that the spirit encompasses the body rather than the other way around, that awareness holds matter, not merely the reverse. Sitting with this idea while meditating on the name 'The Spirit' can quietly reorient how we think about illness and health. We are not purely mechanical systems that occasionally have feelings. We are spiritual realities who also have bodies, and that ordering matters enormously when we bring our wounds and weariness to prayer.
Calling on The Spirit for healing
When you are unwell, whether the suffering is physical pain, mental exhaustion, grief, or a sense that something essential in you has gone quiet, calling on God as The Spirit is an act of reaching toward the source of vitality itself. It is an honest admission that you cannot manufacture aliveness on your own, and a humble opening of the hand. Nothing in this prayer or in these reflections promises a particular outcome; healing, when it comes, arrives by God's wisdom and in God's timing, and wise counsel from physicians and other skilled caregivers remains an important part of caring for yourself. What calling on The Spirit does is situate your need inside the largest possible reality: not the limits of your own reserves, but the inexhaustible life of the One who breathed existence into being.
You might find it helpful to pause before reciting this line of the prayer and simply notice your own breath for a moment, that most immediate, embodied reminder that you are, right now, a living spirit. Then bring whatever ails you forward honestly, without dressing it up. The name 'The Spirit' does not require eloquence; it requires only the genuine turning of a heart toward the One it names. Many people who pray the Long Healing Prayer regularly speak of a gradual softening, not necessarily the removal of their condition, but a restored sense that they are held within something larger than the condition itself. That quiet, sustaining sense of being held is itself a form of healing, even when the body's work is not yet finished.
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Living the Word
Applying The Spirit in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The Spirit being asked of you right now, and how will you practice it? Keep a short note each time you return, and watch your own path with this name take shape over time. It stays on this device.
In the Bahá'í Writings
“15.3O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer. 15.4O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. Acquiring Divine Virtues”
Read in full at bahai.org →“God Is the Great Compassionate Physician Who Alone Gives True Healing October 19th All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy. If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us! There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastric malady. Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing. All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“5 For example, the mind and the spirit of man are aware of all his states and conditions, of all the parts and members of his body, and of all his physical sensations, as well as of his spiritual powers, perceptions, and conditions. This is an existential knowledge through which man realizes his own condition. He both senses and comprehends it, for the spirit encompasses the body and is aware of its sensations and powers. This knowledge is not the result of effort and acquisition: It is an existential matter; it is pure bounty. 6 Since those sanctified realities, the universal Manifestations of God, encompass all created things both in their essence and in their attributes, since They transcend and discover all existing realities, and since They are cognizant of all things, it follows that Their knowledge is divine and not acquired—that is, it is a heavenly grace and a divine discovery.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The Spirit
- Why does the Long Healing Prayer call God 'The Spirit' rather than something more powerful-sounding, like 'The Almighty'?
- The name 'The Spirit' emphasizes intimacy and aliveness rather than sheer force. It suggests that God's relationship to creation is not only that of a sovereign lawgiver but of the animating presence within life itself. Power and spirit are not in opposition here, in this same line of the prayer, 'The Spirit' appears alongside 'The Sufficing' and 'The Abiding,' names that carry real weight and assurance.
- Does calling on God as 'The Spirit' mean I should not see a doctor?
- Not at all. Reflection on these names in the Bahá'í writings consistently holds spiritual and material remedies together rather than in competition. Seeking skilled medical care is part of taking your own life seriously, and it is entirely consistent with sincere prayer. The two approaches support rather than replace each other.
- I don't feel very spiritual right now. Can I still meaningfully call on God as 'The Spirit'?
- Feeling spiritually dry or distant is one of the most common human experiences, and it is certainly no barrier to prayer, in fact, many people find that praying precisely when they feel least spiritual is when these names become most vivid. The name 'The Spirit' belongs to God, not to your current emotional state, and calling on it is an act of reaching rather than of arriving.
- Is 'The Spirit' here the same as the Holy Spirit?
- The Bahá'í writings speak of the Holy Spirit as the channel through which divine grace and healing flow to creation, and there is a real resonance between that concept and the name invoked here. Whether they are identical or related but distinct is a matter on which authoritative Bahá'í interpretation would be needed; this reflection simply notes the family resemblance and invites you to hold the connection gently as you pray.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer