Self-knowledge

Our Future

We mean by this title our situation after death. We can define death as the separation of the spirit from the body. Sleeping is to some extent like death. There is however a difference. During sleep the spirit is still connected with the body, but to a lesser degree than waking. But during the death the spirit is disconnected from the body and belongs to another body which has the qualities of a material body like shape and size without the mass. Philosophers compare it with the bodies of dreams. They call them 'barzakh' or 'mithalt'. This continues until the resurrection. Then our spirits will belong to another body which is like the body in its present situation. In this way we believe in the physical-spiritual resurrection.

This topic is very controversial. Even those people who believe in the physical-spiritual resurrection have reached no consensus about the nature of the bodies in that universe. But what we have said can be easily understood from the Glorious Qur'an and Islamic traditions on which great Islamic scholars agree, and this suffices us in our discussion. As we know, the most important part of our being which makes our personality is. the spirit. All rewards and punishments are in one way or another related to the spirit. The body is just a means for the spirit. Note the following two verses of the Glorious Qur'an.

“Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that die not during their sleep; then He withholds those on whom He has passed the decree of death and sends the others back till an appointed term. “(39:42)

These verses show that death is not an end of our being, that during death our spirits will be completely received by Allah or according to the other verse we will be completely received by (1) and that sleeping is to some extent like death. These verses answer many questions about the resurrection, but they are not closely related to our discussion.