What you do in your dreams?

In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful

Image: Dream

In sleep, the soul can also move freely about the world and meet with the souls of people who are still alive and gain knowledge from them. Some of what it learns is true and some false. The false part is the normal dream or the chatter of the soul.

If the sleeper is a liar and likes what is false, his soul still rises to heaven during sleep, moves freely about the world, meets with other souls and learns true information about the Unseen. However while the soul is returning to the body, it meets Shaytan in mid-air and he mixes the true with the false like he does when a person is awake. Then when he wakes up, the person is confused and muddled about what Allah the Mighty and Majestic has let him see and consequently does not understand it, only remembering what Shaytan showed him. Those are confused dreams.

In confirmation of these things, we will mention what Allah the Great has said in the sura, az-Zumar, ''Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and that which has not died, in its sleep. He withholds that against which He has decreed death, but looses the other until a stated term. "( Az-Zumar (39): 42)

In the sleeping state, the soul does not completely leave the body as it does in the case of death, but remains inside the body not leaving it to move freely through the heavens. We can liken it to a ray or a thread whose end remains connected to the body. The ray of this soul stretches out to the heavens and then returns again to the body when the sleeper wakes up. It is like the rays of the sun. The orb of the sun is in the heaven but its rays are on the earth. The two cases are not exactly the same, but it is a way of making the meaning clearer. In the case of death, the body remains in the ground while the soul is in the inter-space between the two worlds. An 'inter-space' is something which separates two things: heaven and earth, or this world and the Next World.  In other words, it is the period between death and resurrection. The bliss or punishment of the Inter-space is not the same as the bliss and punishment of the Next World. It is something that happens between this world and the Next World. Despite the fact that the soul is in the inter-space between the two worlds and the body is inside the earth, the' two are still connected.

Consequently, the bliss or punishment happens to both of them. We have likened this condition to the sleeping state, but naturally there is a distinction. In sleep, the soul subsists fundamentally in the body. It emerges as something like a ray to the heavens ·so that the sleeper has a dream in which he feels either happy or miserable. He experiences either bliss or punishment in his sleep.

In death, the soul subsists fundamentally in the Inter-space, not in the body. When Allah the Great desires bliss or punishment for the soul, He connects it to the body. It is in Heaven, but at the same time it looks at and is connected to the body in the ground. The soul is diffused in more than one place at the same time. The proof of this is that the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, saw Musa, peace and blessing be upon him, on the night of the Night Journey standing in prayer in his grave and he also saw him in the sixth and seventh heavens.

In spite of that, bliss or punishment happen at times to both' body and soul simultaneously. At other times, it happens only to the soul. The dead person can lose aware-ness for a time but then the bliss or punishment continues. That is dependent on the will of Allah the Great and dependent on a man's own actions.

One of the people of earlier times thought that if his body were burned to ashes and then some of the ashes were cast into the sea and some onto dry land on a very windy day, he would be saved from the punishment of the grave. He therefore told his children to do that. However Allah commanded the sea to collect together the ashes that had been thrown into it and the land to do likewise and then said, 'Get up!' and the man found himself standing before Allah. Allah questioned him, asking 'What made you do what you did?' He replied, 'I feared You,my Lord, but You are the one who knows best.' Because of that Allah forgave him.Doing that could not eliminate the punishment and the bliss of the Grave which affect those parts which no longer exist. If a righteous man were to be buried in a fiery furnace, his portion of bliss would still reach his soul and body and Allah would make the fire cool and peaceful for him. For the wrongdoer, the cool air becomes fire and hot wind. The elements and the matter of the universe obey their Lord, Originator and Creator. He makes them behave in whatever way He wills. None of them are able to do anything except what He wills. Everything obeys His will in humble sub-mission to His decree.

Courtesy of: An Abridgement of Ibn Al-Qayyim’s kitabur Ruh.