THE SOUL'S JOURNEY AFTER DEATH

introduction

they will ask you about the spirit. say "the spirit is at the behest of your lord. you have been given only a little knowledge"
the living go on and the dead do not'.... Allah! what an extraordinary expression and what an even stranger position to take. when somebody dies, our sorrow and tears, our weeping and mourning soon cease. the funeral rites, the Thursday ceremony and finally the forth day ceremony are held and then all is forgiven. We say ourselves "the living go on and the dead do not" and put the dead person out of mind on the premise that he is dead and at rest. we forget or pretend to forget that he is in fact in even greater need of us than the living. he faces the future all alone, hidden away in the domain of the earthworms , burried under the earth in a desolate grave. he was in the light and now he is in darkness. he was surrounded by beauty and spaciousness and now he is enclosed in narrowness and gloom. he was in bliss and he now is in torment.
   all this however,  is measured by criteria which are completely different from those that we, the living, use. we cannot perceive these things with our eyes or our inner senses or even our ears. the dead person is completely aware of them, but according to the criteria of the next world. what are those criteria? what is death? what is life in the next world..the world after death? questions, many questions come to mind.

  i have read more than one book on this subject, but i consider my basic source in what i say here to be the kitab ar-ruh by ibn al-qayyum which is based on the qur'an and sunnah , traditions and what the greatest scholars have said. however, before reading ibn al-qayyim, we must first know who ibn al-qayyim was, and whether he is  a  reliable source.