They call this death…
Death… An experience awaiting each and every single one of us…
According to the Quran, death is an event ‘to be tasted’:
“Every individual consciousness will taste death (life without a biological body will continue eternally).”[1]
Therefore, after having tasted death, ‘I’ will continue to live… To put it another way, I will continue my life without the biological body, as my connection to this body is going to be severed. However, because I have been identifying with this body my entire life and uploading data to my consciousness as if I were no more than this body, when this connection is severed, it will feel as though I am being buried alive, I’m going to feel fully conscious, aware and alive when they bury me! They’re going to put me under the ground and cover me with soil, and I’m going to watch and feel all of this … Then I will be transferred to the realm of the grave… This is the event to which the Quran refers as the ‘tasting of death’!
The Rasul of Allah (saw) told Omar (ra) about how a person continues to see the people around him during burial and hear their calling after being placed into the grave, “O Omar, you will continue your life in the grave with the same consciousness and comprehension as the consciousness and comprehension you have here today!” And he calls out to the graves of those who died in the Battle of Badr, and when those who think they are dead say, “Why are you talking to the dead, can they hear you, O Rasulullah?” He answers, “Indeed… They hear and understand me better than the way you do and they confirm what I say!”
So, do not think of those who have been buried as dead; they are alive and conscious! Yet, because their bodies are no longer in use, they are unable to contact us by means of their physical bodies. But they have full perception of us. It is for this reason that it is useful to console someone who has just passed away.
Death is the gateway to a new dimension of life! And in this new dimension of life we will have a new astral or wave body, which in religious terms has been referenced as ‘the spirit.’ But the most crucial point is that we are continually and simultaneously building our spirit-bodies in this world by and through our current biological brain! That is why it has been said in a hadith, “The world is the sowing field of the hereafter; what you sow here you will reap in the hereafter.” That is, the body that you generate and build here, you will use there! You will have no excuse to complain about your body there, for you will have designed and built it yourself with your brain in this world!
When we get to the platform of the afterlife, the platform of the sun, each of us is going to see this Truth and say, “I wish I could return to the world and do the things I neglected, and have the opportunity to build a new spirit-body so we don’t have to put up with the distress here!”