Page:Alchemyofhappiness en.djvu/89

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Ghazzali's Alchemy of Happiness.
81

the divine road are dead: they are alive near their Lord and are sustained by him."[1] In regard to the miserable spirits, the apostle of God came to the infidels who had been slain in the battle of Bader,[2] and called upon each by name, and said, "O! such a one, son of such a one, I have found the victory and triumph which ray Lord promised. And you, have you found that latter end and torment of which the Lord assured you, or have you not found it?" His honored companions having remarked to him, "they are dead and how can they hear and how can they speak?", the glory of the world replied, "By the truth of God who has commissioned me to be a true prophet, they are better able to hear than yourselves: there is only this difference, that they are not able to answer." And the prophet of God declared that the spirits of martyrs are in lanterns under the empyrean: and according to another account that they are suspended to the fruits of the trees of Paradise in the craws of green birds. In brief, whoever will study carefully the verses of the Koran, the Traditions and recollections that have reached us respecting death, and will consider the well substantiated accounts of the movements of the dead in grave yards, he will know, in a manner that should remove all doubt, that the dead clearly do not become non-existent....

Hence it happens, that when a person becomes breath- less and is entranced, as sometimes happens in the first exercises among the Soofees, he has a delightful vision of the state after death, notwithstanding the animal spirit continues in the enjoyment of health. Yet if, while in that state, fear and terror should happen to predominate and deprive him of feeling and motion, and if he become so far like the dead that he perceives no external object, the same

  1. S. 3:163.
  2. First victory of the Mussulmans hear Medina.