I was listening to your answer about the Ruh, and would it mean that the process of that violent transformation from one stage to the next be painful as it is purportedly for this life? Who told you it is painful? You have not gone through that process? No, I think I have read either a hadith or something which… It is not painful for the departing, you know, higher value. The body which is left behind, it may show signs of some pain or distortions or this and that, but even if you call… body, of course it is felt by the soul.
The pleasure which follows is out of all proportion much more, with the result that that pain is not considered to be an unwelcome thing. So some sort of pain, as you write there, is involved, is attached to the phenomenon of a new birth. When the babies, every baby is born in pain, both his mother and he himself goes through that ordeal of pain, otherwise the babies, newborn babies would not cry. Sometimes they do not survive that trial, you know, it is so difficult for them. that the newborn babies, even if they feel, they don’t remember it.
And the mothers remember it, but in the diminishing order. With the passage of time, that begins to appear very small and ordinary and something left in the past. But the pleasure of having a child is far greater. So the soul, which would be like a baby, if she passes through that phase of pain, I believe like a child, she would not remember it, you know, she wouldn’t consider it any significant thing. But the previous stage may go through some throes of pain or torture, but compared to the again it would be just nothing.
The question I had formulated is answered, so I wouldn’t ask, but it’s about the holy verse in Surah Az-Zumar, where the process of dying is described, compared with the process of sleeping. Because Allah says, اللَّهُ يُتَوَفَّلْ أَنفُسًا هِينَ مَوْتِهَا وَالَّتِي لَمْ تَمُتْ فِي مَنَامِهَا فَيُمْسِكُ اللَّتِي قَضَى عَلَيْهَا الْمُوتَى وَيُرْسِلُ الْأُخْرَى إِلَىٰ أَجَلِ مُسَمَّةٍ إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لَعَيَةِ الْلُّقَامِ يَتَفَقُنُونَ So if you don’t feel any pain during sleeping, and the process is somewhat comparable… No, but you see, the question of pain, as raised by you, was accepted by me because in most cases we observe some involvement of pain in that process.
But I shouldn’t have accepted your statement in two-toe, because in so many cases of this transformation, that is, from life to apparent death or a new life, no pain is involved at all, either for the body or for the soul, because sometimes the process is so quick that our apparatus for feeling pain is not activated in that short time. If you sever your finger, or somebody severs, I should say, his finger, rapidly, in that instant he wouldn’t feel anything. The pain may follow later, but if the whole body is severed into two, there would be nobody left to feel the pain later on.
So again, there are some people who die in sleep, some people reach ripe old age and die very quietly in bed, and some people have been noticed to be talking, and the next moment they are not there. So to say that necessarily the phenomena of pain is involved is not correct, but it may be involved. So you should read my discussion in the light of this statement, that if it is involved it would have that sort of application, otherwise it may not be involved at all.
