It should be so obvious to every Ahmadi because the Promised Messiah has spoken on this subject, written on this subject, so has every Caliph, I suppose. So it should be a common knowledge with every Ahmadi that whenever grave is mentioned in context with some punishment or some reward after death, it is not that grave dug on this earth. But it is a term of Islam and this fact is proved from many verses of the Holy Quran and many traditions of the Holy Prophet that whatever is meant is not this grave, but a different thing.
For instance, our Huzoor sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is known to have told us that whenever some person is buried, windows open into his grave. And if he is a pious man, a window from heaven is opened, and if he is an evil man, a window from hell is opened, and he receives gusts of the respective natures. So obviously whenever you dig the grave again, or due to some natural calamities, sometimes the grave throws their dead out, and sometimes due to rain, people have to open up and reset things again. So never a window has been witnessed by any man. So our Huzoor sallallahu alaihi wa sallam could not be wrong.
Only the understanding of the people is wrong, who take him too literally. So similar evidence is abundant through inference from which we can safely assert that the after-death state of the spirit is not a fully developed state. As far as our consciousness is concerned, it could be a state of consciousness as compared to our consciousness. But the ultimate consciousness, the most refined type of consciousness, to which it is heading for an ultimate development, is quite a different phenomenon. You can’t even conceive that such a refined consciousness could exist. So that is the difference between the final developed stage of the spirit and the stage where it starts its course of development, that is immediately after death. That period in between is called the period of grave.
Now for instance the Holy Quran throws light on this subject at different places. Number one, the period of resurrection is, as I have told you earlier, is so far removed from this phase of human life on earth that it could be a billion years or less or more. But it’s a very very large period, a big period. between us and between the resurrection. And also we find that وَمَا خَلْفُكُمْ وَمَا بَعْثُكُمْ إِلَّا كَنَفْسٍ وَاحِدًا That your life after death and your raising from the dead will be of exactly the same nature as your first birth. Now what is the nature of the first birth?
The Holy Quran again refers to this phenomena by inviting our attention to the changes which take place within a pregnant woman’s uterus. And the embryonic stage of creation is referred to in particular. And it is pointed out that see how it gives different shapes to the embryo until it fully develops and becomes a child. So if you see the similarity, you begin to see the similarity between the first phase of life creation and the second phase of creation you will immediately grasp the whole idea that the beginning of the fetus has in fact so far removed in quality and in shape and in essence of life as one cannot believe that this could develop into a full developed child. So that child which is born and that fetus which takes its first seed first embryonic stage they are so far removed that as if they don’t belong to the same thing. And similarly if there is a similarity between the first creation and the second creation the same ratio of difference should exist between the shape of our soul immediately after death and the shape of our soul at the time of resurrection. The ratio should be constant in both cases, otherwise there could be no similarity. Allah tells us that your first creation and the second creation are to be studied like the phenomena of a single birth on earth. If you study that phenomena, nafs in waheda’s creation, single person’s birth then you will understand both the phenomena.
So as we know already what happens during this phenomena of individual creation we should also visualize what may happen after death. And the first lesson one gets is that after death the spirit would be so crude in its form as if it has no bearing and no relationship to the shape it will have developed into at the time of resurrection. So that period of development is called grave. And again, why it is called grave? Because again it has a similarity of the child within the woman’s womb, uterus. Because it is also like a grave. Everything which is developing in there is developing in layers after layers of pouches and whatever is imprisoned there is finds, is in a state very similar to that which you can visualize would be in in the grave. So that similarity continues to hold in every respect.
So the period of grave is a very long period of the development of soul until the soul is ready to take a new birth and that birth would be close to the time of resurrection. And the time of resurrection I said close, maybe I should have said at the time of resurrection, but that day of resurrection should be conceived as a very big period. People think that everything will happen within the day of which we have here. You know for billions of people to have been examined and to have been rewarded according to their own acts, actions, that 12-hour day is not just not enough. It’s enough for God, but not for the people to understand what’s happening. So the phenomena which is described in the holy Quran positively refers to a day of much longer duration.
It could be a day which has been described in the holy Quran as comprising 50,000 years. So in a period of 50,000 years souls would be taking shape. The earlier souls perhaps will be taking shape earlier or maybe those who are pious men, their souls would develop earlier than everybody else’s and so on and so forth.
