Imam Al Ghazali says on this topic in his monumental work, “The Alchemy of Happiness” as follows:
The effect of death on the composite nature of man is as follows: Man has two souls, an animal soul and a spiritual soul, the latter of which is of angelic nature. The seat of the animal soul is the heart, from which this soul issues like a subtle vapour and pervades all the members of the body, giving the power of sight to the eye, the power of hearing to the ear and to every member, the faculty of performing its own appropriate functions. It may be compared to a lamp carried about within a cottage, the light of which falls upon the walls wherever it goes. The heart is the wick of this lamp and when the supply of oil is cut off for any reason, the lamp dies. Such is the death of the animal soul. With the spiritual or human soul, the case is different. It is indivisible and by it, man knows God. It is so to speak, the rider of the animal soul and when that perishes, it still remains, but is like a horseman who has been dismounted or like a hunter who has lost his weapons. That steed and those weapons were granted to the human soul, so that by means of them, it might pursue and capture the phoenix of the love and knowledge of God. If it has effected that capture, it is not a grief, but rather a relief to be able to lay those weapons aside and to dismount from that weary steed.
Therefore, the Prophet said, “ Death is a welcome gift from God to the believer.” But alas, for that soul which loses its steed and hunting weapons before it has captured the prize, its misery and regret will be indescribable.
Regarding Human Soul
Imam Al- Ghazali, speaking on the topic in his monumental work, “The Alchemy of Happiness,” says: “The human soul is entirely distinct from the body and its members. Limb after limb may be paralyzed and cease to work, but the individuality of the soul is unimpaired. Further, the body which you have now is no longer the body which you had as a child, but entirely different, yet your personality now is identical with your personality then. It is therefore easy to conceive of it as persisting when the body is done with altogether, along with its essential attributes which were independent of the body such as the knowledge of and love of God. This is the meaning of that saying in the Quran: “ The good things abide.” But if instead of God, this ignorance also is an essential attribute and will abide as darkness of soul and the seed of misery. Therefore the Quran says : “ He who is blind in this life will be blind in the next life and astray from the path. The reason of the human spirit seeking to return to that upper world is that its origin was from thence and that it is of angelic nature. It was sent down into the lower sphere against the will to acquire knowledge and experience as God said in the Quran: ‘Go down from hence, all of you, there will come instructions to you from Me and they who obey the instruction need not fear, neither shall they be grieved’.”
The verse, “ I breathed into man of My spirit,” also points to the celestial origin of the human soul. Just as the health of the animal soul consists in the equilibrium of its compound parts and this equilibrium is restored when impaired by appropriate medicine, so the health of the human soul consists in the moral equilibrium which is maintained and repaired when needed, by ethical instruction and moral precepts.
As regards its future existence, we have already seen that the human soul is essentially independent of the body. All objections to its existence after death, based on the supposed necessity of its recovering its former body fall, therefore to the ground.
Some theologians say that the human soul is annihilated after death and then restored, but this is contrary both to reason and to the Quran. The former shows us that death does not destroy the essential individuality of a man and the Quran says : “ Think not that those who are slain in the path of God are dead, nay they are alive, rejoicing in the presence of the Lord and in the grace bestowed on them.” Not a word is said in the law about any of the dead, good or bad, being annihilated. Nay, the Prophet is said to have questioned the spirits of slain infidels as to whether they had found punishments with which he had threatened them, real or not. When his followers asked him what was the good of questioning them, he replied,” They hear my words better than you do.”
Some Sufis had the unseen world of heaven and hell revealed to them, when in a state of death like trance. On their recovering consciousness, their faces betray the nature of the revelations they have had by marks of joy or terror. But no visions are necessary to prove what will occur to every thinking man, that when death has stripped him of his senses and left him nothing, but his bare personality, if while on earth, he has too closely attached himself to objects perceived by the senses such as wives, children, wealth, lands, slaves, male and female etc, he must necessarily suffer when bereft of those objects. Whereas, on the contrary, if he has as far as possible turned his back on all earthly objects and fixed his supreme affection upon God, he will welcome death as a means of escape from worldly entanglements and of re-union with Him, whom he loves. In his case, the Prophet’s saying will be verified. “Death is a bridge which unites friend to friend,” and the “world is a paradise for infidels, but a prison for the faithful”.
On the other hand, the pains which souls suffer after death all have their source in excessive love of the world. The Prophet said that every unbeliever, after death will be tormented by ninety-nine snakes, each having nine heads. Some simple minded people have examined the unbelievers’ grave and wondered at failing to see snakes there. They do not understand that these snakes have their abode within the unbelievers’ spirits and that they existed in him even before he died, for they were his own evil qualities symbolized such as jealousy, hatred, hypocrisy, pride, deceit etc, everyone of which springs directly or remotely from love of the world. Such is the doom of those who, in the words of the Quran, “Set their hearts on this world rather than on the next.” If those snakes were merely external, they might hope to escape their torment, if it were but for a moment, but being their own inherent attributes, how can they escape?
Take for instance, the case of a man who has sold a slave girl without knowing how much he was attached to her till she is quite out of his reach. Then the love of her, hitherto dormant, wakes up in him with such intensity as to amount to torture, stinging him like a snake, so that he would cast himself into fire or water to escape it. Such is the effect of love of the world, which those who have it often suspect not till the world is taken from them and then the torment of vain longing is such that they would gladly exchange it for any number of mere external snakes and scorpions. Every sinner, thus carries with him into the world beyond death, the instruments of his own punishment and the Quran says truly, “Verily, you shall see hell, you shall see it with the eyes of certainty,” and “hell surrounds the unbelievers.” It does not say “will surround them,” for it is round them even now.
Some may object, “ if such is the case, then who can escape hell, for who is not more or less bound to the world by various ties of affection and interest?” To this we answer that there are some, notably the faqirs who have entirely disengaged themselves from the love of the world. But even among those who have worldly possessions such as wife, children, houses etc, there are those who, though they have some affection for those, love God yet more. Their case is like that of a man who though he may have a dwelling which he is fond of in the city, when he is called by the king to take up a post of authority in another city, does so gladly as the post of authority is dearer to him than his former dwelling. Such are many of the Prophets and saints.
Others there are, and a great number who have some love for God, but the love of the world so preponderates in them that they will have to suffer a good deal of pain after death before they are thoroughly weaned from it. Many profess to love God, but a man may easily test himself by watching which way the balance of his affection inclines when the commands of God come into collision with some of his desires. The profession of love to God which is insufficient to restrain from disobedience to God is a lie.
We have seen above that one kind of spiritual hell is the forcible separation from worldly things to which the heart craves too fondly. Many carry about within them the germs of such a hell without being aware of it. Hereafter, they will feel like some king who after living in luxury has been dethroned and made a laughing stock. The second kind of spiritual hell is that of shame, when a man wakes up to see the nature of the actions he committed in their naked reality. Thus, he who slandered will see himself in the guise of a cannibal eating his dead brother’s flesh and he who envied, as one who casts stones against a wall and these stones rebound and put out the eyes of his own children.
The journey of man through the world may be divided into four stages- the sensous, the experimental, the instinctive and the rational. In the first, he is like a moth which though has sight has no memory and will burn itself again and again at the same candle. In the second stage, he is like a dog which, having once been beaten will run away at the sight of a stick. In the third, he is like a horse or sheep, both of which instinctively fly at the sight of a lion or wolf, their natural enemies, while they will not fly from a camel or a buffalo, though these are much greater in size. In the fourth stage, man altogether transcends the limits of the animals and becomes capable to some extent of foreseeing and providing for the future. His movements at first may be compared to ordinary walking on land, then to traversing the sea in a ship, then on the fourth plane where he is conversant with realities, to walking on the sea. While beyond this plane, there is the fifth known to the prophets and saints, whose progress may be compared to flying through the air.
Thus, man is capable of existing on several different planes, from the animal to the angelic, and precisely in this lies his danger, i.e of falling to the very lowest.
In the Quran, it is written, “We proposed the burden (i.e responsibility or freewill) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains and they refused to undertake it. But man took it upon himself. Verily he is ignorant.”
Neither animals nor angels can change their appointed rank and place. But man may sink to the animal or soar to the angel and this is the meaning of his undertaking that, “burden” of which the Quran speaks. The majority of men chose to remain in the two lower stages mentioned above, and the stationary are always hostile to the travelers or pilgrims, whom they far outnumber.