his bed while his soul is at the Lote Tree of the utmost boundary, circling around the Throne; whereas another may be physically standing in worship, yet his soul is down below, roaming among the lowest realms.

When the soul leaves the body it joins its companion, whether that companion be of the higher company or of the lower. With the higher company there are unfailing delights: every joy that gladdens the eye, all bliss, happiness, exhilaration, pleasure, and a wholesome life. With the lower company there is every care and grief, constriction and sorrow, a wretched life and a straitened existence.

The Almighty said: “And whoever turns away from My remembrance, for him there shall be a constricted life” (Taha 20:124). His remembrance here is His speech that He sent down to His Messenger. To turn away from it is to neglect reflecting upon it and acting by it. As for the “constricted life,” most of the exegetical reports say that it is the torment of the grave; so explained Ibn Mas‘ud, Abu Hurayrah, Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri, and Ibn ‘Abbas (1), and there is a hadith traced back to the Prophet on the matter (2). In Arabic the root ḍ-n-k conveys tightness and hardship; anything cramped is described as ḍank—one says: a cramped dwelling, a straitened life.

This constricted life counters the person’s widening of his self and body through whims, pleasures, and ease: the more room he gives the lower self, the more it squeezes the heart until life becomes narrow; and the more he restrains it, the more the heart expands and opens. Therefore, the hardship of life in this world that comes from piety yields spaciousness in the barzakh and the Hereafter, whereas the spaciousness gained here by following caprice turns into constriction in the barzakh and the Hereafter.

So prefer the better, the purer, and the more enduring of the two kinds of life, and let the body bear hardship for the soul’s bliss.