Husayn ibn Hasan al-Marwazī, who said: ‘Abd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak informed us: al-Mubārak narrated to us from al-Hasan, who said: ‘I have been informed that when a servant falls asleep while prostrating, Allah, Blessed and Exalted, says: “Look at My servant: his soul is with Me, while his body is obeying Me.”’”
If the soul ascends to heaven while remaining in the body, it follows that its ascent is not of the same kind as bodily ascent, for which this is impossible. The ascent and descent of the angels are of the same kind as the soul’s ascent and descent, not those of the body. The ascent of the Lord, Mighty and Majestic, is above all this and more exalted than all of it. For He, Exalted is He, is further removed from resembling any created being than one created being is from resembling another.
If it is said, “Ascending, descending, coming, and arriving are all forms of motion,” the response is: Motion itself comprises different kinds. The soul’s motion is not like the body’s motion, nor is the angels’ motion like the body’s motion.
“Motion” may mean the displacement of a body or physical object from its location, but it may also mean other things, as many naturalists and philosophers maintain. These include motion in quantity, such as growth; motion in quality, such as a person’s transition from ignorance to knowledge, or a colour or clothes changing from black to white; and motion in place, such as the motion occurring in growing bodies—plants and animals—as they grow and increase, or wither and diminish. Yet here no body moves from one spatial region to another.
Whoever says that indivisible atoms move from place to place is mistaken, as has been explained at length in its proper place.