…resolve the matter, they argued: “Both experience and analogy concur that the human soul can gain some share of the unseen.” Their proof was that knowledge of hidden realities in a dream is possible; therefore it must also be possible when one is awake. The first premise, they said, is established by direct experience and continuous testimony. As for the second, once it is accepted that such knowledge occurs in sleep, it can no longer be categorically ruled out in wakefulness. Indeed, supposing people had never witnessed it in sleep, they would have deemed its occurrence there even more far-fetched than during wakefulness. Imagine telling someone that a company of highly intelligent men—perfect in reason, sound in senses, and endowed with sharp insight and powerful thought—had exhausted every means to discover some unseen matter yet failed; then, when one of them became as if dead, his movement and perception suspended, he suddenly came to know that hidden thing. People would judge this impossible and would argue: “If the strong and complete faculties are unable, the weak and deficient are even less capable.” But the fact that this very phenomenon has repeatedly taken place in sleep has removed such denial and obstinacy. Thus, since knowing the unseen is possible during sleep, it is even more fitting that it be possible while awake. They add, “We do not use the validity of one state as decisive proof for the other; we only use it to dispel the objector’s misgivings and to support the view that is worthier of acceptance.”

I reply: This is the premise upon which they base the claim that prophets—and others—may know the unseen. Yet it is well known that, when one sleeps, the soul withdraws from the body to a certain extent, for sleep is the twin of death. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—used to say when he lay down to sleep:

“O Allah, You created my soul and You will take it. To You belongs its death and its life. If You hold it back, then have mercy on it; and if You release it, then guard it with the protection You grant Your righteous servants.”

He would also say: “In Your name, my Lord, I lay down my side, and in Your name I raise it. If You seize my soul, forgive it and have mercy on it; and if You release it, then guard it with the protection You grant Your righteous servants.”