Life After Death — Selected Writings of the Promised Messiah

Introduction

Refuting materialistic doctrines, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS) explains the Quranic reality of life after death and the emergence of the refined spiritual body in the realm of the Hereafter.

Book Series: Selections from the Writings of the Promised Messiah
Author: Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (AS)
Compiler: Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih IV (RH)
Section: Eschatology & Hereafter
Navigation: Previous: « The Soul | Book Series Archive | Next: Sin »

Excerpt 62

Islam expounds the most excellent doctrine that in the interim period after death, every soul is vested with a sort of body which is essential for perception of pleasure and torment. We cannot accurately describe as to what substance that body is made of. As far as this mortal body is concerned, however, it ceases to exist. Moreover, it is never observed by anyone that the same corporal body is revived in the grave.

On the contrary, this body is often cremated, and many a time corpses are also preserved in museums, or kept otherwise out of the grave for long periods. If it were the same body which were to be revived, it was very likely that people would have observed this happening. Nonetheless, the revival of the dead is very much evident from the study of the Holy Quran.

Hence one is compelled to believe that the dead are revived in such forms as we cannot see. Most likely that spiritual body is composed of some highly refined constituents of this material body. The soul having been thus provided with a body, human perceptions are reinstated. Because this new body is far more rarefied and ethereal in nature, a much wider avenue of visions and revelation is laid open to it.

[Kitab-ul-Bariyyah: Ruhani Khaza’in Vol. 13, pp. 70-71]
[Selected Writings of the Promised Messiah, p. 77]