Verily, Hellfire and Gehenna constitute the world of physical bodies beneath the celestial sphere of the Moon, which is in a constant state of generation, corruption, alteration, transformation, and decay.

Know that the Angel of Death is the midwife of spirits and the nursemaid of souls, just as the nursemaid of physical bodies is the midwife of infants.

Verily, death is nothing other than the separation of the soul from the body, just as birth is nothing other than the separation of the fetus from the womb; and sleep is the temporary withdrawal of the soul from the body while its governing care ('inayah) still encompasses it.

Souls do not perceive that state to which they are being transferred until after they have separated from the body, just as a fetus does not perceive the affairs of this world until after birth. For this very reason, the Prophet—mighty is his glory—said: "People are asleep, and when they die, they awaken." Their sleep is simply their heedlessness of what succeeds death, because the death of the body is the birth of the soul, which is the spirit.