The Lowest Level

Now there is the afterlife experience in the Islamic tradition, and what happens in it. The very first thing is that there is a pre-worldly existence: the existence of the spirits, the souls, before we came into this world. The next stage is the worldly existence, and this is called dunyā.

It is interesting that in the Arabic language dunyā means the lowest. In other words, this is the lowest; we are at the lowest level. What is above us is hierarchy, and the highest level is the presence of God. Dunyā is the lowest level. The life of this world in the Qurʾān is called al-ḥayāt al-dunyā.

One of the meanings of the root word of dunyā is grapes — like the famous fox in Aesop's fables: the grapes are just out of reach. And that is the nature of this world. There is an element in this world such that the soul will never be content as long as it is in this world, but it will attempt to satiate its desires through the world. This is like the idea of the sensual in Hinduism, or even in Kierkegaard's system: the idea of the aesthete, the person who spends his life in sensual experiences. These are attempts at assuaging this turbulence within the human soul. From the Muslim point of view this is futile: the soul will never be at peace as long as it is attempting to fill the vacuum, the emptiness, through worldly experience.