Observations placeholder
Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Eight degrees of Paradise
Identifier
000380
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
In the following quote , a number of gardens seen by visionaries are described from different levels. The reference is to the Qu’ran….
Perhaps of all the observers, Shaikh Kirmani describes best the fact that the garden is a construct of the soul. As such Paradise gardens are of our own making. If we see Paradise and a beautiful garden, that is the state of our soul. An ill kept weedy place is equally the state of our soul.
In Islam, the ḥūr or ḥūrīyah (Arabic: حورية) are commonly translated as "(splendid) companions of equal age (well-matched)", "lovely eyed", of "modest gaze" "pure beings" or "companions pure" of paradise, denoting humans and jinn who enter Jannah (paradise) after being recreated anew in the hereafter. “Islam has a strong mystical tradition which places these heavenly delights in the context of the ecstatic awareness of God”
A description of the experience
Shaikh Muhammead Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm –[ translated by Henry Corbin and Nancy Pearson] 1977
Certain authors place these eight degrees of Paradise in the following order; the gardens of Paradise (18:107), which are in the eighth heaven; the lofty gardens (69:22); the gardens of bliss (10:9 etc); the garden of Eden (18:25 etc), which has no opposite on the side of Gehenna; the gardens of the secure place (44:51); the gardens of eternity (50:33); the gardens of the refuge (32:19); the gardens of the abode of peace (6;127)...
...............The Paradise of each one of us is absolutely proper to him. It consists of the man’s works and actions, which in the other world will appear to him in the form of houris, castles and verdant trees. That is why the Paradise of each of us is in the Heaven of his being; it is absolutely his own, for no one else has a share in it.