Sleeping Is the Free Trial of Death — But With Ads.

This idea and title comes from the LinkedIn Post of Cognitive AI and reflection. It was a very interesting thought that got me thinking on the movie itself and the Dua I learnt in the book of Masnoon Duas.

Near the end of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, opens his eyes on an aeroplane.

For much of the film he has been moving through dreams inside dreams—constructed worlds so convincing that the distinction between imagination and reality becomes unstable. Cobb eventually wakes on the plane, returns home and spins the small metal top he uses as a reality check. If it eventually falls, he is awake. If it spins indefinitely, he may still be dreaming.

Then he sees his children.

He walks away from the top.

The camera stays with it.

And Nolan cuts to black before telling us with certainty whether it falls. 

That ending works because it exploits a very old human question:

How do you know when you are truly awake? And how do we perceive reality itself? We ascribe meaning to it. This is why propaganda is so dangerous and I have repeatedly talked against it here.

But today, we are looking at something different. Have you ever been in a dream when it felt almost real? Like you felt every emotion of the dream through your body? Most people would say yes.

Islam asks something related, but much larger.

Every morning we open our eyes and say:

But what if waking from ordinary sleep is itself only the smaller awakening?

What if every night contains a miniature demonstration of something that will happen once, finally, at the end of life?

Sleeping, in that sense, is the free trial of death.

The Qur’an’s extraordinary description of sleep

The relationship between sleep and death is not merely a clever metaphor.

“It is Allah Who calls back the souls upon their death as well as the souls of the living during their sleep. Then He keeps those for whom He has ordained death, and releases the others until their appointed time.” — Qur’an 39:42

The verse actually places death and sleep beside one another.

There is another verse in the Quran about the soul –

They ask you ˹O Prophet˺ about the spirit. Say, “Its nature is known only to my Lord, and you ˹O humanity˺ have been given but little knowledge.” (Quran 17:85).

There is something very interesting here. Allah can keep secrets – it’s from his Majesty  – he chooses what to disclose and what not to disclose. Second, we as humans endeavour for knowledge – to pry open more and more through science and technology – but we can only get as much as Allah chooses. The double slit experiment in Quantum Physics comes to mind – and many other things – which we know scant about. This does not mean science should not push its hardest to get answers. The question is – when does knowledge reveal itself and by whose command.

Back to death, Classical commentator Ibn Kathir makes the connection explicit. In his tafsir of this verse, he describes biological death as the “greater death” and sleep as the “lesser death.” He then links Qur’an 39:42 to Qur’an 6:60, where Allah says that He takes human beings by night and raises them again during the day. 

So there is an important correction worth making.

There is no need to invent a hadith saying, word-for-word, “sleep is a mini-death.”

The idea is already stronger than that.

It comes directly from the Qur’an and its classical interpretation.

Every night you practise dying

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ then turned this theology into a daily ritual.

When going to bed, he would say:

بِاسْمِكَ أَمُوتُ وَأَحْيَا

Bismika amūtu wa aḥyā.

“In Your name I die and I live.”

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي أَحْيَانَا بَعْدَ مَا أَمَاتَنَا وَإِلَيْهِ النُّشُورُ

Al-ḥamdu lillāhilladhī aḥyānā baʿda mā amātanā wa ilayhin-nushūr.

“Praise be to Allah who gave us life after causing us to die, and to Him is the resurrection.”

This is authentically recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari 6312. 

I would encourage readers to research more on this – is sleep the cognate of death, a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)