Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him): Among the questions that a zindiq (irreligious man) asked Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him) was this. He said: "Tell me about a lamp — when it is put out, where does its light go?" The Imam said: "It goes and does not return." He said: "Then why do you not accept that a human being is like that light — that when he dies the soul leaves the body and never returns to it, just as the light of the lamp, once extinguished, never returns to it?" He said: "You have not drawn the analogy correctly. Fire is hidden within bodies, and the subsistence of bodies is by their own essence, such as stone and iron. When one of them strikes the other, a fire leaps out from between them, from which a luminous lamp is kindled. So the fire is fixed in their bodies, and the light [passes] away. The soul is a subtle body which has been clothed in a dense frame, and it is not like the lamp you mentioned. Indeed, the One who created a foetus in the womb from pure water and composed within it various sorts of veins, sinews, teeth, hair, bones and other things, is the One who brings him back to life after his death and returns him after his perishing." He said: "Then where is the soul?" He said: "In the depths of the earth, in the same place where the body is laid, until the time of the resurrection." He said: "Then one who is crucified [and whose body is not buried in the earth] — where is his soul?" He said: "In the hand of the angel who took it, until he entrusts that soul to the earth." He said: "Tell me about the soul — is it something other than blood?" He said: "Yes! As I described to you, the soul's substance is from blood, and from the blood come the moistness of the body, the clarity of the [skin's] colour, the beauty of the voice and abundant laughter. When the blood congeals [and ceases to flow], the soul parts from the body." He said: "Is the soul described with lightness, heaviness or weight?" He said: "The soul is like the wind in a waterskin: when it is blown into the skin, the skin fills with it, but the wind's entering does not add to the skin's weight, nor does its leaving reduce it. So too the soul — it has neither heaviness nor weight." He said: "Tell me, what is the essence of wind?" He said: "Wind is air itself — when it moves it is called wind, and when it comes to rest it is called air. The subsistence of the world depends on it, and if the wind were held back for three days, everything on the face of the earth would spoil and stink. That is because the wind is like a fan that repels and drives corruption away from every thing and makes it wholesome. So it is like the soul: when the soul goes out of the body, the body stinks and changes. تَبَارَکَ اللهُ أَحْسَنُ الْخالِقِینَ [Blessed is Allah, the best of creators]. (Al-Muminun/14)." He said: "Does the soul disintegrate after it has gone out of its frame (the body), or does it remain?" He said: "Rather it remains until the time the Trumpet is blown. At that moment all things perish and pass away, so that no sensation and no sensed thing remains. Then all things are restored just as their Governor first created them. That interval, between the two blowings of the Trumpet, is four hundred years, in which creation rests." He said: "How can he be raised again, when the body has decayed and its limbs have been scattered — one limb in a land where its beasts of prey have eaten it, another limb elsewhere torn apart by vermin, and another limb turned to dust which, with clay, has been built into a wall?!" He said: "The One who brought him into being from nothing and shaped him without any prior model is able to bring him back as He first created him." He said: "Explain this to me!" He said: "The soul remains in its place — the soul of the righteous in light and spaciousness, and the soul of the evildoer in narrowness and darkness. The body becomes dust, just as it was created from dust. And whatever the beasts of prey and vermin have eaten and torn apart and cast out from within themselves [as excrement] — all of it is preserved in the dust with the One from whom the weight of an atom in the darknesses of the earth is not hidden, and He knows the number and the weight of all things. The dust of the pious is like gold in the midst of dust. When the time of the raising comes, the rain of resurrection is showered upon the earth and the earth swells; then it is churned as a waterskin is churned, and the dust of the human being becomes like gold which, when washed, is separated from the dust, and like butter which is drawn out of milk when it is churned. So the dust of each human being is gathered into its own frame, and by the leave of Allah the All-Powerful is transferred to where the soul is, and the forms return, by the leave of the Fashioner, to their original shape, and the soul is breathed into them. When he has become a complete human being, he will not deny anything of [his own being]."