Where is the Gate of Heaven?

God Most High says: “Truly those who deny Our signs and wax arrogant against them, the gates of Heaven shall not be opened for them, nor shall they enter the Garden till the camel passes through the eye of the needle.” (Q Aʿraf 7:40). Similarly, one hadith of the holy Prophet (s) describes the gates of Heaven closing in front of the spirit of the unbeliever.

Know, may God grant you success, that heaven and earth occupy a single locus according to the people of unveiling and certainty. This is because for them, the realm of other-than-God is sheer fantasy. And although this imagined realm appears to occupy space, it has no actual existence. For a single place can embrace not only a world, but multiple worlds within the same spatial boundaries and without those worlds interpenetrating.

Behold, may God have mercy on you, the meticulous perfection of the Lord. Behold how in “the Work of God, Who perfects all things,” (Q Naml 27:88) multiple worlds and creatures exist, yet neither overtakes the other: roaming angels, flying jinn, and walking human beings — each in their own world. Now in order to pass from earth to heaven, you do not need to fly upward nor descend downward. Instead, what you need is a luminous spiritual capacity (quwwa ruhaniyya nuraniyya) that can pierce through the veils. It is in the measure of your luminosity and capacity that you climb and ascend.

An important remark concerning the realms of the unseen and the visible is in order. The earth that you walk upon, dear disciple, is the visible realm. The first heaven, with respect to you, is the unseen realm. This first heaven and all its inhabitants and angels are unseen for you. But when you pierce through the veil of heedlessness that is cast over the eye of your heart, and the heavenly steed of the invocation (buraq al-dhikr) leads you to ascend to the first heaven, you will find yourself standing on an earth that is different from ours. Yet it is an earth for your soul. At that moment, what was once unseen for you will become visible, and your first heaven will become your earth. The same applies from the first to the seventh heaven.

To this effect, ʿAbd Allah b.ʿAbbas said: “A solar eclipse occurred during the lifetime of the blessed Messenger of God (s), and he performed the eclipse prayer. His companions asked, ‘O Messenger of God, we saw you trying to grab something while standing in prayer, and then we saw you withdrawing.’ The holy Prophet (s) said, ‘I was shown Paradise, and wanted to grab a cluster of fruit from it. Had I taken it, you would have eaten from it as long as the world remains.’” (Bukhari, sahih)

Now when the holy Prophet (s) extended his noble hand to pick from the fruits of Paradise, was he in heaven or on the earth? The congregants behind the Messenger of God were seeing him in the prayer niche of his noble mosque in the radiant city of Medina. At the same instant, he was in the celestial Gardens because he pierced through the veils of the visible world and, by virtue of his intense luminosity, he was unseen with respect to the veiled persons behind him. God describes him in the verse: “Thou seest them looking upon thee, but they see not.” (Q Aʿraf 7:198)

It is for this reason that after he (s) passed away to the Sublime Companion, he became ontologically situated in a place that is unseen, and he said: “what lies between my grave and my pulpit is a gardenplot from the gardenplots of Heaven.” (Ahmad, Musnad) Behold how a space-occupying place turned into a placement of rank, and how the unseen became visible, by the grace of our master, the Messenger of God (s).

There are many hadiths on this subject that make this meaning evident. For instance, it is reported that ʿAli b. Abi Ṭalib said: “I heard the blessed Messenger of God (s) say: ‘Whoever comes to his Muslim brother and visits him (when he is sick), he is walking among the meadows of Paradise till he sits down, and when he sits down he is covered with mercy. If it is morning, seventy thousand angels will send blessings upon him till the evening, and if it is evening, seventy thousand angels will send blessing upon him till the morning.’” (Ibn Maja, Sunan) Thus, the Muslim who visits his sick Muslim brother is walking in the meadows of Paradise by the grace of [the divine saying] “I was sick, but you did not visit Me.”

Now these realities that we are discussing are only understood by the People of Direct Witnessing and Unveiling. As for veiled persons, the highest they can attain is to surrender to what has been said, without metaphorical interpretation or understanding. If, on the other hand, you do understand what we have just explained to you concerning placement and place, then by analogy you may draw meaning from the verses of the noble Qurʾan that speak of above-ness and of heaven (samaʾ).

Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi Al Karkari (Kaf al-astar)