The meaning of the cataclysmic Qur’anic description of Judgment Day is that when everything about this physical life disintegrates, then we will know what our soul has put forward. Inwardly, all the old social behavioral patterns, our cherished habits, attachments, and our egos and selfishness will crumble into ruins, ruins as tiny as atoms, and be reconstituted into a new configuration. This upheaval and disintegration into total ruins continues. If we do not elevate from our physical level, and our spiritual realm is not developed, we will experience hell in every moment eternally.
Sufism teaches that each day is Judgment Day. Each and every day our deeds are evaluated by our Creator. If we wish to be happy and content, if we wish to enter the Garden in this life, we must carefully purify, develop our inner capabilities, and elevate from the lowest state of our existence, which is our physical level, to our most elevated state, which is called Adamiyyat, the state of Adam, the chosen of creation—as created in the image of God.
The Day of Judgment in the original language of the Holy Qur’an is literally called “The Day of Rising” (???????????). Hazrat Salaheddin Ali Nader Angha, Pir Oveyssi, in the book Sufism, the Reality of Religion states:
In Islam, the quest for one’s truth is called qiyam (rising). It means rising from one’s stable foundation and not leaning towards anything. For example, the first step in prayer is to rise and to stand firm, with the intention of witnessing God and attesting to the oneness of God. (S. Angha 48)
Therefore, every day and on the Day of Judgment, we rise on the foundation that we have perceived as our reality. When we die, if the foundation is perishable, and our spiritual capabilities have not developed, we experience eternal disintegration and hell. However, if the foundation is based on our stable center and true source of life, we elevate to a more delicate stage of our being.
The Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) said:
Whichever way you live here, that’s how you will continue thereafter.
Hazrat Molana Shah Maghsoud Sadegh Angha, in the book Manifestations of Thought (61) in the Seventh Manifesto states:
Death is an evolutionary and developmental stage of being. It is the tearing away of the veil that covers the infinite absolute. Death and life are two reciprocal appearances that become thought of as stages of existence. In reality, however, existence is an absolute whole which contains these steps.
The one who wants to attain spiritual exaltation, and reach the highest rank of humanity (the rank of Adam), must ask God, with purity of the heart and intention, to reveal the Spiritual Teacher to his heart. In this way, God directly introduces to him the rightful teacher, or the “Imam” of the time. After this introduction, one is placed under the supervision of this teacher who has total authority and is the “owner of the commandment.” By learning and performing the instructions of the teacher, one is born again and elevated form human rank to that of Adam, which is the state of unity, and the original purpose of the creation of mankind.