Is There Any Meaning to a Spiritual Experience Felt When Someone Passes Away?

Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch

Question

I felt a bright light enter, then leave me and rise upwards when my mother passed away. Is there any meaning or precedent for such experiences?

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

This may be a good sign of your mother’s state with Allah (Most High), however, one cannot definitively claim to know this.

In a general sense, light has a good connotation and may be a sign of an illumined spiritual state. Additionally, it is part of our beliefs as Muslims that upon death, the soul rises into the Heavens until it is rejoined with the body in the grave. [Maliki, Nayl al-Maram]

Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch teaches Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom Seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences.

He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he studied for three years in Dar al-Mustafa under some of the most outstanding scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib.

In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Quran and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.