Where does the soul go when a person dies?

The body decays, the soul lives on. It leaves the world we know through our senses and enters a finer form of existence, closer to God. There its awareness keeps growing until the Resurrection.

At death, body and soul separate. The body returns to the earth. But the soul is not made of matter. It cannot be found at any place in the body. It stands above thought and directs it, and the brain is more its instrument than its seat.

So where does it go? Perhaps it does not need to go far at all. But it leaves the world we grasp through our senses and enters a finer form of existence that is closer to God. A comparison may help. One can imagine beings that share the same space and yet know nothing of each other, because they belong to different levels of reality. In the same way, the soul of someone who has died may be very near and still have no contact with us.

Much about this remains hidden from us, and God alone knows it fully. But one thing He has told us. The soul does not die. At first its awareness is still faint. Yet it grows and keeps developing until the Day of Resurrection.

Then all earlier awareness will seem like sleep in comparison. The second verse above describes it. The veil is removed and the sight becomes sharp. A person will then recognise the traces of his own life, which were always there but which he could not perceive before.