Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #210 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 13 Apr 2021 › Segment 37 of 50
Can the soul travel into the spiritual world through meditation or dhikr?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas al-bukhari sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari imaam imams prayer leader muftis haraam forbidden sufism soofi fitnah fitna fitan strife zikr zikar dhikar zikir adhkar azkar remembranceSpiritual centres in the body, the soul and non-local consciousness
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This segment2:24:10 to 2:33:20 · 9 min 10 sGeneral teaching
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machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth says such practices may work for the dedicated, and that the soul is not inside the body but a non-local consciousness the brain connects to, like a phone picking up a signal.
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Asked about the spiritual centres in the body that some use to make their souls travel into the spiritual world through dhikr [?], Mufti Abu Layth says some Sufis speak of these, similar to chakras in Hindu meditative practice, developed by trial and error, and that they may work for those dedicated to them. He says consciousness, which to him is the ruh, is a level we have not begun to understand; breathing and meditation can affect brain activity, and the brain connects us to consciousness without being it. He says the soul is not a ghost inside the body: he believes in a non-local consciousness that the brain picks up as a handset picks up a signal, a kind of social network of consciousness that ultimately came from God into Adam, and he reads the hadith that souls were grouped together, so that those who knew each other are in harmony, in this light. He suggests such bonds allow low-level communication, such as sensing danger for a loved one, wonders whether something happens in REM sleep, and says the spirit of an age, such as accepting that slavery and racism are wrong, reflects a change in collective consciousness, not only education.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedWhat is going on with the spiritual centres in our bodies? Some people use them to make their souls travel into the spiritual world through dhikr. What are your thoughts?
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says he understands the soul not as a ghost inside the body but as a non-local consciousness that the brain connects to, like a handset picking up a signal, and that collective consciousness shifts over time.
“i feel the soul is never in the body anyway in that sense that people think like people think the soul is a ghost kind of figure inside you”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
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we have to do is recognizing it what you do everyone who sees it will be blinded see like that lesson that we each have a star all we have to do is find it wow that is so i find in that echoes clear echoes found within the message of islam that you know that a person has to strive that there is something written there for you but just don't give up on finding it and and when you do find it you will shine in it and i thought that that was so powerful um
yeah so somebody said music is haram you must live a miserable life then uh right but he's right so okay i don't know people commenting about somebody hip-hop all right so what is going on people what is going on with the the spiritual centers in our bodies real some people use them to make their souls travel into the spiritual
world through thicker what are your thoughts much love um right the life something that some sufi turk speak about which in some ways are similar to the kind of chakra points um in other like hindu meditative practices also i think these are things through kind of just like trial and error that people have developed and and maybe it worked for them to have that they felt that certain energies can be kind of brought in the way you'll have chi and i'm i don't know maybe some of these things you know if you dedicate yourself to
developing them that they work i definitely do feel that the human being beyond the body at the level of consciousness that is a whole nother level of complication that we that we have not even we haven't even read let alone understand we haven't even got to that stage yet and i just i do wonder how does consciousness how and to me consciousness isn't just con consciousness is the rule to me how does that even work and i wonder from that world how the world
looks you understand it's a bit like i wonder i don't know you know and i and i think that from that perspective yes meditation may definitely work um definitely may and there may be certain like you know breathing because obviously the way you breathe and regulate your body you can impact the way the kind of brain the brain activity now i'm not saying the brain is the rule is consciousness but the brain is definitely what connects us to consciousness so
you know it does have certain modalities but i don't know i don't know in other ways you could just you could take a special something and go on a journey but but that is only for those of the path [Laughter] um people say that might be the soul leaving or something yeah i feel that um the
somebody right okay let me i'll come to your question um i feel that yeah the soul i don't know about leaving i feel the soul is never in the body anyway in that sense that people think like people think the soul is a ghost kind of figure inside you i've never understood it like that uh to me it's more that the body can connect to consciousness so i believe in a kind of like a non-local consciousness but we pick it up it's like how the handset picks up the signal and it picks up and and it can operate and it can do everything
and um you know it can have it can download movies and where are these movies you know they're just in the year isn't it it's just wi-fi and but it can do all of this obviously certain frequencies but they're invisible to us so i feel in many ways we are the same and the roar is something out there but we with our brain can connect to it so we're kind of connected to our particular take but then there's almost like a social network of this consciousness i feel um and then maybe that taps into another
stream of consciousness ultimately which ultimately kind of came from god into adam but i feel that this um yeah and this is what allows people to have a connect without having a physical connect like i feel that you know the hadith says that that if the soul that the souls are kind of bright they're kind of grouped in together and those that knew each other before that they will always have a harmony in
in this world i feel that that was kind that's what it's kind of referring to and yeah and i feel sometimes you can create a bond as well in this world that kind of connects the consciousness as well and hence people who uh are very close to each other whether it's through family or loved ones sometimes have this bond that they you know that and and the communication that happens at this is it's very it's low level communication so it's not like you can send hey meet me tomorrow at seven o'clock
it's not like that but what it can do is it can trigger so uh it can it can i feel people can sense something like they sense danger for someone or they sense anxiety or they suddenly remember someone after not having thought about them for years suddenly um it's all above probability these things and i feel it's to do with that connection so yeah that's the and and i do think as well that maybe during sleep something happens you know during
uh paradoxical sleep rem i feel that because the brain becomes so active during rem it's as active as you are now if not sometimes even more active which is crazy because for most of the brain cycle that the brain activity drops until it gets really low when you're in deep sleep and then for rem for about 60 seconds it goes so mad and you know then it just once again goes really low and what is it that the brain's doing at that time and i feel is that i don't know like is that the time that i don't know consciousness kind of connects
in it it has this kind of bio uh not bio this kind of bi-directionality feedback loop because if you think about it the zeitgeist and the feel of an age it's not something you know contrary to what people think it's not actually something you just learn people just change they they feel like people today accept that slavery is wrong people today will accept certain things are just wrong whereas even a few decades ago they may not have what is it that changed people say well there's been more advertising
like people today accept racism is wrong even though this racist bigots out there but but even they don't like to be called racist because they think you know they they too deep down except racism is wrong whereas a couple of decades ago people didn't even accept that is it just simply education now education obviously has helped but i feel that it's almost as though the collective consciousness has changed but yeah uh who is ashik ra
um right she's 100 years each and every one of us will be forgotten from this world maybe not maybe not mufti tell me how to do russell properly all right there was a question about is it true that uh grant was sorry the grand ustad of imam bukhari made the fear of imam malik mufti the grand stadt of imam buhari made right i'm not sure of any
person making take fear of imam malik like that not sure of that i've never come across it but i know there's been people they were the odd person who you know disagreed with imam ali that would have been more so in his time because this person that you're saying i don't know who you're saying but if he's a teacher of imam bukhari then he's way after imam malik so i don't think anybody after malik would have done it but even if somebody did it so what what's the big deal you know people today
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Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-04-13-S37, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/37/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, April 13). Can the soul travel into the spiritual world through meditation or dhikr? [Video, segment 2021-04-13-S37, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/37/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Can the soul travel into the spiritual world through meditation or dhikr?" Video, segment 2021-04-13-S37, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 13, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/37/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-04-13-S37, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Can the soul travel into the spiritual world through meditation or dhikr?}}, year = {2021}, month = {4}, date = {2021-04-13}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/37/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/37/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-04-13-S37, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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