Excerpts from Knowing the Spirit (Ma’refat ol-Rûh):

Chapter 7: The Spirit’s Return by Way of the Process of Perfection

[90] Now since the intermediate world has just been mentioned, this is perhaps the right occasion to explain something of the distinctive features of that intermediate world in order to illuminate the minds of those who would like to understand it.

The barzakh (intermediate world) is a world situated between this material world and the realm of eternity, a world which is devoid of (this world’s) spatial dimensions and temporality. In other words, the intermediate world is so unlimited with respect to its spatial capacity that, for example, all of the beings in creation, from the first to the last, could be brought together in that realm without ever restricting its capacity and relative extent in any way. This is just like the way it happens with all the thoughts and mental occurrences that enter into the human mind and brain: even though they may be unlimited, they can all still be retained there without that requiring any increase or decrease in the capacity and extent of the brain.

With regard to temporality, as well, a certain kind of extent of time takes place there that is unique for every particular individual being, varying according to their destiny and what they have come to deserve through their actions. Thus, according to the different individual cases, the period of one “year” in the intermediate world may not correspond at all to one year of solar time on the planet Earth, when you compare the two. For example, a full year of earthly time may be equivalent to as little as a second of time in the intermediate world. And at the opposite extreme, a second of earthly time may correspond to as much as a year in the intermediate world.

Moreover, one should not suppose that the extent of periods of time in the interworld—for example, when it is mentioned that a single second there is equivalent to one year of solar time on earth, or the inverse—is the result of something illusory or unreal and imaginary. It is not at all like our imaginary seeing of things in a dream. For example, suppose that someone sees in a dream an enormous space filled with a vast multitude of people over an unimaginably immense period of time: yet when that person wakes up, nothing at all remains of the actual effects of those things. Whereas in that intermediate world, which is a world of (real) images or likenesses, the basis of space and time is solidly grounded in real spiritual sensations—not in the forms of size, number, and extension of this earthly, material world. Or to put it another way, whatever appears to each person (in the intermediate world) through those spiritual sensations is actually real and absolutely true.

[60] Now the reason why the intermediate world has also been called a sort of “imaginal world” or “world of likenesses” is because after each being in this material, earthly world dies, it becomes manifest in the intermediate world in whatever shape and form and build it already had, with the same proportions and all its other qualities. Moreover, whatever milieu and surroundings it was lacking in this lower, material world for continuing its process of perfection, there will be prepared and projected for it in the intermediate world a real, particular milieu that is the exact likeness and image of the earthly milieu and surroundings that it needed, along with the period of time it needs. For example, if someone should die during childhood on earth, that person will experience the rest of their physical growth and development in the intermediate world. And the same sort of thing will appear for all other cases.

One final point that must also be considered attentively is that the difference between this lower, material world in relation to the higher realm of the intermediate world is exactly like the relation between (the state of) the fetus in its mother’s womb and that of the newborn infant in its open, free environment, or like the difference that separates shadows from the light.