Count not those who were slain in God's way, whether their slaying was the result of the lesser struggle and the expending of the soul for the sake of God's satisfaction, or whether through the greater struggle and the breaking of the soul and the suppression of caprices by means of spiritual discipline: as dead, but rather, living with their Lord, the real life, disengaged from the filth of natural traits, brought near to the Holy Presence, provided for [by Him], with spiritual provisions, namely, gnoses, realities and the irradiation of lights and are provided for in the formal garden in the way that all the living are provided for. For there are levels in the gardens, some of which are spiritual and some formal. In each of the spiritual and the formal there are degrees [merited] in accordance with the works [performed]. The spiritual [levels] are the garden of the Essence and the garden of the attributes and the superiority of certain degrees over other degrees within them is relative to the varying superiority of the degrees of the people of God's power and those of the angelic realm. The formal one is the garden of the acts whose varying degrees of superiority is relative to the varying degrees of superiority of the world of the kingdom that is the upper heavens and the gardens of this world. It is related from the Prophet that he said: 'When your brothers were struck down in [the battle of] Uḥud, God placed their spirits in hollowed-out forms of green birds circling in flight over the rivers of the Garden, eating of its fruits then returning to golden lanterns hung in the shadow of the Throne'. The green birds are an allusion to the celestial bodies, and the lanterns are the stars. In other words, they attach themselves to the luminous celestial bodies because of their purity. The rivers of the Garden are the springs and watering-places of knowledge; its fruits are the states and the gnoses; as for the formal rivers and fruits are commensurate with their spiritual or formal garden. For every thing that exists in this world of foods, drinks, spouses, garments and all pleasures and delights exists in the Hereafter and in the various strata of the heavens [but] more pleasurable and purer than those of this world.