13وَطَعامًا ذا غُصَّةٍ وَعَذابًا أَليمًاAli UnalAnd food that chokes, and a painful punishment.1Concerning the kinds of torment in the Hereafter mentioned in the last two verses, Fakhru’d-Dīn ar-Rāzī says: “These four kinds of torment can well be interpreted as spiritual torments. Fetters symbolize the carnal soul’s remaining shackled to its physical attachments and bodily pleasures. Since the carnal soul has acquired acquaintance with such pleasures and loved them in the world, when it departs from the body, it increases in agonies and worries, and its former acquaintance with, and attachment to, these become obstacles preventing it from entering the realm of peace and purity. Then those spiritual shackles generate spiritual fires, burning to the degree that the carnal soul was inclined towards such pleasures, along with the impossibility of attaining them; all this gives rise to a sensation of spiritual burning. This is the second step in the torment, which the verse describes as ‘a blazing flame.’ Then the carnal soul tries to swallow the choking agonies of deprivation and the pangs of separation (from the objects of its worldly enjoyment). This is the ‘food that chokes.’ And, finally, it remains deprived of being illuminated by the Divine light and joining the community of the blessed ones. This is the greatest torment and is depicted as the ‘painful punishment.’ But these explanations of mine should not be misunderstood. I do not mean that the meaning of these verses is restricted to what I have stated. Rather, I mean that these verses mention four steps of torment in the Hereafter which will be suffered both spiritually and physically.” It is a fact that both the blessings the people of Paradise will enjoy and the torments the people of Hell will suffer will be the consequences of their faith and deeds in the world. But they are not restricted to spiritual torment. Where the human self or soul (nafs) exists, things are not only spiritual. When we consider that even in the world it is the human soul which suffers from what happens to the body, not the body itself, we can easily understand that the pleasure and torment in the Hereafter cannot be thought of as being only spiritual. But we cannot know the exact nature of physical or bodily existence there.