Rising Through the Levels: How Spiritual Practice Prepares Us to Bend Time

Spiritual mass, presence, and the structured path to bending time and space.

For centuries, Muslims have read stories about tayy al‑arḍ — the ability of prophets, saints, and the awliyā’ to cross great distances instantly. Many imagine this as a miracle granted only to a few. Yet our own texts hint that this phenomenon is not just an external miracle but a direct outcome of spiritual density — what physics would call “mass” — built up through practice.

In physics, mass bends time. The greater the mass, the slower time flows around it. If spiritual “mass” is real — the weight of purity, dhikr, knowledge, and presence — then time itself can bend around the soul.

In our structured levels of practice, this is exactly what is happening:

• Levels 1–2 purify the vessel, stabilizing the ego through ritual, dhikr, and discipline.

• Levels 3–4 expand perception with tafsīr, fasāha, and balāgha, teaching the soul to hold multiple realities at once.

• Higher levels build high‑density presence (ḥuḍūr). At this point, time begins to contract or dilate in your awareness. Minutes feel like hours, or hours like moments. This is already bending time on the level of consciousness before the body moves.

Classical scholars hinted at this long ago:

• Ibn ʿArabī wrote that the saints “travel by the inner realities of time, not the outer measures.”

• Imam ʿAlī (a.s.) spoke of “those whose spirits traverse before their bodies move.”

• Persian Sufis described jamʿ al‑ʿālam — “the gathering of the world” — where distances collapse for the heart.

What we now have is a systematic path to build this spiritual density step by step until it becomes normal, not accidental. This is the training ground for what the 313 will manifest outwardly.

At the lowest level, this manifests as tayy al‑arḍ — instantaneous travel across space. At higher levels, it extends to bending time, compressing space, and even perceiving other dimensions. This is not science fiction. It is the natural consequence of aligning the soul with the structure of reality as described in Qur’an and Ahl al‑Bayt (ʿa).

And here is the part almost no one talks about: those who reach this station naturally draw their descendants with them. Just as gravity pulls nearby objects, spiritual mass pulls your lineage. The baraka of one soul’s journey shapes the timelines of an entire family. This is why the Qur’an repeatedly links spiritual ascent with descendants who are “guided along with them” — it is not just metaphorical.

For most Muslims, this is an unspoken subject. Yet it is time to recover it. We are no longer simply repeating narrations; we are entering the laboratory of the soul with a structured program. If mass bends time in physics, presence bends time in spirituality.

The 313 will not simply “appear” when the Mahdī calls; they will have been trained for this. And every believer walking this path is being trained for the same phenomenon — and bringing their children with them.