Respected teacher, in light of this Hadith Qudsi, God cannot be seen in this world. It says that when God’s friends enter Paradise, I know that they will ask to die once more so they can meet Me. That is why I speak with them seventy times each day. So they defer seeing God until after death. Do you agree with my understanding of this hadith?
A Hadith Qudsi on the qualities and fate of God’s friends
O Muhammad (PBUH), these are the signs of those who are close to Me:
1. They keep company with My poor servants, sit with them, and strive to feed them. Knowing that I am close to them, they draw near to them, confide in them, and sit listening to them as My envoys.
2. They do not beat their foreheads against the ground like anvils. (Rather than engage in abundant worship, they engage in abundant reflection.)
3. They are deeply modest before Me.
4. I grant them great discernment so that they may be safe from people’s harm.
5. They are exceedingly generous and giving.
6. They spend less time with the ignorant.
7. In sleep and wakefulness, they keep watch over their hearts.
8. Their eyes shed tears when they remember Me.
9. Their hearts are ever occupied with remembering and invoking Me.
10. When they speak with Me, I delight in hearing their words as a mother delights in hearing her child speak.
11. They give thanks for every blessing I bestow on them and apologize to Me for their inability to give thanks as they ought.
12. The prayers of these people are answered.
13. I make their words blessed and let them take root in the hearts of those around them.
14. I appoint angels at their sides, on their right and left, to keep them company and protect them from devils, both jinn and human.
15. Nothing in this world—not even a misfortune I bring upon them—can make them forget Me.
16. They do not waste their days or their lives.
17. They see people as though they were dead, turn away from creation and devote themselves wholly to Me. They do nothing to please people except for My sake, and they make people content with what I command.
18. Seventy times a day, they die and return to life in their struggle against Satan.
19. They are not enamoured of food, clothing, sleep, or worldly possessions.
20. When they stand before Me in the middle of the night, they see nothing but My greatness and their own smallness.
By My might and majesty, I swear that when the time comes for My servant’s death, and I intend to meet them, I will command the Angel of Death to stand aside, and I Myself will take their soul. After they have died, I will open the gates of Heaven to them, so that they may behold with their own eyes the majesty and might that, during their lives, they had seen with the eyes of their hearts and come to believe in. I will remove every veil between Me and them, command that Paradise be adorned for them, and have My angels escort them to their Paradise on wings of light, with the fragrance of heavenly lote tree and camphor. I will command the houris, whom I created with My own hands in unsurpassed beauty, to stand at the entrance to Paradise and welcome them.
Because I know that such a servant of Mine will not be sated by Paradise’s blessings, I will show them My beauty seventy times a day, as though they were sitting beside Me, and enrich them through My words and conversation. I know that if I did not do so, even in Paradise they would wish for another death, so that they might come to Me.
Nāsikh al-Tawārīkh, Hadith Qudsi, vol. 4, p. 2099