In the book With The Righteous Servant – Part 1 Imam Ahmed Alhasan (a.s) said:
Do you know what Hasad (Envy) is? Do you know how its effect happen? And do you know why Hasad is from Kaba’ir (Great sins) and why the one who envies gets judged even if he has not done the action himself with his own hands?
Now first of all let us look at the human being and at his presence in the physical world.
The reality of the physical world is that it is a condensation of force (energy) or ability. And this condensation has a scale which ranges between higher value and lower value .
And I suppose that you see this clearly through the different physical matters which you know; even though they are close in level, and the difference between them is not great, but you classify the gas that surrounds the earth differently than how you classify water and rocks, and so on.
And you do not see the air or the gas that surrounds the earth, but the fact that you do not see it does not deny its existence in this earth.
Now, the human being – any human being – his existence extends from the first sky, or its lower bottom ( and this is his self) until the most dense thing in this physical world. And that is why you find minerals in the composition of the human’s body.
So in fact there is a self, a visible physical body, and an invisible physical body.
And in order to make it easier for you, I say there is one invisible body.
But in fact there are many manifestations and many appearances, and there are human bodies as the same number as those manifestations and appearances. And that is why Allah The Exalted said: {And if you count the bounties of Allah , you will not be able to enumerate them. Indeed man is very unjust, very ungrateful
So counting is possible, but enumerating is not possible. And the reason is because: The number of human’s existences which are overflown with bounties equals the extension of his existence divided by his manifestation. And since the manifestation must be as less as possible in order that it may connect with the existences of the human being, meaning that it becomes like a complementary chip, so it becomes as close as possible to Zero.
Now, if you divide any number by zero what will the result be? The result is infinity. And infinity can not be counted nor enumerated. Rather, we do not have Zero, rather, a number as close as possible to Zero. And what is the result of dividing any number by the closest number to Zero? The result will be a very big number, [this number] lies within the circle of numbers, but it can not be enumerated, it is very big, bigger than the ability to enumerate
In order to make the picture closer to you:
Imagine that this number equal to 1, and in front of it are many zeros and you need billion light year to enumerate them.
So if the blessings of Allah are 10 or 100 or 1000 they can be counted and enumerated.
And if I told you count for me the blessings of Allah upon you, no matter how many blessings you count you won’t reach million. rather I doubt that you would even reach 1000 blessings.
So then how does Allah The Exalted say that His blessings can not be enumerated?
And could He say that His blessings can not be enumerated but they fall within countable things?
You can solve those matters and contradictions by knowing that the human being has many manifestations and existences like I have clarified, so that [those manifestations and existences] can be counted but they can not be enumerated. Because each blessing of the blessings of Allah is overflown upon all of these manifestations! So one blessings of those is enough to be called “inenumeratable”
Now, one of these bodies or manifestations is enough to be a third existence and affects just as this body affects in this physical world.
Now let us go back to Envy:
For example, a man hopes to have the car of another man, and he wants this car to be taken away from that man and to become his, so then you find this car while moving on the road flipped and crashed. Isn’t this a type of Envy? Why is it Haram(Forbidden)? Why would the person who envied be punished if he was not the one who flipped the car with is own hands?
Yes, he flipped it with his third body, or with his invisible physical existence, but it has an effect in this physical world.
So those levels of manifestations that I mentioned earlier are invisible but some of them have enough density to be effective in this physical world and what is in it.
So Allah swt tested the human being by granting him the ability to affect other by this manifestation, or this invisible body, and he commanded the human being to not do evil with this ability, and if he does evil he will be punished, because he would have done it with his hand. And envy is not just a psychological matter like people imagine.