Detached Thinking

How does it happen that a person becomes so heedless of the Hereafter?

The reason for this is that at every moment a person finds himself in a world which his experience tells him is a world other than the Hereafter. All his dealings and relations are with this known world. From morning to night, and again from night to morning, his entire life is spent in this same world. In this way, he becomes so used to this present world that, consciously or unconsciously, he thinks that whatever appears to him externally is precisely the whole of reality or the total world and that beyond it there is nothing. Even many of those who in theory accept the Hereafter think in this same way in practice.

In such a situation, a strong, throbbing faith in the Hereafter can only be had by someone who develops in himself detached thinking—that is, while living in this world, he mentally separates himself from it. Physically, he is still located in this world, but in terms of his thinking, he has reached the world of the Hereafter.

This method of detached thinking is the only way for one to live in the consciousness of the Hereafter. It is this Hereafter-oriented thinking that makes a person develop a truly spiritual personality. There is simply no other way.

To become a spiritual person there is just one condition—and that is, to become a complex-free soul or, in the words of the Quran, a ‘soul at peace’. Only such a person receives God’s guidance. And it is only God’s guidance that can make someone a spiritual person.