How to Attain God’s Neighbourhood

What is Paradise? Paradise is actually the name for living in the neighbourhood of God (Quran 66:11). In the world before death, a person of faith spends his life in the neighbourhood of God at the level of spiritual feelings. In the world after death, he will get an opportunity to spend his life in the neighbourhood of God in actuality.

God is the source of all virtues and goodness. That is why we can get true peace only in the neighbourhood of God. Anything less than that cannot become a means for true peace.

The present world is a testing ground. Here, those people are being selected who, in terms of their qualities, will be eligible to be settled in the neighbourhood of God. These are those whose thoughts, emotions and actions conform to the ethical standards required for being a neighbour of God. This selection will happen on the basis of the record that is being made by recording angels. In the eternal life of the Hereafter, this good fortune of living in the neighbourhood of God will be obtained exclusively on the basis of merit.

The neighbourhood of God is a universal garden, as it were. In this garden, only those people who fully conform to divine standards will find a place. Anything less than divine standards will not entitle a person to a place in this garden. Those selected for entrance into Paradise will be those who in the life of this world made God their supreme concern, whose thinking, feelings and actions were all devoted to God, whose days and nights were spent in devotion to God. It is these fortunate people who will be selected for living in God’s neighbourhood.