Planning for Life

“Oh! How foolish I was! I got the chance to live just once, and I completely wasted it!”

This feeling will overwhelm a person who leads a life of heedlessness when he dies and enters the world of the Hereafter. Behind him will be the world where he has finished his allotted time. And ahead of him will be the eternal Hereafter, where he will have to face the consequences of all his actions in his life before death. At that moment, he will be completely drowned in regret for having wasted the precious opportunity of living in this world for preparing for the eternal Hereafter. Because this opportunity is given to an individual only once, he will feel even more remorseful—for there is now no second chance. Regret and despair will burst like a furious volcano inside him.

If we want to save ourselves from such a fate, it is absolutely necessary to understand the purpose for which God has created us and sent us into this world—in other words, the Creator’s creation plan. Why does an individual take birth? Why are we provided with the many things that are necessary for life, and who provides these? Why is it that after spending some time on Earth, all of us must necessarily face death? What is the meaning and significance of this life? What is the final culmination of life? What is death? What, if anything, happens after death? Which way of life takes us to success in the life before death and in the life after death?

We need to obtain a clear understanding of all these issues. This should be the topmost concern for all of us—whether we be learned scholars or so-called illiterates, rich or poor, weak or strong. For all of us, irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, gender, class, religion and so on, these are most crucial questions. To obtain the right answers to these questions should be our foremost concern.