The Nursery of Paradise
The Creator made a vast world. This world was in every sense ideal and perfect. This world is called Paradise. From the Quran we learn that Paradise was made before the creation of Adam. After this, God wanted that He should select those people who were worthy of being settled in this paradisiacal world. For this purpose, He created Planet Earth. This planet is, as it were, the nursery of Paradise. A nursery is a place where saplings are reared for transplantation, to be later taken out and planted in a garden.
The present world is a sort of nursery. Here, people are continuously taking birth. Through his actions, every person is building up a positive or negative character for himself. Death is that moment when, like a sapling being plucked out from the nursery, an individual is taken out of this world. If he has built an undesirable character for himself, he is rejected, like an unhealthy sapling that is discarded. And if he has developed a desirable character, he is settled in the garden of Paradise.
This point can be understood in the light of this Quranic verse (67:2):
He created death and life so that He might test you, and find out which of you is best in conduct. He is the Mighty, the Most Forgiving One.
On the planet where we presently are, innumerable people take birth. They spend a limited period of time here and then die. This entire crowd is not desired by the Creator. The Creator will select only those people who in the course of this period of selection prove that in the fullest sense they are the best in deeds. In a nursery, all sorts of plants grow. Likewise, in this world there are all sorts of people, with varying types of character. But in Paradise only those people will be settled whose record says they are qualified for this—in terms of their character and deeds.
In the Quran Paradise is described in great detail. In one sense, the Quran is an introduction to Paradise. This introduction is in such an effective manner that one who reads the Quran begins to see Paradise with his own eyes, as it were. If you collect together the verses of the Quran that refer to Paradise and study them you may experience a strong emotion emerge within, urging you to make Paradise your destination and to focus all your activities in its direction. As is said in the Quran (37:61): “It is for the like of this that all should strive.”
For the present world the Creator’s criterion of selection of people for Paradise is not collective or mass-based, but, rather, individual-based. In this sense it would be correct to say that the present world is not for the establishment of a system or government but, rather, for the development of one’s personality or character. Here, only development of one’s personality is possible in the ideal sense. The formation of an ideal system or state is completely impossible here. It is this interpretation of human life that is the right one. Evidence that it is right is the fact that with this description of human life everything falls into place and one gets fully satisfying answers to all the questions of life.
