Why This Heedlessness of Death?
I was listening to All-India Radio. It was the interview of a certain writer. This man had died some months before. After his death, when I listened to his voice on the radio, suddenly I felt that he had been speaking while he was still alive in the present world and then, after he had died, he had gone to another world and now it was if he is speaking from there!
A recorded voice that is listened to later symbolizes the fact that even after death a person is not extinguished. Rather, moving out of one phase of his life he enters another one.
Man is an eternal being. He can never be snuffed out. After death, he continues to live, in some form or the other. According to modern findings in biology, the human body is a collection of more than 100 trillion cells. These cells are continuously decaying and dying, and their place is continuously being taken by new cells. Inside the body, this process is taking place nonstop. It is as if in terms of his body, a person dies every few years and once again receives life.
But despite this repeated ‘death’ of his body, an individual’s personality remains intact. For instance, his memory remains the same as before. This proves that the body is simply a vehicle for a person. A person’s vehicle changes, but his personality remains intact, in its true state. This fact is expressed by a western scholar in these words: “Personality is changelessness in change”.
Death means that setting off on a journey, a person leaves the present world and travels to another one. Death is something that all of us will face, some day or the other. Given this, we ought to ponder deeply on death. In fact, we should contemplate on it the most, because it is a leap towards a completely new world. Since death is inevitable for all of us and is such a momentous thing, we ought to prepare ourselves fully for it and for the state after death. Our thinking should become ‘death-oriented’ thinking—in a positive sense.
Death is the most certain occurrence for anyone. We are repeatedly faced with occasions to think of death. We all see or read or hear about death happening every day. But despite this, very few people think from the perspective of the reality of death. Most of us live in such a way as if we will never die, as if we are going to live in this world forever. Throughout human history there has not been a single person who has not died. Yet, we don’t learn any lessons from the inexorable fact of death. A person acknowledges, in the true sense of the term, the reality of death only when it comes upon him, when, in accordance with a compulsory decision, he finds that he has arrived at death’s doorstep.
When a person travels, he does so with the thought that in a while, his journey will come to an end and that then he will arrive at a new place. For this purpose, he makes the necessary travel arrangements. An individual’s life is also a sort of journey. Each of us is journeying from life to death and beyond. Yet, few people, if any, view this journey through the lens of death. We live as if we are going to live here, on Earth, forever.
My ancestral home is Azamgarh, in eastern India. In the period before India’s independence there was a rich man who lived there. He began building a mansion for himself, near the city’s main road. He spent a lot of money on the project. It was to be a multi-storeyed, fort-like house. Beautiful artwork adorned its walls and roof. But before the construction work was over, the man died. He was unable to live in the mansion of his dreams.
This is the story not just of one man though. It is almost every person’s story. Most of us make plans and build dream-palaces and live in such a way as if we are going to live here forever!
Why are most of us so heedless about the reality of our own death? This is a really serious question. We see or hear about others dying. But rarely, if ever, do we think about our having to leave this world one day too. According to a hadith, the Prophet of Islam said:
When people turn around to return after the burial of a person, God sends an angel at that place. He takes some earth from the burial site and hurls it at people, saying: “Go back [again] to your world and become forgetful of your own death!” (Al-Haba’ik fi Akhbar al-Mala’ik by Jalaluddin Suyuti, vol. 1, p. 112)
In this hadith a profound truth is explained in symbolic language. It is an admonition. People see others dying before them. They participate in their burial. They see that a person who just a while ago was moving about has now been buried below the ground. Yet, they do not draw any lesson for themselves from this. They continue to lead a heedless life. They do not want to draw lessons from other people’s death or to reflect on the reality of their own oncoming death.
What is the reason for this general heedlessness? This can be understood from the point of view of what is called ‘programming’. Generally speaking, whatever people do, they do in accordance with their mind’s programming. Several of our programmed actions are a natural phenomenon—for instance, feeling hungry, thirsty or sleepy. All of these happen in accordance with our biological or natural programming. Other forms of programming include those that are a result of one’s environment and of one’s self-talk.
Generally speaking, a human being thinks according to his programming. Rarely, if ever, does he think in opposition to it or act against it. Anti-programming thinking is actually another name for anti-self thinking, which is something very rare. Our programming can change partially, but at a conscious level to think against one’s programming is a very difficult thing.
As we know, computers work according to how they have been programmed. It is the same with the human mind. In line with their programming, people engage in various activities throughout their life. They live in this state, and in this state they die. During their life, they keep seeing or hearing about other people dying. Yet, rarely, if ever, do they seriously think about their own death. In fact, many of us think that we won’t ever face death! This predicament owes also to programming.
Our minds have the capacity to know many things, but one thing that we cannot know is when, how and where we will die. It is perhaps because of this that many of us live as if death is never going to happen to us. We live and plan our lives in such a way as if we are going to live in this world forever!
The study of the DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid is a relatively new branch of biology. A lot of research is happening in this field, which is yielding new information about human beings. It is said that a person’s DNA contains a huge amount of information about him, including about how he will look, how he will speak, how he will smile, and so on. All this information is contained in the form of ‘chemical letters’. It is said that this information relates to some 3 billion different subjects about a person’s life! A person’s genetic code, it is claimed, contains so much information that if it is decoded and written out, it would require several hundred volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica! But strangely, despite this information of encyclopaedic proportions being contained in the genetic code of a single person, this code contains no information about when, how and where he will die. Why is this so? The reason is that God has made death a matter of conscious discovery for an individual. A person should come out of his programming and think about the fact of his death, and, in the light of this, plan his life.
There is a similarity between sleep and death. This is expressed in the words of a hadith of the Prophet: “Sleep is the sister of death.” (Shu‘ab al-Iman 4416) When someone goes to sleep, he becomes unconscious and oblivious to his surroundings. Similarly, death appears to make a person unconscious. But there is a basic difference between sleep and death. People generally have some sort of fixed sleeping hours, or at least are aware when they retire to bed to go to sleep. But with regard to death, no one knows at all when it might come. Death suddenly arrives, without anyone’s knowledge. Someone dies in infancy or in the prime of youth. Someone else dies at a ripe old age.
This fundamental difference between sleep and death conveys to us a profound truth. And that is, that while sleep is a part of the natural programming of a person, death is not so. When death arrives, it does so as a direct decision of God. It is God who decides when a person shall die.
When someone dies, it does not mean the end of his life. The fact is that despite his bodily death he is still alive and is present at a different place. Thus, death is actually a transfer. Death is the name of that special moment when someone passes out from one phase of a life and is transferred into another one. It is like a passenger getting off from a train at one station and from there boarding another train, thereby continuing with his journey.
Many people are very particular about planning the journey of their every day, being mindful of the limited number of hours that they have that day. They are very particular about their daily schedule. Why, then, is it that when we have only a very limited time on this planet, most of us do not properly plan the journey of our life? For instance, why don’t we think that in a few days or years we have to die, so what is the use of wasting our life accumulating unnecessary material things, things that we cannot take along with us when we die?
These issues can be properly understood only when we study them in the light of God’s creation plan. When God created a human being, He created him as an eternal being. Every person brings with birth itself the awareness that he is an eternal being. His journey does not end at death. Rather, he continues to be, to exist, even after death. Every person lives in the consciousness of his eternalness.
Our programming tells us that we are eternal beings with eternal personalities. This sense of our eternalness generally stands as a block in our awareness of the fact of our mortality. Our programming leads us to imagine death as something that happens to others but that will never happen to ourselves. In line with this programming, people consider this present life as never-ending, while actually it is only temporary. Just as a student spends only a temporary period in an examination hall and then returns to his actual home, a person has come into this world only temporarily and will then be taken back to his real home—which is the eternal world of the Hereafter.
Given this, for the proper planning of life we need to develop ‘anti-programming thinking’. We should think against ourselves, in particular against our instinctive tendency of not wanting to recognize the fact of our mortality. Only then can it be possible for us to rise above our conditioning, distinguish between the pre-death phase of our life and the post-death phase and plan our life on the basis of reality. This way of thinking can be called ‘detached thinking’. In the words of a poet:
My ability of detached thinking is worthy of praise. I remember You while in the midst of non-godly things, O God!
Thinking realistically in this manner, one will realize that there is just one sensible way to plan our life—and that is, what can be called ‘death-based planning’. In other words, to plan our life based on the recognition that this life of ours stretches from the temporary pre-death phase of life through death and to the eternal post-death phase. The present life is for all of us only a temporary journey. It is like a station where one gets off and then boards another train, which is heading to another place.
In this regard, revealed knowledge, knowledge from the Divinely-revealed scriptures, provides us with reliable guidance. According to this guidance, the phase of our life before death is the time for making preparations, while the stage of life after death is the phase where we receive according to the preparations we had made in the former stage. This present life is like an examination hall. Everything here is an exam paper. Here, everything that happens with us, good or bad, is, in fact just a test paper. What we sow here shapes what we reap in the life after death.
These are some basic truths or facts about human life. Each of us must plan our life in accordance with these truths if we want to be truly successful, in this life and in the life after death.
In this present world, to plan one’s life on the basis of reality, ‘anti-programming thinking’, or, as they put it, ‘thinking out of the box’, is a must. This might appear to be something very difficult, because for this one needs to think in terms of both this present, temporary life as well as the future, eternal life. But thinking in this way actually isn’t really difficult at all if one trains one’s mind to do so. A person’s mind is so vast that it can encompass all sorts of contradictions. This truth has been wonderfully expressed by the British writer Walt Whitman in these words: “I am large enough to contain all these contradictions.” It is entirely possible for us to begin to think contrary to the way we have been programmed, including about the phenomenon of death.
Each of us must seriously think and decide about how, in what direction and for what purpose we want to spend this temporary life of ours in this present world. This decision is of utmost importance because it will determine our eternal future after death.
Modern civilization is based on the concept of the maximization of material comfort and sense-pleasures. It is premised on a view of life that focuses only on this present life, a worldview encapsulated in the slogan ‘Work hard, party hard!’. The creed of confession, you could say, of the mind that this civilization represents, is: ‘Be happy, right here, right now!’. The modern media is almost entirely run according to this ideology.
This concept of a successful life is totally against God’s plan for a human being. The fact is that human life is eternal. It stretches beyond death into the eternal future. Given this, a concept of life that is concerned only about today (this present life) and that totally ignores tomorrow (the eternal life after death) is a completely erroneous understanding of life and its purpose. Given the fact that human beings are eternal beings, the only beneficial way for us to plan our lives is to do so taking into full account the fact of our eternalness and the fact of the Hereafter, rather than recognizing just this present life and this present world.
But people in general don’t recognize this. They keep seeing others die but refuse to recognize that they too will die one day. To understand this point, consider this account about the late Russi Karanjia, a famous Indian journalist. Born in a Parsi family, he became a trendsetter in sensational journalism. He was considered on par with journalists like Khushwant Singh and Dom Moraes. He worked as a war correspondent in the Second World War. In 1941, he founded his weekly magazine, Blitz, on which the following motto used to appear: ‘Free, Frank and Fearless’. He had contacts with many important people, like India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, President Abdul Nasser of Egypt and the Shah of Iran.
Russi Karanjia suffered a heart attack twice. He died in a hospital in February 2000 in Mumbai. At that time, he was 92. A report in The Times of India (February 2, 2008), related that before his death “the only thing he complained about was that the nurses’ skirts were not short enough”.
At that time Mr. Karanjia was on his death-bed. He had almost reached death’s doorstep. But even at that moment what he was obsessing about was that the skirts of the hospital’s nurses were not short enough—while actually what at that moment he should really have been concerned about was what his condition would be after death. The reason why he didn’t think as he ought to have was lack of awareness, including about the reality of death. He was unable to rise above the way he had been programmed to think. Hence, even in his last moments he remained unaware of the reality of death.
In the Quran, the Prophet’s mission is described as inzar, or to give warning—that is, to remove people’s unawareness and make them aware of the reality of life. Since we have no idea at all when we will die, most people rarely, if it all, think about death or recognize that they too will die one day. So, they live as if they will live forever. We need to overcome this unawareness so as to lead a life that will bring us true success, both in this world and in the life after death. This requires us to come out of our programmed way of thinking and to move to higher levels of thinking, based on reality. The mission of the prophets is to help every person develop the capacity for this lofty thinking and lead a life that can bring us eternal success in the Hereafter.
One reason that many people do not seriously think about the inevitable fact of their having to die one day is because death seems to them simply as the cessation of life. Consciously or otherwise, they are unaware of the fact that death is not the end of life at all and that, actually, it is the beginning of a more meaningful stage of life. If they come to know this, their entire way of living will change. Their focus will be on how to live here in the right way so that they can become successful in the eternal life that unfolds after death.
Consciousness of the fact of our own death can thus become the greatest incentive to lead a truly meaningful life here and now. Remembrance of death doesn’t make a person inactive and listless. On the contrary, it can make him much more active, in a very positive way. Remembrance of death can inspire us to do as much meaningful work as possible right now because such opportunities for action will not be available after death. Death is not the end of life but, rather, the end of opportunities for action. After death, we will not engage in actions but will be reaping the consequences, sweet or bitter, of the actions, good or evil, that we engaged in while in the pre-death phase of our life. If we are aware of this fact, remembrance of death can become a very strong motivational force for positive action.
He who created us—God—has made us as eternal creatures. In this sense, a person’s true place of residence is the eternal world of Paradise. After birth, a person is kept in this present world for a limited period. This temporary place of residence is a place for him to be tested. During our short stay here, we are being tested to see who among us passes the test and who doesn’t. Those who pass the test of life will be chosen and settled in Paradise. And those who fail the test will be branded as a rejected lot, separated from the others.
Death is actually a midway station in an eternal journey. It is part of the continuity of life. None of us knows when death will come to us. The time of our death is known only to God. It is because of this that rarely, if ever, do we think about our death. We remain unaware of this reality until death suddenly whisks us away to another realm.
Every person has been made as an eternal being. No one can destroy this eternalness of a human being. However, when God sees that the period of someone’s test in this world is over, He decides to put a stop to his stay on Earth and arranges for him to be taken from this world and brought into the next, eternal world. This transfer period is called death. In reality, death is simply about being transferred from one place or plane to another. It is definitely not the end of life.
This fact tells us that for success in this life, each of us should develop a special ability, and that is, ‘anti-programming thinking’. This sort of thinking is, as it were, thinking against oneself. Only in this way can we truly understand the issue of our own death, by thinking against our programmed heedlessness about it. Only then can we properly plan our life in such a way that we may gain true success, in this world and in the world after death.
Under the influence of programming, which causes him to be heedless of the fact of his death, a person seeks to build Heaven on earth, in this present world, for himself. But this is the height of stupidity because it is to mistake the journey (i.e. our temporary passage through this world) for the final destination itself—Paradise in the Hereafter—and that is something that is doomed to fail. All the things we may put ourselves to in accumulating here on Earth will suddenly be taken away from us the moment we die. We will leave all of it behind and go to the next world completely empty-handed.
This life is a journey. When you travel—by train or plane, for instance—you think of yourself as a traveller who is seated in a vehicle for a limited period. But suppose you forget this fact and take your journey to be your destination itself and start demanding to have all the facilities that you have only at home, your journey will become very difficult. That will be the case even if you are travelling by first class! But this is precisely the problem with most of us as we journey through life. We want to obtain things like perfect peace and joy here that can be had only in another world—in Paradise.
Death is an announcement of the fact that the different things that we had been given while we were in this world was not because they were our right or privilege but because they were part of our ‘test paper’ of the exam of life. The arrival of death is the end of this exam period. As soon as this period is up, all the things that we had received as part of our exam will be taken away from us and we will be left all alone. This enormously serious situation that all of us will one day face is a warning. It tells every person: “You must prepare now itself for the stage of life after death by leading the right sort of life. If you enter that stage without having made the necessary preparations, you will suddenly find yourself completely without any support. You will discover that whatever you had in this world has been parted from you and that now you have nothing whatsoever of what you require in your new stage of life.”
