Ephemeral Period,
Eternal Period

Everything in this present world is deceptive: it shows the ephemeral things artificially in an eternal light. Successful is one who regards the present world as a temporal phase and prepares himself for the eternal phase, in the hope of inhabiting eternal Paradise.

During a student’s life one’s thinking is different from that what it becomes after the completion of his education and when he finds a good job. In the first stage, he lives as if he is a traveller, while in the second stage he lives as if he has reached his desired destination. In the first stage, he takes everything as being of a temporary nature while in the second stage he takes everything as being a permanent part of his life.

The same is true in a vaster sense of human life. Man has been granted an eternal life which has two parts to it: pre-death and post-death. In the pre-death period, man lives in the temporal phase of life. In the post-death period he reaches the eternal stage of life. If this reality exists in man’s consciousness, it will suffice for his reform. The present world is called the world of fitna (trial) in religious terminology. This means that it is a deceptive world. Here everything in one respect or the other is playing a deceptive role, that is, showing the present ephemeral world as a form of permanent world, introducing the temporary things of this world as being permanent. Fani Badauni, an Urdu poet, faced certain experiences which made him realize that the present world is unreal. Here everything which appears pleasant is only of a temporary nature. He wrote a couplet in which he expressed himself in these words:

     Fareb-e-jalwa aur kitna mukammal aye maaz Allah
     Badi mushkil se dil ko bazm-e-alam se utha paya

(O God the mirage of splendour is so perfect, with great difficulty I have managed to detach myself from its attraction)

The truth is that everything in this present world is deceptive. It shows the ephemeral things artificially in an eternal light. Successful is one who regards the present world as a temporal phase: one who regards this phase as an eternal phase of life is a failure.