THE DESTINY OF MAN
Man’s life has been structured based on the principle of action and reward. The world before death is the period for a man to sow seeds, while the world after death is the period to obtain the results of this sowing.
Every person builds for himself a world of desires. He spends all his time on this project, so much so that the last moment of his short life arrives, and he departs from this world in utter frustration because he failed to obtain all he had wanted.
Why is this so? In this vast universe, man is the only creature who possesses innumerable desires. Will these desires never be fulfilled, and will every person be buried in the graveyard of their desires? Every person harbours dreams of a beautiful world. Does this world of dreams exist only to remain mere dreams and never come true? Every person nurtures a garden of hope in their breast, but no one finds happiness in entering that beautiful garden. Why is there this contradiction in Nature?
Besides man, nowhere is this contradiction present in the vast universe. Minerals, plants, and animals—their worlds are entirely free of such a contradiction. So then, why is this contradiction found only in man’s life?
This is because there is an essential difference between man and the rest of the universe. The difference is that man’s life is marked by the pre-death and post-death stages. In contrast, all other things in the universe have only one stage—i.e., they come into existence, and then one day, they get extinguished. So first, they take birth, then, after some time, they die and are eliminated forever.
The fact is that the ideal things that man wants to obtain in the first stage of his life can be obtained only in the second stage. Moreover, what has been destined for him in the second stage of life, no one can find that in the first stage. In this case, a special law for man does not apply to other things and beings in the universe. Man’s life has been structured based on the principle of action and reward. That is to say, he must engage in activity in the pre-death stage of his life, whose result he will obtain in the post-death stage.
Knowledge of this law is crucial in understanding the true nature of human life. An understanding of this law makes man’s life meaningful. This law provides perfect answers to all existential questions. After knowing this law, one gets a satisfactory explanation of the whole of human life. According to this law, the world before death is the period for a man to sow seeds, while the world after death is the period to obtain the results of this sowing: a rich harvest of flowers and fruits or a jungle of thorns, as the case might be. A man should refrain from making a useless effort to obtain in the present world itself the flowers and fruits—i.e., Paradise—that can be had only in the Hereafter. Instead, he should focus all his attention on sowing good seeds—through righteous actions, in the best possible way. If he does this, in this world of test, he will obtain all that he could not get in the world before death in the form of Paradise in the Hereafter.
