I Have to Go Till the Hereafter
The well-known Muslim scholar, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (d. 1943) was once travelling in a train. He had to go to Azamgarh, a town in northern India. A railway guard who was his admirer came to meet him at the station. Just then, a villager also arrived, and presented the Maulana with a bundle of sugarcanes as a gift. The Maulana accepted the gift and asked his travelling companion to weigh the canes and book them as luggage.
The railway guard said to the Maulana, “What is the need to book them? I will tell the guard who is going on this train. He will keep an eye on them.”
The Maulana replied, “Your guard will be with me only till this train reaches its destination, but I have to go further.”
The guard thought that the Maulana meant that he had to go to a further station by changing to another train, and so he said, “No problem! I will tell the guard. He will inform the other guard, and you won’t have to face any difficulty.”
The Maulana answered, “I have to go even further than that!”
The guard was surprised and asked, “Where will you finally go? You just said you were going to Azamgarh!”
The Maulana remained silent for a while. Then, he said, “I have to go till the Hereafter. Which guard will go with me till there?”
This matter is not simply about train journeys. In fact, it relates to everything in life. Every aspect of our lives is related to the Hereafter. In this world, a ‘guard’ can be with you for a short period of time, but no ‘guard’ is going to be with you when you reach the destination of the Hereafter. A person who is aware that he has to go till the Hereafter will think of every single thing as valueless which in the Hereafter will have no value at all, irrespective of how valuable it may appear now, in this world. Likewise, he will value those things that will prove to be of value in the Hereafter, no matter how inconsequential other people might think them to be.
People use seemingly beautiful words in order to deny the truth. But in the Hereafter, they will realize that all that they had clung to in this world has abandoned them. Powerful people commit injustices and exult in the belief that the oppressed cannot harm them in the least. But in the Hereafter, they will see that all their power has been left behind in the world that they have abandoned.
Man’s material possessions deceive him. They boost his ego and pride. But in the Hereafter, he will discover that all that he possessed is now far, far away from him.
The difference between a person of deep faith and trust in God and somebody else is that the latter spends his life thinking that he has to live in this world, while a true believer leads his life in the awareness that he has to go till the Hereafter.
