On the Brink of Death

On the 3rd of June 1979, I was in Meerut, a town in northern India. It was evening, and I was walking on the main market road with a companion. Suddenly, a portion of a building just in front of us exploded and collapsed. Mounds of bricks and stones littered the street. At that moment, the two of us were hardly a five second’s walking distance from the spot where the accident had occurred. Had we been just a five seconds’ distance ahead or had the building collapsed just five seconds later, we would certainly have come under the collapsing rubble. Our life would have abruptly ended much before than we had thought it would.

I thought to myself:

There is really just a distance of ‘five seconds’ between man and his death. At any moment, it is possible that a person’s ‘five seconds’ will be up and that he will suddenly find himself in the other world.

If you truly realize that there is only a distance of ‘five seconds’ between you and your death, your life will be totally transformed. You will become a totally different person. You may continue to exist in this world, but you will begin to live in the awareness of the Hereafter.

The secret of life is to know that you are, at every moment, standing on the brink of death, after which you will either enter a garden in Paradise or a pit in Hell. Every step you take leads you closer to one of these two consequences. But Man is so insensitive that he is completely unaware of this.

People rely on false religiosity, but in the Hereafter, only genuine devotion to God will benefit you. True devotion to God is to fear God in such a manner that you think of Him all the time. It is to live in the awareness that God is constantly watching you, day and night. It is to do whatever you do in the awareness that you are doing it before God. It is to be concerned much more about the Hereafter than this world.