The Purpose of Life
When a child comes into this world, he finds a vast life-support system in place that provides him with everything he needs in order to survive and grow. This system is so perfect and so complete that it fulfils man’s every need, small and big, and in just the right way. From the earth to the sun, the entire universe is engaged, in an astoundingly exceptional manner, in the service of man.
After we come into this world, we spend the span of time that has been allotted to us here, and then, all of a sudden, we die. Human beings want to live forever, but, generally within a hundred years or so at the very most, we are forced to leave this world forever, against our will.
Every human being goes through two basic experiences—first, the experience of life; and, then, the experience of death. If you seriously reflect on these two experiences, you are bound to discover the amazing fact that our having been sent into this world is not as a reward for anything, but, rather, for the purpose of an examination.
In this world, we think and feel that we are free. We have been given this freedom so as that it can be ascertained who among us has used this freedom properly and led a principled life, and who has not done so.
If you think about that seriously, you will realize that death is the moment of our having to appear before God. We are actually eternal beings, but, as mentioned earlier, our lives are divided into two periods: the pre-death and post-death periods. The former period is for the purpose of being tested, while the latter period is when we will be rewarded or punished, as the case might be, according to the record of our deeds in the pre-death phase of our lives.
Today, we find ourselves as living and conscious beings. And when we die, we will be taken, while still as living and conscious beings, towards the next world. Each one of us is going to face that awesome day, sooner or later. It would be an unimaginably serious moment. Even after death we will remain the same beings as we were earlier, but everything that we possessed while on earth will have been stripped away from us forever. We will have left behind for good the world where we had spent the short pre-death period of our lives. In front of us another world will stretch, where we will have to live for eternity.
A truly wise man is he who prepares himself adequately for this day.
