ELIGIBILITY FOR PARADISE
Paradise is for one who attains the realisation of His Creator at the level of maarifah while God is unseen and bows down before God while possessing the freedom to disobey Him.
Paradise is a blessing without limits. One will find it only by paying a high price for it. Very few fortunate people will be declared eligible to be settled in the world of Paradise.
The first test for admission into Paradise is that man attains the realisation of His Creator at the level of maarifah. He should discover the Truth amidst a jungle of thoughts, views, beliefs, and ideologies. He should develop the insight to see those not visible to the physical eye. He should feel those things that cannot be supposed at the physical level. Passing by the tumult of the external world, he should become a traveller of the inner world.
Likewise, a condition for admission to Paradise is that man bows down before God while retaining the freedom to disobey. Ignoring all incentives of becoming self-centred, he becomes God-centred in the complete sense. He becomes genuinely devoted to God and God alone. Turning his face from innumerable centres of glitter and attraction, he devotes his full attention to God.
Admission to Paradise will be possible only for the person who, amid adverse conditions, always remains established in positive thinking. This person overcomes jealousy, pride, revenge, and other negative feelings. He unilaterally becomes the epitome of compassion and seeks the well- being of others. Even though he can resort to oppression and injustice, he never does so. In every condition and circumstance, he makes himself bound by justice.
Paradise is a beautiful divine colony. Therefore, only those souls who had subjected themselves to the process of purification in the present world will be admitted.
The present world is a world of tests. Here, every person becomes polluted in some way or the other. So now, every person should engage in a continuous process of self-purification until his polluted personality is transformed into a purified personality.
A person of Paradise lives as a flower amidst thorns, who can become a tower of light amidst the darkness, who can obtain the secret of peace amidst earthquakes and storms, who gives proof of love amidst hatred, who, despite people’s oppression, unilaterally forgives them, who experiences gain even in loss.
A person of Paradise is he who has become close to God, who sees the light of God in the rays of the sun, who experiences the divine touch in the gushing of the wind, who obtains an introduction to God’s greatness in the heights of the mountains, who witnesses God’s mercy in the flow of the rivers, who in the mirror of creation begins to see the glowing radiance of the Creator.
God has, through His prophets, explained the attributes of a person fit for Paradise. Therefore, while living in this world, a person who produces in himself paradisiacal attributes will, after death, be declared eligible for entry into Paradise.
Entry into Paradise will happen neither on any recommendation nor is it based on a connection to any revered personality. Neither will it happen based on any mysterious spiritual solutions. Instead, admission into Paradise is entirely based on a known reality—and that is, that the person who in the present world becomes and lives like a paradisiacal person will find admission in Paradise in the Hereafter.
Paradise is for those who have purified themselves. Purification means that man should abandon a life of heedlessness and adopt a life of awareness. He should be strong enough to overcome desires which come in the way of achieving this goal. He should save himself from the things that can deviate him from the Truth. If a matter of expediency comes before him, he should ignore it. If pride or resentment arise, he should bury them inside himself.
