PARADISE: MAN’S DESTINATION
Those who develop themselves according to the divine standards in the present world will be settled in the ideal world of Paradise in the Hereafter.
Dr Alexis Carrel was born in France in 1873. After his higher studies, he spent most of his career in the USA. In 1912, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In 1935, he published a book titled Man, The Unknown. This book became very popular and was translated into different languages. A commentator remarked about it thus: “This book sums up much of his experience of man and his life seen from the purely scientific aspect.”
In this 312-page book, Dr Carrel failed to discover the truth about human life. Thus, he titled the book Man, The Unknown. As far as man as a scientific being is concerned, Dr Carrel had discovered him to a great extent. However, why did he give the book the title that he did? Because of confusion. Dr Carrel found ‘man’, but his study could not tell him what man’s destination was. Therefore, he felt that a known man was moving towards an unknown destination. This was why he did not know the truth about man. In this sense, a more appropriate title for the book would have been Man’s Goal Unknown.
It is not the problem of Dr Carrel alone. It is a problem of all philosophers and thinkers. It may have appeared that man was, for them, something known. However, the destination of that ‘known’ man has remained unknown to them till the very end. This intellectual vacuum regarding man and man’s destination has afflicted human beings for thousands of years. Speculation about man’s final destination only led people to be drowned in confusion. However, this is a life- defining question, and its immense importance demands a satisfying answer.
The fact is that philosophers and thinkers were (and still are) seeking man’s destination in this very world of today; while in reality, this destination does not exist here. Thus, they have been searching for this destination in the wrong place. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that they failed to find it. This world is incomplete, while man’s nature leads him to seek a perfect world. Man desires eternal life, while eternal life is not possible for anyone in the world before death. Man wants a world of unsullied joy, but in this world, different types of challenging conditions act as a barrier to making this world joyful. Man seeks an ideal world but is fated to live in a non-ideal world. By birth, man is a perfectionist. He seeks a perfect world. However, after all the efforts, he finds that achieving an ideal world is simply impossible here.
The fact is that, unlike what Dr Carrel suggests, the unknown thing is not man. On the contrary, what is unknown is man’s destination—the ideal world that embodies man’s dreams, free of all contradictions, and where man can live with complete fulfilment forever.
The insoluble problem of man’s reality becomes solved when we study man in the light of God’s scheme. That is to say, along with understanding man, the creature, one must also understand the purpose of man’s Creator in creating him. This is the proper method and approach to this matter. When the issue is seen in this way, one discovers that the confusion or lack of clarity about man was only because people tried to understand man without considering God’s creation plan.
A machine is a created thing, not its own maker. Similarly, man is a creature, not the Creator. Therefore, knowing the Creator’s creation plan is necessary to understand man’s reality. Without understanding the engineer’s plan, one cannot explain the machine. Similarly, explaining man without knowing the Creator’s plan for him is impossible. Without this creation plan, man’s life and significance remain incomprehensible. However, after understanding God’s creation plan, everything becomes comprehensible. Everything falls into place.
The Maker of this world has made a pair to this world. One member of this pair is the world where we live after birth—the planet earth. The other pair is the world where we go after death. These two worlds form a pair. In this way, man’s life has two parts: the pre-death and post-death periods. Man’s Creator blessed him with life, dividing it into the pre-death and post-death phases.
The world before death has been made as a testing ground, and the world after death has been made for receiving reward or punishment. Because the present world is designed for the purpose of test, everyone has been given freedom here. Here, everything has defects and limitations. It is as if this present world is a sort of examination hall. Here, all those ‘things’ needed to ‘write’ the ‘examination’ are available, but the higher ‘things’ are absent. If a student wants to build an ideal world in the examination hall, he will surely face only despair and frustration. Similarly, those who seek to build a perfect world in this limited and temporary world of test will face sorrow and disappointment.
While we are in this examination hall—this life of ours on planet Earth—what must each person do to obtain the perfect world they desire after death? The answer to this question is that we must use our freedom according to the Creator’s Will.
For life after death, God has made a perfect world, Paradise. This Paradise is, in every sense, an ideal world. God will lodge such people as prove themselves to be eligible to be settled there. In the present world, those who qualify themselves according to the divine standards will be settled in the ideal world of Paradise.
Now, who are those people who will qualify for Paradise? These are the ones who, using their intellectual capacities, attain the realization of God. Coming out of intellectual confusion, they discover the truth. They devote themselves to God alone and worship none but Him. Despite possessing freedom, they let themselves willingly be regulated by divine discipline. Faced with adverse conditions, they build in themselves a positive personality. They deal with others in the same ethical way they want others to deal with them.
All these qualities are the criteria set according to God’s creation plan for an individual to be eligible for being settled in eternal Paradise after death. Those who fail to meet this standard will face eternal deprivation and frustration.
It is said that an opportunity knocks on your door only once. This saying is also perfectly true concerning the issue of lasting success because no one will get this opportunity again. Therefore, those who lead their life on Earth the right way will have won lasting success by finding entry into Paradise—man’s destination, while those who live their lives in this world in the wrong way, will live in eternal frustration and failure in the Hereafter.
