THIS WORLD AND THE HEREAFTER
If you take this world to be your destination, you will finally arrive at frustration. But if you have made the Hereafter your destination, this belief will open the doors for eternal peace.
What is an individual’s greatest longing? It is to lead a life full of happiness. This is the most incredible dream that people have dreamt of in every age. Every person lives with this dream. But everyone dies without this dream of his being fulfilled. All philosophies, ideologies, and human efforts revolve around this one thing. But till today, human beings have failed to realize this dream at the intellectual and the practical level.
There is just one cause for this failure. And that is, everyone wants their dreams fulfilled in this world. But the experience of tens of thousands of years has proved a single point—that the present world is insufficient for this desire to be fulfilled. The limitations of the present world and the improper use of God-given human freedom are decisive barriers to the present world becoming a place where human dreams can be fulfilled.
We are still on the journey towards making our life successful when death overtakes us. We invent new machines, but new industrial problems emerge. We make great sacrifices and usher in new political systems, but the degeneration of those who come to occupy the seats of power, do not allow these new systems to function effectively. We want to craft a life of our dreams for ourselves, but other people’s envy, jealousy, pride, oppression and revenge come to the fore, and we get entangled in all of this, so much so that we see the little nest that we had hoped we could find safety and shelter in crumbling before our eyes, and then we depart from this world.
All these continuous experiences prove that the world of our dreams cannot come into being in the present world and under the present conditions. For this, another world, and other conditions, are needed. Our hopes and dreams are in themselves a real human quest. But the place where our longings will be fulfilled is the next world, the world after death, and not the present world, the world before death.
This understanding makes our life in this world meaningful. Once we are aware of this reality, this world becomes an arena for making efforts to determine our future in the eternal life after death. The next world is where we will face the results of our actions. Once we realise this, we know our destination, towards which we can move confidently, that is, the world Hereafter.
If you take this world to be your destination, you will finally arrive at nowhere but frustration, despondency and mental disturbance. But if you have made the Hereafter your destination, this belief will open the doors for eternal peace.
In a world where one incurs losses all too often, only such an understanding of life can be proper that conveys to us the secret of gaining through these losses.
