What are the benefits of belief in the resurrection and the
afterlife?
The All-Compassionate Creator has made this world in the form of
a festival, a place of celebration and exhibition. He has decorated
it with the most wonderful inscriptions of His Names, and clothed
each spirit with a body possessing suitable and appropriate senses
that allow the individual to benefit from the good things and
bounties in the festival. He sends each spirit to this festival for
one time. As it is very extensive in regard to time and space, He
divided it into centuries and years, seasons and days, and various
parts. His animal and plant creations promenade therein, especially
during the spring and summer, when the Earth’s surface is
transformed into a vast arena of successive festivals for all small
creatures. This arena is so glittering and attractive that it draws
the gaze of angels, other inhabitants of the heavens, and spirit
beings in the higher abodes. For people who think and reflect, it is
an arena for reflection, and one so wonderful that the mind cannot
de-scribe it.
However, the manifestations of Divine Grace, Mercy, and
Liberality in this Divine festival are counterbalanced by the Names
of All-Overwhelming, All-Crushing, and One Who Causes to Die through
death and separation. This does not appear to be in line with the
all-embracing Mercy ex-pressed in My Mercy
encompasses all things. (7:156) However, consider the
following points:
- After each group of creatures has served its purpose and
produced the desired results, the All-Compassionate Creator causes
most of them, by His Compassion, to feel weariness and distaste
with the world. He then grants them a desire to rest and a longing
to emigrate to another world. And so when they are discharged from
their duties (through death), He arouses in them an enthusiastic
inclination to return to their original home.
- The Most Merciful One bestows the rank of martyrdom on a
soldier who dies in the line of duty (defending sacred values),
and rewards a sheep sacrificed in His way with an eternal
corporeal existence in the Hereafter. Given this, His infinite
Mercy assigns a specific reward and wage, according to their
nature and capacity, to other animate beings who perform their
duties despite hardship and death. Thus, these beings are not sad
when death comes; rather, they are pleased and look forward to it.
The world is continually enlivened through creation and
predetermination, and ceaselessly stripped of life through other
cycles of creation, determination, and wisdom. Death is not an
extinction, but a door opening on a better, more developed, and more
refined life. The Qur’an presents death as something created and
therefore having existence (67:2). When death enters a living body,
life seems to depart. In reality, however, that organism is being
elevated to a higher degree. The death of a plant, the simplest
level of life, is a work of Divine artistry, just like their living,
but one even more perfect and better designed. When a tree seed
“dies,” it appears to decompose into the soil. However, it actually
undergoes a perfect chemical process, passes through predetermined
states of re-formation, and grows into an elaborate, new tree. A
“dead” seed represents the beginning of a new tree, and shows that
death is something created like life and, accordingly, is as perfect
as life.
Since fruit and animals, when consumed by people, cause them to
rise to the degree of human life, their deaths can be regarded as
more perfect than their lives. If this is true of plants, it must be
true of people. As people are the pinnacle of creation, their deaths
must be more perfect and serve a still greater purpose. Once
individuals have died and been buried, they surely will be brought
into eternal life.
It discharges us from the hardships of life, which gradually
become harder through old age. It also opens the gates to reunion
with many of our friends who died before us.
- It releases us from worldly life that is a turbulent,
suffocating, narrow dungeon of space, and admits us into the wide
circle of the Eternal Beloved One’s mercy. As a result, we enjoy a
pleasant and everlasting life free from suffering.
- Old age and other unbearable conditions are ended through
death. Both the elderly and their families benefit from this. For
example, if your elderly parents and grandparents were living in
poverty and hardship, would you not consider their deaths to be
blessings? The autumnal deaths of insects is a mercy for them, for
otherwise they would have to endure winter’s harshness and
severity and be deprived of their lovers: lovely flowers.
- Sleep brings repose and relief, as well as mercy especially
for the sick and afflicted. Death, sleep’s brother, is a blessing
and mercy particularly for those afflicted with misfortunes that
might make them suicidal. As for the misguided, death and life are
a torment within torment, and pain after pain.
- Just as death is a blessing for a believer, the grave is the
door to illuminated worlds. This world, despite its glitter, is
like a dungeon in comparison with the Hereafter. To be transferred
from the dungeon of this world to the gardens of Paradise, to pass
from the troublesome turmoil of bodily life to the world of rest
and the realm where spirits soar, to be free of the distressing
noise of creatures and go to the Presence of the Most Merciful—all
of this is a journey, indeed, a happiness, to be desired most
earnestly.
- The All-Merciful One explains in His Scriptures, especially
the Qur’an, the true nature of the world and the life therein, and
warns us that love or attachment to either one are pointless.
The world and things have three facets. These are the
following:
- Its first facet turns to the Divine Names and Attributes. Each
created thing is a manifestation of certain Divine Names and
Attributes, such as Mercy, Creativity, Grace, Provision, Favoring,
Hearing, Seeing, or Speaking, and so on. As this facet only
mirrors those Names and Attributes, it does not experience decay
and death, but is continually refreshed and renewed.
- Its second facet turns to the Hereafter—the world of
permanence. Being like a field sown with the seeds of the
Hereafter, seeds that will grow into permanent “trees” with
permanent fruits, this facet serves the World of Permanence by
causing transient things to acquire permanence. It also does not
experience decay and death, but life and permanence.
- Its third facet relates to our bodily desires. Many people
love this facet, which is, on the other hand, the market-place of
sensible conscious persons and a trial for the duty-bound. This
facet is apparently the object of decay and death. However, in its
inner dimension, there are manifestations of life and permanence
to heal the sorrows brought by death, decay, and separation.
Why is love for this third facet not something to be approved?
The world is a book of the Eternally-Besought-of-All. Its letters
and words point not to themselves, but to their Author’s Essence,
Names, and Attributes. This being so, learn its meaning and adopt
it; abandon its decorations and go!
- The world is a tillage for the Hereafter, so plant it to
harvest in the Hereafter. Pay attention to the crop that you will
receive in the Hereafter, and throw away the useless chaff.
- The world is a collection of “mirrors” that continually follow
each other to reflect their Creator and then pass on. Therefore,
know the One Who is manifested in them. See His lights, understand
the manifestations of His Names appearing in them, and love the
One they signify. Cease your attachment to “those fragments of
glass” that are doomed to break and perish.
- The world is a moving place of trade. Do your business and
leave. Do not tire yourself in useless pursuit of caravans that
leave you behind and ignore you.
- The world is a temporary place of recreation. Study it to take
lessons and warnings, but ignore its apparent, ugly face and pay
attention to its hidden, beautiful face looking to the Eternal
All-Gracious One. Go for a pleasant and beneficial recreation and
then return. When the scenes displaying those fine views and
beautiful things disappear, do not cry or be anxious.
- The world is a guest-house. Eat and drink within the limits
established by the Munificent Host Who built it, and offer thanks.
Act and behave in accordance with His Law. Then depart from it
without looking back. Do not interfere in it, or busy yourself in
vain with things that one day will leave you and are no concern of
yours.
Through such plain truths, He reveals the world’s real character
and makes death less painful. He makes death desirable for those
awake to the truth, and shows that there is a trace of His Mercy in
all of his actions.
I was, on one occasion, sitting on the top floor of a hotel. The
graceful dancing of the leaves, branches, and trunks of the poplar
trees in the fine gardens opposite me, each with a rapturous motion
like a circle of dervishes at the touching of the breeze, pained my
heart, grievous and melancholy at being parted from the brothers and
remaining alone. Suddenly I recollected the seasons of autumn and
winter and a heedlessness overcame me. I so pitied those graceful
poplars and living creatures swaying with perfect joy that my eyes
filled with tears. Since they reminded me of the separations and
deaths beneath the ornamented veil of the universe, the grief at a
world full of deaths and separations pressed down on me. Then
suddenly, the light of the Muhammadan Truth came to my help and
changed that grief and melancholy into joy. Indeed, I am eternally
grateful to the person of Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings,
for the help and consolation which came to me at that time, for only
a single instance of the boundless grace of that light for me, as
for all believers and everyone. It was as follows:
Picturing those blessed and delicate creatures to be trembling
at death and separation and going into non-existence in a
fruitless season—which is the view of the heedless—so heavily
weighed on my feelings of passion for permanence, love of beauty,
and compassion for fellow-creatures and living things, that it
changed the world into a kind of hell and the mind into an
instrument of torture. Then, just at that point, the light which
Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, had brought as a gift
for mankind lifted the veil and showed in place of extinction,
non-existence, nothingness, futility and separations, meanings and
purposes to the number of the leaves of the poplars, results and
duties which may be divided into certain sorts:
One sort of the duties of creatures relates to the Names of the
Majestic Maker. For example, just as if an engineer makes an
extraordinary machine, everyone applauds him, saying ‘What wonders
God has willed! May God bless him!’, so too, by carrying out its
functions properly, the machine congratulates and applauds its
engineer. Everything, every living creature is a machine of that
kind, congratulating and applauding its Maker.
Another sort of purposes for the lives of things like poplar
trees is that they are each like a text, a book through study of
which conscious living beings acquire knowledge of God. Having
left their meanings in the minds of conscious beings, their forms
in their memories and the tablets of the world of symbols or
immaterial forms, and on the records of the world of the Unseen
and in the sphere of existence, they depart from the material
world and pass into the world of the Unseen. That is, they are
stripped of an apparent existence and gain numerous existences
pertaining to meanings, the Unseen and knowledge.
Indeed, since God’s existence and His Knowledge encompasses all
things, in truth, there is no room in the world of believers for
non-existence, eternal extinction, and annihilation and
nothingness. As to the world of unbelievers, it is full of types
of non-existence, separations and extinctions. A widely circulated
proverb teaches this: For whom God exists, everything exists for
him; for whom God does not exist, nothing exists for him.
In short: Just as belief saves man from eternal punishment at
the time of death, so also it saves everyone’s particular world
from the darkness of extinction and non-existence. But unbelief,
absolute denial of God in particular, changes the pleasures of
life to painful poi-sons, and terminates both man and his
particular world with death, casting him into dark pits like those
of Hell. Those who prefer the worldly life over the Hereafter
should heed this, and let them either find a solution for this or
accept faith and save themselves from fearful, eternal
losses.
Glory be to You, we have no knowledge save that You
have taught us. Surely You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.
What follows demonstrates how belief in afterlife is essential
for human life, particularly social life, and summarizes one
comprehensive proof from among its numerous proofs, together with an
explanation of how evident and indubitable a matter it is:
Belief in the afterlife is the bedrock of social and individual
human life, the foundation of all felicity and achievement,
because:
After belief in God, belief in the Resurrection has the primary
place in securing a peaceful social order. The one who does not
believe that one day he/she will be called to account for what
he/she has done in the world, is not usually expected to live an
honest, upright life. But one who al-ways acts in the conviction
that he/she will give an account of his/her life before God in the
other world will certainly live a disciplined and upright life. The
Qur’an declares:
In whatever affair you may be, and whichever part of
the Qur’an you recite, and what-ever deed you do, We are witness
over you when you are deeply engrossed therein. Not an atom’s weight
in the earth and in the heaven escapes your Lord, nor is there
any-thing smaller or greater, but it is in a Manifest Book.
(10:61)
Whatever we do is recorded by angels appointed to do that. In
addition, God has complete knowledge of all our deeds, intentions,
thoughts, and imaginings. An individual who lives in full
consciousness of this will find true peace and happiness in both
worlds; a family and community made up of such individuals will be
as if living in Paradise.
Children are sensitive and delicate, very
susceptible to misfortune, and easily affected by what befalls
themselves and their families. When a family member dies or they are
orphaned, their world darkens and they experience great distress and
despair. Of my sisters died during my childhood. I was so upset that
I frequently went to her grave and asked God from the bottom of my
heart: “O God! Please bring her back to life again and let me see
her beautiful face once more, or let me die so as to be reunited
with her!” So, what else other than belief in the Resurrection, in
reunion with the loved ones who emigrated to the other world, can
compensate for the loss of parents, brothers and sisters, and
friends? Only when a child is convinced that his or her loved one
has flown to Paradise, to a much better life than this, and that one
day they will be reunited, will he or she find true consolation and
begin to heal.
How can you compensate the elderly for their past
years, their long-ago childhood and youth? How can you console them
for the loss of their loved ones, friends, spouses, children or
grandchildren who went to the other world before them? How can you
remove from their hearts the fear of death and the grave, which is
coming closer every day? How can you make them forget death, which
they feel so deeply? Can you console them with ever-new pleasures of
life? Only when they under-stand that the grave, an apparent
open-mouth dragon waiting for them, is really a door to another,
much better world, or a lovely waiting-room to that world, will they
feel compensated and consoled for their losses.
The Qur’an voices the feelings of the old through Prophet
Zechariah:
This is a mention of your Lord’s mercy unto His
servant Zechariah; when he invoked Him with a secret, sincere call,
saying: “My Lord, my very bones have become rotten and my head is
shining with gray hair. My Lord! I have never been disappointed in
my prayer to You” (19:2-5).
Fearing that his kinsmen would not be sufficiently loyal to his
mission after his death, the Prophet Zechariah, asked his Lord for a
son, an heir to his mission, with that heart-rending appeal. This is
the cry of all old people. Belief in God and the Resurrection gives
the old the good news: “Do not be afraid of death. Death is not
eternal extinction, but only a change of worlds, a discharge from
the distressing duties of the worldly life, and a passport to an
eternal world where all kinds of beau-ties and blessings are waiting
for you. The Merciful One Who sent you to the world, and has kept
you alive therein for such a long time, will not leave you in the
darkness of the grave and dark corridors opening on the other world.
He will take you to His Presence and grant to you an eternal,
ever-happy life. He will bless you with bounties of Paradise.” Only
such good news can truly console the old and cause them to welcome
death with a smile.
Humanity is a unique part of creation, for people can use their
free will to direct their lives. Free will is the manifestation of
Divine Mercy. If our free will is used properly by doing good deeds,
we will be rewarded with the fruits of Mercy. Belief in the
Resurrection is a most important and compelling factor that urges us
to use our free will in the right way and refrain from sin and from
wronging and harming others.
When Caliph ‘Umar saw a young man bravely protest
and resist a wrong, he said: “Any people deprived of the young are
doomed to extinction.” Young people have a transforming energy. If
you let them waste that energy in trivial things and
self-indulgence, you undermine your nation’s future. Belief in the
Resurrection prevents young people from committing atrocities and
wasting their energies on passing pleasures, and directs them to
lead a disciplined, useful, and virtuous life.
Belief in the Resurrection is a source of consolation for
the ill also. Suffering from an incur-able illness, a
believing patient thinks: “I am going. No one will be able to make
me live longer. Fortunately, I am going to a place where I will
eternally recover my health and youth and everyone is doomed to go
howsoever.” It is on account of such belief that the beloved
servants of God, the Prophets and saints, have welcomed death with a
joyful smile. The Last of the Prophets, the Prophet Muhammad, upon
him be peace and blessings, uttered in his last minutes in the
world: “O God! I am desirous of the eternal company in the eternal
world.” He had informed his Companions one day be-fore: “God left to
one of His servants the choice between enjoying the beauties of the
world as long as he wishes and what is with Him. The servant chose
what is with Him.”
The servant in question was the Messenger himself. The Companions
understood and burst into tears.
Similarly, when Caliph ‘Umar was ruler of a vast area stretching
from the western frontiers of Egypt to the Central Asia steppes, he
prostrated to God and sighed: “I can no longer fulfill my
responsibility. Make me die and take me to Your Presence!” This
desire to go to the other world, the world of eternal beauties, and
being blessed with the vision of the Eternally Beautiful One caused
the Prophet, ‘Umar, and many others to prefer death to life in this
world.
The world is a mixture of good and evil, right and wrong, beauty
and ugliness, and the oppressor and the oppressed. Many wrongs go
unnoticed, and numerous wronged people do not recover their rights.
Only their belief in the Resurrection into a world of absolute
justice consoles such people. This belief prevents them from seeking
vengeance. The afflicted and those suffering misfortune also find
consolation, for they believe that whatever befalls them erases some
of their sins and that all that they have lost will be restored to
them in the Hereafter as a blessing, just as if they had given these
items as alms.
Belief in the Resurrection changes a house into a garden of
Paradise. In a house where the young pursue their pleasures,
children ignore religious sentiment and practices, parents are
engrossed in procuring ever more possessions, and grandparents are
sent to a poor-house or a nursing home, or left to shower their love
on pets instead of grandchildren. At least the pets show them love
and respect. In such a house, life is a heavy burden. Belief in the
Resurrection will remind everyone of their responsibilities toward
each other, and will engender a fragrance of mutual love, affection,
and respect.
Belief in the Resurrection leads to mutual love and a deeper
respect on the part of spouses. Love based on physical beauty is
temporary, and therefore of little value. It usually disappears
shortly after the marriage. But if the spouses love each other and
believe that their marriage is eternal, and that in the other world
they will be eternally young and beautiful, their love for each
other will not disappear when they age and lose their good looks. If
family life is based on belief in the Resurrection, that family will
feel as if they are living in Paradise. If a country’s social order
is based on belief in the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment, life
in that country will be far better than what Plato imagined in his
Republic or al-Farabi (Alpharabios) in his Al-Madinat
al-Fadila (The City of Virtues). It will be like Madina in the
time of the Prophet, or the Muslim lands under the rule of Caliph
‘Umar.
One day a number of bright young people came to me, seeking an
effective deterrent to guard themselves against the danger arising
from modern worldly life, youth, and animalistic desires. As I had
previously told other young people who sought help, I also said to
them:
Your youth will definitely disappear. If you do not restrict
yourselves within the limits of the lawful, it will be lost, and
rather than its pleasures, it will bring you suffering and
calamities in this world, in the grave, and in the Hereafter. If,
under Islamic discipline, you use the blessings of youth in
gratitude, chastely and uprightly, and in worship, it will in
effect remain perpetually and be the cause of gaining eternal
youth.
As for life, if it is without belief, or if belief, because of
rebelliousness, is ineffective, it will produce pain, sorrow, and
grief far exceeding the superficial, fleeting enjoyment and
pleasure it brings. As an intelligent, thinking being, a human
being is (in contrast to animals) intrinsically connected to the
past and the future, as well as to the present time. He/she
derives both pain and pleasure from them. Since animals do not
think, neither sorrow arising from the past nor fear and anxiety
concerning the future spoil their present pleasure. But if a human
being has fallen into misguidance and heedlessness, sorrow arising
from the past and anxiety about the future mar his/her particular
pleasure, diluting it with pain. Especially if it is an illicit
pleasure, then it is like an altogether poisonous honey. This
means that, with respect to the enjoyments of life, a human being
is a hundred times lower than animals. In fact, for the misguided,
heedless people, their whole life and existence, their whole
world, consists of the day in which they find themselves.
According to their misguided belief, all of time past and all past
worlds have gone to non-existence. Their intellects, which connect
them to the past and the future, produce darkness for them.
Accordingly with their lack of belief, the future is also
non-existent for them. The separation that become eternal because
of this non-existence continually darkens their lives.
In contrast, if they build their lives upon belief, then
through the light of belief, both the past and the future will be
illuminated and acquire existence. Like the present time, they
provide, through belief, exalted spiritual pleasures and lights of
existence for their spirit and heart.
So, that is how life is. If you desire the pleasure and
enjoyment of life, animate your life with belief and adorn it with
religious obligations. Maintain it by abstaining from sin. As for
the fearsome reality of death, which is demonstrated by instances
of death every day, in every place and time, I shall explain it to
you with a parable in the same way as I explained it to some other
youths.
Suppose a gallows has been set up here in front of our eyes.
Beside it is a lottery office, one which gives tickets for truly
high prizes. We are here ten people, and willingly or unwillingly,
shall certainly be invited there. They may call us (since the
appointed time is unknown) at any moment, and say either: “Come
and mount the gallows for execution!” or “A prize ticket worth
millions of dollars has come up for you; come and collect it!”
While we are waiting for either call, two people suddenly turn up.
One of them holds in his/her hand and offers some apparently very
delicious, but in fact poisonous, sweets, which he/she wants us to
eat. The other is honest and solemn. He/she enters behind the
other, and says:
– I have brought you a talisman, a lesson. If you study it,
and if you do not eat the sweets, you will be saved from the
gallows. With this talisman, you will receive your ticket for
the matchless prize. You see with your own eyes that those who
eat the sweets inevitably mount the gallows, and furthermore,
until they mount them, they suffer dreadful stomach pains from
the poison of the sweets. As for those who receive the ticket
for the large prize, it seems that they too mount the gallows.
But millions of witnesses testify that they are not hanged on
the gal-lows; they use them as a step to enter the prize arena
easily. So, look from the windows! The highest officials, the
high-ranking persons concerned with this business announce with
loud voices: “Just as you see clearly with your own eyes those
mounting the gallows to be hanged, so also know with utmost
certainty that those with the talisman receive the ticket for
the prize.
As in the parable, since the dissolute, religiously forbidden
pleasures of youth, which are like poisonous sweets, are the cause
of losing belief—and belief is the ticket to an eternal treasury
and a document for everlasting happiness—those who indulge in them
are subject to death, which is like the gallows, and to the
tribulations of the grave, which is the door to eternal darkness.
The appointed hour of death is unknown. Therefore its executioner,
not differentiating between young and old, may come at any time to
cut off your head. If you have given up the religiously forbidden
pleasures (which are like the poisonous sweets) and acquired the
Qur’anic talisman (belief and performing religious obligations),
124,000 Prophets, upon them be peace, together with innumerable
saints, have pro-claimed that you will get to the treasury of
eternal happiness. They also have shown the signs and evidences of
it.
Youth will pass…
In short: Youth will pass. If it is wasted in
indulgence, it results in thousands of misfortunes and pains both
in this world and the next. If you want to understand how such
youths end up in hospitals with mental and physical diseases,
mainly because of their abuse, and in prisons or hostels for the
destitute as a result of their excesses, and in bars because of
the distress provoked by their spiritual unease—then, go and
inquire at the hospitals, prisons, and cemeteries.
For sure, just as you will hear from most of the hospitals the
moans and groans of those ill from dissipation and debauchery
resulting from the appetites of youth, so also you will hear from
the prisons the regretful sighs of unhappy wretches suffering for
illicit actions mostly resulting from the excesses of their youth.
Again, you will come to know that, as testified by the saints who
can discern the life of the grave, and affirmed by exacting
scholars of truth, most of the torments of the grave—that
Intermediate Realm the doors of which continuously open and shut
for those who enter it—are the result of misspent youth.
Also, ask the old and the sick, who form the majority of
humanity. Most certainly the great majority of them will answer
you with grief and regret: “Alas! We wasted our youth in
frivolity, indeed harmfully. Be careful! Never do as we did!” A
human being who wastes his/her life for the sake of the illicit
pleasures of a short period of youth, subjects himself/herself to
years of grief and sorrow in this world, torment and harm in the
Intermediate Realm, and a severe punishment in the Hereafter.
So, you unfortunates who are addicted to the pleasures of
worldly life and, troubled about your future, struggle to secure
it and your lives! If you want pleasure, delight, happiness, and
ease in this world, be content with what is religiously lawful.
That suffices for your enjoyment. You must have understood from
your experiences that in each pleasure forbidden by religion lie a
thousand pains. If the events of the future—for example, of fifty
years hence—were also shown in the cinema in the same way that
they now show events of the past, those who are now leading a
dissipated life would weep with horror and disgust at the things
with which they entertain
themselves. |
