‘When I am dead, will I then be raised up again?’
This question is in the back of the minds of
even those who do not have any deep
convictions of the reality of life after death. The
fact however remains that very few people give
any direct attention to the question of the afterlife
while they are in this world. This is surely an
indication of the conscious or subconscious
doubt as to its existence. If, however, we give
serious thought to the reality of life after death,
it becomes easily comprehensible: God, wishing
to put us to the test, has not divulged the secrets
of life after death to us directly. He has however
spread His signs throughout the universe for us
to see and ponder over. This can lead us to a
true realization of God and the essence of all
things around us. This universe is actually a
mirror in which we can gaze upon the image of
the next world. Let us understand how.
It is common knowledge that human beings
have not always existed in their present state.
Man is derived from a formless substance,
which gradually takes on the form of a human
being as it grows in the mother’s womb. This
process continues until, in the outside world, it
develops into a full-fledged human being. The
metamorphosis of an insensate, valueless
substance, imperceptible to the naked eye, into
a six-foot tall human being, is an everyday event.
So why should we have any difficulty in
understanding how the minute particles of our
bodies, after being scattered in the ground, will
once again take on a human form? In fact, every
individual one sees walking around is, an
accumulation of countless atoms, previously
dispersed in unknown dimensions throughout the
earth and atmosphere. Presently the forces of
nature brought these atoms together in one
meaningful, sensate pattern, so that we are now
able to observe these same scattered atoms in the
form of a human being—capable of thought,
feeling and movement. The very same process
will be repeated when, subsequent to our death,
our particles are diffused in the air, water and earth.
Afterwards, at God’s command, they will be
reassembled and once again assume the form of a
human being. What is so extraordinary about the
re-occurrence of an event that has already
happened once before?
Even in the world of matter there are
indications of the practicability of a repetition of
life. Every year, in the rainy season, vegetation
flourishes and its greenery spreads in all
directions. Then the summer pronounces its
death sentence and the earth dries up. Where
flowers bloomed, only a barren plain can be seen.
Thus a full-fledged life expires. But when the
rains come again, and water pours down from
the sky, that very same vegetation is revived
and the dry land once again becomes a meadow.
In this very same manner, man will be raised to
life after his death. Let us look at this from
another angle. Doubts occur concerning life after
death because our imagination is formulated in
terms of our present physical existence. We
consider the mobile figure outwardly apparent
to us to be the essential human being. We then
wonder how this form can be refashioned and
raised up again once it has rotted away and
mingled with the earth.
We observe that when
death strikes, an animate human being becomes
silent; his motion is halted and all his faculties
cease to function. Afterwards he is buried in the
ground or cremated depending on the customs
of the people concerned. A few days later, the
body has been reduced to tiny particles and
mingled with the earth in such a way as to be
undetectable to normal vision. We witness daily
the extinction of living human beings in this
manner and find it difficult to comprehend how
a form so totally obliterated can possibly be
revived.
The fact is that the word ‘man’ refers, not to
any such bodily form, but rather to the ‘soul,’
which inhabits the body. As far as the physical
frame is concerned, we know that it is composed
of tiny particles called living cells. The position
of cells in our body is like that of bricks in a
building. The bricks of our physical structure or
cells are continuously destroyed in the course of
our daily lives and we compensate for this loss
by taking in food. Food, once digested, produces
various forms of cells, which counter-balance
this physical deficiency. In this way, the human
body is constantly being eroded and altered. Old
cells are destroyed and new ones take their place.
This process continues daily until eventually total
renovation of the body occurs, usually within a
period of ten years. To put it another way, nothing
whatsoever remains now of the body you
possessed ten years ago. Your present physique
is an entirely new one. If all the parts of your
body severed from you over the last ten years
were to be gathered together, then another human
being—identical to yourself could be constructed.
If you are a hundred years old, then ten ‘yous’
could be formed which, despite their exact
similarity to you in appearance, would be no more
than inanimate lumps of flesh, for ‘you’ do not
dwell within them. ‘You’ have abandoned these
old bodies and moulded yourself into a new frame.
So the saga of construction and destruction is
constantly being enacted within ‘you’ without
any evident change occurring. That entity which
you call yourself remains as it was. If you had
entered into a contract with someone ten years
ago, you would continue to admit that ‘you’
committed yourself in this manner, although your
previous frame is now non-existent. Neither the
hands, which signed the contract papers, nor the
tongue which testified to it, are any longer
attached to your body. Nevertheless ‘you’ still
exist, and ‘you’ acknowledge the fact that this
ten-year old contract was your own and continue
to abide by it. This is that inward human being at
work, which, far from altering with bodily
transformation, survives countless physical
changes absolutely intact. We can therefore say
that the word ‘homo sapiens’, rather than being
a label attached to a certain physical form, which
is erased with its death, is a separate entity, which
remains intact even after the diffusion of the
body’s composite parts. The fact that the body
alters whereas the soul does not is conclusive
proof of the transitional nature of the body and
the eternal nature of the soul.
Some misguided people even consider ‘life’
and ‘death’ to be the ‘accumulation’ and the
subsequent ‘diffusion’ of multitudinous particles
of matter as expounded by an Urdu poet,
Chakbast, in the following words:
Zindagi kya hai, anasir mein zahoor-e-tarteeb
Mauwt kya hai, inhi ajza ka pareshan hona
What is life? Elements arranging themselves
in order, and death? Their diffusion.
This, statement is however not borne out by
fact. If life were simply ‘elements arranging
themselves in order,’ then it follows that it should
survive only so long as this orderliness endured,
and it should conversely be possible for an expert
scientist to create life by an accumulation of
these elements; obviously, both these
propositions are preposterous. We observe that
it is not only those who have been torn limb
from limb in some accident, who die. In every
condition and at every age people are passing
away.
Sometimes perfectly healthy human beings
suffer sudden heart failure and die and no doctor
can provide an explanation for this. We may
regard a corpse as an ‘orderly, elemental
manifestation,’ but the soul, which inhabited it,
has departed. All elements are arranged in the
same order as they were a few minutes
beforehand, but they are utterly lifeless. This
shows that the organization of elemental matter
does not create life; rather life is an entirely
separate entity.
A living human being cannot be produced in a
laboratory, though such a physical form can
readily be formulated. We have ascertained that
the particles that compose a living body consist
of normal atoms. The carbon in it is the same as
that found in charcoal, its hydrogen and oxygen
are the same as that which constitute water, its
nitrogen is exactly the same gas as that which
accounts for most of the atmosphere, and so
on. But is it true to say that a living human being
is a specific collection of ordinary atoms that
have been arranged in an extraordinary way?
Or is it something else besides this? Scientists
admit that although we know that the body is
fabricated of certain material particles, we are
still not in a position to create life just by
combining these same particles. This proves that
the body of a living human being is not just a
conglomerate of inanimate atoms. It is rather a
combination of ‘life’ and ‘atoms’. After death,
the conglomerate of ‘atoms’ remains visible to
us, while ‘life’ departs for another world.
Clearly, ‘life’ is not something, which can be
eliminated. When we grasp that life is something
with eternal properties, we can appreciate just
how rational and natural the ‘life-after-death’
theory is. The facts cry out that life does not
consist merely of what can be seen prior to
death. Therefore, there must be a life after death
also. Our intellect accepts the transient nature
of this world, and the fact that man is a being,
which survives it. When we die, we do not pass
into oblivion, rather we retire to reside in another
world.
Understanding this, most people now-a-days
do believe in God and in the afterworld. It is not
as if they deny these things; however their
actions bear no relation to their belief. In
practice, all that people are concerned about is
‘worldly success’. Let us understand this with
the help of an example: if we were told that the
earth’s gravitational pull had ceased to exist and
that the planet was being pulled towards the sun
at a speed of 6,000 m.p.h., can you think what
would happen? There would definitely be a total
and complete panic in the entire world, as this
would imply that within a few weeks all life
would be obliterated from the face of the earth.
However, no one realizes that this world is
perpetually facing a peril much greater than this.
What is this peril? It is the peril of the Last Day
in which man will be called to account for his
deeds in this world. The Day, which has been
destined for the world since the creation of the
universe, which we are all careering towards at
a reckless speed. As an article of faith, most of
us accept this reality, but there are indeed very
few who actually feel compelled to give it serious
thought and even less who feel the need to
prepare for the afterworld.
--Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
( Ref - Reality of Life )
