Just think over everything I have described for a
few minutes. You are destined for an extremely
long and unbroken lifespan. Death is by no means
the termination of this life: it is the commencement
of a new era. Death is simply the dividing-point
between the two stages of our life. Take the farmer’s
planting of a crop as an example. He invests his
capital in it and cultivates it, until such times as the
crop ripens and dries up. Then he harvests it so that
he can use the grain and store it up for his year’s
requirements. Harvest is the end of one phase in the
crop’s development, during which time planting
and cultivation had taken place. Before the cutting
of the crop there had been only toil and expense; it
is afterwards that he will enjoy the fruits of his
efforts.
This is the case with our life also. In this world we
are investing in and cultivating our afterworld crop.
Each one of us owns a field which is either being
cultivated or left barren. We have used a seed
which is either productive or mediocre. After
sowing our crop, we have either attended to it or
neglected it. Either we have cultivated thorns, or
else flowers and fruits have blossomed in our
garden. We have either expended our energies on
the improvement of our crop, or we have wasted
our time in unnecessary and irrelevant occupations.
The period of preparation of this crop lasts until
death. The day of our death is harvest-day. When
our eyes close on this world, they will open on the
afterlife, and there, the crop which we have been
busy cultivating all our lives will appear before us.
Remember that the person who does the farming is
the one who does the harvesting, and he will reap
only the crop that he has sown. Likewise in the
afterworld, everybody will reap the harvest he had
prepared for himself prior to his death. Every
farmer knows full well that he will take as much
grain to the granary as he has grown, and that the
crop can never be other than the one he has sowed.
Likewise, in the afterworld man will be
recompensed according to the nature and ardour of
his efforts in the world. Death is the final
announcement of the termination of the time
allotted to him for struggle and endeavour, and the
afterworld is the final place in which he will be able
to experience the results thereof. After death there
will be no further opportunity to struggle, and it
must be borne in mind that the afterlife will never
terminate. What a critical matter this is! If only man
could come to a mature understanding of this
before he died, because his later realization will be
of no avail. Becoming aware of the truth only after
death is too late. There is no time then to consider
the gravity of one’s errors, no time for repentance
and certainly no time for expiations.
Mankind is oblivious of his destiny, while time is
conveying him with the utmost speed towards the
harvesting of his crop. He is busily engaged in
procuring paltry worldly profits, and considers
himself worthily occupied, whereas, in fact, he is
just frittering away his precious time. He has before
him a superb opportunity to ensure a prosperous
future for himself, but instead, he chooses to occupy
himself with bagatelles. His Lord is calling him
towards paradise, a place of endless honour and
bliss, while he, in his ignorance, is immersed in
ephemeral and delusive pleasures. He reckons that
he is saving, but in fact he is squandering. While
constructing his worldly mansion, he is labouring
under the illusion that he is building for his life”,
while in fact, he is erecting walls of sand which will
crumble away to nothing.
Man! Recognize yourself! Know what you are doing
and what you ought to be doing!
Ref - Man Know Thyself
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
