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“When I am dead, will I then be raised up again?”
This question may hover on the periphery of the
conscious-ness of even those who do not have any
deep convictions of the reality of life after death, but
the fact remains that very few people give any
direct attention to the question of the afterlife. The
plain truth that tomorrow’s life is not willingly and
eagerly contemplated in the present world is surely
an indication of conscious or subconscious doubt as
to its existence.
If, however, we give serious thought to this reality,
it becomes easily comprehensible. God, wishing to
put us to the test, has not divulged the secrets of life
after death to us, but has spread His signs
throughout the world which, if pondered over, can
lead us to a true realization of the essence of all
things. This universe is a mirror in which we can
gaze upon the image of the next world.
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 there be 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?
Every individual one sees walking around is, in
fact, 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
which 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 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 fully- fledged life expires. But when
the rains come again, and water pours down from
the sky, that very same vegetation is revived and
dry land once again becomes a meadow. In this
very same manner man will be raised to life after
his death.
Let’s look at it 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, and
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,
cremated or thrown into a river 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 live 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 counterbalance this physical
deficiency. Likewise 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 “you’s” 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 occuring. 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.
This proves 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 consider life and death to
be the accumulation and subsequent diffusion of
multitudinous particles of matter. This theory has
been expounded by an Urdu poet, Chakbast, in the
following words:
What is life? Elements arranging themselves
in order, And death? Their diffusion.’
This, however, is a statement which is 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
ludicrous.
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 no doctor can
provide an explanation. 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 live human being cannot be produced in a
laboratory, though such a physical form can readily
be formulated. We have ascertained that the
particles which compose a live 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 constitutes water, its nitrogen
exactly the same gas as that which accounts for
most of the atmosphere, and so on. But is it true to
say that a live human being is a specific collection of
ordinary atoms which have been arranged in an
extraordinary way? Or is it something else besides
this? Scientists admit that although we know that
the body has been fabricated of certain material
particles, we are still not in a position to create life
just by combining these same particles. In other
words, the body of a live human being is not just a
conglomeration of inanimate atoms; rather it is a
combination of life and atoms. After death the
conglomeration 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 it 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. There must be a life
after death also. Our intellect accepts the transient
nature of this world, but man is a being which
survives it. When we die, we do not pass into
oblivion, rather we retire to reside in another world.
The present world is nothing but a tiny interlude in
our never-ending life span.
Ref - Man Know Thyself
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
