Life Death and Beyond

The Nursery of the Hereafter this issue. If a person who develops in himself world-oriented thinking, his entire life will move in the wrong direction. In contrast, the person whose thinking is Hereafter-oriented will head in the right direction. It is this issue that is of fundamental importance for an individual’s character-building. The Nursery of the Hereafter The first thing that a person in this world should discover is the creation plan of the One who created human beings and the universe. From a study of the Quran it is clear that God first made a vast and perfect world—the world of Paradise. Then, He made humans and settled them there. God bestowed humans with complete freedom of choice. It was desirable for people to freely acknowledge their Creator and, through this free choice, lead a self-disciplined life. But people did not pass this test. They misused their freedom. At first, human beings had been settled in Paradise on a general basis. But when they failed to live up to the established standard, God decided that the decision of Paradise was to be made on a selective basis—that is, only those people would be settled in Paradise who fully lived up to the desired standard of self-discipline. For this purpose, God made a temporary world, a world in addition to eternal Paradise. This temporary world is Planet Earth. The Earth is, as it were, a temporary nursery to feed the garden of Paradise. On this planet, people are being ‘cultivated’, like saplings in a plant nursery. Here, people are given the opportunity to live