The Story of Human Life

So, when death overtakes such people, they die like animals. Having spent their life catering to sensual pleasures, they enter the next phase of life only to face torment and regret. Another unique characteristic of a human being is that, unlike all other creatures, he has a concept of ‘tomorrow’. In the universe, all other creatures live only in ‘today’. It is only we humans who possesses consciousness of the future and who, making the future his concern, can plan for it. It can be said that while all other creatures live only in the present, human beings live in the future. People who waste their potentials only for acquiring the things of ‘today’—the life of this world—and do nothing for their ‘tomorrow’—the life after death—are victims of a grave error. Such people may seem to be very happy and prosperous now, but in the life after death, they will be an example of the worst sort of deprivation. This is because in the life after death what will prove to be of use is one’s intellectual and spiritual development, not one’s material progress. Human beings possess unlimited desires. Along with this, they have enormous abilities, using which they can fulfil many of their desires. People generally use only so much of their abilities as can give them some temporary pleasure in the limited world before death. Not having used these abilities for their spiritual development, when they die, they enter a world for which they have not prepared themselves. Hence, they will be doomed to live there without relief and comfort. Given this, the realistic way for an individual is for him to plan his life in such a way that he uses his abilities in the best possible way, so that he can gain felicity and success in the eternal post-death period of his life. He should save himself from living in such a way that in the Hereafter all that he may have to say for himself is: “I was a case of misused opportunities.” In both the pre-death and post-death period of life the principle of success is just one. And that is, to make oneself