Life Death and Beyond

concepts of good and evil and his way of forming opinions. His whole life will become a God-oriented one. Consciousness of having to answer God in the Hereafter will completely take over his way of thinking. This revolution in consciousness is called tazkiya (‘purification’) in the Quran and Sunnah. Thinking based on tazkiya will lead to the emergence of a new personality, characterized by both love for God and fear of God. In contrast to the world before death, success in the world after death will become one’s greatest concern. As a consequence of this transformation in his thinking, his intellectual stagnation will end and he will grow in creative thinking. The whole universe will become a source of intellectual nourishment for him. He will feel as if he has acquired the company of angels. From Everything Towards Nothing In this world, an individual appears to have been given everything that he needs to live—for instance, heat and light from the sun, oxygen, water, food, a family, social relations and institutions, a governmental system and so on. They are part of what is called the ‘life-support system’. All these things a person receives at birth itself, and he continues to have access to them throughout his life, generally speaking. Because of this, a person tends to take these things for granted. He doesn’t think that, one day or the other, all of these will be taken away from him. Yet, that is precisely what is destined for us all. One day, after a certain age, death must happen and all the things