Reflections on Life and Death

of the Hereafter that is filled with light. But on seeing the sun, man starts taking the sun itself for a deity. The beauty of flowers and trees is in order to convey to people the beauty of the Hereafter. But man takes them to be the ultimate things and wants to create a paradise for himself amidst them, here in this world. The delights of this world exist in order to make people desire the joys of the Hereafter. But man so loses himself in these worldly joys that he completely forgets the Hereafter. A person who loses himself in the deceptive pleasures of this world has lost his Hereafter. When he reaches the Hereafter and sees its eternal joys, his heart will turn into a graveyard of regret. How foolish he was, he would tell himself, that for the sake of false comforts, he lost all the real comforts; that for the sake of false joys, he lost all the real joys; and how, being deceived by false freedom, he caused himself to be deprived of true freedom.

I Have to Go Til the Hereafter T he well-known Muslim scholar, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (d. 1943) was once travelling in a train. He had to go to Azamgarh, a town in northern India. A railway guard who was his admirer came to meet him at the station. Just then, a villager also arrived, and presented the Maulana with a bundle of sugarcanes