Five Seconds to Go

Five Seconds to Go

1986 9 September 16 Five Seconds to Go (443) Once when I was on a visit to Meerut a few years ago, I went for a stroll one evening with my host, Maulana Shakeel Ahmed Qasmi. We were walking along the Sadar Bazaar, when, all of a sudden, the whole front of a house just a few yards ahead of us, collapsed without warning, blocking the entire width of the street with debris. We were hardly five seconds away from the scene of this tragic accident. Had we been five seconds earlier, or had the house caved in five seconds later, there is no way that we could have escaped. Our deaths would have been instantaneous. While we happily imagined that our final destination lay far ahead, our journey would have been cut short in the middle.

It occurred to me at that time that man is separated from death by a mere five seconds. At any point in time there is the chance that man will make this five-second journey – and find himself in another world.

If only man could quite finally grasp the enormity of the fact that the distance between him, at any given point in his life, and death, could be so infinitesimally short, he would undergo the most amazing metamorphosis; he would continue to live in this world, but his thoughts would then become firmly focussed on the life to come. If man could appreciate that he is standing on death’s doorstep, he would then leave the strongest of incentives to lead an upright life, for he should then have to come to grips with the fact that, immediately after death, he would, in the words of the Prophet, either enter the garden of paradise or plunge into the pit of fire. Each step that man takes in this world leads him relentlessly onwards towards one of the two extremes. But man has become so insensitive to this reality that he seldom sees fit to give it any serious consideration.

People put their trust in false ideals, and worship them as if they were holy, but in the life hereafter, only the humble reverence man has had for God in this life can be of any avail in his final salvation. True worship means fearing God in such a manner that he comes to dominate one’s thoughts entirely. He becomes the supreme force in, and monitor of all one’s affairs. Whatever is done then is for the sake of God, for the love of God, out of fear of God, and for no other. In short, one’s total concern is for life in the world to come. Given such concern, life’s mundane affairs should pale into insignificance.