THE GOAL OF MAN — Defining Human Life

The truth is that what is unknown is not man, but, rather, man’s destination — in other words, a world that is the realization of human dreams; a world free from all contradictions; a world where man may lead his life with a sense of total fulfilment. This apparently intractable issue becomes fully resolved when the study of man is made in the light of the Divine scheme of things, that is to say, when efforts are made to understand the will or plan of the Creator along with an understanding of His creatures. This is the only possible method which is of any relevance. When we approach matters from this angle, we realize that this problem confronts us only because we attempt to understand man without keeping in mind the creation plan of God. Man is a creature; he is not the Creator — just as a machine is made by an engineer and is not its own maker. Although man has appeared to be a known entity, scholars have remained totally ignorant of his ultimate destination. This being so, if we want to know the reality of man, we shall have to learn the creation plan of the Creator. Just as without the knowledge of the engineer’s plan we cannot explain the machine, similarly, without knowledge of the creation plan of the Creator, it is impossible to explain man. This is why, without keeping this creation plan in view, the meaningfulness of man’s life escapes us, whereas when we keep this creation plan firmly in view, everything becomes fully comprehensible. Everything then falls into place. In accordance with His creation plan, God created this world as one half of a pair. This world, in which we pass our lives after birth, is that first part. And the other world, the other part, is the one where we live after death. In this way, there are two parts to human life — the pre-death period and the post-death period. The Creator of man has created him as an eternal creature, but He has divided his life into two stages — terrestrial existence and the life after death. The world before death is designed as a testing ground, while the world after death is designed to be a world of reward or punishment. Since the present world is made to serve the purpose of man’s test, everyone here has been granted freedom to make his own moral choices. It is as if the present world is a kind of examination hall where all the provisions have been made that are needed for this test. But