Ismaili Waez | Akhirat Ka Sawab (Part-1) | By Rai Babul Missionary

This Waez has been done by Rai Babul Missionary on the Akhirat Ka Sawab. This is the first part of this waez. Hope that you learn more & more from this Waez :-)

A belief in life after death implies that every deed, however, secretly it may be done, must bear fruit, and therefore this belief is both the greatest impetus towards good and noble and the greatest restraint upon evil or irresponsible deeds. The Koran says: "Then shall every soul become acquainted with what it had sent before" (10:30). Such belief purifies the motives with which a deed is done. It makes a man work with the most selfless of motives in the world, for he seeks no reward for what he does; his work is for higher and nobler ends relating to the life beyond the grave. The Koran says: "Nay! you prefer the life of this world while the hereafter is better and more lasting" (87:16-17).

"The Koran not only speaks of a life after death which opens out before man a new world of advancement, it also shows that the basis of that life is laid in this very earthy life. For the good, the heavenly life, and for the wicked, a life in hell, begin even here, though the limitations of this material life do not allow most people to realize that other: "Certainly thou were heedless of it (the future life), but now (after death) We have removed from thee thy veil, so thy sight today is sharp" (50:22) and "On that day you shall be exposed to view" (69:18). It implies that the spiritual life which here is hidden due to material limitations, will become more manifest after death; because human perception will then be sharp, the veil of material limitations having been removed. The Koran plainly speaks of two paradises for the righteous and two chastisements for the wicked, and as plainly of a heavenly and hellish life, each beginning here: "And for him who fears to stand before his Lord are two gardens" (55:46), "O soul that art at rest! Return to thy Lord well pleased with Him, well pleasing Him, so enter among My servants and enter into My paradise" (89:27-30), "Nay! If you had known with a certain knowledge, you should certainly have seen the hell" (89:5-6), "It is the fire kindled by God which rises above the hearts" (104:6-7), "And whoever is blind in this life, shall also be blind in the hereafter" (17:72) and "Such is the chastisement, and certainly the chastisement of the hereafter is greater, did they but know" (68:33).

It will have been seen that the Koran speaks of the growth of a higher life even in the life of this world, and thus the spiritual experience of man is the first stage of the higher life. Yet, ordinarily, man is neglected of this higher experience, and it is only persons of a very high spiritual development that are in any way conscious of that higher life. Barzakh is really the second stage in the development of this higher life, and it appears that all men have a certain consciousness of the higher life at this stage, though full development has not yet taken place. In the Koran, even the development of physical life is mentioned as passing through three stages. The first stage of that life is the state of being in the earth; the second, that of being in the mother's womb; and the third, that in which the child is born. Thus we have: "He knows you best when He brings you forth from the earth and when you are embryos in the wombs of your mother" (53:32). And again: "And He began the creation of man from dust; then He made his progeny of an extract of water held in light estimation; then He made him complete and breathed into him of His spirit" (32:7-9). And still again: "And certainly We have created man of an extract of clay; then We make him a small life-germ in a firm resting-place...then We causes it to grow into another creation, so blessed be God, the best of the creators" (23:12-14). Corresponding to these three stages in the physical development of man, the stage of dust, the stage of the embryo and the stage of birth into life, the Koran speaks of three stages in his spiritual growth. The first is the growth of spiritual life which begins in this very life, but it is a stage at which ordinarily there is no consciousness of this life, like the dust stage in the physical growth of a man. Then there comes death, and with it is entered the second stage of the higher or spiritual life, the barzakh or the qabr stage, corresponding to the embryo state in the physical growth of man. At this stage, life has taken a definite form, and a certain consciousness of that life has grown up, but it is not yet the full consciousness of the final development which takes place with the resurrection, and which may therefore be compared to the actual birth of man, to his setting forth on the road to real advancement, to a full awakening of the great truth. The development of the higher life in barzakh is as necessary a stage in the spiritual world as is the development of physical life in the embryonic state. The two stages thus stand on a par.