Islam The Voice of Human Nature
4. THE HEREAFTER
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remains beyond our reach. But all around us, we
have innumerable signs, which can help us, by
analogy, to understand and appreciate the nature of
the world to come. Imagine a room, which
ostensibly consists of four walls, furniture, a few
material objects and some human occupants. To all
outward appearances, that is what the room adds
up to. But the moment we switch on the TV set, we
are introduced to a hitherto unsuspected world of
colour, movement, and highly vocal human
activity. This world, with its scenery and very alive
human beings, had existed all along. It had only
needed the flip of a switch to make us aware of it.
Similarly, our terrestrial existence is made up of a
world within a world. The world we know is
concrete, visible, audible, tangible. The ‘other’
world, the world within it, or rather, beyond it, is
not, however, one which can be apprehended
through any of the normal human senses; no switch
can be turned on to make us understand what it is
really like. Only death can do this for us. And,
when we re-open our eyes after death, we find that
what had formerly been impalpable, and quite
beyond human comprehension, is now a stark,
