Questioner: Beloved Hazoor, Assalamualikum,
Huzoor (rh): Wa Alaikumassalam Wa rahmatullah,
Questioner: With your permission, sir, since you remembered the question on which Mu minuna bil ghaib, I was very satisfied about the answers, the three answers on that subject, especially the last part. But still, one part of it remained unasked. So, with your permission, I would like to ask. Since we are not permitted, according to the Holy Quran, to visit this world twice,
Huzoor (rh): Ofcourse not, yes. Just once.
Questioner: then, when we should meet Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, and then we realize that our ibadah was useless, and that we have wasted our time, then we would not get that chance.
Huzoor (rh): No, not again.
Questioner: But since we believe in will Yu minuna bil ghaib arrive, there must be some guidance for those who believe. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala has promised the Muslims, especially in this age, Ahmadiyya Jama’at, the members, that we will be given two paradises, one in this life and one in the next.
Huzoor (rh): So you have answered your question yourself.
Questioner: I am making a statement first. In the next life, if Allah says, who strives for me, I will cause him to see me. And then the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. substantiates this statement by stating, you will be able to see him like the younger full moon. So the question arises now, that if paradise is two, one here and one there, and we will be able to see Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala in the next life, we must see him here. In what way? We will be able to see Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. What is meant by that? Seeing.
Huzoor (rh): Well, as I suggested, you have already answered your question. Thank you for that. The Holy Quran says Wa man kΔna fΔ« hΔdhihi aβmΔ fa huwa fil-Δkhirati aβmΔ , The one who is blind here will be raised blind in the Hereafter. So that is the answer. Those who do not see God here in this life, they lack the ability to see God. And they have not seen Him there. And that also answers the second part of the question, how shall we see? Exactly as we see here. We don’t see Him directly with our material eyes. It’s impossible. No one can see God with material eyes. Because you must understand what the sight is. That we understand. The sight means the light, which is very rare subject, very refined thing. It strikes against something which is coarser than it and returns by striking at it. And what you see is in the return journey of the light and it struck a coarser object. Is anything more refined than God? How could a light strike against God and return to you? It’s impossible. So that is why the Holy Quran has answered this question itself. It says, LΔ tudrikuhul-abαΉ£Δru wa huwa yudrikul-abαΉ£Δr, wa huwa al-LaαΉΔ«ful-KhabΔ«r Your eyes can never reach God. It is God who reaches your eyes. It is God who reaches your understanding and perception. Which means that it is impossible for you to see God. Only God appears to you as He considers fit. And to every man He appears according to him. According to his own capabilities. This is exactly what Hazrat Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam meant when he said, Allah says, AnΔ βinda αΊanni βabdΔ« bΔ« I am according to the concept of man about me. I have become that. So that explains why God being unlimited, yet He appears to a limited being like human beings. He appears to them in their own capacity. If the sea is vast like all oceans are, somebody goes there with a cup of tea and fills his cup. He has got everything. The cup is full. But the sea is far bigger than the cup. So Allah fills everyone with His capacity according to His own understanding and His own capabilities. This is seeing of Allah. This is further explained by a very interesting story, which I have repeatedly told others because I love this story. It is a very good demonstration about the explanation of the hadith, Anam Dazaam-e-Abdibi. It is said that once Moses was passing, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, by a shepherd who was cleaning his jacket from lice, picking up lice and killing it, and also in the process talking to God. So Moses became intrigued. He stood by and listened to what he was saying. So he was saying, O God, I love you so much that when I get you, I will remove your lice. I will clean your shirts, your clothing, wash with my own hands. And went on speaking in the same tone. I will remove your thorns. I will feed you with the milk of goats and slaughter my best goat for you and do this and that. Moses became very angry. He shouted at him. He said, what do you mean? Is God dependent on you? What do you think God is? As he did, God admonished him so severely that Moses was shaken from head to toe. God said, what right have you to interfere between me and my servant? I was enjoying their talk so much. See, this is the meaning of Anam Dazaam-e-Abdibi. I become that which one conceives about me. Everyone has a different feeling. Even the most highly educated and intellectual people who think they know God better. Only know God in a very limited sense because God is unlimited. Nobody can encompass Him. He encompasses everything. So your being of God, of course, will be limited here. But it will be a being where God will appear to you, He will close upon you, and begin to live with you. And that is the sight which has been mentioned in the Holy Quran. If somebody is deprived of that sight here, he will be deprived of that sight in the hereafter. So heaven is to live with God. The difference would be that here we are at distance. We see God, even if we love Him, through reflections from nature, from other things. We remember Him and we conceive of Him in our own respective ways. But still, the distance is a bigger distance because we are material. We are composed of matter and soul. But after the soul is released from the body, Allah will provide us with a rarer, more refined body made of soul, and a new soul will be born out of our own soul. That will be the reaper. And then we will be getting closer to God. His reign will become more clear and more enjoyable. So that experience will be more intense and more sublime. That is going to be the heaven which will also be reflected in forms. The whole man is thus in effect made of imagination. When we taste something, nothing of the food reaches mind. But the mind knows exactly what it is like. So in the final analysis, it is the electrical system, the pulses only. Nothing more. So when we reach the heaven, our pulses, that in the soul, would create a form for us. And that would be our heaven. And this is why Allah told us that there will be different heavens for different people. All will not share the same heaven. The more refined those who have strived in the path of Allah here on this earth. It’s a very simple question. It’s not that hell and heaven are different. In different species I mean. The Holy Quran tells us that the Jannah, that is heaven, is so vast that allahu samawati waba it expands, it covers the whole universe. The companions of the Holy Prophet of Islam, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, were intrigued by this verse. They inquired from him, Ya Rasulullah, where will be the hell? If the whole universe is to be covered by heaven, where will the hell be? The answer was, it will be there. But you won’t know, you don’t know these things. That means the dimensions will be different. Sharing the same thing would give different experiences and different emotions. Now this can be understood in a coarse way, not exactly, but to a degree, by our human experience. If someone is thirsty and also hungry and he needs very much energy but likes it to be cool energy, cool and sweet and swift in providing the loss of energy, you offer him a chilled bunch of grapes. That would be heaven for him. That’s what he needs. He would love to eat it. But a man who needs energy more than that, but he is ill, he is vomiting, he is nauseated, he can’t bear the sight of sweet things. He can’t bear the sight of chilled grapes. You give the same bunch of grapes to that man who needs the energy so much he is being dehydrated. He would feel like slapping your face. Remove it. I can’t see the sight of it. I can’t bear it. It is hell for me. So the same thing, the same situation provides hell to one and heaven to the other. Those who are addicted to filthy television programs, it is heaven for them here on earth. When they listen to a pious program, somebody comes and recites the holy Quran, that becomes hell for them. But when they die, they will only be piety. So that will become hell. Closeness to God will become hell for them because they did not like God there. So you create your own heaven and hell. Allah is not cruel to anybody. It’s up to you. He has explained everything. So it is not difficult for you to know that you are a heavenly body because when you do good deeds, a sense of nobility is born in you. When you act righteously, you know you are right. Every day you are asked for choices of taking the right course or the wrong course and when you take the wrong course, you know you have taken the wrong course. Nobody else is there to blame you, but your own conscience does. And you don’t listen to the why and go on doing it, and yet you say you don’t know whether you are preparing hell for yourself or heaven for yourself. You know. Only you have to delve deeper into yourself and examine your own actions more clearly.
