Life after Death!

Life after death is still a big question and possesses a commensurate and inexplicable nature of its own. Over the times many philosophers, writers & poets have presented a combination of optimism and pessimism to discover the possibility of life after death. Christianity is literally the largest of all religions with a following of around 850 million and it does not belong to any particular cultural group.

So according to Roman Catholic doctrine those souls who have done not much good nor many sins enter a place called 'Purgatory' and only after spending a considerable time are allowed to enter heaven. Purgatory also provides a partial explanation of the state of many souls between the individual judgments and having purged away their sins in this intervening period souls would be ready to enter heaven. Those consigned to hell are said to be excluded forever from God's presence and cut off from all happiness.

According to I Thessalonians 4,New Testament

"For the lord himself shall descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God: and
the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall
Be caught up together with them in the
Clouds, to meet the lord in the air: and
So shall we ever be with lord."

So even the saints who move directly to heaven on death must await a full realization of blessedness until the end of time when the general resurrection will take place.

But according to Qur'an ,81

"when the sun shall be darkened,
when the stars shall be thrown down
when the mountains shall be set moving
then shall a soul know what it has produced."

The Quran teaches that all happens, including the precise hour of death for each individual, is fixed and recorded in the 'tablets of eternity'. The moment the death occurs, it is customary to tie together the two great toes with a strip of cloth and to burn incense near body. In India, to enable the body to lie with its face towards Mecca graves are dug north to south.

The Quran also mentions eight types of heaven, Firadus being the highest. Jahannam, the hell of Islam, has seven divisions each reserved for a particular class of sinners. Islam teaches that when a good man dies angels with white faces descend towards him. When the angel of death(Malaku-l-Mout) comes to sit alongside the head of the corpse and calls out to the pure soul , it emerges 'like water issuing from a bag' and other angels put the soul in to a shroud perfumed with musk and carry it upwards and when those whom they pass desire to know the identity of this pure soul , they are told his name and the the gates of heaven are opened for the soul.

On God's command the soul is returned to its body, the dead man is made to sit up and is asked about his life's actions. A man with a beautiful face then approaches the dead man and says 'I am thy good deeds'.Then the dead man prays 'O Lord, hasten the resurrection for my sake' unlike the bad man is taken to heaven and beset by the heat and hot winds of hell and squeezed in a narrow grave, he pleads 'Lord, delay the resurrection on my account.'


According to Surah, LXXV

'thinketh man that we shall not re-unite his bones?
Aye! His very finger tips are we able evenly to replace'

Thus Muslims of all sects believe that at the end of the world there will be a mass resurrection at which bodies will be raised and united with their souls. The belief in angels is common to Islam and Christianity, but Islam speaks also of Jinns, a class of beings intermediate between man and angels. These Jinns may be good or evil, the leader of the evil Jinns being Iblis, the Satan of Islam.

According to Hindu religion, the basic moral teachings that are incorporated among the children comes from the extracts of Ramayana and Mahabharata, and hence though hell and heaven have been mentioned in Hindu scriptures and yet there's so much diversity of religions that 'Karma' alone is considered to be the only way to attin salvation. Hell and heaven shall be granted according to the 'karma's' performed during life time, howsoever nowhere it is mentioned about the intentions and perceptions n the thoughts borne by an individual..Sometimes an individual might be jejune n holistic in the innocent sense and yet might be forced to change his course of karma because of another being. So, karma are judged by thoughts or by actiosb alone for actions are but a reflection of thoughts! and thoughts in reality are humane..So, somehow this argument seems to rach to no particular end.

Thus in spite of many ideas contributed by various religions the existence of hell and heaven still remains a big question and in a way could also be considered as a way to proliferate a feeling of good and bad among people and also to fear God by adopting a fair way towards this anthropomorphic sort of life and to have a apposite quantity of roseate charm to travel this journey of life optimistically.

Akanksha

*In reference with the book Living and Dying by Vidya Dehejia