The sun takes 255 million years to rotate around the center of the galaxy. Do we have any idea what this means? The Quran says one day in the afterlife will be like one thousand earth years.
“In the sight of your Rabb (the perception at the level of your essential reality manifested by the forces comprising your being) one day is like one thousand (earthly) years!” (Quran 22:47)
“They will murmur among themselves, ‘You remained (in the world) only ten (hours).’” (Quran 20:103)
Perhaps our life in the grave is going to last millions and millions of years…
Muhammad (saw) says:
“It will take 3000 years for a person to cross the bridge of Sirat.”
That is, 3000 years each day of which is like a thousand earth years!
Crossing the Sirat symbolizes escaping from the magnetic pull of the sun after Doomsday and reaching the heavens in space. This will take 3000 galactic years! At this point, Earth time would have been rendered completely obsolete!
How much longer to Doomsday?
How many millions or billions of years more will the deceased ones have to wait in their graves?
How many billions of years will it take for the Earth to melt from the heat of the sun and become flat like a tray?
How many hundreds of millions of years will it take for people to escape this magnetic battle? And finally, how many billions and billions of years will the eternal afterlife comprise?
Imagine going through all of this on your own!
Imagine being prisoned in your grave and consciously watching your body being eaten by all the insects and animals under the ground for perhaps billions of years… Imagine the pain emerging from the absence of everything you possessed and were accustomed to in this world… And imagine this pain to last until Doomsday, while all the time watching the turmoil further awaiting you!
All this pertains only to the life in the grave; I’m not even going to attempt to expound the rest! Those who wish, may obtain detailed information about the stages of the afterlife from various hadith books.
Thus, man constructs his own future with his actions and deeds in this world.
We can either take this reality into serious consideration and consciously evaluate our worldly life in this light, directing our system of thoughts and lives accordingly, or ignore it all and extinguish our lives with worldly pleasures and pain.
All this depends on how much we know and understand Allah, as disclosed by Muhammad (saw).
If we genuinely want to prepare ourselves for the afterlife, we must first begin with the concept of Allah and truly understand it.
Labeling the Gods in our imagination Allah is generally the primary cause of all defective behavior.
“Did you not see the one who has deified his ‘hawa’ (instinctual desires, corporeality, illusory self)..!” (Quran 25:43)
When belief in God based on imitation comprises the foundation of our religious understanding it can often lead to denial or rebellion, resulting in the extreme case of total annihilation.
Whereas if only we truly understood the reality that Allah is Ahad, that there is no God in the heavens, and that we will all face the consequences of our own doings, our entire lives would completely and absolutely change!