They are living in it in the sense that they move amidst the...

They are living in it in the sense that they move amidst the worldly people in their normal activities such as business transactions and family life. However, they do not live in this world since their hearts never get attached to it, nor does the world penetrate into their hearts. Their hearts are only attached to God: they sense, in this world, the blessings of paradise and the torment of hell. How Can A Person Be Among The People Of The Hereafter While Living In This World?

If we want to know how one can be among the people of the hereafter while still living in this world, and how one can treat the malaise of attachment to the world and free his soul from it and subsequently attach himself to the hereafter, we have to ponder over these words with which the Imam (as) addressed Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah: … “[Know that] the world is as if it has never been and the hereafter is as if it has always been.” Worldly life will surely come to an end and one’s relationship with the world will not last; all that one acquires in this world and one’s attachments will finish.

It is the hereafter that is permanent: ***“What is with you will be exhausted but what is with God is permanent.” (Qur’an-16:96)***What is with us is our possessions and what we are attached to in the life of this world, and what is with God is the peace and pleasure of the next world. God Most High says: "The parable of the life of this world is that of water which we send down from the sky. It mingles with the earth’s vegetation from which humans and cattle eat.

When the earth puts on its luster and is adorned, and its inhabitants think they have power over it, Our edict comes to it, by night or day, whereat we turn it into a mown field, as if it did not flourish the day before. Thus, do we elaborate the signs for a people who reflect”. [^2] It is the permanent and enduring pleasures that deserve man’s attachment instead of the fleeting enjoyments that quickly disappear and cannot last for man.

Every enjoyment is fitted for man’s affection to the extent for which it lasts for him, and the relationship between the duration of worldly pleasures and those of the next world is the same as the relationship that exists between the limited and the unlimited or the absolute. So the proportion of one’s attachment to the world and the hereafter should be the same as the proportion of the duration of limited worldly pleasures to that of the limitless pleasures of the hereafter.