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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Resurrection Judgement and the Hereafter Lesson Fourteen: Characteristics of the Hereafter The images that we form in our minds of persons, gardens, cities or other places when we hear them described to us, are generally quite different from we later see when we come to observe the objects at first hand. This is true despite the fact that we have often seen similar objects earlier in our lives and are therefore able to make comparisons.

When we wish to give some idea of the bliss or punishment that awaits man in the hereafter, the vocabulary we have at our disposal in this world is clearly inadequate to delineate an accurate picture. The reality will not in any way conform to our mental deductions. It is not easy for us to perceive the painful torments that sinners will justly endure and the countless blessings that await the believer, for we have never beheld or touched them.

They belong to the realm of the unseen; we are unable to experience them directly, and our mind is not equipped to comprehend their precise and true sense. The images we have of concretely existing objects cannot be extended to cover a reality that lies beyond our reach and experience. The terms and expressions that we have in our vocabulary are designed for the limited affairs and concerns of this world.

This is all we have at our disposal words the reach of which not extend beyond the four walls of our present world. A different vocabulary and a different mode of vision are therefore required for perceiving and understanding matters that lie beyond this limited realm.

Although the life of this world and that of the hereafter have certain aspects in common, both representing forms of life in which pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, are present, there are also profound and fundamental differences between them. In this world, life begins with infancy and ends with old age, but no such change or transformation exists in the hereafter. Here man must labor and sow; there he reaps.

Thus the Commander of the Faithful said: “Today is the day of work, not the day of accounting; tomorrow is the day of accounting, not the day of work.” ( Nahj al-Balagha, sermon 42) In this world the rays of man's awareness can illuminate for him a realm that appears extensive to him but is in reality finite, whereas in the hereafter human perception attains its utmost expansion and becomes unlimited.