The existence of man is such a unique phenomenon that no other such example can be found throughout the vastness of the cosmos. Man is rightly called the ‘best of all creations’, which means the best and most meaningful ‘being’ among all the things created. Such a ‘meaningful being’ cannot have been created without a purpose.
Out of all God’s creatures, man, who is unlike any of His other creatures, is the only one who has the greatest need for certainty, for he must know what lies ahead of him. No other created entity, whether animate or inanimate, possesses such a concept of “tomorrow.” It is a well-acknowledged fact that the destination of all creatures, save man, is simply that of ‘today’, while man’s destination pertains to ‘tomorrow’. This ‘tomorrow’ indicates the probability of a world hereafter.
We can come to grips with this paradox by examining the observable phenomenon of the principle of pairs, which is universally operative.
The Qur’an says:
And all things We made in pairs, so that you may give thought. (51:49)
This means that everything in this world exists in pairs; everything becomes complete only in a pair.
It was known in ancient times that there were pairs in the human and animal worlds. Later on man learnt of pairs in trees and plants. In 1928, however, it was discovered that solid matter also had a pair. In that year the British physicist Paul Dirac demonstrated the possibility of other, invisible particles existing alongside those of matter. Then, in 1932, K. Anderson discovered, while studying cosmic rays, that with electrons there were other particles with an opposite electric charge. These particles were called anti-electrons. This research was pursued further and finally it was learnt that all particles in the universe existed in the form of pair-particles: particle and anti-particle, atom and anti-atom, matter and anti-matter; there was even, as Dirac showed in 1933, an anti-world.
Many present-day scientists are of the opinion that this anti-world is an entity apart from us, having a parallel existence of its own. This world is made up of matter; according to the law of opposites there should be another world made up of anti-matter. It is estimated that 20 million years ago, when the Big Bang explosion occurred, photon-matter and anti-matter came together in two separate forms. The two then started to form the world and the anti-world.
The first people to work on this theory were a Swedish pair, physicist Osker Klein and astrophysicist Hannes Alven. The results of their research were published in 1963. The Soviet mathematician, Dr Gustav Naan, further consolidated the theory. According to him, the anti-world cannot be fully explained by known theories and laws of physics, yet he is convinced that the anti-world exists, even now. It is, however, independent of us, existing on its own, parallel to this world. In the present world all anti-particles are in an unstable condition; but in the anti-world they will all be stable, for the nuclei of atoms have a negative electric charge, while electrons are positively charged.
Therefore, everything is in accordance with this law of nature. Nothing is complete without its pair. So this world must also have a pair, for only then will it be complete. It is this pair of the present world that is called the hereafter. If we accept this logic, everything becomes meaningful. Everything begins to fall into place but if we do not believe in a world after death, then this most perplexing question will remain unanswered.
Since this world is ephemeral, it follows that the anti-world, or to use its religious term, the hereafter, must be an eternal world. The discoveries of modern science, then, have given us a picture of the next world, which accords, with that of the Qur’an – Paradise.
What is Paradise?
This brings us to the question – what is Paradise? Paradise is the ultimate answer to the human quest. It is a vast, zero-defect, evil-free universe, complete in itself. Certainty prevails all over the universe, but the human world is marred by uncertainty. Fear is unheard of in the universe, but man continually suffers from fear and apprehension. The rest of the universe is in a state of equilibrium as it receives everything that it needs, while human beings are in a state of imbalance as they are the only creatures in the world to suffer from the painful thought that they have not received what they wanted. Moreover, the rest of the universe is evil-free, while human beings continually suffer from the problem of evil.
Paradise is the answer to all these problems. The concept of Paradise shows that man too will find everything that the rest of the universe has found. So while the rest of the universe is receiving what it wants today in this world itself, man will receive what he wants tomorrow in Paradise.
Paradise is the name of the ideal world; the desire for which is lodged in the hearts of every man and woman. It is Paradise where the personality of man shall achieve fulfillment in the fullest sense. Man with his entire existence is desirous of this very Paradise and Paradise with its entire existence awaits him.
Paradise is that world, where a creation such as man attains his complete fulfillment, where he thinks the way he wants to think; where he sees what he desires to see; where he listens to the sounds that give pleasure to his ears in the real sense; where he touches those things which give him the highest degree of pleasure; where he has the company of those people who make his life highly meaningful, where the winds are life-giving zephyrs for him, where he eats such food as he eternally craved for and he sips such drinks as are only beautiful figments of his imagination today.