The Journey of Death

The Journey of Death

'They will ask you about the spirit. Say, "The spirit is atthe behest of your Lord. You have been given only a little knowledge. 'The living go on and the dead do not.' ... Allah! What an extraordinary expression and what an even stranger position to take. When somebody dies, our sorrow and tears, our weeping and mourning soon cease. The funeral rites, the Thursday ceremony and fmally the forty-day ceremony are held and then all is forgotten. We say to ourselves, 'The living go on and the dead do not,' and put the dead person out of mind on the premise that he is dead and at rest. We forget or pretend to forget that he is in fact in even greater need of us than the living. He faces the future all alone, hidden away in the domain of the earthworms, buried under the earth in a desolate grave. He was in the light and now he is in darkness. He was surrounded by beauty and spaciousness and now he is enclosed in narrowness and gloom. He was in bliss and he now is in tormen.