Confusion is your final outcome. This means your understanding is based on the Books, documents and hearsay without personal and conscientious application of mind and expectedly without an exception the outcome shall be confusion. If only using one's own perception each individual of the world had pondered over 'Life, Death and Thereafter,' there could have been multitudes of meaningful opinions on the subject having as many different planes and levels. Each one's conclusion will be merging with and complementing the rest of the opinions with no option for one contradicting the other.
Before knowing the Life, Death and Thereafter, we are to go through the following categories: 1) The Body. 2) The Life or The Life Force 3) The Mind and 4) The Soul. This is the order by which we get at the truth ascending from the lowest status to the highest stature.
First we take 'The Body' as the starting point.
Body means dead material. We have a body consisting of external and internal parts and organs. They are the dead materials bound to disintegrate and for decomposition. So before we are deceased we get diseases that cripple the organs and various parts of the body suffer losing its vital energy by every passing day. The child is also born dead until it starts breathing. If the child does not breathe and its lungs remains still after its birth we say the child is dead or the it is "still born". The child is a mere body bound for self destruction and decay. Today we are suffering from organ decay and failures such as Kidney failure, Liver failure, Lung failure, Heart failure, Central Nervous System break down, gangrene of the foot, paralysis, decaying of even skin with allergy and bed sores, indigestion, failure of the pancreas, blindness, hard of hearing, parkinson's disease that causes trembling of the nervous system, Alzheimer's disease resulting in loss of all memories. What we shall understand from these instances is that the body without life is as good as extinct from the surface of the earth. This is the life force giving life to all the organs of the body. Without this life the body and the bodily organs will die. If this life source is insufficient then the body and its various organs suffer diseases; and if there is deficiency in life energy the body suffers weakness and lethargy and diseases; and when the life force leaves the body, the man is declared dead and his body will be no more. His life does not die. It just leaves the body dropping it dead as the appointed term for it to stay in the body comes to a close. The life leaves and the body is left to decay. The life is captured by the Creator, the God.
We now have to move on to the next stage of elevation 'The Life or The Life Force'.
The body of a just born fetus becomes a living newborn as the life is infused into it within seconds of birth, enlivening each and every cell, nerve, tissue and organs of the body. While the life force circulates permeating the prodigious wonder of nature, the man the whole universe registers its grand entry. Thereafter it is incumbent on the universal life force to sustain and safeguard the combined force of life and man until the life span fixed for him ends and his worldly chapter is closed. Thus throughout one's living, the life force carries him forward from birth to death. Between the life and the death of a man the living becomes his need and necessity.
No sooner the child cried than the hither to functionless breasts of the mother sprang to life pouring out milk. This is the phenomenon of creation and the sustenance of 'life and being,' the mammalian living being. Among the mammals, man is the finest and also the superior most of all the creations of the entire universe. In only one aspect man is superior to the rest of the universes since he alone has the criterion of distinguishing quality of differentiating between and good and bad; between just and injustice; between right and wrong and between godliness and satanic forces. In other words he has the capacity, the mental ability to reach up and grasp at the universal truth as the virtue and secrecy of the universal wisdom is revealed to his mind. The more we understand and become mindful of the truth, the more relaxed is the mind; the more the mind is relaxed the less is the stress we cause to the life force circulating in the body. As long as there is no stress in the mind, there is no obstacle to the circulating life force which is the root cause for all the diseases mentioned above. To summarize it is the stress in the mind that causes physical strain through obstruction to the circulating life force. Here it is only pertinent to bring to mind that the Mind is very important factor to enliven the life force; Mind stability gives liveliness to the life force.
We move on to the more important entity 'The Mind.'
Unsteady mind causes break up and blocks in the energy circulation throughout the body. If the heart has to pump and make the blood circulation move, the life energy is most essential. Without the energy the heart ceases to beat and there is a sudden block in the arteries, damaging the inner delicate thin lining of the blood vessels. This is where the blood clots and other materials including the cholesterols in the circulating blood get sticky over the injured area causing narrowing of the blood vessels of the heart. This is the heart block. The coronary artery blocks are not due to any other causes other than what we sense here. Unless we free the mind from fear, worry, obsession, anger, depression and cloudy moodiness there is no way we can lead a disease free life. All these emotions in the mind saps up the life energy necessary for the life in the body to exist. Keep the mind stress free from these emotional confusion and destruction for liveliness of the life energy. Peace to the mind is all important for life to continue its journey in our body to run up to its term fixed for it. How to impart peace to the mind? Allow your mind its free travel that unravels to you the mysteries and secrecy of each of your future and that which brings manifold fortunes of all nature to your favour. Save yourself from any impact you might cause to your self by putting your mean ideas, your evil ways and your worthless goals in its path of free force. Your body and life force will be shattered and throw you into desolation and depression to your will. You will brought down to your knees to eat the humble pie until such time the free mind brings its fortune to you from a direction unknown to you. If you want to save you from any disaster and disarray; and distress and difficulty follow 'the Mind.' Do not force the mind's free will and wish follow your goals, ideas and ways. The only way to follow the mind is to follow its wishful wisdom. Identifying the wish of mind is very simple - The Unbelievable Fortunes of All Nature! Stay tuned to such order of your mind and follow its wish all day until the last day that lasts forever. Maintain your peace and patience towards this end. Have the wish for the same and only now you are prayerful! Prayer means falling in line with the mind and allowing your future to glide in its flow.
By keeping up peace with the mind regarding the future, and allowing the mind to take full care of it, go about using your meanest worldly ways and knowledge to attend to your day to day life with repentance and seeking forgiveness — for all your knowledge put together cannot make you move an inch beyond where you are at any point of time except tasting your own feedbacks as kickbacks and setbacks. What do we mean by repentance and seeking forgiveness? Who do we seek this from?
This is the time we do turn towards our Command, The Soul.
The soul is the highest seat of wisdom that distinguishes the two directions: the righteousness and the falsehood. It also gives us the glad tidings and the warning admonition based on the direction we choose between the two. If we choose righteousness then from then onwards we are guided by the soul, all the time mindfully in the most blessed direction by the allowance of the Almighty. Every thinking and action in this direction is imprinted in the soul. On the other hand if we tread the path of falsehood much against the warning of the soul, again every evil thinking and action is also registered in the soul however trivial or big it may be. We shall have to be very careful and fear that we shall not slight aside the blessings and admonition of the soul that shall stand as formidable witness on the Day of Resurrection and Reckoning.
The Day of Resurrection and Reckoning is the Day of Death.
The last day and the time of our life on the earth is the time when our Grand Witness the Soul will be captured and removed out of our body along with the mind and the life force. Life force is the one that acted under the command of its immediate superior, the mind. And the life force acted through the hands and legs, mouth, ears and eyes of a person. So on the day of reckoning when we are breathing our last as we are questioned by the power of almighty, our stares are fixed; our body will not move; we will be sent to deep coma and every sense of our body the eyes, the ears, the skin, the hands and the legs will answer the questioning and for this the life energy that worked evil through these organs will stand testimony. And next, the mind that went astray disregarding the supreme command of the soul when it called to the path of righteousness will be questioned. It is impossible to stand up to this final trial for the mind and life force against the soul, the mighty witness to our life in this world. The judgment of hell or heaven will be pronounced before the last breath. Each one's world will vanish for him after judgment before finally the life is finally captured with mind and soul together. The body will be destroyed; the mind and soul shall never become extinct until the end of the world and the birth of the new world with the new earth and the new skies. This is the day of execution of the judgment. Between the day of death of an individual and the day of execution the hell bound suffer such agony much worse than one who await the execution of hanging. But there is a difference between the execution in this world and the execution of hell life in the hereafter in that they will neither die nor will be able to live. Death will reach them from every direction yet they shall not die; and this is an endless eternal life. What an evil abode for one to reside therein!
And for those who stood by the command of the soul and lead a righteous life, their questioning on the Hour will be over at the wink of an eye. Their soul, mind and life force will be left free to travel and live in the seven skies above us; it will be like in a dream where we travel to places we had not visited and where we live with an unseen body. In a dream our body will be on the cot for others to see, but at the same time we will be in another world with the same body. Similar to this situation in the hereafter though our body is buried or burnt it does not matter at all. With the same but unseen body we will be in different world hell and heaven. And that is True! And for sure this will happen!