In this concluding portion of his lecture, Hazrat Inayat Khan gives a view of the hereafter as each individual shall experience it, each according to his or her condition. The previous post in the series is here.

There is a time when our ego desires all that tempts it, but when that stage of beginning and action is past, helplessness remains.

Our life has three parts, the part before our birth, the time of our life here, and the time after death. When considering our life here and hereafter we understand that our life on earth is our youth, and the hereafter age is the time of reaping fruits of our actions. And the judgment comes in age, which is the time after death.

In the arts too we see that there are these three aspects. In music there is first the introduction, then there is the music in its full grandeur, then there is the conclusion, which gives the essence of all that has gone before. In painting the artist first designs. Then he colors the picture, and then he looks at it; if it is not as he likes, he wipes it off or he tears it up. A person might say, ‘You yourself have made it, why do you tear it up?’ It is because when he looks at it, he sometimes discovers that it is valueless, whereas when it is better the artist desires it to be sent to the exhibition, and he proudly calls his relations and friends to look at it. This world is the Creator’s picture. The Creator as an artist looks at his work, and He alters it, improves it, or He wipes it off as He chooses best.

Why is the Day of Judgment called ‘day’? Our day is when we are awake. Our night is when we are asleep. This is not the day and night of earth, which are limited to twelve hours each, but the day and night of the consciousness. What separates one day from another, what makes us distinguish the days, is the night.

Here our life is in the darkness of activity, where the world of illusion appears to our eyes as real, and the rapid passing of life appears to us stable, just as when in the train it seems as if the trees by the line were running while the train is standing still. When the illusionary life has proved to be not so real as for some time we had thought it to be, then comes the day when things appear as clear as in daylight. To some few this happens in this world, but to all in the hereafter.

Here we have two states, the waking state and the dream. There the only reality will be the dream. That will be our day, uninterrupted by any intervening night. It will not change. And this day will last for ever, that is to say until our individuality is merged in the divine consciousness.

We dream of all the things which are in our surroundings and of all things as they appear naturally. We dream of a horse or an elephant, or of our brother, our sister, our mother, our father, or our uncle; but we do not dream of nonexistent objects, such as a horse with wings, or a rabbit with elephant’s ears, because these are not of our world. That with which our consciousness is impressed, that only is our world. And that world comes into the judgment which is always going on. The world of the husbandman will be his cottage with his family, the world of the king will be the surroundings of his palace.

Shall we, then, not be in a great gathering where there will be millions and billions of souls in whatever form they may appear, and all the souls that have existed on earth will be tried at the same time? It will be so in appearance, but not in reality, for every individual’s Judgment Day will reflect the whole world within himself and will be peculiar to himself. In other words a world will be resurrected in each soul. The affirming and denying aspects of conscience will both be in full play, sometimes in the guise of Munkir and Nakir, the recording angels.

In reality it will be like a gramophone record, which repeats all one’s life’s experiences, remembered and forgotten, good and bad, together with the moving picture of all who were concerned in them, whether dead before or after, or still alive on earth. This takes place before one’s own soul in the presence of the perfectly just and mighty Being, the thorough Knower and Weigher of all things.