Last month, Muslims around the world observed Ashura — the Islamic day of remembrance for the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. It also commemorates the day when God saved Moses and his people from Pharaoh in Egypt by parting the Red Sea
At some point, everyone thinks about their own salvation. If there is a God or some higher power out there, what happens once our time as living flesh is over? Is there such a thing as heaven and hell? Or laws of causality and karma? Do our actions on earth really have far-reaching consequences concerning our standing with God or the universe?
Different religions answer these questions in different ways. But as we all come from the same source of creation, there must be salvation for all. It should depend more on intention, attitude and behavior than on a belief system.
In the Abrahamic religions, salvation refers to the deliverance of the soul upon death to Heaven, the Kingdom of God, and is generally achieved according to God’s judgment of the strength of that individual’s faith as well as morality – those who do good will qualify for a good state in the next world and vice versa.
In Baha’i, the journey of spiritual cultivation and the process of perfecting oneself occurs during the individual’s life and continues on in the next world after death. This is echoed in Hindu and Buddhist ideologies, in which each rebirth of an individual is an opportunity to progress a little further toward the final salvation which is moksha or nirvana, the escape from the eternal cycle of birth and death.
