LEARNING LESSONS
One of the major concerns of the Quran is to inculcate in every man and woman the spirit of contemplation. In the chapter Al-Hijr (The Rocky Tract) the Quran refers to certain historical phenomena and then says:
There are certainly signs in that for those who can learn a lesson. (15:75)
Natural phenomena as well as historical events have great lessons for those who go deeply into them and learn lessons from them. The Quran, in referring to them, attempts to develop the thinking habit, so that readers may gain from them intellectually.
Jesus Christ once said: “Man does not live by bread alone.” (Matthew 4:4) This is an important teaching of all religions. This means that all men and women need two kinds of nourishment: the physical and the spiritual. Everyone knows the importance of physical nourishment but, where spiritual nourishment is concerned, people remain in ignorance of how vital it is.
Man cannot afford to live in a state of physical starvation, for physical starvation brings on weakness and disease. Everyone, being aware of how debilitating this can be, makes sure that he or she has proper sustenance.
The same is true of spiritual starvation. Spiritual starvation makes you a weak personality. It erodes the faculty of wisdom. It deprives you of moral values. Spiritual starvation may go to such an extreme that one may face spiritual death.
To keep spirituality alive, spiritual food is at all times a necessity. The source of that spiritual food is thinking or contemplation. Moreover, one should develop the habit of not taking things at face value. The deeper aspect of things must be gone into so that their inner meaning may be discovered. This requires an uninterrupted intellectual process.
The individual must keep his mind alive every day and every night. When he studies a book, when he observes a scene, when he is confronted by a historical event, he must properly activate his mental faculties in order to learn some spiritual lesson from it. He must endeavour to turn his experiences into meaningful lessons.
Men and animals both have experiences of different kinds each day and night, but the difference is that animals take them at face value and are unaware of the need to discover their deeper meaning.
To keep spirituality alive, spiritual food is at all times a necessity. The source of that spiritual food is thinking or contemplation.
But man has the capacity for what is called ‘conceptual thought’. Man can penetrate to the deeper aspect of things, and then learn from them hidden lessons. This difference is very important. Those who fail to take lessons from experience, be they men or women, are reducing themselves to the level of animals.
Spirituality is a requirement of man: animals have no such requirement. Animals can live without spirituality, but man cannot. Man cannot afford to deprive himself of spirituality. It is in man’s own interests to keep his mind alive, so that he may not lose any opportunity to learn spiritual lessons from the happenings of life.
Spirituality makes you a creative thinker: without creativity, man is little better than a stone statue.
