Badges mark quoted or attributed material (Qur'an, hadith, another author, an opposing view). Unbadged passages are Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's own words.
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. p. 169
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. p. 169original + quote
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. p. 169
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. p. 169
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. p. 169
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. p. 170
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. p. 170
To keep spirituality alive, spiritual food is at all times
a necessity. The source of that spiritual food is thinking or contemplation. p. 169
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. p. 170
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. p. 170