Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | Feb 13, 2022
How to inculcate spirituality among people? Basically, it is a part of education, both formal and informal. Education means the training of the mind, with special emphasis on inculcating high values. To spread spiritual values in society, we need value-based education, especially during schooling, which is a preparatory period for life, and if we want to build a spiritual society, we must adopt a spirituality-oriented form of education.
One aspect of spirituality is that it makes one evaluate actions in terms of their results – a major factor in having a sense of responsibility. One who is a spiritually developed person is able to see things in terms of value. He is able to differentiate between right and wrong. There is a saying: ‘A wise man is one who knows the relative value of things.’ The spiritually developed person is a wise person and a wise person is one, moreover, who has a predictable character. All these qualities stem from spiritual training. It is the responsibility of reformers, therefore, to train people to become duty-conscious by enhancing their thinking capacity – for the duty-conscious person can never involve himself in any such negative activity as corruption.
One aspect of spirituality is that it keeps the emotions under control and brings peace of mind. Spiritual education is an elevated form of learning and it is the spiritually learned people who, being intellectually developed, are best able to control their emotions by applying their powers of reasoning.
The materialistic person is more concerned with material than with spiritual goals or values. Corruption is a phenomenon of the materialistic society, while spirituality is the phenomenon of spiritualized persons. It is only such persons who can build a non-corrupt society. Spirituality and corruption cannot go hand in hand.