Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | SG Blog | 13 Aug 2020
Walter de la Mare (1873 – 1956), the English poet, once observed a lady at a dining table taking her meal. There were some eatables on the table like porridge, muffins, apples, and so on. He then had a very strange thought: outside the lady these are food items, but once the lady takes in these items, they are readily converted into a living woman, that is, Miss T. De la Mare later composed a poem on this idea. He added these lines to the poem: It’s a very odd thing, As odd as can be, That whatever Miss T eats Turns into Miss T.
This is the miracle of Miss T’s stomach. But one’s mind can conceive of something that is a million times stranger than this. All these food items were produced in an external world. But, miraculously, these food items are totally in accordance with our needs. Both are complementary to each other. This complementarity between two quite different things is clear evidence that there is one Creator of both. It is a highly well-planned creation.
This phenomenon of nature leads us to believe that there is a single force that controls the whole of nature. This in turn leads us to believe that in nature there is unity of purpose. This further leads us to believe in what may be called the oneness of God and the oneness of man. This phenomenon of nature gives us the right ideology of life – an ideology which is the basis of universal peace and brotherhood. This dispels the notion of ‘we and they’, it promotes oneness of thought.
Everyone talks of spirituality. But what is spirituality? Spirituality is not anything mysterious. Spirituality can be arrived at through contemplation rather than through meditation. Spirituality is an intellectual phenomenon. In my experience, the basis of spirituality is the mind rather than the heart.