Spiritual and Intellectual Development

will certainly face spiritual starvation and finally spiritual death. For example, everyone can speak. Yet the verbal exchange of dialogue is a rare phenomenon peculiar to human beings: no other creature of this world shares this capacity with us. Speech apparently is a physical phenomenon, but it also has spiritual content, in that it reminds us of the special blessing we have been endowed with by God. And this discovery enables us to acknowledge God in elevated language – something that cannot be done by any other creature in the physical world. Self-Correcting Mechanism It is said that once a man came to the Prophet and after some discussion the Prophet said to him: “Stay with Ali ibn Abi Talib – one of his companions – for your further training.” A few days later, the Prophet asked Ali about the man who had come to him. He replied that he had stayed with him for a while and then he had gone away, and that now he had no knowledge of his whereabouts. The Prophet said: “Anyone who meets him, bring him to me.” After a few