Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Speaking Tree Website | December 29, 2014

Unrest is a phenomenon of discontentment. Why does this phenomenon exist? The reason is that every person is born with an unlimited sense of enjoyment. But, everyone has very limited capacity of fulfilment. It is this gap in human nature that makes people live in unrest.

Is this phenomenon due to defect in nature? Not at all. It is due to a people's unawareness of themselves that creates this problem. Awareness is the key to a contended life, while unawareness leads to all kinds of discontentment and restlessness.

To explain this phenomenon in the right way, we have to discover the scheme of things of the Creator. According to the creation plan, the domain of fulfilment in the material world is very limited. While, the domain of spiritual fulfilment or intellectual development is so vast that only the word "unlimited" can express its endless boundaries.

If you want to achieve the state of fulfilment in the material world, then very soon you will discover that the scope here is very limited. Food, clothes, fame, married life, entertainment: each of these things is associated with boredom. Even going on a holiday cannot give you fulfilment. A person goes on a holiday with hopes and returns with "holiday stress". This phenomenon of lack of fulfilment pertains to your physical being, but your spiritual being is free of all these bindings.

Man has a dual personality, physical and spiritual. In physical terms, man has a limited body, measuring no more than a few feet. Due to this limited being, man develops boredom as far as his physical domain in concerned. But, his spiritual or intellectual being has no limit. Your mind travels in limitless space. Your mind travels through thinking, and there is no boundary for the thinking process. It continues its journey by crossing all kinds of boundaries.

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For example, the activities of a businessman are limited to the material world. Due to this limited nature, he very soon develops boredom. The American business magnate Bill Gates rightly said: "Once you get beyond a million dollars, I have to tell you, it's the same hamburger."

Scientific pursuit is an example of travelling in the intellectual domain. This is the reason why scientists do not say what a businessman says. For example, Newton said about himself toward the end of his life: "I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." So was the feeling of the great scientific mind Albert Einstein, when he said: "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."

Greater than the scientific pursuit is the spiritual pursuit. The reason for this is very clear. According to Galileo Galilee, the domain of the scientific pursuit is the study of the quantitative aspect of nature. While, the domain of the spiritual pursuit is the qualitative aspect of nature. And, it is a fact that the qualitative domain of the world is far vaster than the quantitative domain of the world.

One who adopts the spiritual pursuit for his intellectual activities is a spiritual scientist. A physical scientist may stop at a certain point, but for the spiritual scientist even the saying 'sky's the limit' becomes irrelevant. It is only spiritual achievement that can give you the sense of fulfilment. Material fulfilment is quite unachievable, but spiritual fulfilment is achievable to the last extent.