One reason some people give for not bothering with spiritual development while they are on the physical plane is that it has no practical use here. That is simply not true. The spiritually developed person is more intelligent and wiser than the average person. She is better able to recognize when she is being lied to. He is better able to avoid financial pitfalls because he is more intuitive.

    In general, a person who has undergone a certain degree of spiritual development will be healthier that most people on a physical and mental level as well. The spiritual person is better able to recognize what foods are healthy and what foods her body really needs rather than just trying to make sense of the conflicting information. Thousands of years ago, when people came into a new area with new animals and plants that they were not familiar with, it was the shaman, witch doctor, medicine man, or other spiritual person in the tribe who helped them decide what to eat and what to avoid.

    On the mental side, spiritually developed individuals are less likely to have serious psychological problems. That is because many of those problems come from the confusing and conflicting data that we are bombarded with on the physical plane. The person who has spiritual insight can easily avoid the confusion by accessing the truth that is found at the spiritual level.

    It is also true that health and illness tends to flow from the higher level down to the lower. That means that an illness of the physical body will probably not effect the mental, psychic, or spiritual levels, but an illness or weakness at the psychic of spiritual level will affect the mental and physical levels. Therefore, being healthy at the higher levels improves health at the lower ones.

    And there are benefits in addition to the body and mind. The spiritual person with a strong intuition may decide to not buy a house that seems attractive and a good deal. A year or two later, that house is destroyed by a flood. The spiritual person may decide after several years of working for one company that it is time to move on and gets a new job. A few months later the old company files for bankruptcy and shuts down surprising everyone because the company never let on that it was having problems.

    Those are just a few examples of how spiritual development can benefit us in our physical, material lives as well, although the primary benefit is still to save our immortal spirit and soul.