Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Why Spirituality?

May be an interesting question! But we have to define spirituality before attempting to answer this question. This is because each one may be having their own understanding of spirituality. Hence providing an answer for this question without defining this term (with respect to what is written here) may be a futile exercise.

For sure, spirituality is not referred here as an act of worship. Worship may be a tool for spirituality for somebody in the path of spirituality. For somebody else in the path of spirituality, the act of worship may be an unnecessary one and for them anything relevant to worship may be an act of dragging themselves away from spirituality.

Prayer – definitely cannot have any relevance to spirituality. It may be a prayer towards the unknown entity called as God or prayer towards known entities called Godmen/women or prayer towards Gurus and so on. In general prayer is a form of begging – to an unknown entity. In any form, prayer is far away from spirituality. May be for someone, in some sense, prayer may also be a tool for spirituality.

Rituals are widely considered as part of spirituality. Today, almost every one calling themselves as spiritualist are mere performers of rituals. And the pettiest part is that many of them even not having the slightest understanding of those rituals except some constructed meaning. In real sense they are not spiritualists. Of course, rituals may be a tool for spirituality, at certain plane.

Then what is spirituality? In a simple statement, spirituality is a search for truth. The word ‘truth’ may represent the true nature of simplest subject with/within/near/around us or the complicated nature of existence itself. If we are able to understand and perceive the true nature of simplest subject, we may not be far away from knowing the true nature of this infinite existence; for that the simple subject is an integral part of the existence itself.

Very rarely we know about the truth of any subject. We know only the thought construct about any subject. The subject may be any physical object or any relationships or anything else exists here. For example, when we see a table, we just see the dimension, colour, weight and similar qualities we sense about that object by our senses and the mind construct an idea about that table. This is our knowledge about that table. We rarely know the background, true information about that table. The wood used for that table, the person created that table are just two of many variables about the truth of that table. Now, the nature of the tree which provided wood for that table and the qualities of the person who made that table are further derived variables, upon constructing this way, to find the true nature of this table, we may have to go up to the time of creation and/or complete nature of existence. Knowing all these things construct the true nature of that table. Without knowing these, parameters we can never be able to understand the real nature of that simple object in front of us.

Why the shit we need to know the real nature of that table, if it involves so many unpredictable, unperceivable parameters? What use does it have for us? Is it not sufficient if we know how to use that table? If knowing such truth is spirituality, why the hell we need spirituality? – Very much valid questions!

Before trying to answer these questions, we must understand one thing. We are constructed in such a way that we need to get answer for any questions arises within our mind. Unless we get some answer – a convincing answer, our mind cannot rest. The mentally ill (so called) people are those who have many such unresolved questions and resultant conflicts within them, which might have taken away their awareness completely. (It is what I think, not sure about the medical/psychological background to state it authoritatively.) It may be the nature of human mind. The super-natural power God must have been invented to answer these questions – A very simple answer, God provided this and that means we are satisfied. Unfortunately, this simple answer leaves many unanswered questions within as long as we have a trace of logical thinking within us– for most of these questions we know partial answer through our own experience. The remaining part of the answer superimposed on the idea of God may not go along well with our experience and hence a conflict arises within us. Those who try to resolve these conflicts enter into the field of spirituality. Others just live with those conflicts, which in turn produces new conflicts and then a chain of conflicts – on those conflicts, our pleasure and pain are constructed and maintained.

For a person, who is not yet submerged into the chain of pain and pleasure or who is capable of peeping out of this chain surely start to get many questions on whatever that person see/perceive in the world – for example, the table itself. For understanding the table, one has to probe into unlimited questions – the artistic nature of table, the materialistic nature of table, the origin of its artistic nature, the origin of its materialistic nature, how the material form developed, how the artistic form developed, what are all the supports for the development of its artistic form/materialistic form…….. Never ending questions!

The optimistic part of this probing is that once we start getting some understanding in some of these questions, the remaining understanding comes to us as a clear stream. Once we have reasonable understanding of this simple object – table, we have the reasonable understanding of the whole creation and existence itself. When we have reasonable understanding of existence, almost all the conflicts within us evaporate like a water drop on an intensive fire.

When we are free from conflicts…………. Need not repeat here! We know it! That is why Spirituality!

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