Man's Fate and God's Choice, Bhimeswara Challa [best free ereader .TXT] 📗

or with what they do in their daily lives. What was deemed superstition and paranormal not too long ago, to be shunned by any ‘rational’ person, is now fashionable. The explosion and popularity of things

 

 

 

339 R.D. Ranade. A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy. 1968. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Chowpatty, Bombay, India. p.241.

 

and practitioners like divination, fortune tellers, tarot cards, palm reading, crystal balls, clairvoyance, telepathy, black magic, ghosts, etc., is at once a broadening of the frontiers of knowledge, and a desperate search for help to cope with the ‘unbearable emptiness’ of modern life. There are some who say that even this ‘pseudo-spiritualism’ is not all bad, that a spiritual journey that begins with an ‘impure’ motive can practically serve a greater purpose and can be transformed into a collective spiritual quest. The spiritual life is no longer a specialist concern, restricted to those who belong to religious traditions. The spirituality movement has now become a motley revolution, embracing diverse sections of the society and induced by different interests. In them lies probably the hope that, despite the god-men and gurus, a spiritual renaissance of mankind will emerge out of this ‘selfish spiritualism’ and opportunism. One of the fundamental aspects of the spiritual renaissance ought to be the realization that much, if not most, of the sorrow in the world is generated by our present states of consciousness, in which each one of us acts as if he is the center of the

universe. That we act in this manner is not surprising, given that each one of us exists within a separate physical body, with private thoughts and private sensations that nobody else can hear or feel. This state of consciousness is at the root of our rampant indifference to the needs and feelings of others. The others are “not me” — so, “what do I care if they feel pain when I hurt them, if I try to get ahead of them, or if I steal from them or even kill them for a cause?” All this is rationalized in our mind.

We cannot precisely define it, but a broad definition of spiritualism could be found in the words of Ursula King, author of the book Spirituality and Society in the New Millennium (2001): “... spirituality is now understood anthropologically as an exploration into what is involved in becoming fully human.”340 Someone said spirituality is a journey from the external world of names and forms to the subtle world of energy, to the innermost core of our being. In practical terms, it has come to be the metaphor for man’s discontent with the state of his being, a statement of modern man’s search for a meaning other than in material comforts and worldly gains. Very often, the cacophony of spirituality is so boisterous that the spirit of spirituality is obscured, giving it a bad name and scaring off the real seekers. Its ambit is very wide, and it encompasses a wide spectrum of people and quests — from atheism to total identification with God, psychic healing to ghost-busting, from transcendental meditation to corporate excellence, fashion designers to fortune tellers, from mediums that ‘talk to the dead’ to merchants of death, ramp-walkers to the recluse, and those who, in the words of Aldous Huxley, want to ‘be a bit kinder’. But search without the essence has led many people to the sanctuary of suicide, to the ashram of a guru, to the conclave of a cult — and to mindless, or maybe ‘mind-full’ murder. If a person deeply believes he is not only doing his religious duty but in so doing has become a ‘spiritual being’, then we must conclude the malaise is far deeper than an individual hallucination or misdirected zealotry.

Many thoughtful scientists are also coming round to the view that man is more than a material being. The Australian neurophysiologist John Eccles, for instance, said, “I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition............................................................................................ we have to recognize

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

340 Cited in: StateMaster Encyclopedia: Spirituality. Accessed at: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Spirituality

 

that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.”341

The hunger for spiritualism, although a new found ‘love’, is as hoary as man himself. Noble as it is and deemed a shorter route to God than any other way, spiritualism is also not an end by itself. It is a way to fully fulfill our inherent potential and to, as it were, externalize the divinity dwelling inside, and in so doing obliterate the distance between any two humans, indeed any two beings. The essential question is, are we spiritual beings having a human experience or human beings having a spiritual experience? If we are human beings experiencing a spiritual experience, then it means that our personality and thoughts are primary, and being spiritual becomes a desirable goal towards which we labor in everything we do. If we are the other kind, then, it means that, first and foremost, we are qualitatively different from who or what we assume we are, and the ‘I’ of the self is but a reflection in this ‘personal pond’ of the all-pervading Almighty. The essence and substance of this thought is best captured in the four famous Upanishadic mahavakyas (great sayings): Prajanam Brahman (Consciousness is Brahman); Ayam Atma Brahman (The Atman, or self, is Brahman); Aham Brahmasmi (I am the God) and Tatvam Asi (Thou art That). So essential are they to spiritual life that they are the mantras that are taught when a person is initiated as a sanyasi (someone who renounces everything worldly).

Striving towards that kind of vision is the heart of spiritualism, which is also sometimes dismissed as mysticism. In fact, many scientists are themselves turning to mysticism, and it is said that the favorite study of a good many of them is The Secret Doctrine (1888), written by the mystic and the master of occultism and theosophy Helena Blavatsky.342 The essential difference between the scientific and the scriptural view of the human being is that, while science posits that man is wholly a physical being, the scripture says he is essentially a spiritual being. The awakening of the slumbering spiritual side of man is important not only to redefine the man-to-man relationship, but also the man-Nature relationship. In many ways, man’s schizophrenic nexus with Nature is a snapshot of the overall human condition. Unless we set it right, nothing else will make the needed difference. We are a part of Nature; we are reliant on Nature; but we methodically destroy Nature. We must move towards a new pattern of partnership with Nature, which has been called deep or spiritual ecology.

Deep ecology is based on the premise that all living beings are separate but are equal parts of the web of life, that animals and plants, and also human species, possess awareness and intuition, and perception; probably some are capable of experiencing fear, jealousy, friendship, pain and shame as well. As one ecologist said, “Each time we harm Nature, we cut a little piece of our own flesh.”343 It echoes the message of the Upanishads that voice the living credo of the ancients. One of the central messages of the Upanishads is that one should strive to see all creatures in himself, and himself in all creatures and everything that exists in the cosmos; living or non-living is the manifestation of the divine. The Upanishads say that

 

 

 

341 Cited in: David Pratt. John Eccles on Mind and Brain. [Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, p.241]. Reprinted from Sunrise Magazine. June/July 1995. Theosophical University Press. Accessed at: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm

342 How Science and Occult Science Work. ArticleNext. Accessed at: http://www.articlenext.com/Article/18133.html

343 Cited in: Alexandra Elizabeth Brichacek. Anthropomorphic Theater: Deep Ecology and the New Paradigm. Environmental Vegetarian Union (EVU) News. Issue 3/1997. Accessed at: http://www.euroveg.eu/evu/english/news/news973/anthropo.html

 

there are two selves — the many individual selves and the one Universal Self, whose locus is the ‘cave of the heart’. The Mundaka Upanishad likens these two selves to ‘two birds of the same appearance who sit in the same tree’.344 A Shinto saying captures the essence: ‘Even in a single leaf of a tree, or a tender blade of grass, the awe-inspiring Deity manifests Itself’.345 But, to actualize that realization and to rise up to that level, reason and intelligence are not good enough or even inappropriate, which is another pivotal message of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Our inability to connect with the non-human animals and with Nature, stems from the same source that divides one man from another, which is our inability to go beyond the boundary of the physical body.

For a fuller understanding of spiritualism, it is useful to take a peek into another branch of ancient human knowledge often dubbed as mysticism and magic, and also sometimes called the oldest known religion: occult or occult science. The word ‘occult’ itself comes from the Latin word Occults (clandestine, hidden, secret), referring to the ‘knowledge of the hidden’. Somewhat similar to the spiritual way, the occult approach requires us to literally become the very thing we wish to investigate — or at least to participate in it. It is like the Vedantic view that we must become God to truly relate to God. Again, like spirituality, the occult system always operates from within to without, and prefers to investigate Nature by participating within its processes, rather than interpreting its outward manifestation. The widespread violence and evil in the world today, where power, perfidy, and physical force hold sway, has reflexively propelled many persons to embrace spirituality as an escape route, not as a means for betterment. It has become the refuge of the discontented and the disenchanted. And then there is the question of the nexus between spirituality and religion. The question is whether one could be spiritual without being religious. Or, can one be religious and yet not be spiritual? Being spiritual is often identified with religious extremism, so there are some who feel repelled by what goes on in the name of religion and who tend to lead a spiritual life while demonstrably being anti-religious. The big question then is: if inheritable spiritual genes are present in human beings — as some scientists like Dean Hamer posit (The God Gene, 2004) — then why are the roles of the spiritual genes in human behavior so passive and subdued in most men, while the monster or evil genes seem so active and alive in the human gene pool? One possible explanation could be that the evil genes are the stronger ones, rooted as they are in the mind, and the mind being the dominant part of consciousness, these genes shape and control human predisposition more than the spiritual ones. Evangelists reject the idea that faith can be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain, and humanists refuse to accept that religion is inherent in people’s make-up. In any event, we cannot adduce it as an alibi for our ruinous behavior. After all, predisposition is not predetermination. As Dean Hamer says “our genes predispose us to believe. But they don’t tell us what to believe in” and again that, “what we do with our spiritual genes, however, is very much up to us.”346 That is what being human is all about: to choose from among what we have, inside or outside, within or without. Hamer himself says at the end of his book that it “is important to distinguish between believing and the act of

 

 

 

 

344 Swami Nirmalananda Giri. Commentary on the Katha Upanishad. The Divine Indwellers. Spiritual Writings. Atma Jyoti Ashram.