The quest for a (more) spiritual life will be meaningless
and uninteresting to three kinds of people. There are, first, those (many
hundred millions, alas, still) who are so poor that the mere quotidian struggle
to keep their heads above water usually takes up all their time and energy (and
yet, even they often indulge in
painting, dancing, music, storytelling and religious rituals – witness the
flourishing arts of our tribals. Food for much thought). Then there are those
who are not fully human at all, even if they are fairly well off (no insult
intended, but that’s the way a vast proportion of people are, quite content
with endlessly pursuing only the animal impulses – eat, sleep, breed, fight and
preen: especially more and more common among our relatively well off,
‘educated’ urban middle classes. Food for much thought again!), and those who
are so happily engaged with worldly pursuits (whether it be business or
government or scientific research or something like that) that they don’t need
or have time for anything else. But a caveat: some members of even the second category
feel the sudden and urgent need for spirituality, especially when they are
badly shaken up by some or other kind of unexpected trauma or begin to grow
old, tired and sick; and even those who belong to the last category might
gradually begin to realize how badly things are going for the world as a
consequence of the way humankind is living (waste, pollution, climate change,
extreme inequality, increasing infantilization of culture, collapse of
civilized manners and so on), and wonder whether or not they need to make
drastic changes simply to survive for any significant length of time as a flourishing
species. In that sense this kind of public thinking should not be irrelevant or
uninteresting for anybody.
Also recall that I wrote before about ‘the cravings of
the spirit’. By which I mean that there is some very deep and powerful urge in
many if not most people to seek satisfactions of the sort that are not strictly
sensual and material; not passively ‘consumed’ (as in watching TV or Instagram Reels), not ‘profitable’ in
the lazy, contemporary, narrowly commercial sense. The love of literature, art,
music, sport and the pursuit of knowledge for
their own sake is the example that is most accessible to the understanding
here: so is a common housewife’s desire to keep her house tidy and pretty, to
the extent that she does it for her own aesthetic pleasure, not to make her
neighbours jealous. There are others, even in this day and age, who pursue
ideals of justice and equity and love (even for animals and plants) with the
same doggedness, with no significant personal ‘returns’. We know of countless people
who have found deep and abiding satisfaction in such things even if they have
not brought money or power or fame (most great artists and scientists were like
that until very recently, historically speaking); indeed, they often had to
give up the lure of the ‘safe and comfortable’ life and actively court
hardship, ridicule, isolation and even physical danger in the relentless
pursuit of their ideals. So many scientists have died without ever reaping the
just rewards of their labour and talent; so many artists have found recognition
only after death. There is much talk about ‘motivation’ today (and most
motivational speakers cannot imagine what to ‘motivate’ you about except how to
become rich and famous quickly without much risk and effort!) – what sort of
‘motivation’ urged such people on, do you think, unless it were the goading of
the spirit?
So, spirituality – as I have been labouring to
underscore – is not essentially about God and gurus and mantras and pilgrimages
to ‘holy’ places and special codes of dressing and eating and so forth. But
yes, spirituality is most definitely about becoming a) less material minded, b)
less bothered about what the herd is doing, c) more comfortable, even happy,
with silence and solitude, d) more willing to cut out endless distractions (get
off social media, turn off your phone, grow a distaste for partying!), e) more
interested in finding out what you really
want most out of life (you can’t have everything – if you love to sleep, or
if you are forever suffering from FOMO, becoming a billionaire should not be
one of your goals), and f) more determined to focus on things that really
matter to you.
This last is about learning to meditate. Again, as I have learnt from a lifetime of teaching and keep telling my pupils, meditation is all about stilling your mind and focusing on the task at hand, and that need not have anything to do with God and all that stuff. People have traffic accidents, quarrel over trifles, forget what they learnt only weeks or months ago, cannot long maintain exercise and diet regimens, make stupid mistakes in examinations and idiotic investments, simply because they cannot decide on and focus on their priorities. The spiritual mind is the habitually meditative mind, and the meditative mind is a calm, firm, well-sorted, focused mind. To some it comes instinctively, even from childhood, but a lot of people can learn to become like that through long and earnest practice. Therein lies hope, therein lies my motivation for writing in this vein…
Two questions are likely to arise at this point: a) have you tried it yourself? and b) what have you got from it? So the next installment is going to be of a very personal nature, trying to answer those questions.
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