The life of the spirit, part three

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.