Spirituality
This post is not as much about spirituality than it is about my personal thoughts and critical views on the concept and idea of spirituality as it applies to life. After my share of indulging in spirituality for a number of years, I think of it is as an intellectual preoccupation, and as much of a vanity as religion. A true seeker of truth (regardless of his motivation for seeking truth – humanist, metaphysical, or simply material betterment of one’s life) will eventually move beyond the word or the need for any sort of scaffolding like “spirituality”. Worst thing that can happen to an intelligent person is to get trapped in it. Like religion, it stifles one from asking critical questions and from doing real meditation. Without either you have nothing to act on, and your pursuit for truth becomes a wistful preoccupation; one illusion just substituting for another.
What I do believe in is the way of the original Hindu thinkers, in particular the darshana of yoga. That is, the science of yoga and applying it to life. To me yoga is: yoga + karm + critical thinking + bhakti.
Yoga by itself will not get us anywhere, unless it is applied to life, as in karm (to act) or to engage in life with the sword of yoga. Karm when undertaken with yoga leads to outward expansion which bootstraps your inner growth (and automatically dispenses with the need for too much reflection). In fact I’d say it accelerates your inner growth far more than doing yoga without karm.
Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, so also nothing can substitute for life experiences. This is also one of the essential messages of the Gita as well: to act (as in to engage it in action, in life) armed/tempered with yoga.
Where does bhakti come in? If you take bhakti in the context of karm, i.e. putting it in action… it becomes a heart-centered approach to life. Just like engaging yoga in life, engaging bhakti in life requires you to carry over your feeling of bhakti into life. That is, translating the same exhilaration you get from say reading a piece of bhakti poetry or a particular raga, into life, instead of confining it within the walls of worship. In a society that is intellectually-centered and fast paced, this can be tricky and difficult, but can be done if one sets his mind to it. If karm is engaging life, bhakti is about engaging the moment and hence experiencing life. Engaging is via karm, experiencing via bhakti (I’m using bhakti in a much broader sense than it was intended; or maybe it was intended that way).
Where does critical thinking come in? I believe that critical thinking (and to be an independent thinker) has two purposes. First it is needed to take yoga and put into action, to engage it, in all walks of life with effort. Secondly it serves as the critical feedback loop for you to refine your yoga / path further. For how else would you know, without testing it? this comes from engaging in life. The intellect should serve as nothing more than as a guardian (like the vigilant hooded cobra covering a siva lingam).
I feel all the siddhars and aghoris were independent thinkers. They did not follow any “religion” or even a “spiritual path” (these words didn’t even exist back then!), but approached it from first principles, from acute experimentation and observation (not reflection or brooding) at the level of yoga + karm + critical thinking + bhakti.
Footnotes
- If one is observant enough, one comes to realize that inner growth and its corresponding outward expansion, never really come from yoga alone (nor meditation, intellectual reasoning, or reflection), but from life experiences, tempered with the astute insight/guidance of yoga.
- But what about yogis? It seems like they reach great spiritual heights without any karm or acting. But in actuality they do act — the act of making the choice and by engaging yoga in their life as a yogi.
- Sometimes the question arises (from an ascetics perspective), why would one even want to experience life? isn’t it all about detachment? well my answer is that by experiencing via some form of yoga, we gain more compassion. As for detachment, this sort of experiencing of life via yoga+bhakti is itself detached, just as acting in life via yoga+karm is detached; anything done with yoga is automatically detached — even if it seems attached to the outside observer. Attachment/detachment is a whole can of worms for a later blog.
- People have different approaches to engaging yoga, depending on their strengths, deficiencies, and needs: bhakti (faith), karma (action), jnana (knowledge), raja (meditation), or any combination thereof.