|| PREAMBLE TO SPIRITUALITY ||
By Kishor Kulkarni >
Ladies,
and Gentlemen…lovers of literature across the globe,
It
feels so nice to talk to you on ‘Spirituality’, on this global platform here,
from the dias of my primary school buddy Ravishankar’s blog of Marathi Poetry.
Well…it
has already changed to a dias of Sanskrit-Marathi-English Poetry, as you will
notice in it’s caption on the blogsite now, with Ravishankar’s first English
composition on Philosophy, titled ‘ The Devil’s Knock’.
I
personally adore Spiritualism, and so, will be speaking to you through my
compositions related to Spirituality.
Now,
coming to the meaning of this concept of Spirituality, first let us understand,
why common people like you and me, should desire to learn Spirituality, in the
first place.
We may be desirous of getting onto the path of spirituality
for one or more of the following reasons –
(1)
We may be leading a life of suffering for too long, and hence want to see if
spirituality can give us “relief”.
(2)
We may be completely weary / bored / disillusioned by the ways life has gone on thus far, which
feeling may have created a vacuum in our life. We want to see if spirituality
can fill the vacuum.
(3)
We may be curious about spirituality. We
may not be as badly disposed towards life as a person in category 2 above is.
But we may be just about bored enough to “try out” something different and
better, and think we can look at spirituality.
(4)
We may be ordained by the Creator to get on to the path of spirituality for His
own reasons. (Such cases, in general, would be very rare.)
Whatever
may be the reason for pursuing a spiritual path, we must leave behind our past
baggage of conditioning, and open our mind as much as possible to a whole new experience
and attitude. Unless one manages to clear his mind of the conditioning received
by it thus far, the higher knowledge cannot be accommodated there. It’s like a
pot filled with mud. Unless and until it is cleared and cleaned of the existing
muck, you can’t fill it with milk. So, it essentially requires dissolving our
limited ego and opening ourselves to the superior identity.
We
need to bear in mind that our ‘intelligence’ that we may have been trusting in
our life thus far, won’t be of much use on the spiritual path. This is so because our intelligence is
essentially a conditioned phenomenon rooted in the physical world of objects
and is thus ill-equipped to grasp and tackle the meta-physical / Occult
phenomenae, which is spirituality. So, we must consciously stop our
intelligence from hijacking the spiritual contemplation. In other words, we
must not try to fit spiritual concepts into the familiar intellectual patterns,
or seek materialistic proof / logic for the spiritual concepts. The reason for
this is that our conditioned intelligence is a wrong instrument to use in the
realm of spirituality – it’s akin to using a foot-rule to measure the thickness
of a single sheet of thin paper, and that too in Metric units !! However, we
may use certain familiar models, if only they fit the spiritual concept. That
way, we may find it easier to accept spiritual concepts, at least in the
beginning. But, even if we cannot find a model that can explain the spiritual
concept, we should tell ourselves that it MAY be so, rather than discarding the
concept for want of intellectual/ logical reasoning.
Vairaagya (asceticism / detachment) is the cornerstone of
spirituality. One has to gradually get out of the perpetual cycle of desires,
where the moment one desire is fulfilled, another is ready in the queue. Vairaagya is a complete and true
indifference to the physical world.
However, Vairaagya must arise
from within, out of a genuine desire for knowledge of “before and beyond the
physical”. Vairaagya is not something
that should be imposed because then it is counterproductive and unsustainable.
Also, such imposed Vairaagya is of
the kind where one gives up one desire / attachment, only to acquire another.
Like the example given in some of the spiritual literature, a man gives up his
family and goes to the jungles, but acquires disciples in place of his family
and an Aashram (cottage) in place of a house and gets attached to them! Such
an approach culminates in fruitless efforts..
The
right way to set out on a spiritual path is to surrender our conditioned self at
the perceived feet of the Omnipotent and Omniscient Creator of the universe, and
invoke his blessings for spiritual wisdom. It is like tuning a TV receiver to a
different frequency – when we are tuned to the physical world of objects, we
can experience only the materialistic show. Unless our receiver is tuned to the
spiritual frequency, we will not be able to see what lies beyond and behind our material world. Towards this, wise people from Indian
tradition have recommended seeking blessings from a True Guru.
So,
thank you, for your interest and patience in auditioning my outlook on
Spirituality… ...
We
will meet here again.
-- Kishor Kulkarni
Postscript by
Ravishankar.>
" Dear readers across the
globe… …,
Dear
Kishor has ended his preamble on Spirituality, with the words ‘ True
Guru’…
Well…
…in terms of Philosophy, what I have to
say about it, is this… …
In
Sanskrit doctrines, the term ‘ Guru’ has been defined in a multitude of ways…
One
of the most succint, and easily comprehensible definition of ‘Guru’, is as
below…
॥ अंगुलीम् गृहीत्त्वा
यो चलयति, स गुरुः ॥
Meaning
thereby, that…
‘One who holds you by the finger, and INSPIRES you to attain everything in the material and
/ or spiritual world, is your ‘True Guru.’
This symbolic monoliner in
Philosophy, is so rich in kaleidoscopic meanings, that to cover it reasonably
enough, I may end up writing a volume by itself !!!
Thus,
in the strict sense of this definition, a true Guru neither serves you anything
readymade on a platter, nor teaches you the ways and rules to attain anything.
He will simply inspire and empower you to attain everything possible by
yourself, within your God bestowed capabilities, through self enlightenment.
I
hope, that you will find Mr. Kishor’s discourses on Spirituality too, quite
interesting.
Thank
you all, and here we set off… … …
*************************************************************
-- RAVISHANKAR.
