Eternity is better.
July 9, 2008
Spirituality as a philosophy has a long history of five thousand years. In ancient Greece there were great philosophers like Plato and Aristotle whose thinking was spiritual in nature. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, spiritualism is the philosophy of higher reality, which has been defined by different philosophers in different words such as, “immaterial reality,” “a universal mind,” “a supreme being,” “spiritual cosmic force,” “infinite personal God,” etc.
Spirituality, being a subjective discipline, it cannot be described in objective terms. Every person is composed of two things—body and spirit. The body is related to objective science while the spirit is related to subjective science.
There are two different concepts of spirituality: God-oriented spirituality which is based on the concept of God Almighty, and man-oriented spirituality, which is based on man’s soul itself being the treasure-house of spirituality. As for the former concept, spirituality results in God-realization; while in the latter, spirituality results from self-realization.
The concept of self-realization is based on the assumption that the treasure of spirituality exists within man himself. And through meditation man can peep into his inner self and discover spirituality. Acharya Rajneesh has explained this concept in his book, “Kundalini Andar Base.” However this concept of man-oriented spirituality called “in-dwelling God” by Pandu Rang Shashtri, founder of the Swadhyaye Movement, is not corroborated by Islam. According to God-oriented spirituality man has no such spiritual treasure-house existing independently. For man is a ‘taker-creature’. He receives everything from his Creator.
True spirituality, is when man discovers Higher Truth; he rises above the physical or animal level and starts living at the higher human level. The question that arises is why aren’t people achieving true spirituality in spite of working towards it for centuries? According to me, this is because there is a common misconception that the source of spirituality is within us – in our heart. We simply have to look inside ourselves and obtain spirituality. Unlike this popularly imagined thought, according to Islam, spirituality is not a heart-based discipline; it is a mind-based one. This is because the biggest faculty in a man is his mind – that is why man is called a ‘thinking animal’. Therefore true spirituality is that which is achieved through the conscious and awakened mind.
The spiritual journey is therefore entirely intellectual in nature. Its quest is two fold: one is to solve the riddle as to why all men and women undergo negative experiences in this world; and the other is with regard to finding positive solutions. It addresses the paradox of human beings having been given the freedom to make their choices, and their frequent misuse of this liberty - a course of action which causes them to repeatedly face situations in which people do each other harm; losses are incurred because of others’ injustice; severe provocations are suffered because of untoward experiences – these trigger negative thoughts such as malice, lust, anger, arrogance, greed, etc. But when man raises himself above his immediate surroundings, i.e., from the material level to a higher level of thinking – at this elevated level, he is able to eradicate his negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones: patience when confronted with provocation, love when confronted with hate, etc. The afflicted person then becomes one who loves rather than hates. He becomes unilateral rather than bilateral in his ethics. This is spiritual training.
Spirituality, in fact, is a process of converting our everyday material events into spiritual experiences: converting our negative experiences into positive ones, converting non-spiritual matter into spiritual matter. This principle, which is governing the entire material world, may be called the principle of conversion. The conversion takes place in the spiritual sense rather than in the physical sense. Such a spiritual person is produced through a superior intellectual process, which involves his de-conditioning.
The truth is that everyone is born spiritual or on their nature. But, after birth, one lives in a society, which continues to condition or nurture him – just like the layers of the onion that cover its bulb. Spirituality makes it possible to de-condition the individual so that he may revert to his natural state in which he was born. For this to happen, he has to re-engineer his mind. He has to shake and jolt and remould his personality. He has to turn himself into the kind of person who is shaped not by society, but by spirituality and is able to live a God-oriented life. The way to obtain spirituality, as per Islam, is therefore by living a God-oriented life; by awakening your nature, which is already invested with God-Consciousness; by observing the creation and finding the Creator; by developing the spiritual aspect of your personality – to eventually find the purpose of your life. This contemplative spirituality, according to Islam is Ideology of Spirituality – the formula to achieve true spirituality in the world.
Let us understand the ideology of spirituality by going through the following:
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