Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, Living a Spiritual Life

A faculty member of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, since 1973, Rev. Valson Thampu is an ordained minister of the Church of North India (CNI). He is engaged in theological research with focus on shift from religion to spirituality, and is an active member of the forum, 'Religion for Social Justice'. He has seven books, forty booklets and over a hundred articles to his credit.

All religions agree that bliss is an authentic sign of spiritual life. But in this materialistic age we need to be alert against the possibility that bliss could get equated with pleasure, unmindful of its source or substance. Bliss is an elusive thing; and it cannot be sought after and attained in itself. It must be appropriated as the by-product of a way of life that is centred on God and sensitive to the whole of creation.

The Spirit, in biblical thought, is a principle of dynamic integration. It is like the inner unity of the body effected by blood circulation. Blood unites the various parts of the body by flowing through them. In the process, it not only unites but also nourishes and purifies the body and fights infections. The resultant well-being of the body is the physical counterpart of the spiritual 'bliss'. Or, this is bliss to the extent that the body may experience. Bliss is, essentially, a spiritual category. Spiritual bliss arises out of being right with God and with our fellow human beings. And it is misleading to project it in terms of some rarefied states of mind and experience, analogous to drug-induced ecstasy. Human nature is such that we cannot be truly happy in a state of self-centredness. Our happiness must blossom in the social and spiritual space.

The various qualities that we associate with spiritual life, such as love, compassion, selfless service, righteousness, etc., are best seen in this light. None of them can be practised in isolation; all of them involve a triangle of relationships comprising God, self and others. Spiritual life is, thus, life lived in double equilibrium--with God on the one side; and with those around us, on the other.

To live a spiritual life is to live life in all its fullness. Fullness here points to the integration of the three dimensions of human life: the physical, the mental and the spiritual. The human tendency is to live only in terms of one of these three components, mostly the physical; for that is all that we can normally cope with. That is the case especially in a materialistic and consumerist culture, the like of what is rising in our midst at the present time. But this is inimical to humanity. A human being is not only a body but also a mind and a soul, not separately or sequentially but together and at once. Therefore, we miss the bliss of being truly human if we live only according to the light of one or even two of them. Spirituality involves the dynamic integration of all the three dimensions. The possibilities that emerge on account of this integration are miraculous and revolutionary.

The result of this three-fold integration is transformation. Transformation denotes a state in which our latent potentiality--our true and full scope--is activated and empowered. The possibilities inaugurated by the integration of even two elements are too vast for words. Oxygen and hydrogen, for example, combine to form water; and the properties of water are quite different from those of its two constituent elements. That being the case, one can imagine the mind-boggling possibilities that could emerge when three elements--each of them far more complex and multifaceted than oxygen or hydrogen--combine to create the miracle of miracles: a spiritually vibrant personality! Our life today is deformed and disabled by the loss of this integration. The various facets of our being work in a state of mutual dis-relationship. As a result, the divine in us is distorted, though it can never be wholly destroyed. The possibility of regaining it, and the potentiality to activate it, are still there. It is in this sense that the Bible maintains that human beings are created in the image of God; a truth illumined by the Vedic intuition that godhead is within us. 'The Kingdom of God,' said Jesus in a similar vein, 'is within you.'

Each of the three constituent parts of our being--body, mind, and spirit--is a dynamic and complex entity. Illustratively, think of walking on two moving belts at once. It is a great deal more difficult than walking on a single moving belt. Now think of walking on three belts, all moving at the same time and not necessarily in unison! Walking on either one moving belt or three stationary belts is somewhat manageable. But that will not be the case if all three are moving or dynamic. In ourselves we do not have the ability to cope with complexity of such superhuman scope. It is this that makes dependence on God and the guidance of the Spirit a daily necessity. Those who deem themselves self-sufficient, and are too proud to depend on God, do not find spiritual life a welcome prospect. Such people remain unlettered in the bliss of spirituality.

Spiritual life is directed by the dynamism of the depth; whereas carnal life is dictated by the logic of the surface. Every manifestation of life has both surface and depth. Life is necessarily three-dimensional, but it is possible for us to live as though life is only surface and depth, an illusion. This is what accounts for the contrived superficiality that brands life especially in materialistic cultures. Materialism is a world-view that excludes the claims of the depth. Its genius is that of the surface, and its strategy one of manipulation. Wonder and humility, creativity and transcendence, renewal and regeneration, in contrast, mark a spiritual culture. It is the depth that nourishes and renews life; the blossoms of life, though, are seen on the surface. But for the depth, there will be neither any blossom nor any fruit that expresses and enriches life.

The depth of life is ruled by love; whereas power reigns on its surface. The more we are alienated from the depth, the more we are taken over by the lust and logic of power. Power is necessarily superficial. Vis-a-vis the depth of life, power is like the patterns we draw on water. The depth cannot be controlled and manipulated. We can only belong to it, on its own terms, as its devotees. Who can control the great seas? We can, however, allow the great sea to hold us up according to its own logic, provided we know how to negotiate it. To swim is to abide in the sea. To lead a spiritual life, likewise, is to abide in the Spirit, according to the genius of the Spirit. It is to manifest on the surface the logic of the depth. It is, if you like, to live in this world of power as the agents of love. It is to manifest the power of love in our historical existence, which is driven by the lust for power.

Human beings are free, said Swami Vivekananda, neither in the material nor in the mental realm. We are free only in the sphere of the Spirit. The Bible is aglow with this spiritual insight. The Spirit is pure freedom. The Spirit leads us into truth, and truth sets us free. This is because, for one thing, the realm of the Spirit is free from the human will to power. Freedom and the will to dominate are in a relationship of inverse proportion. Freedom declines proportionately as the will to power takes hold of a person, culture or society. The realm of the Spirit is the realm of love; and love redeems, enables and enlarges freedom. Secondly, the realm of the Spirit is free from fixity and dogmatism. Stereotypes, prejudices and hate rule the worldly mind. The Spirit abhors stigmas and stereotypes. The realm of the Spirit is a realm of compassion, not hard-heartedness. No human being or society can be truly free unless freedom is established firmly on its spiritual foundations. Spiritual life is marked by creative freedom--the freedom to love, to create, to care and to share. The darkness of hate, cruelty, destruction, exploitation, and so on, intensifies as the light of the Spirit is rejected or defied.

The Spirit is a domain of sanctity. Sanctity is to our spiritual life what purity is to our physical life. Life can survive only on the foundation of purity. Most of the important organs of the body (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys etc.) are meant to safeguard the purity of the body. When this purity is compromised, the health and survival of the body are endangered. The same logic applies, perhaps to a greater extent, to our spiritual life. Spiritual sanctity is compacted of values such as love, truth, compassion, selflessness, justice, generosity, self-control, and so on. When our inner hygiene is compromised, love degenerates into the lust for flesh, lucre or power. Justice degenerates into oppression. Truth is perverted into untruth. Darkness eclipses the light within us. Death looms large over life. The Vedic prayer, 'Lead us from darkness to light, from untruth to truth, from death to eternal life,' captures the longings of our spiritual life. Such a prayer cannot dwell in a carnal consciousness. To live a spiritual life is to live according to the hygiene of the Spirit.

Purity or sanctity is a precondition for unity. If a part of the body loses its purity, it gets alienated from the rest of the body. A gangrenous limb has to be amputated. An infected tooth is a threat to the well-being of the whole body. An open wound is a chink in the armour of our physical well-being. When the kidneys fail, the integrity and unity of the whole body is imperilled. In a personal and social sense, sanctity is a precondition for unity. As we have seen, truth, love and justice are some of the basic ingredients of spiritual hygiene. A society that rejects truth in favour of falsehood, love in favour of hate, justice in favour of oppression, accelerates its own disintegration. Swami Vivekananda has said, 'Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient and modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.' No society that squanders its moral and spiritual hygiene can hope to remain united and vibrant. This is a spiritual truth that we shall overlook only at grave peril to ourselves. The writing is already on the wall, in all its alarming, compelling clarity. It needs to be read at a time when a whole culture based on spiritual unhygiene is overwhelming us under the cover of globalization. The culture of India endured the test of time only because of its spiritual foundations. The cancerous consumerism and soulless materialism that we seem to have embraced in indecent haste today threaten to tear apart these very foundations.

The Spirit is a realm of dynamism, rather than of inertia: of rajas, rather than of tamas. The dynamism of the Spirit expresses itself through the passion for doing good. The agents of tamas, of materialistic darkness, have their energies focused on negativity and destructiveness. They are bored by peace and goodwill, and are stimulated by what is violent and wicked. Spiritual life can never be a state of apathy. It is marked, instead, by a passionate intensity in the pursuit of what is good and godly. It is this that we see in the life of the enlightened. In them the dynamism of the good found its creative and redemptive expression.

The realm of the Spirit is not, thus, a realm of fantasies and fairy tales. It is, instead, a sphere of conflict and struggle. In this mixed-up world it is impossible to do good without provoking conflicts and incurring losses. One cannot be spiritually enlightened and sleep over the death dance of injustice and oppression all around. For the spiritually sensitive, this world is an ongoing Kurukshetra, where the epic battle between good and evil, duty and sentimentality, dharma and adharma, rages. The Spirit is the quintessence of life and brings with it a passion to fight the forces of evil and darkness. Spirituality thus proves subversive to adharmic systems and structures. The spiritual war, wrote Rimbaud, is far more brutal than physical wars. Surely, it is more pivotal to human dignity and well-being than any other war recorded in history.

This truth is writ large over our national predicament today. The political struggle was waged with exemplary enthusiasm and determination. But the spiritual war, to which Gandhiji had urged and exhorted us, was a non-starter. The British were driven out. But in about five decades--a laughably short period in the life of a nation--the forces of recolonisation have returned with a vengeance; and that on our invitation! Today we have reached a stage in which a second liberation struggle has become imperative. But this struggle has to be a spiritual enterprise, aimed at creating a nation of righteousness: the Ramarajya of Gandhiji's dreams.

The alternative to spiritual activism is religious escapism, obscurantism, or fundamentalism. Religion then becomes a sphere in which the trivial is absolutized, and the Absolute, trivialized. The externals of religious observances and practices become all-important and the call of the Spirit to uphold truth, justice and righteousness falls on deaf ears. The attention of the people is directed entirely to what divides and separates in religions, but the core of shared values and concerns is conspiratorially obscured. Religion degenerates into an instrument of division and cruelty. What we need today is a paradigm shift from religion to spirituality. The time has come for all right-minded people to work for the spiritual renewal of their own respective religious traditions.

Nations and societies, not less than individuals, need to reinforce their spiritual foundations. A focus on the spiritual foundation for nation-building is at the centre of the Gandhian legacy for our destiny as a nation. Spirituality is the only enduring principle of coherence. It is like the water that makes cement and sand cohere and become strong in unity. It is impossible to demonstrate empirically the political sagacity and social sanity of the Spirit in terms of a direct, one-to-one correspondence. Water, for example, has no adhesive properties. Its potential to be an adhesive dwells in its coming together with sand and cement, both of which also lack adhesive properties. Those who live the life of the Spirit become agents of unity and all-round health, without even trying to play such a role self-consciously. They unite and heal by their spiritual presence. It is impossible, said Gandhiji, that there is a stirring of the Spirit and the world around remains indifferent to it. In contrast, the material order lacks coherence. Prophesying the inevitable disintegration of the materialistic civilization in the West, the Irish poet, W. B. Yeats, wrote in his poem, The Second Coming: 'the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the earth.' The Universal Spirit--the Spirit of love, truth, compassion and justice--alone can provide a stable point of coherence for our entropic world of progressive disintegration.