A 'no-more comprehensible' guide to Spirituality

I had to think of long to even put up the title, let alone the subject. Although I had been hovering around it for quite some time now, expressing it through poems, articles, etc., it was inevitable that the word 'spirituality' would pop up on the way. It had to. But writing anything about it seeks tremendous discretion because this innocent word has gone through a rigorous doping to the point that interpreting a core idea taking this word would be almost near to impossible. To some, spirituality means bringing gold from thin air. To some, it means leaving one identity to just pick up another, more 'sacred' identity. To someone else, it might be talking incessantly to a 'divine' character of human imagination that has been given the weight bias for it to seem real and responsive. For some, it's a journey to the ultimate where the term ultimate is not so clear, but that it is a journey to be taken which is different from the 'ideal' social standards for a journey through life. For most, it is a way to escapism. Escaping life, thinking it as a trap of illusion only to be severely sucked into a deeper illusion for the rest of life. With so many notions, philosophies and nuances to each line of thought that inherently gives a person the feeling of uniqueness and the feeling of being different than everyone around, it is really not easy in terms of the limitations of human language to come up with the core idea of it without getting into controversies. Having said that, I will still try. What I write might seem pretty unconventional, but I promise, if you bear with me till the end, you will have a firm idea of what spirituality is NOT. I might not be the best candidate to propound what it is, but this small journey has made me aware of what it is not, which I will filter on the way. Let's start!

The first problem I encountered in this journey was that, the broad notions of spirituality are excessively human-centric and dogmatic, as a result. And recently, with a huge body of collective human knowledge being researched and getting added every day, the long held belief systems are collapsing. Researches are exploding with the findings that the ability to be self-aware, or introspect, which had long been held as special to only Homo Sapiens, are indeed not restricted to only humans. The pace at which our understanding of the world is growing is far more than the evolution of the mental scape of the civilisation to adjust to these changes from the inert dogma that had held them back for long. Discovering facts and the seamless flow of information - are the fundamental cause of disruption of social order. 

Let's break it down to the absolute fundamentals. The fundamental instinct of lifeform on this planet is to survive. Even when organisms weren't complex enough to have the process of thought, the fundamental life instinct was to survive, and survive in the fittest manner given the environment. The outdated products of evolution were rejected and they got extinct. Now with the human mind coming into the canvas of mother nature, this notion of survival took a desparate turn. Assumingly, Homo Sapiens, in order to support its instinct of survival, which came to a mental level now from the mere non-mental instinct, did the largest butchering in the history of species, making thousands of species extinct including all the known five in the genus Homo! What for? To ensure its own survival. We, today, are a result of that great butchering, if we can call it!

For all the other species, survival is the only question and the only answer. For humans, with survival being taken care of, new faculties start emerging out. Arts, philosophies, language, architecture, and so much more. Humans learn to ask questions, and find answers. So far, nature did the job of evolution to perfect a species like Sapiens that can have an advanced degree of metacognition. Before this, the quest was to have the bodily desires fulfilled; now with proper nourishment and engineering a way to survive without a major risk of extinction, added to just physical fulfilment, the advent of a mental process, intellectual fulfilment overcame the threshold. You might have observed - if you are on a quest to understand something, you try hard and harder and suddenly one day you understand or realise the fact perfectly; the pleasure that is felt is similar to, or sometimes even more than the pleasure you get with an orgasm. All of the societal structures we see are merely quests for intellectual fulfilment, and the exploration led us to where we are today. Of course ideas of currency and economy added to the drive of it, but it would not align with our context of this discussion.

Now we are not only capable enough to question our place in the Universe and our existence, we also have means to explore the questions in a deeper way, with the advent of technology. Having said that, intellectual quests would only mean something if humans survive. Presently, there are two major threats to long-term human existence - humans themselves, or an external apocalyptic event. For humans being a threat to human existence, we are collaborating on maintaining a certain order, albeit delicate, but persistent. For a major external apocalyptic event that could perhaps wash out the civilisation altogether, we are striving to be multiplanetary. How far can this quest go? Even if we become multiplanetary, eventually someday the Sun will burn out all its fuel and life would be inhabitable on the planet, where its already halfway through. We will lose all sources of energy. To survive, we would need to be interstellar. But then, all starts would burn out someday or the other. We become intergalactic in the meantime with advancing technology, but the Universe is bound to collapse someday as it got created. The Universe collapsing means spacetime and all of matter ever existent in the Universe, would cease to exist into nothingness, just like it was. If there is no matter, or spacetime, where would humans exist? We popped out from nowhere in a revolving piece of stardust in the middle of nowhere. Prolonging the human civilisation in this desperation, flying off and trying to get hold of bigger stellar systems with a greater timeline, is it really a way out for permanence? Our presence is just a flicker in the HUGE timeline of the Universe. The Universe continues to evolve and so does everything. Evolution constitutes creation and destruction with repeated iterations. As far as matter is concerned, it is bound to disintegrate someday or the other into nothing. We all came from that nothing, and would go to it.

Hence the core notion and idea of spirituality - to get back into that nothingness before the Universe reaches there, in its usual pace of many billions of years. It is a fast-track way to evolve and dissolve back to nothingness. It is for those who did realise the futility of limitedness and bondages of the body and the mind, fully understands that the same cycles of joy and sadness, misery, little glimpses of success and failures are all there is to life, and want to hasten the entire process. And exactly how do we do that? How do we go to nothingness, beyond birth and death, beyond creation and destruction, being one with everything and simultaneously cease to exist? How to get used to this abstract notion? To start with is to disengage from our bodily identity, most of which is a product of the human mind. The mind is constantly buzzing with thousands of thoughts on a daily basis, and not handling it in a way it should be, makes it into a complete mess and often brings huge amounts of suffering to people. But mind is a phenomenal tool - a powerful tool that it can be used to manifest literally anything. Things that were considered impossible was successfully done with the power of the mind, or rather a focussed mind. From curing cancer to discovering theories of the Universe, mind is the all-in-one tool. Hence, it is the obvious starting point. A tool is useful only when it can be used when required and kept away when needed. A tool which sticks to a person all the time becomes less of a tool and more of an irritant! Similar is with the mind. If there arises a little seperation between a 'person' and his 'mind', it is a great point to start with. And hence, the necessity of a procedure to make the mind non-sticky. A procedure to distill the mind of unwanted thoughts, focus it like a beam of laser, and simultaneously maintain some distance from it so that it doesn't create unnecessary hassle in our life. The procedure is vaguely known as meditation, for lack of better words.

In the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, one of the magnificient work on the nuances of human system, it is said that once the mind is completely distilled and there is not even one thought for a single moment, one can attain to yoga or be one with the universe - realise one's true nature (yogaschittavrittinirodha tadadrstaswaroope avasthanam YS1.1). By realising one's true nature, he eventually gets liberated, gets merged with the creation, becomes nothingness, becomes truly no more. But for a mind clouded with so much dogmas, beliefs, purposes, and a constant flow of thoughts, to attain to this state requires years of strenuous practice of deconditioning the mind. In the process, as the mind starts becoming more and more distilled, and waves of bliss starts flowing from inside. The journey of meditation is so rewarding that mundane aspects of life starts dropping off automatically and one gets absorbed into the bliss that requires no outside stimuli. Humans live for pleasure, either it is through a beautiful song, scenary, food, sexual satisfaction, or intellectual pursuit, money, or through children, philanthropy etc.; pleasure is the goal, after survival is taken care of. But to have any of these pleasures, an incessant stimuli from the external world is necessary. Hence, often in the pursuit of pleasure, the objects of pleasure becomes an addiction and a strong bondage to the world, someway or the other. Nothing wrong with that - it is just that it limits a person from exploring the true potential of being a human being. If someone is looking beyond - for the unlimited, the endless, the beginningless, to find out if there exists any, one has to start with one's own mind, looking inside. The mind is the seat of experiences, and our lives are nothing but a collection of diverse experiences. Even if the brain is somewhat active, if certain aspects of the mind is switched off (for example in deep sleep), there is no experiencer to experience anything. Hence, with deepening the process of meditation, the experience of a pleasure, thousands of times more than the most pleasurable experience, independent of an external stimuli, can be had. Once there is a constant wave of bliss flowing through the system day in and day out, the body becomes absolutely relaxed, the mind becomes focussed yet relaxed, and with more and more waves of bliss hitting the entire being, the sense of body is loosened, because the experience of inexplicable bliss is not happening through any external stimulation but from the inside. 

Once the sense of body and a strong identity with starts getting loose, food, sleep, sexual desires slowly subside. The mind starts becoming more and more still. That makes it not only a powerful tool to be used much more effectively in the external world, but also opens up the subconscious layers of perceptions. With time, deepening the experience in meditation or dharana, spontaneous dhyana happens. Slowly, sustained states of dhyana transforms into nameless ecstasies of samadhi. There are many gradations of samadhi, as is stated in the literature. Each state of samadhi signifies more and more bliss. It is possible that one stays stuck in these levels of bliss for way longer than is necessary, sometime for days and months on end. While it is a fantastic state to be in, the ultimate realisation of one's nature lies somewhere beyond. Eventually, the last state of samadhi is reached, which is known as the 'nirvikalpa samadhi', where there is true nothingness - no happiness, no sadness, no life, no death, no space, no time, no emotions, no nothing, no mind, not even experiences, but pure existence and simultaneously non-existence, beyond dualities. It is here where the seed of self-realisation lies. It is like when you keep listening increasing frequencies, crossing a threshold (20,000 Hz for humans), suddenly the sound isn't in the realm of our experiences. With realising the self, one gets released from this cycle of taking bodies on the Earth and is forever freed from the clutches of existential cycles. 

While there were a lot of terms here to digest, this is the crux of all of spirituality that has ever existed on this planet. There is a misconception that spirituality makes someone incapacitated, in reality, it is quite the complete opposite of it. Getting a spiritual touch into life empowers a person in ways that are verbally incomprehensible! May you touch that which is beyond!