What spirituality stands for today : Spirituality is now a contemporary fashionable term for all kinds of pseudo-intellectual verbiage that supposedly explains concepts like mind-body separation, eternity of the soul, consciousness, self and host of other supra-sensory entities and experiences along with the grand promise of achieving ‘self-realization’ through esoteric meditative/yogic practices and rituals Of course the few discerning can see through all this self-realization as a case of delirious self-proclamations of whatever states of ecstasy, frenzy or tranquility that the delusion and feverish imagination of the spiritual brigade of Swami’s, Gurus, and Babas can come up with by flogging the ever-suffering lingo of spiritual terms to sprout new words and phrases of greater meaninglessness Let’s look at terms like ‘Supreme knowledge’, ‘Ultimate Reality’, ‘Higher Truths’, ‘Knowledge of the Self’, ‘Unconditioned Consciousness’, ‘Highest Truth’, ‘Freedom from Illusion’, ‘Universal Consciousness’, ‘Universal Soul’, ‘Awareness of the Self’, ‘Self-realization’, ‘Pure Consciousness’, ‘Field of Pure Potentiality’ While these words and terms may be music and symphony to the novices and doyens of the spiritual variety, but any search for the meaning and significance of these in the lexicons and thesauruses of old and new is hardly likely to return any meaningful result It will be observed that the term ‘Consciousness’ is the darling of most ‘spiritual connoisseurs’. What does it mean? Let’s look at the most favorite definition of it all: “Consciousness is that from which everything arises, and everything lives and passes through and into which everything ultimately dissolves into” This may sound very poetic, expressive, metaphorical, pithy and more. But it practically means very little despite all the weight of books, speeches and writings that the spiritualists keep throwing at it This belief in the all-pervading reach, permeation and influence of Consciousness on both the life and lifeless alike may seem of a piece with some kind of revolutionary leap of understanding that the hordes of religious believers keep making from time to time. But this leap is not that of understanding or knowledge, but rather the leaps and bounds of faith hurtling down the bottomless pit of a new spiritual fetish It is neither possible nor the intention of this article to recount all the rhapsodies of delusive delight and frenzy that the term Consciousness inspires in the spiritual cognoscenti, but this one famous quote about Consciousness should make the sane and skeptical smell the stench of baloney and nonsense from this much spiritually hallowed term : “Consciousness exists not just in you and me, but breathes in the soul of mountains, seas, woods and trees and is the same even in a stone. Nay it permeates the entirety of existence.” Quotes like this expose the classic muddling of ideology, allegory and mundane facts of life that is so typical of the these kinds of desperate flourishes of poetastry from the spiritual brigade
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 03:24:16 +0000
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