While there can be only one spiritual goal for all humans on
the basis of their common physical composition and mental dispositions in spite of
minor differences such as color of the skin or language they speak, the many
religions existing in the world today seem to point at totally different
directions when it comes to their higher spiritual goal.
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| Something precious left in garbage |
This gives rise to a discussion whether religions are
really helpful in orienting one towards the actual higher spiritual realms, in
pointing to one those existing states of human spiritual development which are
available to anyone today provided they do the needful to get there.
First let’s be clear about what is meant by ‘actual states
of human development’ that are ‘available to anyone’ in the form of spiritual
progress today.
We could make use of few simple criteria in recognizing
these.
The first would be any such state cannot be limited by
national or cultural boundary.
Just as the effectiveness of a cure for a recognized malady
has no regard for culture or language spoken by the patient in its working, any
higher human state should have the same working on any human, in spite of
superficial differences among them.
The second criterion derives from the first. Although pretty
obvious, let me state it specifically. Such a state cannot have only one
culture-specific name to describe it. We cannot expect to have one absolute
name to describe such a human wide state as it is not culture or nation
specific.
So the rational conclusion to take from this is, such a higher human
state may be known by different cultures under different names and criteria worldwide.
And another aspect we need to expect is necessarily all
the higher goals presented by religions will not agree with one another or overlay exactly upon the
other to indicate that they all point out to ‘one’ thing. If they did, the
world would have been a much more different place than what it is today.
The third, and the most important aspect is, such a state
should prove itself beyond doubt to the person who attains to it; that IT IS a
higher spiritual state. This means that it should result in a clear shift for the better in
the person subject to it in his understanding, social relationships as well as
views and opinions so far held. Ideally
speaking, the perfect higher spiritual state should
result in total inner composure and perfect understanding with everyone who are human.
I had an interesting discussion with Nida on facebook
regarding my earlier post on the ‘source’, when she asked if what religions do
is only to block this higher achievement, by creating misconceptions about it,
and most importantly by creating human sects which finally corner themselves to
defend themselves and fight against other spiritual sects on the ground of
spirituality.
Quite true. Religions are notorious in creating conflict and
fanaticism, clouding the utter human spiritual elevation with their own
sectarian set of symbols and denominations, misleading the unsuspecting
follower into a corner filled with biased confusion of spiritual jargon.
Well, it will be helpful to throw some reflection on the
context of the origin of a religion here.
Usually a certain ‘holy man’ is at the origin of a religion.
The sayings and deeds of the holy man
will be at the center of the set up but these will be brought down from generation
to generation by not so holy men, who prefer to pass down their own mark, logo
at the same time glorified with a bit of self-esteem along with the holy man's message. These are however
characteristics which are totally against any higher human message. So sadly
the original message will be marred and a self-glorification will be the result
after some generations in the name of a religion.
Is the higher spiritual truth safer in the total absence of
religions?
Well, this may be subject to controversy. What I feel is, even
though blurred with symbolism and jargon, religions still remain a subject
which directly refers to the higher spiritual potential of a human. Politics,
economics or astronomy will not ever talk about this human aspect, and if you are
ever interested in it, you need to turn to a religion for help.
But only you need to be careful, even though the essence is in
the religion, it requires strenuous procedures of purification to single out
the essence, and this is not for the ordinary individual, but for the one with
a great heart and soul to separate the living message of higher human
spirituality from the religious dustbin mostly filled with stinking garbage.
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