A lot of serious posts, I have written..To change my blog mood, the time has come!!
Ok ok..I know I copied the 'Yoda' style but then the 'Force' has to be with someone while he is not around ;) He he..So the phenomena has started already..I am ON now with this kind of nonsense. What gave me inspiration for such perspiration was a very dangerous and an unlikely event - I read my own blog posts!!! :O
My ongoing blog series 'Phor the Phil of Sophos' was like so full of dry funda-baaji that I was like - 'Did I write all this crap?? From when did I become so wisdomous!!' I don't want to read back my own posts years after my last grey hairs fall off and wonder 'Was I such a boring geek at 23??' Well I am not...and I am gonna prove that to future old me that 'Oho..So I was also a childish freak' ;D
Today I checked out Twitter..some micro-blogging microsite which eating popularity charts like a parasite (notice my rhyming alankar ;P )..Bhuni my friend..also known by net alias samudranb (which may be his real name if I remember right) had been tweeting for some time now and I went to see what on earth is he upto after resigning from his job just bcoz his boss didn't give a damn about his leave request for a biking trip!! And I found what looked like more or less like orkut scraps or facebook wall crawls just with '@' symbols added in front...
I found his one tweet -
@gulpanag my 6 month old cocker spaniel pup Leo hides between my legs the moment he sees a stray... any advice from @super_milo ?
I got suspicious...Is he talking bullshit to the same Gul Panag that we feel wetty even if we talk to her only in dreams!! I clicked on it and got redirected to Gul Panag's tweeting home with her supersexy photo on left...I was like 'Wooooowwwww!'
But that was not just it!! I scrolled down on her page and found this -
@samudranb just be cool he says'
I was like 'What the ...!!!' Dude that Samudra is, I never expected he be asking Gul Panag about his cocker between his legs (yeah that sounds very un-innocent ;P) and she would be actually replying to that!!!
Well, a celebrity is what celebrity does...Way to go Bhuni!! :D
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Phor the Phil of Sophos - Religion & Spirituality
I have listened to many understandings of 'religion' varying from 'praying to a personal God' to 'observing rituals'. Also I heard definitions of 'spirituality' from the common men. They range from 'doing meditation' to 'drinking spirit(alcohol)'!! Some people even consider 'religion' as theistic and 'spirituality' as atheistic. I find it a bit disappointing to find my fellow Indians so ignorant on this topic though they feel proud in hailing from this 'Ancient Land of Spirituality'. I do not claim to be a doctorate myself but at least I try my best to fan out my ignorance. And what follows is my current understanding on the subject.
I consider spirituality as the core of religion, any religion. In fact I would like to divide religion into 3 layers inside out -
1. Spiritual - Based on experience
2. Philosophical - Based on intellectual understanding of the 1st layer
3. Ritual/Cultural - Based on lifestyle created in harmony with the 1st & 2nd layer
Any religion begins with the actual experience. The seed of Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam, etc was the experience of Siddharta, Mahavira, Jesus, Muhammad, etc respectively. Of course, Hinduism was based on the experience of not just any particular person, but on collective experiences of rishis,yogis and swamis. So we see that 'experience' is the foundation of religion.
Now the question comes what exactly this experience is. We say 'I myself experienced this or that' but have you heard anybody saying 'I experienced myself'? Self is consciousness. It is the awareness of the innate understanding that 'I' am. 'I' is the experiencer and everything else is being experienced. But when this 'experience-r' itself becomes the 'experience-d', then it is the 'experience' we are discussing here. So in simple words, it is the experience of pure consciousness. There are 4 states we can experience by the combination of the 2 states of mind & 2 states of consciousness -
1. Waking State - Thoughts with consciousness
2. Dream State - Thoughts without consciousness
3. Deep State - No thoughts and no consciousness
4. 4th State - No thoughts and just consciousness
We experience the first 3 states commonly. But its this 4th state of experience which proves elusive. This 4th state is the 'God','enlightenment','Self','superconsciousness','no-mind state','samadhi', etc etc. Whatever you may want to call it, but this experience is the ultimate bliss. And in this state also comes the awareness that the cosmos, you and I are not separate but manifestations of the same 'I'. The whole science of 'yoga' & 'tantra' deals only with how to get this experience and is a vast topic in itself. This experience is like the waking up from the dream world to reality. And here is where the seed of religion gets planted.
Of course, when you wake up from a nightmare and find others screaming in their sleeps, what will you do? You will try to wake up the other guy and show him that his misery is just caused by his own illusion. This process of 'waking-up' others to show them the truth where there is no misery is what starts the movement which becomes a religion over time.
The philosophical layer is also an important part of religion as it tries to answer the questions asked by the intellectual minds. The questions can be anything like - Who am I? Whats the purpose of existence? Is there a creator? Why should we do good to others? etc...More often than not these questions lead to more questions, and thus the quest continues till the answers are given not through books or lectures but through direct experience itself. And then again as one tries to explain the experiences, more philosophy gets created.
Based on the experience and the intellectual understanding of the experience comes the lifestyle - the way to live. This way of living is designed in such a way that people get happiness, peace, prosperity and evolve more rapidly towards the ultimate. Of course dry philosophical lectures cannot be enough to make the common man follow this lifestyle. For that, the philosophy get woven into stories, the spiritual practices get embedded into rituals and the formless God gets limited to some forms. This completes the religion.
It all sounds very logical and so where is the damn problem one might ask. The problem is that the people start idetifying only the 3rd layer as 'religion' and forget about the first two. Instead of maturing towards the inner layers they get stuck with the 3rd layer and stubbornly & fearfully refuse to move from there. Then you will see the mothers telling the same stories to their children but not teaching them their true meaning because they themselves do not know or even care to know. You will find men following rituals daily without knowing their purpose. People will be fighting over which 'God' is superior without the understanding that all are one and the same. In many cases people this ignorance becomes so rock solid that even when some enlightened masters with the 'experience' try to show them light, they attack the masters with the charge of 'blasphemy'. History has repeated itself again & again witnessing the fate of Jesus, Socrates, the Sufi masters and many others.
We need to move over from this kind of ignorance to omniscience. We need to first understand the truths and experience them. We need to loosen up the hold the 3rd layer has on us and be liquid enough to seep through the inner layers. We need to mature from rituality to spirituality.
And we will, eventually. After all that is the ultimate stage of evolution and we all are moving towards it with our own velocities. Its just that why keep riding on a bullock cart when aeroplanes are parked in front of us!
I consider spirituality as the core of religion, any religion. In fact I would like to divide religion into 3 layers inside out -
1. Spiritual - Based on experience
2. Philosophical - Based on intellectual understanding of the 1st layer
3. Ritual/Cultural - Based on lifestyle created in harmony with the 1st & 2nd layer
Any religion begins with the actual experience. The seed of Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam, etc was the experience of Siddharta, Mahavira, Jesus, Muhammad, etc respectively. Of course, Hinduism was based on the experience of not just any particular person, but on collective experiences of rishis,yogis and swamis. So we see that 'experience' is the foundation of religion.
Now the question comes what exactly this experience is. We say 'I myself experienced this or that' but have you heard anybody saying 'I experienced myself'? Self is consciousness. It is the awareness of the innate understanding that 'I' am. 'I' is the experiencer and everything else is being experienced. But when this 'experience-r' itself becomes the 'experience-d', then it is the 'experience' we are discussing here. So in simple words, it is the experience of pure consciousness. There are 4 states we can experience by the combination of the 2 states of mind & 2 states of consciousness -
1. Waking State - Thoughts with consciousness
2. Dream State - Thoughts without consciousness
3. Deep State - No thoughts and no consciousness
4. 4th State - No thoughts and just consciousness
We experience the first 3 states commonly. But its this 4th state of experience which proves elusive. This 4th state is the 'God','enlightenment','Self','superconsciousness','no-mind state','samadhi', etc etc. Whatever you may want to call it, but this experience is the ultimate bliss. And in this state also comes the awareness that the cosmos, you and I are not separate but manifestations of the same 'I'. The whole science of 'yoga' & 'tantra' deals only with how to get this experience and is a vast topic in itself. This experience is like the waking up from the dream world to reality. And here is where the seed of religion gets planted.
Of course, when you wake up from a nightmare and find others screaming in their sleeps, what will you do? You will try to wake up the other guy and show him that his misery is just caused by his own illusion. This process of 'waking-up' others to show them the truth where there is no misery is what starts the movement which becomes a religion over time.
The philosophical layer is also an important part of religion as it tries to answer the questions asked by the intellectual minds. The questions can be anything like - Who am I? Whats the purpose of existence? Is there a creator? Why should we do good to others? etc...More often than not these questions lead to more questions, and thus the quest continues till the answers are given not through books or lectures but through direct experience itself. And then again as one tries to explain the experiences, more philosophy gets created.
Based on the experience and the intellectual understanding of the experience comes the lifestyle - the way to live. This way of living is designed in such a way that people get happiness, peace, prosperity and evolve more rapidly towards the ultimate. Of course dry philosophical lectures cannot be enough to make the common man follow this lifestyle. For that, the philosophy get woven into stories, the spiritual practices get embedded into rituals and the formless God gets limited to some forms. This completes the religion.
It all sounds very logical and so where is the damn problem one might ask. The problem is that the people start idetifying only the 3rd layer as 'religion' and forget about the first two. Instead of maturing towards the inner layers they get stuck with the 3rd layer and stubbornly & fearfully refuse to move from there. Then you will see the mothers telling the same stories to their children but not teaching them their true meaning because they themselves do not know or even care to know. You will find men following rituals daily without knowing their purpose. People will be fighting over which 'God' is superior without the understanding that all are one and the same. In many cases people this ignorance becomes so rock solid that even when some enlightened masters with the 'experience' try to show them light, they attack the masters with the charge of 'blasphemy'. History has repeated itself again & again witnessing the fate of Jesus, Socrates, the Sufi masters and many others.
We need to move over from this kind of ignorance to omniscience. We need to first understand the truths and experience them. We need to loosen up the hold the 3rd layer has on us and be liquid enough to seep through the inner layers. We need to mature from rituality to spirituality.
And we will, eventually. After all that is the ultimate stage of evolution and we all are moving towards it with our own velocities. Its just that why keep riding on a bullock cart when aeroplanes are parked in front of us!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)