Why world needs a Spirituality sans religions ?
We know how violent and hate-filled modern world is, basically caused by certain group's religious beliefs. God of some group says don't kill this animal and eat its flesh, while for some others, it is some other animal. For some, some day is holy, for some other, t is some other day. Most of them have Holy-Books, statues of their Gods and sub-Gods, and any disrespect to such symbols results in violent clashes and even vengeful killings!Armies of devotees are ready to make war and kill for the sake of their Gods, and their symbols.
We all know, that for what reason the Polity took over the control of the world from Religion. Christain Church was in total control of the Western world for many, many centuries. Whatever she decreed was the final truth. Church believed Earth is at the center of the universe. But when Galileo looked at the sky with his telescope, he found Earth rotating the bigger star, Sun! Church asked him to shut up! But, the evidence of the eyes and Reason had to win over untruth and blind beliefs. That was the law of nature.
Though that was an old story, even today, in many major corners of the world, BELIEFS of religions rule Nations and peoples' mind. These days, religion is used by the polity to prey on the minds of people, and keep them under own fold, as what rules the world today is the tradition of MAJORITY. If majority say 2+2=5, it will turn the truth of the day! Those who say, no it is 4, he will be arrested and put behind bars.Questioning is always a threat to authority.
So, religions are not at all the old roads to salvation. it is symbol of strength and majority.It has once again joined hands with Polity in many parts of the world, stopping progress of the world. A rethink on God, hence is a most pressing need of the day! Is He a divisive figure? Does he need worship? Is He also subject to hatred and violence like ignorant man? Is He one, or many? Is He a person, a character, or simply a personal non-entity, but having only His emotional 'predilection' ( or predisposition) what let the world exist and continue?
Better we accept the last proposition as the most sensible one, as it can not be different to different Gods! His likes and dislikes, his attitudinal features will be same for all,even if we believe that Gods are many! It is extremely difficult to imagine, that there exist vengeful Gods too, who seek blood of his own other creatures!
Though religions were originated with spiritual goals, they had turned different 'life-style' and cultural groups in their course of development.Every religious group was under existential compulsion to stick-on as one single life-style group for various reason listed and described at our other blogs in this spirituality post-series.For the inevitable spiritual need, each person, irrespective of his religious identity and life-style, tend to keep and maintain his own kind of very subjective and personal spirituality through out human-history. There has always been the very subjective spiritual realm for each person, plus his group-togetherness in the book,myths and life-style oriented external religion.
With existence, it looks like that, nature or God is keeping an exclusive or unique kind of relation or contract with every human-being. His gene-equation is so unique that no other person would be having such an equation ( the gene-combination from his father and mother, another unique pair) his very unique life-surroundings, ( the unique relation with his parents, his small community, his unique geographic location etc) his equally unique relation making with other unique people around, etc etc. All the above factors make each person in the world a unique 'aggregate' in every sense and meaning.No one exactly like him exists anywhere in the world ! It is like having unique ID in nature for every human-being.
Life, in this sense, is a unique opportunity, a unique aperture for each person. If God or whatever the ultimate source of reality and energies behind life and existence be, man can not connect with Him / It through collective prayer/communication process, because, what is personal is personal, and no group approach would be appropriate and effective. Collective or group rituals only would help to induce certain very personal and subjective thought-frame in the mind this way ! Every one has to go back to this source also, all alone, one day ( in death) ! So, spirituality need to be, and should be a very personal communion or communication with whatever is his metaphysical source, for every human being. This is similar to each sibling's unique tie with his/her parents.
Good 'sense' in understanding God, or the ultimate essence as a PREDISPOSITION / Predilection
Instead of keeping different images of God by each religion, it would simply make extreme sense to understand Him as His predisposition, or predilection, which can not be more than ONE in any way. The ultimate CAUSE behind creation, or having 'existence' of man,beasts,plants,planets,milky-ways, space and time etc. could be, in all possibility, be the RESULT OF AN ALL PERVADING 'emotion', or a 'motivation-factor'. The physical form of the world, and the emotional nature of all living beings must be the 'sharing' of this base existential emotion from such an essence, and what better way to understand the ULTIMATE TRUTH than getting to know such a cause, or all-pervading emotion/ predisposition of the source of ultimate existence ?
Common-sense would tell that even science attributes a certain 'predisposition' to existence; a certain mathematical coldness, without much verification and evidence. Such a zero-sum 'coldness' is what explains the physical theories of the world, or the 'structure of the world'. It is plain that 'structure' is always determined by a hidden essence. By this logic, instead of randomly attributing different predispositions to God by different religions, if sensible agreement is arrived among all religions on this CENTRAL POINT, it itself could start a new religion sans different dogmas and belief systems- a SPIRITUALITY without religions !
( please see our work on such a sensible predisposition at links: http://patternsofapproachtodiscoverreality.blogspot.in/, http://thewhyquestionofexistenceanswered.blogspot.in/)
If the contemporary world proceed in the direction of propagating such a universal spirituality, not in any particular religious sense but as an essential personal discipline of every child and grown-up person, it will gain much in the way of avoiding religious based hatred, violence and wars. Citizens would then be lesser exploited by political entities in the world for their dubious number games. It might also end the dangerous hold of religious leaders and institutions upon human communities. Instead, every religion could encourage its followers to be simply spiritual, leaving divisions and conflicts in the name of life-style and ritualistic differences.
Such a development in Spirituality would boost man's ever-adored individuality that got lost once again in the post-enlightenment period of political and industry hegemony; though enlightenment era had originated the concept and value of individual-dignity, the unfortunate emergence of economic and political institutions in the post-liberal era had once again trapped man and his individual relevance in the same old Feudalism era kind of servitude. New economic and political institutions never found needing a truly sovereign individual citizen, but groups that easily fall for powerful political slogans, and/or inevitable necessities of physical survival. Power of the new States and the equal Power of the new economic masters of the world have compelled human-beings and societies once again to seek-out old religious identities !
Authored by:
Abraham J.Palakudy,
An independent philosophy,Mind& Reason,spirituality and polity researcher,seeker and writer.
Twitter: voice of philosophy@jopan1
