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The purpose of spirituality is to enable us to grow with the right knowledge about ourselves as well as the world, and to live a life of freedom and fulfillment.

There is a widespread misunderstanding that spiritual study and practice are ‘mystic’ and ‘other-worldly’, and necessary only at the end of our life. But in truth, the purpose of spirituality is to enable us to grow with the right knowledge about ourselves as well as the world, and to live a life of freedom and fulfillment. So, the earlier one takes the spiritual path, the better.

The goal of spirituality is to make us master of the world, by making us master of our own mind and intelligence. Right from birth, each day we become more and more a slave to the objects and the objective situations. Spirituality redeems us from this slavery, enables us to embrace any world situation with poise and unaffectedness.

It is wrong to consider spiritual practices as ‘religious’ in the conventional sense. In fact, Hinduism is neither a ‘religion’ nor any ‘ism’. It represents the thoughts and experiences, discoveries and conclusions, of a civilization on the path of its quest for the ultimate goal of human life as well as the society. And the core of Hinduism is its eternal spiritual wisdom enshrined in the Upanishads. Upanishads are truly the record of experimental discoveries made by our Rishis, the spiritual scientists of India, who researched into the ultimate Reality and discovered our Real Identity.

As the knowledge of Physics, Chemistry, or Mathematics does not depend on whether you are an American, African or Indian, whether you are a Hindu, Christian or Atheist, the knowledge of one’s Real Identity, as revealed in the Upanishads, is also independent of one’s racial, ethnic, and religious identity.

A God-believing person is a believer in his ‘concept of God’. An atheist is also a believer, but in the ‘concept of No-God’. Both of them are believers. They believe in some concept of their mind. This a priori belief stifles their enquiry. A seeker of ultimate Truth should start with no belief. That is why spirituality begins where religion concludes.

Why do we look for a Creator of the world? Because, we find that everything in the world follows ‘causality’. The causality we see all around, makes us think that there must be a ‘Cause’ of the objective universe. But, the same rationality, which compels us to look for a cause behind everything, tells us that the very nature of causality is a never-ending chain, and the ultimate Reality, by definition, has to be beyond causality. Causality works within the ken of duality. But the ultimate Reality must transcend duality.

Or, in other words, there cannot be any ‘objective cause’ behind the objective Universe. Then, how do we proceed to find the ultimate Reality? Is there any truth that transcends ‘Objectude’?

Look within, to discover the transcendental non-dual Self, on which appears the “entire objectude as well as the subjectude”.

So, as one takes to ‘spiritual enquiry’, the focus shifts from the external God to our deepest core within, to our Real Identity. The pursuit becomes one of integration and evolution of our own personality. The truth being about our own Self, a mere theoretical knowledge either from the scriptures or from lectures will not be sufficient. We must discover the truth of our identity ourselves. We must live the truth.

(Courtesy: Bhavan’s Journal – Dec 31, 2015)

– Vicharasethu—Mar 2016

(Published in “Speaking Tree” on 23 Oct, 2024 titled “To seek ultimate truth, start with no-belief”)