BY
A.A.
Abstract:
This
article revises the concept of spirituality
against the light of ancient vedic values at
the one hand and modern natural science at
the other hand. It concludes wellwishing that
this definition according to true time,
loyalty to the celibate, economic austerity
and vegetarian compassion, contributes to the
interest of bringing more personal happiness
in the fist place and will also offer a
broader perspective to a future world
order.
Contents
The
definition of
spirituality
The
essence
The
story of our human
values
Sexual
abstinence
Three
more
values
Natural
time
Spirituality
revised
Hope
for a worldorder
The
definition of spirituality
Many wonder
what spirituality is. What is the definition?
The dictionary (the Merriam
Webster)
will tell you that it is something deeply
religious, something relating to the spirit
and sacred matters. The rest is to them for
you to find out. You are left with questions:
What is religion, is religion the purpose,
the goal, or just the means to the spiritual
end? What do we mean with the word spirit and
what would be sacred? Or what of the sacred
is of real importance? This article tries to
give clear answers to these
questions.
The
essence
Of the
definition of spirituality is first of all
the concept of soul, the not materially to
determine principle on the basis of which we
live, important. It is called the essence of
our being. Spirituality without a soul
doesn't make any sense. The concept of the
soul is used to contrast the human with the
animal interest. If we are not just of animal
interest we might be talking of human values,
of remembrance, of compassion and conscience;
or in one word of the soul. This animal
interest is also called material interest.
Someone pursuing the animal interest is
involved in material actions. In fact this is
the evolutionary beginning of the story of
humanity. Undoubtedly we originated from God.
But what God would that be, that has shaped
this peculiar ape? What happened to us? If we
fail to understand this, we will not be in
touch with our history and therefore be
alienated from the remembrance of what is to
make up for the conscience of the soul.
Therefore: how have we become human in the
first place? The evolutionist will say that
it has happened by natural selection: a
conscientious ape would be more of an
evolutionary success than one without such a
compassionate remembrance. The creationist
will say that we have been created after an
ideal template called God, after the example
of a Lordship that descended from heaven to
redeem us from our sins. Of course both are
right. The vedic scriptures confirm this, but
the ideal template is not of any specific
form. To the Hindu the Lord can take the form
of a fish (Matsya) or a boar (Varaha), He can
be the sun and sungod, the moon or the
celestial sky, He can have a human form or a
spiritual form like a Vishnu with four arms.
As such we are created not as a form but as a
spirit. The template is not about form, the
template for the essence of our spirituality
is an ideal spirit. If we would be turtles
with the ability to speak and manipulate
matter, we would have had the same questions
and answers (In fact the tortoise is part of
the vedic make up). Seen this way the
controversy about the creationist or
evolutionist view of our origin is of less
importance.
If the
question is where the ideal of the spirit
comes from, the question is much more easy to
answer: from our suffering in the material
world, whether we are turtles or apes, we
know of the desire not to suffer. And that
desire shapes our minds into what we call the
spirit of God, the Holy spirit or the mind of
idealism that any materialist knows to call
an illusion after the newest disappointment
about material endeavors. And that is the
God, the spirit and the ideal that molded us
into what we are now. Our present state
though is not one of clarity: the world is
confused and uncertain about its survival and
cultural future. Are we going downhill or
will we rise from the ashes of our gruesome
experiences of war and social decay? Many
still have the question whether the soul,
that leading ideal of human values, really
exists at all. Many still see from the
evolutionary point of view the social
darwinist concept of society only: to belong
to the survival of the fittest with a necktie
and an automobile is the reality. The
question remains: why do we see our selves in
animalistic opposition beyond the rational
control as depicted above? Why don't we have
a worldorder that is founded on an
integral
vision of our historic and present human
reality.
Again the answer must be sought in the
direction of the definition of soul that
guarantees our human values: only a conflict
about these values can be able to obscure a
clear vision of the future. Only from this
clarity, of not having a conflict at this
foundation in the values of the soul, we can
speak of an enlightened spirituality and
liberated society.
The
story of our human values
Sexual
abstinence
From the
evolutionary point of view we have begun as
apes. Normal fruit eating Adams and Eves (or
Lucy's) in the paradise of natural time. We
had no sexual complexes and did not repress
or deny our natural being: we were unashamed
as any ape is, making for public sexual
dominance in a social hierarchy, sharing food
and territory pacifying with other species
(except for a bout of a-vitaminose motivated
killing), never being worried about any
intoxication with tobacco or alcohol. Thus
was our paradise, religious people as well as
scientists agree about. Except for the sexual
dominance the rational human being will
subscribe to this concept of an ideal
society. Many see sexual regulation as the
mark of humanity while just as many recognize
the sexual frustration as the great evil that
has created the horror called warfaring
manhood. Historical psychoanalysis concluded
that for sure our problems relate to sexual
trauma, whether we have too much of it (a
fixation in perversion) or not enough of it
(a neurosis in cultural hysteria). But
religiously sex is not the dominant theme at
all. The grace of the religion would cover
the sexual as well as the asexual human
being. Legitimate sex can be considered holy
(there are official christian saints with
offspring). The teachings of God and soul are
always about compassion with the fellow man
(or animal), loyalty to the community (and
the marriage partner), about speaking the
truth and about sharing possessions.
The
abstinence of sex is the way we chastise us
for the sake of this societal religious and
soulful concept of health. The school works
that way, but the community of people who are
supposed to have graduated from it (or by it)
live in sexual liberty (as far as hygiene
permits). Classically we counter our troubles
of management and futurology with the
traditional chastisement: no sex and foolish
infatuations of love until we have our clear
vision back. Back to school and the
'drawingboard' if we didn't turn out to have
our lessons learned. But after all of this
classically chastising us with sexual
abstinence we may wonder: is this the only
and the proper strategy of attaining to
knowledge? Sure it works in some way,
although the religious examples are just as
well of sex (with the Hindu's and Muslims) as
of abstinence (the Christians and Buddhists).
Psychoanalysis pointed out that civilization
is much of sexual sublimation (if not
frustration). Sex gives us the awareness of
the duality of first non-subliminal man and
woman and later subliminal knowledge of
celibate loyalty as opposed to sexual
attachments and their mind and motivation.
Seeing the problems of the world this way
only solved half (or better: for a quarter),
we must conclude that we might have
overlooked some other strategies of
chastisement into the true intelligence of
paradise.
Three
more values
Going back
to the theme of ape-paradise, we see two, or
in fact three other natural disciplines that
would apply for the status of schoolish
chastiser next to the sexual theme of
knowledge through duality and sublimation. We
know that monasteries going to the limit of
chastisement, also practice to the vow of
poverty for the sake of sharing in a
community. That is one value of paradise.
Also the ape shares in community (although he
doesn't really have the capacity to create
the possessions he would have to share apart
from territory, and tends to keep the women
all for himself as a leader). The second
lesson to learn from our 'ancestors' is that
of pacifying as a vegetarian with other
species (and greater nature). Before humanity
developed its culture of status divisions and
vocations becoming an agricultural civilized
society we were predators: hunters and
collectors. In fact the culture is still
pretty much predator minded always hunting
for the loot of commercial profit and chasing
the woman for sexual gratification. The
hunter is our second identity (next to the
religious one which it is supposed to
control). Television shows an abundance of
crime-stories and other digestive personal
drama about this predator nature of the human
being (and we do not watch it because we long
for it). Our complete concept of sanity and
health is in fact thwarted by it: we think
ourselves healthy thinking like cats and
dogs, meanwhile suffering all kinds of
'welfare' diseases because our primate
ape-bodies are not really built for it. The
dentist constantly has to repair our teeth
since they are not really fit for this kind
of predator digestion and acid saliva. The
doctor has to cut away and radiate cancerous
growths losing control over our genetic
program of cel-management (if it is not our
body temperature in a flu).
The
predator program is not ours. We have other
teeth and longer intestines just like the
apes. Biologists assure us: we are primates,
not really predators. We only have the
capacity to imitate predator behavior as well
as the moral right of killing the way the
predators do. But that is not our real
nature, our philosophy of the paradise in
which we are very well capable of staying
healthy with dairy products, beans, cereal,
vegetables and fruits. It is, apart from
simply easy (but too complex) proteins, more
of an anxiety neurosis with the trauma of
vegetarian inferiority complexes facing the
threats of predation (see also The Bible).
Our primal motive is fear: we do not want to
be eaten or even be threatened by predators.
The meateater is afraid of losing his
strength (read: his agression). And answering
to that threat we have become the threat
ourselves: now the fellow human being is the
predator, the murderer and the thief we have
to fear. The original threat is overcome long
ago: all lions are in prisons (zoo's) or in
reservates. They hardly exist anymore. So why
continue with this neurosis? Do we like the
killing? Are we addicted to violence and the
excitement of stealing and breaking the law
(to speed up the digestion of meat in our
vegetarian-long intestines). This cannot be
the formal belief and policy. And there is
still another practice and value of paradise
that has not been covered by laws (and
'medicine') against theft and murder and
practices of religious sexual abstinence and
sharing of possessions.
Natural
time
This fourth
natural value, so basic to the history of
human values, is the one of the truth of the
natural timing of the ape society: the apes
do not need calendars and clocks. The
inscrutable mystic and
sacred
time
of nature that would be God Himselves
according many philosophical accounts and
religious sloka's is the time that
conditioned the ape for his paradise. As the
sociologist prof.
K .
formulated:
"Sacred time involves the collapsing of
the past, present, and future into an eternal
now in order to, in part, allow heroics of
the past be continuously part of the sacred
present. Profane time is time as
wear-and-tear, time as decay and
death."
The biblical fall into sin, having eaten the
apple from the tree of knowledge, very well
might have been the first knowledge of a
timescale derived from the gnomon of a
primitive sundial. The sin in this case would
be the fixation of and attachment to a scale:
an image of God was created, 'a golden calf
of economy' and worshiped against the truth
that God is life and change (or a person or
prophet), the real mystic of subjective
inscrutable time Himself. This was called
primal sin as man realized that civilization
without an agreement on time is not possible.
Thus shame was born, since no fixation of
time could ever hold or could be called
absolute, and thus the necessity of religion
was born that had to exercise the revival of
human selfrespect on the schemes of the then
religious called time not to pick the fruit
of the tree any longer on the Ides of the
lunar month or the sunday of the gregorian
calendar. In fact the natural of time was
called the truth or the true, and figured for
the criterion of truth, not just by the
religious lunar calendars, but also by
scientists studying the stars and the
planetary movements. True sidereal time and
true suntime make up the times of the sundial
and the passage of stars over the longitude.
Later on it also was called apparent, as the
mean (local or zonal) time we could really
perceive on clocks wasn't really the true
time it appeared to be in nature. This shift
from natural values to cultural-political
values defined modern consciousness ever
since the
julian reform in the year 689 AUC of the
Roman
calender,
short before (46 years) the descend of the
christian Lord that had to counter the then
considered false authority of local priests
and roman dictators.
Humanity
had lost touch with the natural order of time
as it could not decide between the sungod and
the moongod. What would we need: a moon
calendar unstable to the seasons or a solar
calendar with a weekorder that did not longer
align to the ancient natural 'fasti' (roman
legal days for fruitive action) -order of the
lunar calendar? We fell back into the school
of personalistic ordering with its
chastisement and confusions about how it
really was and should be. How much money
should be offered to the priests? Would the
emperor (or Führer) be a God fit for
worship? Confusion all around as well as many
wars and reforms of the state and religion
later on ensued: polytheism is wrong,
monotheism is good, nobility is bad and the
republic is good, mooncalendars are bad and
suncalendars are good. All kinds of political
local controversy and fugues rose and found
wars according international oppositions.
Many of the modern wars were accompanied by
manipulations of the time-system as the one
who would have the power also would determine
the time with his own signature of ego. Roman
emperors tried to make it a tradition to name
the number of the month to their own name
(hence the month August). Thus the calendar
became a feat of the ego in doubtful respect
for the discipline of the soul or the facts
of science. The timesystem became a monster
of repression and denial in egotistical
opposites against the founder of Rome (once
worshiped as the God Quirinus) and its first
lunar calendar and against the Caesar the
dictatorial reformer of it. The emperor of
August changed (by commitment of his
respectful senate) the 30/31 regularity of
the julian calendar and later on the
gregorian reform of the catholic rule changed
the leaping tradition which was defied by
russian orthodoxy (see also Sun
Moon and the World
Order).
There is no
general religious agreement about respecting
the dynamic God of change. There is dispute
over fixations. The gregorian fixation is
also a temporary fix that needs correction
(after 2.500 years for one day) and thus is
it also to be recognized as one of the same
sins in the series called primal. The theory
of relativity of modern physics that declared
an absolute of time fictitious was considered
as too intelligent and had no real practical
societal and political conclusion in its wake
(apart from maybe alternating summertime with
wintertime). Nor could religion promote
further reform as it is simply 'of the beast'
to impose another time beyond the will (not
to be confused with the consent) of the
people, making that 'better' time in fact as
secret as the old lunar calendar was to the
common people of Rome in the old lunar days
of our
calendar
history.
The only right decision would be to hold on
to the firm decision to confess
against the false absolutes of whatever
fixation for the sake of regular correction
(penance). At the other hand all existing
fixations should be considered equal of value
(or equally false) although some are more
egoistic and others more logical. As with sex
the consciousness we need is that of the
duality of natural time against cultural time
or that of one timeculture against another.
That duality could give us the consciousness
and stability - or option for stability -
that would give us a vision of a new world
order of agreement about that duality and
necessity of eternal selfcorrection and
confession to the relative and dynamic of
Gods creation.
Spirituality
revised
Therefore,
in consideration of all this historical
rumination about the values of the soul, what
would spirituality really be? Many adhere to
the timeless concept in worship of the
original inscrutable God of time of
ape-paradise. But the other half of mankind
does not hold this concept in respect, and
considers it simply too aloof and escapist to
be taken serious as a lead for a new world
order. Considering the above, the classical
vedic values of truth, purity, austerity and
compassion (satya, sauca, tapa, dâya)
should be revised if we want to progress with
the definition of spirituality. From the
above one can say that truth should be dually
associated with as well the 'timeless' cyclic
concept of (Newtonian) celestial bodies in
their orbit as with the serial
electromagnetic concept of cultured atomic
time for the sake of a reliable and stable
unit of measurement. And for this purpose
indeed one should not have to drink alcohol
or use any other intoxicant. Loyalty to the
celibate (being married or not) should next
be the virtue of purity as no 'dirty game' of
sex should take the lead in settling an order
'of God'. This means that the natural love
for sex can be as free as possible, but that
it cannot rule without respect for the
celibate (like with the ninetees president of
the USA confessing his sins of sex to the
christian commune). Thirdly will paying taxes
for an austerity not suffice as simply the
lack of control over the private possession
of money will never make a world government
that is in control at all (that's one for the
'saints and wise' of economy). In order to be
able to share one will have to be motivated
for the soul and its other values too, which
can be an illusion in the world of material
motives, but might become a reality with
electronically managed money that can be
monitored (and thus be controlled) by
i.t-managers and a government that does
subscribe to this definition of spirituality
and world order. Fourth is the legal care for
social security checks (even if implemented
worldwide) not enough to guarantee a proper
compassionate and righteous, non-violent
world community. Also our predator motive of
outdoing the fellow human (and animal or even
floral) being will have to be revised, if
only out of the practical impossibility of
feeding an ever(?) increasing
worldpopulation.
Hope
for a worldorder
Along the
lines of classical human values as well as
those of natural silence, I hope to have
sufficiently revised the concept of
spirituality. I hope this definition
according to true time-duality, celibate
loyalty, economic austerity and vegetarian
compassion, that is based on the old vedic
and roman values of societal and natural
order, can contribute to the interest of you
as a reader in the first place. It can make
one a better integrated and more happy
individual that ultimately can deliver proof
by societal success and longevity of a really
effective, non-escapist and multiculturally
tolerant concept of soul and world order. Our
God in this, our essence in spirituality, is
nothing but the full potency in all fortune,
and full integrity of all basic visions to
our love of spiritual knowledge or filognosy,
of the purely good witness of consciousness,
fortitude and knowledge that we find within
ourselves when we with meditation and service
hold on to the basic values of truthfullness,
purity, sharing, and nonviolence with all
living beings. We then also realize what the
job is that we to this spiritual cause, this
essence, have to do: time and again to
excorcize from our hearts the devil in
opposition that consists of nothing but the
all too human justification and attachment of
the bad habits of lying, lusting, gambling
and committing violence, that lead into the
egotistical opposition and mutual
selfdestruction that is our
misery.
