All of us subsist on a physical plane; we cannot do without the basic needs; we crave for more wealth, more possessions, more acquisitions; but the intelligent ones among us know that wealth and possessions cannot really make us happy. We are fascinated by the rare moments in our life when we are filled with awe, wonder and a sense of mystery that send our spirits soaring. We know that none of these finer feelings can be captured by a materialistic way of life!
In the past, the distinction between spirituality and the workaday world was so sharp that people renounced the world and worldly activities to contemplate on the higher things of life. But today, the boundaries have blurred.
All of us are concerned about our inner life; we all crave for a sense of peace and harmony that is central to our being. We may not want to renounce the world to find that elusive peace; but we are ready and willing to spend some time focussing our attention on the rich interior world that is within us.
Spirituality, like faith, is a very personal concept. Atheists deny it; agnostics speculate about it in a detached manner; I do believe that there are thousands of people who practice some form of spirituality in their daily lives — through inner reflection, contemplation or even through silence and service — without actually codifying their behaviour. In this sense, spirituality is a means to an end; and this ‘end’ or ‘goal’ may also vary from person to person. In our Hindu way of thinking, the highest goal is the goal of Liberation - freedom from the eternal cycle of birth, death, rebirth.
The purpose of human birth is to free ourselves from this vicious cycle. Freedom is breaking away from bad habits, addictions and wrong attitudes; freedom is conquering the lower self; freedom is the ability to rise to the highest level of consciousness and the purest level of thought that we, as human beings, are capable of! It is this level, this height of awareness that we reach when we follow Sri Krishna’s profoundly simple, yet powerful advice in the Gita: “Whatever you do, whatever you eat or pray, do it as an offering unto Me!”
Spirituality is as simple as this: Let all our thoughts and words and deeds be an offering unto the Lord!
Dada J P Vaswani is a humanitarian, philosopher, educator, acclaimed writer, powerful orator, messiah of ahimsa, and non-sectarian spiritual leader
