The Hallmark of Perfect Spirituality

Spiritual life starts with Sadhana - regulated practices under the guidance of an authentic spiritual teacher for purifying the mind and increasing our attachment to the Supreme. In it's maturity, spiritual life goes beyond regulations into the realm of constant spontaneous engagement. Regulation is required to deliberately engage the mind in spiritual ways when the mind is not completely spiritualised. But when the mind is fully attached to the supreme, it never wanders into non-spiritual or anti-spiritual thoughts.

Ironically, the spiritually perfect people never shun their regulations thinking that they have gone beyond them and become perfect. This is because spiritual perfection is symptomised by extreme humility where one thinks oneself as the most incompetent spiritualist.

Being humble, the true spiritualist has eternal gratitude for the spiritual master and continues to follow the regulations laid down by him, never thinking that he can ever go beyond them. This also sets the proper example for others.

On the other hand, an imperfect spiritualist falls prey to his mind and ego's desires to become perfect and starts thinking that he has become perfect. So he artificially leaves spiritual regulations and starts living by the dictations of the mind thinking himself to be beyond regulations. This causes other immature people to shun regulations as well and lead an arbitrary lifestyle falsely thinking that it is spiritual.

The most fundamental and essential regulation of spiritual life is to chant the Holy Names of God under the guidance of an authentic spiritual teacher. By garnering all our humility, we should take time out, sit at one place, and daily chant the Holy Names on a rosary (chanting beads) a fixed minimum number of times. During chanting, we should not let our mind wander to anything else. Taking exclusive time out daily for chanting and chanting specifically on beads sitting at one place as instructed by the spiritual teacher are expressions of desire to become a humble servant of the Holy Name. Our spiritual advancement and sustenance depends almost wholly on our sincerity and humility in chanting the Holy Names.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

In this world, spiritual perfection is not about being regulation-less. The mark of a true spiritualist is that he not only follows spiritual practices sincerely, but also dedicates his life to the spiritual upliftment of all others. This spontaneous intense compassion for others, in the specific form of teaching spiritual life to others or setting the perfect example of humility, merely as an instrument of the spiritual teacher and God, is the hallmark of a perfect spiritualist.

Proud of being Wrong

Many times we do what we do, not because it's the best option, but only because our mind craves for it. What's more, choosing the sub-optimal option makes us feel independent - why should I follow someone else's opinion? I am free to choose my way of life. I will decide for myself - always. Thus, it's just egotism that controls our decisions, not timeless wisdom. And we are proud of it.

This false sense of ego and bloated sense of importance about one's own opinion makes us deaf to any principles that are higher than the ones we currently follow. Tragically, we even deride higher principles because they don't comply to our own sense of right and wrong.

It takes a humble disposition to open our minds to sincerely try to understand potentially higher principles even if they go against our current sensibilities.

Do you have the courage to change, no matter what age you are?

The Bhagavad Gita - Fundamental Vedic Principles

The Bhagavad Gita is the essential summary of all Vedic literature. To follow a message that is not supported by the Bhagavad Gita is like rejecting fundamental Vedic principles. Do that at your own risk.

Giving Respect

Expecting respect from others, even subtly, burdens our heart and complicates our lives. Giving all respects to others, no matter who it is, lightens our heart and simplifies our lives.

Quality of Living

Life is about what you do daily, not about where and in which condition you are.

Conditions of life, e.g. how much money you have, where your house is, how you look, your social stature, your job, etc. are all external. You might not have full control on these externals.

But what you do daily in all conditions of life reflects your internal state and the quality of your life.

Standard of living and quality of living are two different things. The former is an index of the conditions of life, while the latter is about what you do in life.

Beyond a certain point, increase in the standard of living ceases to bring in any improvements in life's quality. And yet the whole world seems to be impressed by and running after high living standards.

A worthy purpose shoots up the quality of our life. It guides our daily activities, values, and commitments. It minimises the position of standard of living from our minds.

The higher our purpose, the higher the quality of life. A purpose about something that is ultimately temporary can't be the highest. Embrace the eternal, and live life fully.

Keep the Faith

Most humans do not vehemently deny the existence of God. Most of even those who want to stay away from talks about God don't actively speak against God. Of course there are some who are vehement.

As a human being who has not started taking active interest in God, but who is not vehemently opposed to Him, it's a good practice to avoid hearing or doing things that retards one's faith in God. Faith in God only helps if it rests on a proper philosophical understanding that shuns both sentimentalism and fanaticism.

With our hearts open, gradually, drop by drop, enriched with life experiences, our enhanced faith will usher us into taking an active interest in God and His sublime teachings.

Why deny ourselves the most inspiring of all human experiences? Keep the faith.

Life Before Death

Life After Death is a popular topic with varying opinions about its possibility. But what about life before death? What characterizes life? The answer to this question heavily influences our opinion about the possibility of life after death. And in fact, it decisively influences our definition of death too.

If life is just about pumping of the heart and activity of the brain, then absence of these two can be called death. But life is more than the functioning of an electro-chemical mechanical system; life is about consciousness – about thinking, feeling, desiring. Life is about the ability to perceive. Consciousness is what differentiates a man from a machine, a live human from a dead one.

No characteristic of matter (atoms, molecules, electrons, etc.) suggests that it can be the source of consciousness or the seat of perception. What, or who is it, that perceives or is conscious? For example, a periscope helps me see beyond a high wall, but I can see not because of the periscope, but because I have eyes that can see. The periscope is merely the medium through which the light rays are reaching my eyes. Similarly, the eyes of my body are merely the arrangements of atoms that allow light to pass through. I see what I see, not because of the atomic arrangement of my eyes, but because I have the ability to perceive and make sense of the incoming light.

That I is the soul. I can see, hear, feel, think, will, etc. only because I (the soul) have these abilities. These perceptive abilities that characterize consciousness are the inherent qualities of the soul. Since matter does not have these abilities, we understand that the soul is unlike matter. The soul is non-material, it is spiritual.

The soul does not depend on matter for its fundamental abilities of perception. In fact, its fundamental abilities to perceive are conditioned by the nature and state of the body that it occupies. For example, going back to the periscope example, how well I can see beyond the high wall depends on how clean the lens of the periscope is. Even if my eyesight is perfect, a dirty lens will hamper my perception. Thus, to define life in terms of a pumping heart and an active brain is like defining eyesight in terms of the condition of the periscope. Just like my fundamental ability to see is not dependent on the periscope, the soul does not depend on the body for any of its fundamental abilities.

Since the soul, characterized by consciousness, does not depend on anything that makes up the body while it’s in the body, we understand that the soul does not need the body for its existence. The body is merely a lump of matter; it is always dead. Life is when a soul occupies a body and animates it; death is when the soul moves on to leave behind a dead lump of matter – the body.

Life exists not because of a functioning body, but despite being in an inherently dead body. If life exists even before death, it definitely can exist after death.