The Spirit Of Spirituality: Spiritual Progress

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Spiritual Progress

This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.

The Spirit Of Spirituality

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As we progress on the spiritual path, many of us get a nagging doubt. Is this a worthwhile effort? How do I measure whether I am making progress on the path? What benefit am I getting out of this endeavor? Let me try to address this issue.

As indicated earlier, the main objective of spiritual practice is to attain Brahman or Immortal bliss. But knowing that this is an intense practice which can last several births for the “ego”, in this current world of instant gratification, how do I convince myself that I am making progress? When I am driving from New York to Boston, as the exits change, I know I am making progress. But if I am traveling sitting on a snail’s back, how will I even know the progress? This is the situation in our spiritual journey. The road to spiritual bliss is long and winding and the typical pace of our practice is almost a snail’s pace. So, how do we know the progress?

Since the final goal of spiritual practice is eternal bliss, can we measure our progress by the degree of bliss we are achieving in our day to day life? Before we begin this exercise, let us once again recap, what it is that causes unhappiness. Our familiar enemy, “desire” comes into picture. Owing to an intense desire for objects of this world, be they material, emotional or intellectual, there is a constant turmoil in our lives. As long as we do not have what we crave for, there is unhappiness. If someone or something prevents us from acquiring the object, there is anger. Once we achieve the object of our desire, there is the fear of losing it. So whether we get our object of desire or not, unhappiness is always there. It is important to note that every desire is of two types, a desire to acquire something which pleases and a desire not to have something which does not please.

Let me start off with the basic desire driven by the sense organs. These are the desire to see good objects, listen to good music, smell nice scents, touch smooth and soft objects and taste tasty stuff and concomitantly avoid seeing bad objects, bad music etc. While I would love to see good things, I personally am not bound by the need to see something that pleases me. If I happen to see something I am fine. If I do not see it, it does not matter. I can contrast this behavior with my behavior several years ago. There used to be a serial that came on Doordarshan, the good old Indian TV channel. I used to watch it regularly. Once it so happened, that due to professional reasons I had to travel with a probability that I would miss it. I was cursing my boss for planning this trip. I took a bus to Pondicherry which I was visiting. When I got down, I noticed that if I rush I could just make it for the episode. I told the cab guy to rush to the hotel, checked in and straight switched on the TV for the episode. I had not showered since the earlier day, was hungry. But still that obsessive desire to watch that serial overtook everything else. At that moment, if the power had gone or someone had called, I would probably have gone mad. So compared to those years, I am much more at peace. Seeing or not seeing something I enjoy does not create any major emotion in me. So to that extent, I am partially on my way to bliss since I do not have the desire to see something affecting me in any way. Similarly, once upon a time, I would have shouted at someone who tried to stop me from listening to my favorite Hindi songs on the radio. Today it does not matter even if someone prevents me from listening to what I like. To the extent that these objects of physical desire do not disturb my peace, I am making that much progress on the spiritual path.

Next is the desire at the emotional level. This is the desire to be loved, desire to avoid fearsome situations, desire to get the best for oneself at the cost of others(greed), desire to avoid being happy when someone else is happy(jealousy) etc. We think we love people out of unselfishness. But deep in heart, if we question ourselves, we love others because they give us pleasure. We love our child because being in its company gives us pleasure. We love our family because their presence gives us pleasure. So at any point if we do not get love, we would be disturbed. We have seen situations where if a husband forgets his wife’s birthday, the wife is all upset and is ready almost to divorce. This is the desire to get an emotional object and that is love and when that object is not received, there is anger or unhappiness. When we see a friend who has been like us always, suddenly get a BMW, outwardly, we may show happiness, but deep within, are we not jealous? When something bad happens to someone else, an accident, injury whatever and our child was with them, do we first worry about the injury or harm to the child or be comforted first that our child was not hurt or unwell. Isn’t this in a way, selfishness? Even though another child/wife/husband may have been seriously injured or ill, would my first reaction be sadness for that child or a “wicked” satisfaction that it was not my child/wife/husband? We can claim to have made progress on the spiritual path when we start seeing improvements in the areas mentioned above.

Next, let’s look at objects needed to satisfy our intellectual desires. Intellectual desires include concepts like hierarchy, nation, religion, caste etc. Isn’t it the bane of the world that throughout history, that some people with a desire to prove that their religion is better than any other religion have caused the most unhappiness to themselves and the world? If I belong to religion A and someone speaks ill of the religion, my desire to be happy that I belong to Religion A is being challenged and I drift into anger and unhappiness. In an organization, my desire to be promoted and to move ahead is a burning desire. What happens if I do not get that object of desire? It results in anguish, anger and hatred towards the other person and at the same time unhappiness in me. But in reality what do belonging to a religion or being a senior manager really mean? These are conceptual and are not any physical or emotional objects of desire. But still, not getting these objects causes us intense pain and unhappiness. Only when we get the ability to go beyond the desires of the intellect to be recognized or to be part of a group or be ahead in a hierarchy, will we be at peace.

Thus by tracking our reaction to desires, it should be possible to track our ability to be unaffected by the objects of desire and as a fruit of this disassociation with desire, we can measure whether our happiness and peace has improved or not. No amount of knowledge of the physical world, its sciences, arts, humanities whatever can give us the knowledge towards bliss. It is only spiritual practice that can lead us on the spiritual path and hence on the road to bliss.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.

1. My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality