Spirituality beyond religion The call of societas generis humani

M Sadagopan *

Listening to sermons, we feel as human beings undergoing a spiritual experience. No. We are, in fact, spiritual beings undergoing human experience, as God’s creations, let us make no mistake about it.

SPIRITUALITY is abstract. To make it more concrete, and in tune with our fractured group dynamics, we reduced it to RELIGION, an ‘opium of the masses’.

To make religion better presentable (?) in tune with our imperfections we cast on ourselves, which demand compromises on principles, we developed values and reduced religion to a set of DOGMAS. And to drive home the undercurrents of the dogmas (and to palpably justify them), we developed stories and anecdotes as part of mythology.

Nothing wrong, per se, about these. Great speakers are good story tellers, since stories drive home messages easier. Problem arises, however, when we get stuck up with the stories. A flair for ‘management messages’ in preference to morals among the intellectual no- dwarfs and social recalcitrants consciously jettisons principles.

Then the religious dogmas degenerate into meaningless RITUALS, like the Ram lila celebration of the Hindus, stoning of evil personified during Haj by the Muslim brethren and the anti-Satanic chorus of the Christian belief.

We perform these rituals without a thought that the demons lie in us (in our human existence as against the Godly nature of our spiritual being) and not to be hounded out from outside! This inward looking self- realization is spirituality. It has no religious from, colour or odour. When our religion, whatever be the faith, is the ‘manifestation of divinity already in man’, it gets upgraded as spirituality.

Among us now when social dynamics is in the pangs of complexities, what with the noise of competition louder than the whisper of conscience, a Nash (in) equilibrium of ‘each one for himself, and devil for all’ leads to an impasse. Peaceful coexistence seeks Pareto Efficiency.

From Knowledge Era we will morph into Wisdom Era, where everyone has to manage himself or herself on the path of moral principles for such peaceful coexistence. Corporate governance and social governance will materialise only when there is individual governance. Science witnessed Hiroshimas and Nagasakis , and religions end(ed) up in wars and inquisitions. The pathway through these turbulences lies in spirituality.

Spirituality, in the context of human existence, is nothing but a win-win social solution, giving everybody space. Wherever there is this geographical unawareness, history shows up war. Life is not to be seen as a zero-sum game.

One’s win should never mean others’ loss. We have unwittingly created this greedy frenzy: ‘winning is a pleasure when the victors are a few’ (to quote a part of my own verse), with our gospel of self-help and a creed of grab.

As individuals, we are lost in this eddy. But collectively we can change the name of the game. We have to, for, pushed to the corner we are in, the shove is the stark reality that either we live together or die together!

A new world order is not absent on the horizon. Peter Drucker, the management guru, lamented that the society is unprepared for a metamorphosis into the Wisdom Era. Albert Einstein, the scientist-philosopher par excellence, moaned, as he succinctly put it, ‘all the astounding inventions of modern science have been acquired at the cost of emptiness of content!’

A new world is still possible for us to create, for, there is peace on the other side of chaos, and it should give us hope. We can hear her breathing in the silence of the night. She only calls for spirituality to permeate every sphere of human indulgence.

Mahatma Gandhi listed seven deadly sins as
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce (business) without morality (ethics),
Science without humanity,
Religion without sacrifice and
Politics without principle.

If we can inject the above shades of spirituality in each sphere, as work in wealth acquisition, conscience in entertainment, character in knowledge exchange, ethics in business, humanity in science, sacrifice in religion and principle in politics, we can effectively answer the call of the new world and transform without catastrophe.

If only we can regroup ourselves as societas generis humani (society of the whole human race), united by spirituality from being divided by religion, we can set aside the pangs of the present complexities, taking it as the birth-throes of a better future, which eventually will be “an endless fountain of immortal drink Pouring unto us from the Heaven’s brink”!