Gaurav Ojha

Thoughtful Musings on Humanism & Spirituality

Gaurav Ojha

Everyday Spirituality

With the abundance of spiritual leaders, groups and their publications, the concept of spirituality has become an integral part of our collective psyche. However, most often, I find this term overused, misused, confused and even utterly commercialized.

After all, these days, spirituality is not something available without generous contributions; all the spiritual relief available in the market has a price tag stitched around it. Hence, spirituality has become an industry operating with a consumer culture, packaging spiritual exercises in such a way that they are attractive enough for those with a certain purchasing power.

Likewise, our familiar assumption associates spirituality with becoming a member of a spiritual sect, listening to spiritual teachers, blindly following their instructions and assertions or with reading spiritual matters regularly. However, I usually try to find the meaning of spirituality away from these appearances as I have come to realize that human spirituality is not something isolated from our everyday life. Spirituality is a part and parcel of our being in the world, and it is not just about giving up on life and growing some facial hair.

After all, being spiritual is all about experiencing life with utmost intensity and passion, while at the same time embracing all the recklessness of human life amidst all the paradoxes of our existence. Even etymologically, the word spiritual comes from a Latin word meaning ‘to breathe’, hence it is associated with air, or, in a more subtle sense, with being a free spirit – those who dare to move beyond their traditional beliefs and celebrate their freedom.

Hence, spirituality has nothing to do with our faith in the supernatural being, some mystical figure or believing in baseless myths and taboos collected from religious texts. Rather, spirituality is an art of maintaining harmony between our subjective life and with the everyday realities that we encounter as our lived experiences.

Moreover, the calmness, joy, harmony, creativity and peace I experience while reading Chekhov, walking around in the woods with friends, gazing at the stars or playing the guitar add spiritual meaning to my life more than anything else. Besides, I have learned to celebrate my spirituality within my ordinary everyday practices of writing poetry, gardening, explaining stories, humor, reading, debating with my father and helping my mother in the kitchen. And these little things nurture, nourish and refresh my inner life as I touch my connectedness with other beings and nature.

Hence, for me, spirituality means to embrace and engage fully with our everyday life and to celebrate our transient human existence in every ounce and with all its energy. After all, nothing can be more spiritual than to breathe in a world already overflowing with life, rhythm, sense of wonder, beauty and mystery.

Yes To Life

Being a one-world and one-life person, I don’t like to think of my life as a rehearsal or a preparation for something better, behind or beyond this world that awaits me after I die. As a biological creature, I know, I am not going to be here forever. Hence, before death removes my character from this world, I want to play my part, become more conscious of this world and its exhilarating beauty, pursue knowledge, understand myself better and improve my character.

And, finally, when this brief drama of my life comes to its close, I wish to depart from the stage without leaving behind a sack full of burden, guilt or regret.

Human life is utterly transient. Hence, my life is only a brief spark in this vast universe, and soon the spark I am carrying will flutter and fade away. But as long as the spark lasts, I have promised myself to carry on with my passionate commitment to taste all the impulses of life in its utter recklessness.

I have come to realize that I am part of a universe that is utterly unpredictable and indifferent to human concerns; however, I can’t remain indifferent because for me my life, my search for knowledge and especially my relationships with other people really matter to me. Life has been unfair to me many times, and there are those usual days of languid confusions and vast sorrows, but I keep up with my constant solace knowing that the universe lives its life with me.

Moreover, human life is rather plotless. And, with all the tumbling experiences of life bubbling around us, we might feel that our human life is utterly meaningless without the presence of another world or an afterlife beyond this world. Similarly, we imagine a supernatural being that constructs and directs the narrative of our lives. And we also like to project unscientific, superstitious and meta-physical beliefs like destiny, laws of karma, sins of past-life, God’s will or grace, damnation and predestination to make meaning out of our lived experiences.

However, our life only appears to be meaningless only if we consider the source of meaning to be outside of us. Whereas, our life is a continuous dichotomy of joy and sorrow, gain and loss, presence and absence, perfections and follies put together in a single package. Human life has poured itself out from this world, and it also passes away here. Hence, to live, enjoy and understand our human life authentically, without mere pretensions, prejudices and projections, we need that courage to say yes to life in all its shades and shadows and also embrace its utterly transient, random, unpredictable and contingent nature.

Waking Up

Many people are languidly happy with their religious beliefs, superstitions, hollow and insensitive rituals, hence it’s rather difficult and at times even dangerous to challenge and question their unscientific and irrational assumptions about human nature, human life on earth, laws of nature and about the mysterious universe. Therefore, I must confess, it’s not easy being a naturalist, humanist, free thinker, skeptic or non-religious in a culture context where many people take the concepts of spirituality, religious values, beliefs system, rituals, myths, astrology and the esoteric ideas like reincarnation, liberation and salvation for granted without ever doubting or making an inquiry over their validity.

Our universe is outside-less, and we human beings are finite creatures placed against a vast, infinite and mysterious universe.  I find it rather ridiculous to believe that we get thrown into the infinity of additional existence judged from our less than a century of human life we spent in this tiny speck of dust among millions of galaxies dancing in the sky. We human beings like to expand the briefness of human life with the concept of eternal life because we are still too afraid to confront our mortality. Without our fear of death and nothingness, it seems rather unconvincing to argue and believe that our finite human existence and its experiences, errors, memories, imaginations, actions and reactions, choices and decisions have those lingering impacts that last infinitely.

There is only this flux of life and nothing else apart from the sparkling sensations of being alive. I find myself living in an ever-changing world that is vibrant and alive. For those people who wait for eternal realms, heavens, Shangri-La, mystical worlds, paradise and other spiritual planets after their death, human existence may appear less meaningful to them than their ultimate destination. However, I recognize my death as my final destination. Hence, for me, the journey of my life is far more meaningful, exciting, vital and vibrant than my destination.

As a finite being, I want to live my life with utmost care, joy, gratitude, creativity, courage and understanding, as I find little pieces of delights that keep on pouring out from the immediate experiences of my life. There is always music, dance and poetry in the organic rhythm of life. Whether it’s paradoxical, complex, confusing, mysterious, painful, unknown or overwhelmingly beautiful, nothing can be as delightful as to wake up from the slumbers of our self-conscious delusions, to express our thoughtful love for actual life and to be alive, here and now.

Self-Realization

My quest towards understanding the concept of self-realization ran along circles of debates, discussions and doubts before I read the writing of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Before my encounters with the works of J. Krishnamurti, I also used to think of self-realization as a spiritual experience of the inner spirit or soul that culminated in the eternal spiritual quest of a seeker. And, as a free thinker with my non-theistic world-view, I was always a bit skeptical of all those ideas that relate self-realization with inner spiritual awakening.

However, J. Krishnamurti’s insights on self- realization emancipates the concept of self-realization from the narrow dimensions of significance it derives from religious dogmas, spiritual exercises, mystical experiences of spiritual seekers, and from spiritual masters, gurus, saints, sages and their esoteric interpretations.

With the radical insights from his works, I have come to realize that it is utter nonsense to think that one can know one’s self significantly, completely and fully, through isolation, exclusion, through regular practice of some kind of spiritual exercise and introspection in some solitary state away from all the hustles and bustles of life.

Similarly, it is not at all necessary to be a religious or a spiritual person, practice renunciation, give up your social life, live in caves and monasteries, and perform ascetic rituals regularly to comprehend the notion of self-realization.

To put it in the words of J. Krishnamurti, self-knowledge is a process, not an end in itself or a conclusion; and to know oneself, one must be aware of one’s actions and reactions in one’s relationships. Further, he argues that you discover yourself not in isolation, not in withdrawals, but in relationships: in your relationship with society, your wife, your brother, your mother, friends and family, and with other beings. Hence, self-realization is neither a spiritual achievement nor an isolated mystical experience; rather it’s an endless process of learning and re-learning where one becomes aware of one’s own self in relationship with others. Therefore, it’s nothing more than a self-illusion or ego-trip to transform your identity, take up a spiritual title and boast one-self as a self-realized person.

Besides, nothing exposes us wide open than our relationships. Our relationships provide us a mirror to observe our being along with its pretensions, denials, fantasies, inner torments, selfish desires and unconscious motives, inner insecurities and repressions by allowing us to see the projections of these hidden aspects of our inner lives in our relationships.

Hence, it’s our relationships, how we relate with our self and with others, and how we unveil our thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions in our dialogues and encounters with others that truly allows to us discover, acknowledge and understand ourselves better than any form of spiritual exercise, solitary meditation or religious escapism.

A Humanist’s Perspective

From a humanist’s perspective, as individuals, we human beings are free, capable and creative enough to think for ourselves, live a life of reason, value, compassion and character, and make our individual life meaningful with our aspirations, choices, commitments, engagements and struggles. For this reason, humanism is an all-inclusive philosophy and a non-judgmental way of life that encourages, respects, celebrates and tolerates differences of human thoughts, expressions, subjective tastes, alternative lifestyle, worldviews and opinions.

For a humanist, it is not necessary for everybody else in this world to be like him, think and talk like him or even follow his way of life as absolute. Hence, a humanist happily embraces the diversity in human expressions and also empathizes with the paradoxes of human nature without any fear, suspicion, prejudice, contempt or hatred.

Moreover, from a humanist’s perspective we human beings are distinct individuals with our unique ways of being in the world, and our human lives can truly flourish when we create social, political and human conditions where an individual has the utmost freedom to think for himself and to live his life in his own terms which is neither harmful to him nor to the people around him.

Hence, we humanists are critical of all those absolutisms and ideologies, including both religious and secular, that tend to undermine and stifle the freedom of thought, natural impulses, appetites, plurality, rationality, critical thinking and creativity.

Also, humanism insists that the tremendous progress we have made in both empirical and social sciences explains the mysteries of the cosmos and the realities of human life in a far better way than any religious revelation, communal myth or even personal narratives. Besides, humanism suggests that there is nothing beyond, better or besides this world for us human beings. Hence, this world is all that there is and it’s more than enough.

Moreover, contrary to what many people think, humanism is not an amoral system of living.  A moral outlook of a humanist is based upon reason, respect, dignity, empathy and responsibility he shares with all his fellow beings. Therefore, it’s not surprising that most of our ethical outlooks that have become an integral part of our modern values like freedom of speech, inclusiveness, tolerance, gender equality, social justice, human rights, minority issues, anti-racism, non-discrimination and the respect for people with different sexual orientations share its roots in the works of freethinkers, moral philosophers, humanists and progressive social reformers.

Hence, being a humanist is an ethical commitment in itself to struggle for the greater good, progress, justice, fulfillment and freedom so that we can make this world a better place for each other together.

Gaurav Ojha is a faculty of communication; critical thinking and marketing research at different educational institutions. He can be reached at ojhagaurav84@gmail.com