SPIRITUALITY:
WHAT IT IS
AND WHAT IT IS NOT
by Jeanine Miller
Basically spirituality is the recognition and
realisation of, and the living in accordance with, the
principle of the unity of all life; the intuitive
understanding of the oneness of life. Life is one but it
manifests through a multitude of appearances, a
marvellous kaleidoscopic pageantry of passing forms.
The whole universe is the throbbing expression; indeed,
the signature of the one life.
It may be difficult for many of us to understand this
basic oneness of life, but such realisation is the very
essence of spirituality, its essential criterion. It cuts
across everything, for everything that man has marked
out as highest—love, compassion, harmlessness, self-
oblivion, harmony, peace, courage, fortitude—derives
from it. It cuts away all bigotry, arrogance, fanaticism,
separativeness, hatred. It implies living in perfect peace
with all; with ourselves as harmonised human beings;
with our environment, the animals, the plants, the whole
earth; most difficult of all, with our brother man. It
implies that we reach out to our brother/sister through
that which we have in common, the very core of our
essential humanity and life. It implies an all-inclusive
outlook, a depth of understanding and love, a grasp of
that inner dimension which makes all things one.
TRANSFORMATION
Spiritual growth begins with transformation, the
complete turning round of our being from an outward
seeking, ego-centred person hankering after wealth,
position, prestige, success or fame, pandering to greed
or ambition, to an inward quest to discover what is
buried in ourselves so deeply that, for the most part, we
are not even aware of it. It is what is lost in ourselves;
what has been called the pearl of great price, or the
Higher Self, that Higher Consciousness that silently
urges us onwards to great deeds of self forgetfulness
for the sake of others (witness, St. Francis of Assissi,
Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi),
to constant betterment, to spiritual achievement. No
outer compulsion, no organised religion or ritual, no
ethics, laws or discipline imposed from outside, no
reading or listening to lecturing can bring this about,
this inner turning round. All these may help in shaping
out our vision or goal, but they cannot bring it about.
Such inner turning round will occur of its own, when
we have grown to maturity, when our heart, our deepest
sensitivity, has been profoundly touched and has grown
capable of changing us, when our understanding has
opened to the deeper dimension of life, to the oneness
of life. It is that inner understanding, from which alone
we grow to maturity, which has to open out, to unfold.
This alone can enable us to touch depth and height
unsuspected by mere intellect, to unfold all expressions
of life in an all-embracing vision, in profound love
which is compassion, to release the wisdom and intuitive
life of the soul.
Religiousness, going to church, performing rituals,
are not spirituality at all. The pageantry and pomp and
beauty of the rites may and do help some people to a
vision of something higher, may and do elevate their
minds, but unless they cleanse themselves of all
selfishness, envy, hatred, conflict, bigotry, self conceit,
and arrogance that characterise most average people,
they will remain exactly the same, that is, unspiritual;
the pomp and pageantry will remain at best a beautiful
palliative, at worst a mere routine. Spirituality concerns
the inner being; leads us to an inner change, a vital
transformation that fundamentally alters the life. To
follow a religion supeficially is not spirituality, but to
understand its depths, for example, that ye love one
another and live accordingly, that is a mark of a growing
spirituality. For the past two thousand years, what have
we done with this greatest of all injunctions? The
Inquisition, the wars of religion, the thousand and one
murders in the name of the God of love, the total
eradication of some races (Tasmanian) or tribes
(American Indians), the enslavement and forcible
removal of Africans to America by Europeans claiming
to be Christians, have made a mockery of the tenets of
Christianity and have shown how human beings at large
are incapable of understanding the basis of spirituality,
let alone acting in accordance with it.
THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
The Gospels are full of parables showing the human
plight and hinting at what is required for spiritual
growth. The story of the rich young man, usually
interpreted literally, portrays a rich man above the
average, who lived an ethical life and performed all his
tasks dutifully, coming to Christ for enlightenment. At
a higher level of interpretation, his wealth implies that
he was rich in his personality equipment, intelligence,
experience and achievement. What else was required,
he asked, to win eternal life? The latter, mystically
understood, refers to that something within us, the pearl
of great price, that inner understanding which, given
the right conditions, may mature and take us into the
spiritual dimension of consciousness. Sell your wealth,
give to the poor, come follow me was the answer. The
literal interpretation falls far short of the deeper
meaning of the parable. Merely to sell your wealth would
do nothing to sublimate desire but on the contrary might
exacerbate it. The inner process which makes us turn
away from worldliness and materialism, from hankering
after success and fame—and all that sensationalism
which at the present time, marks our civilisation—from
the glittering accomplishment of personality, and
sublimate all desires to an ultimate desire for the higher,
is here in question. Sell your wealth is an outward q
symbol of this inner transformation, but the rich young
man had not yet reached the stage of sublimation of
desire and of willingness to lay aside the pigmy self.
Once this process is underway, then personality
attainment may or may not be an asset, but it no longer
stands in the way and the human being is free to give
himself wholly to the higher call. He has no more
worldly ambitions. Follow me implies that opening of
one’s self to the deepest aspect which we call the Higher
Self, which in the Gospels is portrayed as Christ.
There is obviously a need to understand rightly what
spirituality is all about, but most of us are in the same
state of misunderstanding and ignorance as Nicodemus
is portrayed as being. The latter comes to Christ in the
dead of night, an indication of his confused condition.
He judges everything, including the spiritual and
Christ’s actions from the standpoint of the senses. This
standpoint is totally opposed to the spiritual standpoint
which is what Christ is trying to bring forward. The
senses cannot help us, for a mind fed on sense data and
therefore on outward phenomena only, cannot contact
the spiritual, cannot grasp the meaning of the inner
dimension, cannot open out to spiritual truths. In the
story, Christ ignores Nicodemus’ statement that he
believes in Christ because of his miracles, and gives a
subtle hint as to the real spiritual understanding, a hint
which is usually missed: Except a man be born again
he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven (John 3:2). Only
through an inner transformation which amounts to a
new birth or psychological change, can one become
aware of spiritual meaning, not through sense data. This
is once again misinterpreted by Nicodemus who asks
this most ridiculous question: How can a man be born
again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother’s womb and be born? (John 3:4). Christ’s
meaning has nothing to do with anything physical.
Nicodemus embodies our inveterate habit of judging
from the physical standpoint. Once again Christ ignores
the words of Nicodemus and insists that man must be
born of water and of the spirit. Water has a highly
symbolic meaning. It refers to purification, to our facing
the forces of the unconscious, for at one level water
symbolises the unconscious; but it also takes us to the
realm of the higher emotions, mirror of the intuition,
to the Eternal feminine, to the cradle of life. It refers to
that sensitivity which so many of us try hard to repress
but which, when allowed to be and to develop, enables
us to grow into consciousness of the One Life.
METANOIA
Our inner being, the psyche which is the evolving
human entity made up of the sensitive and the conscious
aspects of ourselves, must suffer metamorphosis, or
metanoia, a thorough change, a complete turning about.
This does not mean an addition to what is already there,
but a transformation, like the caterpillar that emerges
out of its chrysalis a completely different creature. Out
of the death or giving up or letting go of that which
holds us back, we come to new life, we are born again,
born to a new dimension of life, a spiritual dimension.
(Note ho~v the fundamentalists have pońnced upon these
words born again and degraded the whole idea!). The
centre of consciousness shifts to another dimension
which alters one’s whole outlook, one’s whole
psychology.
SPIRITUALITY AND i
PERSONALITY
So the standpoint of the personality and that of our
inner being are totally opposed. We cannot grow
spiritually by adding to our personality. The person is a
collection of facets which, first of all, have to be
integrated, and of which the ego is the centre to which
all sensations refer. Persona from which person comes,
means mask. The personality is a mask, but the
personality itself puts on masks. We have, for example,
the professional mask, the social mask, the lecturer.
mask, all sorts of masks. If we put on a mask, we can
also lay it down. Spiritual growth means doing away
with the mask, the discarding of all the layers with
which we cover ourselves to our detriment, all, the
unnecessary trammels we find so necessary; it means
becoming transparent to the indwelling presence, the
very core of our being, that pearl of great price that is
lost in us through having too many masks, too many
layers.
The personality develops by taking or adding to
itself, for example, acquiring knowledge, the social
graces, education, a profession, a status, the spiritual
being unfolds by eliminating, removing what belongs
to the world, discarding worldly achievements. The one
grows through self assertion, competition, separateness,
the other unfolds through self oblivion which leads to
the realisation of oneness These polar opposites are in
us; we have to recconcile them. We have in the child a
typical example of the growth of personality which takes
and makes demands but which as a consequence of
growth and maturity may give way to the spiritual . Thus
the child grows through taking from its environment,
its parents, education, and so on; through assimilation
of what it has taken, it should reach maturity and then
as an adult give back to society what it has taken from
it. To give back is a first step towards spiritual
unfoldment. The meeting point of both personality and
spirituality lies in the maturing of the inner
understanding which grows out of experience, out of
suffering, out of deep feeling, and which changes the
whole being, and brings about real maturity which is
wisdom.
Some people confuse spirituality with psvchism
because both are non-physical. But here again there is
misunderstanding and the mixing of two totally different
states of consciousness. The physical senses have an
inner counterpart which is developed in some people
and not in others and which allows, us to see certain
things which others cannot see; for example, the field
of radiation of all creatures and plants, or to tune in to
others’ needs or states of being, even to know the
motives which animate human beings. Psychic powers
may help us to see more clearly or to help others, but
unfortunately in the average person, they may be more
of a hindrance than an asset. If we have no higher ethics
or humility, we may begin to think that we are superior
to others, impose our knowledge, claim supernatural
powers, and the ego gets more and more inflated. This
is the sad state of affairs with many psychics. Just as an
overdeveloped intellect may completely dry up a human
being so that what is human and humane in him is
eradicated, so the psychic senses may totally unbalance
and ruin a human being who is still average. Psychism
is concerned with separate phenomena and not with the
realisation of the one life. Herein lies the difference
between spirituality and psychism. The tatter does not
emphasise the necessity to hold the ego in check in order
to let the spiritual self shine forth. Spirituality is a state
of being which conduces to selflessness, to the
realisation of the unity of life; hence love, compassion,
forgiveness, patience, harmony, peace, harmlessness. It
stresses the interlinkedness of all, the mode of unity;
everything is seen as part of a whole, as connected with
a whole, as harmonious in that whole.
CRITERIA
That is why the criteria that mark a person as
spiritual are the following:
1. The personality radiates harmony, love and peace,
for these are soul qualities and only an integrated
personality in communion with its innermost being, and
therefore a soul-infused personality, can radiate such
qualities. It is whole.
2. There is always a calm background to all the activities
of the person and a great sense of justice and
compassion.
3. The pairs of opposites which torment men such as
gain-loss, success-misfortune, pain-pleasure no longer
hold their grip on the person; nor can he be subject to
neuroses-psychoses, anxieties. Nothing can have power
to disturb his inner equanimity and serenity; for he lives
in another dimension of consciousness.
4. Theory and practice have become one; to know the
Wisdom is to live the life of wisdom.
5. Disinterested, spontaneous service is always the result
of true soul contact; service is an outstanding
characteristic of the soul and has nothing to do with
the busy-bodies and do-gooders who work from the
separative personality standpoint, and not from the all-
inclusive soul viewpoint. The spirit of inclusiveness
marks a person as spiritual. His motives are pure because
selfless. This obviously precludes all narrow-minded
attitudes, bigotry, clannishness, sectarianism and
fanaticism.
As Sri Ram wrote in Thoughts for Aspirants:
Spirituality is a quality of the innermost being,
which permeates the whole realm of one
consciousness...
The spiritual man is one who has transcended
the play of opposites and has integrated him-
self Because of his wholeness, he can meet
each one with the whole of his being. Each
thing he takes into his consciousness becomes,
in its inner nature, one with himself
THE ULTIMATE GOAL
The ultimate goal of the spiritual life is to live a
life of altruism guided by That within us which is the
infinite. The spiritual life is a moment to moment
consecration of our whole being to that hidden spark
which was lost in us but has been found; a constant
hearkening to what Sufis have called the Divine Hint,
those inner promptings that drive us to deeds of self-
forgetfulness, of valiance and love, of creative beauty,
to deeds of perfect service; building a world of harmony;
a hearkening to what others have called the voice of
the silence. Silence is the greatest homage man can pay
to that indwelling presence which he senses in his
deepest moment of recollection; silence, the inner
quietude that reveals to us the pearl of great price:
Only this silence is the ultimate teaching,
Only this illumination, the universal response,
says the Chinese Buddhist Hung Chih.
Consecration means making sacred through
dedication to a higher ideal. When the higher ideal and
the personal life have become one, that is spirituality.
Spirituality means making sacred every moment of life
because we are in harmony with the indwelling presence
which is the flame of life, the spirit which radiates on
all, because we constantly place its imprint upon every
passing incident of our daily life. It means oneness with
the One.
REFERENCES:
The Bible
• Sri Ram, N., Thoughts for Aspirants, T.P.H., Adyar,
1957.
