Table of Contents
Hope for Enlightenment: Sign of Psuedo Spirituality
As long as there is hope, there is a false pursuit which makes the search more diverse, delaying the finality of things. This delay is where one finds time to find excuses and indulge in whatever is dear to the mind and the senses.
The hope for enlightenment has been fooling the living organism through endless lifetimes perhaps. One wakes up in the morning to find himself being mauled by the second-hand of time, pun intended.
One gets busy throughout the day, trying to keep pace with one’s routine, getting busy with a search which will inevitably continue the next day too.
Every day, the routine has very few alterations and continues day after day without anything spectacular happening. Even if something spectacular were to have happened on certain days, we see it as a great deviation from the regular routine.
We look at it as a great disturbance which ought not to have happened. Most individuals think like that. This is what the mind perceives it to be.
The routine rolls over successively through many years. Meanwhile even the routines have been completely overhauled, changed, replaced and yet one notices nothing.
The mind simply clings from one hope to another.
Psuedo Spirituality: Hopes of the Mind
There is still hope in the future that at some point in time all this may stop and stop for the better.
The mind likes to ruminate on memories and anxieties whenever a gap in the routine, even for a second becomes available.
The slip over to the future either instills fear about the unknown or thoughts of past regrets and guilt.
The whole energy system takes many beatings as days slip into months and years, our minds being in turmoil induced through heaviness of work and relationships. All said, there is still hope for the future, this is what the mind likes to believe, period. This hope seems to somehow induce or pour more vigor into the actions.
But the anticipation of the result or a possible gain out of certain business deals or activities drains the life out of the temporary surge in energy. All this energy gain finally comes to a naught.
Psuedo Spirituality: A Change in routine through Spiritual Talks
Meanwhile, one hears the promises of spirituality either through a friend or through close relatives who accompany us to some absorbing lecture.
We’ll often get to hear what we always wanted to hear. Like, things about life, the boredom of relationships, the fears of the mind and all those things…
Since this appears to be a welcome deviation from the routine, we make an adjustment into our routine.
Probably keeping a few hours of Saturdays and Sundays for Satsanga or Holy meetings. We take this time to meet some saints or holy men, labelled thus by society.
We agree to these labels because we too could not escape their talk, inducements or offers so to say.
Psuedo Spirituality: Fairy Tales not now, for the Future
Now, that we have ended up with holy association, we take the baggage of our unanswered questions to these holy people.
A point to make: Not that the questions could not be answered by the obvious, which probably, at the core we are always aware of.
But, one prefers to keep these questions dangling so that the future is secure in the womb of these questions. The problem was that, if these questions were to get answered in the here and now, why would anybody go through the routine of life with hopes hinging on to a far off future?
The great thing about the questions we have for the mystic men who have entered we life through the doorways of our consent is that there is a great deal of romanticism in these questions.
We ask such questions as: “Why are we alive?”
“What is the purpose of life?” “What should be the highest ideal” and a barrage of questions that I am certain, have no answers. There can be no answers to these “fine” questions.
But we continue asking these questions to holy, wise or seemingly enlightened ones because somewhere we know within that we are about to get an equally romantic answer which can make a glint come to our eyes.
The answers can possibly make one glow with renewed energy so that one can continue with one’s self-imposed ignorance going well for another week.
Well this is exactly the nature of spiritual materialism.
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Psuedo Spirituality: The Lullaby of Spirituality
Most of our journey in spirituality aims at feeling good, the good factor.
Most of us are happy to go on with the daily sleep, along with keeping our interests in spirituality going on, in the background as a lullaby playing behind us.
This background music of spirituality restricts the mind from going in a certain direction, so that it does not start gnawing us from the inside.
That is exactly why there is a demand for spirituality in current times, the demand for spiritual materialism. We as individuals want to go on with our lives probably in the same old ways.
We want to keep spirituality as a weekend agent to keep stress under the carpet. So, we find those repetitive lectures of modern day gurus or so-called spiritual geeks.
These talks by the so-called wise lot is used by the audience folks as if it were small doses of powerful drugs that can suspend the mind into some dimension, such that it remains intoxicated for the week.
Come Thursday, one starts feeling the pressure and stress of work and fear of survival. But come Friday, there is hope once again because Saturday is round the corner. The Spiritual Materialists get ready to have their weekly round of talk-drug.
Thus these assumedly spiritual encounters with the Guru Lot, has only stoked the flames of hope. This keeps the “great question about existence” in permanent abeyance.
Psuedo Spirituality: The Spiritual Guru Market
The Guru market is also well tuned. Just like all the commodity and consumer markets review their measurement dashboards and keep pace with demands…
The spiritual markets have also learnt the great art of selling only that material which is in demand. The Spiritual Market has now watered down Spiritual subject matters and are competing with the Self-Motivation and Personal Development Bazaar.
We see Spiritual Gurus of certain cults and spiritual organizations telling people what they should be doing with their lives. They are telling people when they should get up or go to sleep.
They may even tell we how we should brush oour teeth, just joking.
Lullabies that were meant for the new-born and toddlers are now also been sung for adolescents, youth, adults and people entering old age. These are lullabies coated with the sweetness of so-called or psuedo spirituality.
Their spirituality pills just taste sweet and comfortable. It sounds sweet so that people can keep munching over and over as they cozily go into weekly slumber.
Once you enter the slumber of these talks you will not want to taste anything else. This is because you are hearing only those things that you have always wanted to hear. You want to hear about the ideal “You”.
You are not concerned about the “you” of the present and this is the slumber.
Psuedo Spirituality: Spirituality and Truth in Current Times
If somebody were to tell you the Truth, probably you may end up hating the speaker for pointing out your sullied face which you do not want to see or know about. So, maybe you will not to hear his lecture ever again.
But, you are hearing their lectures over and over again.
Because, they are giving you what you want and are keeping you away from what is true, to your euphoric delight. You do not want any disturbance while your dreamy spiritual slumber goes on. Because, it is perhaps the best sleep that you have been introduced to and perhaps induced into.
All this while I thought spirituality was about waking up or snapping out of a cosmic dream.
This is what Sanatana Dharma truly talked about right? All said, Spirituality today is a market that is progressively eyeing the self-motivation and personal development market space.
That is sad indeed. The situation does not seem to be improving. So-called spiritual teachers do not want to make any difference to the current situation.
All of them are making hay while the sun shines. They are getting money, name, fame and power at the cost of the gullible common folks, without the investment of a pittance.
Their only skill is to understand well what you would like to hear. What more can they ask for? They do not want to scare away the innocent folks who are anyway coming to them for entertainment.
The spiritual men are reveling in the light music of their talks while the common mind is slips into slumber.
Psuedo Spirituality: Waking up to True Spirituality
True spirituality does not exist anyways in the modern context. Its Psuedo Spirituality galore. Even if it exists, it is very hard to detect. It may also appear to be non-spiritual to many!
People are willingly exposing themselves to spiritual gymnastics.
Because, this helps them sleep better by keeping the “Who Am I” question permanently in abeyance. I wonder whether there is anyone here to ask oneself this question “Is there any Truth at all in one’s life?”
Psuedo Spirituality: Truth has become a controversial concept
When people start accepting truth, it is a great threat to the mind. Because, then it cannot fool you with its imagination and continue its mind chatter. People like to discuss about their spirituality with others because somewhere they feel that they are getting importance.
Spirituality then becomes a subject of one’s vision about God. For some, strange things that happen to them, qualify as “spiritual experience”.
We failt to realize that it is the trick of the mind. Our scriptures itself allude to the fact that-
“All worldly experiences, be it material or spiritual, they are all projections of the mind.”
Sometimes the deep hidden clandestine desires also manifest as a miracles. We have been hypnotized by the world and our mind. This confusion reflects uin our so-called experiences.But, we erroneously conclude that these are mystical experiences.
Other than a handful of good teachers who understand the reality of the mind all others are taking advantage of the gullibility of the innocent seeking population. The true spiritual teachers are doing good work in the world to their best capacity.
Understand that, all experiences are, of the mind and mind alone. This means that there can be no “spiritual experience.” A spiritual experience may be utmost about extinguishing the mind. Spirituality means removing the veil of illusion permanently.
This is possible. Other than that all talks about spirituality is just like the dog trying to grab its own tail.
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