Is Rational Spirituality possible – What do some of the best minds have to say?

My conversation with Swami on Rational Spirituality continues..

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“The world has seen a host of great teachers and spiritual Gurus. Are you saying that they all lack conviction and accuracy? Didn’t any of them provide us with enough guidelines to approach Spirituality from a rationalistic point of view?”

“This was what I was coming to. There have been plenty of attempts to explain spirituality logically, philosophically, scientifically and even empirically. A dozen books can be written on the researches conducted and theories formed on this subject. But let’s have a cursory overview of some of the efforts through history and see if they actually succeeded.”

“I think we can start with Nirvana, can’t we?”

“Yes. The first attempt of its kind in history to actually “explain” spiritual life and practice might be found in ancient Indian texts. In those, Spirituality was related with attaining the state of “Nirvana”. Nirvana is defined as the supreme goal of the meditation disciplines. The concept was slightly altered and carried forward in Buddhism, in which it signifies “the transcendent state of freedom achieved by the extinction of desire and of individual consciousness.”  (We will examine Buddhist theories in a little more detail later). The goal of Nirvana-oriented spirituality is the realization of this truth. With this realization, ignorance is destroyed, and, consequently, all craving, suffering, and hatred is destroyed with it.

So far, so good. Nirvana speaks about a goal, a state to be achieved. Even if we shouldn’t be so dogmatic as to ask for scientific explanation of a theory which was devised three millennia back, there is another major shortcoming for this theory which we can’t ignore – the theory itself! Nirvana speaks of a state of utter extinction, not of existence.  Nirvana is but a perishing state.  Any hypothesis that is characterized by the complete denunciation of material world can not even figure in a rational discussion – simply because we are trying to bind a theory to simple science and practice, and not trying to “interpret” ( read fabricate) it to suit our pre-defined agenda, as many modern day Gurus do. “

“I too agree that Nirvana was subjected to a good deal of interpretations – especially by Indian Spiritual Gurus, and it is still being…”

Swami broke my words up to start his:

“India-born philosophers have played key roles in making spirituality not only “modern”, but even a fashion - from Jiddu Krishnamurthy to Aurobindo, and from Osho to Shri Shri Ravishankar. (There are other names too, of course. But I don’t think our subject here is “The Secrets of Necromancers”). Some of them were undeniably great intellectuals up to whom any thinking individual can only look with great awe and adulation. “

“Then why are you not looking up to them for your so-called ‘rational’ answers? ”

“I did exactly that; but not sure if their theories provided me with what I was looking for – let us examine:

Philosophers like Jiddu and Osho were, unfortunately as I would like to term this, a sort of “temporal spiritualists”. One can not analyze their theories just by reading them; the effort also demands knowledge as to when and why they wrote them. They re-framed and revised their theories many times. Jiddu for example, subsequent to his countless preaching, renounced any claims to being a World Teacher and began a career of writing and teaching. Osho (despite his theory on meditation – that it is something that can just happen, a state that one can be in, not something that one can do - which is worth an analysis and very close to the hypothesis that spiritual pleasure is hardwired), again just to give an example for his flip-flops, altered his teaching on unrestricted sexual activity because of his growing concern over new-world diseases.

Spirituality and science should be taken with extreme seriousness, and I doubt if any philosopher who keeps changing his theories just under the influence of social or political circumstances can do justice either to himself or to the grandeur of the subject he deals with.  In addition to all this, we can never even find a single scientific fact that substantiates their teachings or writings.”

“But I strongly presume that Aurobindo would have been better suited for your pursuit…”

“True, Aurobindo does belong to a different ilk. He, I think, was the first to formulate a dialectic mode of salvation for the individual and humanity. His theory of “cosmic salvation” ( his version of Nirvana) goes like this: “enlightenment comes from above (thesis), while the spiritual mind (super mind) strives through yogic illumination to reach upward from below (antithesis). When these two forces blend, a gnostic individual is created (synthesis).” The theory is strong enough to make ripples in a rational mind due to its stunning uniqueness and unprecedented candidness. So, next natural question that pops up is this: “Fair enough – now, what is yogic illumination and how it is explained?” And the answer to this in Aurobindo’s teachings (briefly) is that the “yogic illumination transcends both reason and intuition and eventually leads to the freeing of the individual from the bonds of individuality, and, by extension, all mankind will eventually achieve moksha (liberation)”. 

Bad luck! We are talking about reason here; we can not afford such transcendence. “

“Fine. Now, just to get a sense of how extensive your research is - who do you think are the most logically coherent spiritual pursuers of our times? How many of them were of any help?”

“For me, the most impressive among them are Capra and Wilber. Fritjof Capra did a highly admirable attempt to explore parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. He rightly observed that the Physicists do not need mysticism, and Mystics do not need Physics, but humanity needs both. It is a wake-up call for all dogmatic theorists. But mind you, this is no reason why spiritual philosophers, Gurus and mystics needn’t necessarily owe rational and logical explanations of their theories to humanity.

Kin Wilber approaches spirituality with due seriousness. He comments that radical transformative spirituality is extremely rare, anywhere in history, and anywhere in the world, and most of the world population takes it so lightly. He says : “… you must have noticed that the word "soul" is now the hottest item in bestselling book titles—but all "soul" really means, in most of these books, is simply the ego in drag. "Soul" has come to denote, in this feeding frenzy of translative grasping, not that which is timeless in you but that which most loudly thrashes around in time, and thus "care of the soul" incomprehensibly means nothing much more than focusing intensely on your ardently separate self. Likewise, "spiritual" is on everybody's lips, but usually all it really means is any intense erotic feeling, just as "heart" has come to mean any sincere sentiment of the self-contraction. All of this, truly, is just the same ole translative game, dressed up and gone to town...”  A candid lamentation from a true spiritual philosopher!  

But the moment Wilber traded in Darwinian Evolution for the Theory of Intelligent Design, I got pretty much convinced that he is no exception from the prejudiced rest. We will hark back to this subject later.

There are also certain interesting masters like Marianne Williamson, who tried to cut out a self-study paradigm in spiritual psychotherapy as in her "Course in Miracles". Though completely Theo-centric, the book deals with non-sectarian, no- denominational spirituality. We also have quite a few Gurus who evade the need of a God in spirituality. There are still others uses the term “rational spirituality” for the process of seeking "rational" explanations to extra-natural stuff.

I have then gone through the major works from a legion of “spiritual experts/Gurus/guides”. They include Sylvia Browne, Deepak Chopra, Iyanla Vanzant, Norman Vincent Pearl, Caroline Myss, Neale Walsch and even some monks who sell Ferraris. (With that satiric reference to Robin Sharma whom I personally like, Swami proceeded to conclude the second part of our discussion. Swami maintained a strong reservation about many of the Modern-day spiritual teachers, and is used to disparagingly call them ‘professional spiritualists’)

But none among them seems to be indulging in a divergent thinking intensive enough to help us in doing away with the elusive metaphysical aura hovering spirituality.

So where are we? Where is the rational explanation we need? Though many of them sound convincing, which of these theorists provide an explanation keeping in mind the fact that humans are no different from the rest of reality? The answer is - nobody. “

“So - where will we go from here?

“We will now examine some existing rational ideologies. That means we are now going to approach the puzzle from an entirely different angle. Let’s try if we can undo the tangle from the other end of twine.”

Next:  Spirituality minus religion, Part-4: Is Rational Spirituality possible – Analyzing Ideologies.