The Messengers and The Message

All established religions have had Prophets, Messiahs and other divine beings coming into existence on a regular basis and saving humanity, these stories are integral parts of all religions. For convenience sake I will henceforth refer to them as "The Messengers".

The Messengers have always come at a time when humanity has been lost physically, spiritually or in any other sense of the word. The Messengers have appeared to individuals as well as entire groups of people and provided them guidance and education, helping them come back to the path of religious righteousness. In fact, whole religions have taken shape out of the teachings and guidance handed down by The Messengers.The role of The Messengers is so significant that, the religions themselves often take up the name of The Messenger.

The Messengers have all provided good guidance and teachings, however, all except one failed to address a basic human flaw.

The Human brain processes and retains pictorial information better than it does abstract ideas or concepts. People often remember a character better than the story. We all remember great world leaders like Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X,  etc. ideologies aside all the mentioned people were great leaders who were able to rally huge masses of humanity towards one common goal (good or bad), but how many of us remember even one single complete speech any of these people ever made? we can all quote random lines (mostly out of context) but only a miniscule minority of us remember the speeches. There are hundreds of statues of Gandhi all over India, he is even on every Indian currency note/bill, people all over the country see his face on a daily basis, but how many follow or even remember his teachings of non-violence or truth above all else? why has this situation come about? its because as a nation they have focussed more on the person than his teachings. Once you focus on the messenger, you lose focus on the message and eventually forget the message itself. this is true for every single great leader, actor, religious figure, spiritual leader.

The Message has been universal and clear in all religions, conveying the same meaning, that of unity, compassion, peace, righteousness and faith. By creating images or stories to substantiate and validate the life and goal of The Messengers, religions have inadvertently created a problem, wherein followers have moved away from focussing on the message and started focussing on the messenger.

Think of pop music in the era before television, we all knew the names of the singers who had sung the songs, but very few of knew what they looked like. we focussed on the song, lyrics, music, etc and paid little or no attention to the musician, his life, his inspirations and so on. If the song was good, if the music and/or lyrics connected with us we enjoyed it and the song was a hit, else it didn't.Then came television, bombarding us with music videos and promos focussing on the appearance of the singer and trying to force an image of the song into our heads rather than letting us imagine it for ourselves, songs started losing their lyrical quality and focussing more on the videos and appearance of the singer, their outfits, their hair, their make-up. we often hear people lamenting the death of good music and rightfully so. The same has happened to religion!

The Message is more important than The Messenger, whatever their lives may have sought to establish or demonstrate, they have only served to distract us from The Message. Everybody remembers the biblical story of Moses parting the Dead Sea, very few remember why (to save his people) or how (with the help of god). The same holds true for stories across all religions.

If you want Spiritual Enlightenment, go back to the message. Read it, understand it and most importantly imbibe it into your daily life as much as you can. Prophets or Incarnations or Messiahs cant guide you on your path to spiritual enlightenment, their messages can and will. dont look for inspiration or information in the world outside, let your conscience be your guide, strengthen it by understanding and inculcating the messages laid out by The Messengers.

I am not saying forget The Messengers, I'm saying stop following them and start following their messages.

The Singularity of Duality

I believe that both the Spirit and the physical body co-exist as one singular unit and not as two individual units struggling to break free of each other. Over the last few decades or even the last century, we as a race have been repeatedly told that the purpose and sole aim of spiritual practises is to free the soul from its material bindings, the interesting aspect of this line of thought is that no one has bothered to ask the question, why?

Why should we free the soul? where is it going to go? why does it have to go to that place? what makes that place a better place than the space within our bodies? Don't souls get freed when we die anyways, then why the rush?

This line of thought and the subsequent movement of "soul liberation" supported with its humongous amount of supporting literature has created an insurmountable amount of confusion within the common person. Today, we are at a place in time, where we have been presented all this "spiritual research" which has identified that the soul is dying to be liberated, that there is a better place towards which it must go right away, there are also a multitude of self-proclaimed "Spiritual Guides" who promise us an all expense paid one-way trip to this apparent paradise. The flow of information and "guidance" is so heavy and so strong that it has robbed of us the ability to take a moment and step back and think. We are lost! completely, totally, spiritually lost!

When I say spiritually lost, what I mean is that humans have lost the balance between their spiritual and physical(material) existences. Spiritual enlightenment or well being is not an external goal which one must strive for, its an internal balance between one's material being and spiritual being. This balance can be achieved by various means, but seldom by proxy. The so called "Spiritual Guides" of today promise to teach you the fastest and easiest way to achieve this balance....for a fee!

In my opinion the first step to achieve the balance is by recognizing the singularity of duality, the moment we realize that our soul and our body cannot exist without each other and that they must work in unison at all times in perfect balance. This realization is key as it will help us focus our efforts. The more focussed our efforts are in the right direction, the less we will end up looking for the right thing in the wrong place!

There is a common misconception that the body is impure and that the soul is pure, that the body does acts which taint the soul and the goal of spiritual enlightenment is to cleanse the spirit of the results of body's actions. There is no such thing in my opinion. As mentioned earlier, the body does not and cannot function without the direction of the soul and the soul cannot act without the participation of the physical body.

Even a person in meditation or trance state, depends on the body to anchor to the material plane. and similarly a person committing any physical act connects with his soul (even if its just momentarily) for moral guidance, otherwise knows as our conscience.

The Soul and the Body are both God's creations and they are both equally pure or impure depending on ones individual perspective. they don't negate each other they simply balance each other, thereby creating a mental and physical equilibrium. There are many terms such as mind, subconscious mind, conscience, etc. which all essentially mean the same thing, the Soul. I will discuss these terms in detail in a future post

Whatever we do to strengthen or purify the body also directly/indirectly strengthens the soul and vice versa. For instance, working out in a gym will strengthen your muscles and at the same time the focussed will to work out on a regular basis, the discipline and regimen that goes along with it improves our control on our mind. similarly practicing meditation on a regular basis helps us increase concentration and focus better, this has its impact on the body as well in terms of better blood flow, increased oxygen supply to key body parts etc.

If and when we realize the concept of Singularity of Duality, our journey will be a lot more enjoyable and less painful.

Please read this before you read anything else!

Before you read any further, I request you to please read this post. This will serve as your guide in interpreting the thoughts I present in all forthcoming posts as well as help eliminate any misconceptions or misunderstandings arising out of the content of the posts.

I do not wish to or aim to offend or defend any established religions or religious practices. I do however wish to warn you that I am not very happy with the plethora of religious "Gurus", "Swamis", "Preachers", "Muftis", "Imams" etc who proclaim themselves to be nothing short of a divine incarnation if not God itself. I do not follow or even listen to any of these characters other than for purely entertainment purposes.

The Terms "Spirituality" and "Religion" have for centuries been used interchangeably or at least in conjunction with each other. There has been an attempt by established religions to propagate the myth that one cannot achieve/attain "Spiritual enlightenment" if that person does not follow prescribed religious practices or rituals. This I personally find to be totally untrue. Yes it is important to read the scriptures (of any religion), but to simply gain an understanding of the "message". I would use this as my guidebook for my own Spiritual quest, but not build my spiritual personality based on the religious texts. For instance, you would use a tourist guide map to understand your current surroundings and to help you identify where you are in a given part of the city, however you would not constantly refer to and depend upon it if you were to build a house in the same city, for that you would use an architectural blueprint which delves into the finer details of the individual house which you are attempting to build.

Every religion splits a person's life into stations or stages, such as  childhood, puberty, householder(marriage), parenthood etc. There are also prescribed actions and duties for each of these stages. If one were to use religious scripture as a guide map then it would tell us where we are in our individual life (stage/station), how it relates to our past and future, how it relates to the world at large and finally how it relates to God, this is the purpose of scripture. If one wanted to shift the focus from an outward looking view to an inward looking view then one would indulge in what is commonly known as "Soul Searching" via meditation, contemplation, etc.

Common thought is that the soul is constantly in conflict with the physical being and they are both trying to break free of each other, there is also a strong belief system that once you progress from religious rituals into spiritual practices, you turn inwards and shut the world out, go to the mountains and meditate or cloister yourself in a monastery and pray or some such behavior. I personally believe that the soul and the body are one singular unit, one cannot exist without the other, hence the journey towards spiritual well being should include both and not at the cost of the other. A spiritual journey cannot be undertaken by a "soul-less body" or a "disembodied soul", they need to coexist and complete the journey together.

Think of this in terms of the electrical energy stored within a battery, the battery has no purpose without the energy stored within and the energy within that particular battery cannot exist on its own outside it. The electrical energy can surely be transferred from the battery to say a light bulb but the battery without energy or the energy itself without a battery to live in would be useless individually.

I have attempted to explore topics such as reincarnation, liberation of the soul, spiritual guidance, the concept of God, concept of Mind and also other related concepts such as success, happiness, selflessness, selfishness etc.

I don't claim to be an expert on any of the topics I have presented here. I have simply embarked upon a journey to find a common ground and creating a healthy working relationship between my own Spiritual curiosity, Rational thought and Common sense.....uniting body and soul!

If anything here offends you in any way, then I would sincerely request you to take a moment and instead of feeling offended, try to turn the offending idea into a question for yourself which would tickle your thought process. Anything which offends us also has phenomenal potential to present us with a completely different perspective, all it takes is a bit of thought with a calm mind. Don't let your anger or predefined notions block you from enjoying the posts here.

Disengage from your prejudices and  take a small step on this journey. Think of yourself as being on an all expenses paid trip to a fantastic locale, would you choose to get offended by every little thing that doesn't work in your favor on this trip or would you ignore the little annoyances and try to enjoy the trip? maybe when you get back home you would think back on those same little annoyances and find a new way to deal with them on the next trip! maybe you would not even see them as irritants in the future!

My serious, sincere and honest to god intention is to provide my thoughts and ideas in a format which will possibly invigorate your own intellectual curiosity and help you in understanding spirituality from a potentially new or different perspective.

There is no ground breaking, earth shattering new theories or spiritual research which I am providing here. I embarked on a journey and this is my journal of where the journey has taken me. You maybe able to relate to it or use parts of it for your own journey and I am gladly offering up these experiences and ideas to you if you find it helpful. I do not wish to claim this as the only way or the true way or the correct way, this is just the path I've been down and am still going down

May the Force be with you !!......No strike that......The force is ALWAYS with you and within you!! :)