Monday, November 24, 2008

Spirituality is not like a commercial product to be promoted by the massive business propaganda machinery

The Spiritual Aim in Society
by RY Deshpande on Mon 24 Nov 2008 01:37 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

If our endeavour is to take the spiritual aim to society, society that is not yet open to it, then the problems can arise, many problems can arise. It can even be construed as a kind of proselytization. In fact even more serious problems can arise.

But one thing is certain: it cannot be, should not be by diluting the spiritual contents; it is not by adjusting or simplifying it, in order to accommodate the prevailing conditions of the society, by fiddling with it so that what it can understand and accept is fitted into it. Otherwise it would be an imposition of the spiritual on the worldly or mundane. This does not work, particularly in a society which respects individual’s freedom and freedom of expression.

Which means, if at all spirituality is to be taken to the worldly and the mundane, then there has to be something in the worldly and the mundane,—including the rational or academic, religious or even mystical or occult—to see the necessity of the spiritual; it should see it to have its own fulfilment assured, it should be for its own compelling reasons; it should be something arising from its own free and happy and spontaneous need, should be its desideratum.

As a matter of fact, spirituality is not like a commercial product to be promoted by the massive business propaganda machinery. There has to be a call for it. And the wonderful thing is, one who receives it he also gets the needed help in his quest. This is proven through the centuries of spiritual history, and the safe thing is to awaken to it if there is the basic urge for it.

RY Deshpande

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Integral Yoga of the Future
by RY Deshpande on Sat 22 Nov 2008 09:05 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

“The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1928. The supramental change was decreed by him, and he and the Mother had set themselves to work out its inevitability. But to realize it in us there is needed the call and we have to be ready to receive what they are constantly showering on us. Tapahprabhava and Devaprasada, as the ancient Upanishadic scripture says, together can bring fulfilment to our longings, to our soul’s aspiration. To be engaged in that spiritual growth, to live and work and enjoy divinely in the Divine is the Integral Yoga of the Future.

RY Deshpande
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