Spiritual Pretence Of Godmen And Spiritualism - Part 3

The deprived poor people of the ‘Bahujan Samaj’ turn to the ‘Babas’ to get relief from their poverty and the accompanying difficulties. The well-to-do educated middle class go to the ‘Maharaj’, who preach ‘live and let live’ policy. And the highly educated higher middle class go to ‘Acharya’ in search of ‘the art of living’. All these three institutions-Baba, Maharaj and Acharya- are individual centred. They start with the dictum-if the individual changes, the society will change. Next they preach the audience to uplift their own selves and progress. Finally they ask them to leave all the problems of their lives to the Adhyatmic powers of the god man and surrender to him. The audience is convinced that their beatitude lies in the total surrender to the god man. This whole process gradually de-socialises the individual.

Today all our energy is spent in fighting superstitions of the primary state. Those who do not openly indulge in deceit and exploitation but harbour very regressive thoughts and act accordingly as do the Maharaj are unfortunately left alone. And the fight against the Acharya is altogether out of the question. Such Babas hold workshops for personality development provide health facilities and also do some other socially useful work. But they also generate indifference and aloofness towards progressive movements, administration, community life and even generates religious hatred at times.

All this leads to the destruction of youth’s reasoning and gives it a wrong direction. This is quite dangerous and does not have a simple solution. We can only chalk out the direction thus: on one hand there is the responsibility of determining what is truth and what is not, what is right and what is not right.

For centuries, religion provided the answer to this. Scientific outlook fulfilled this responsibility in the field of investigation of knowledge and this was accepted by religion too. But in addition, with the help of rational thinking, scientific outlook also could find answers to questions such as- what kind of life should one live; what is good and what is bad; what should be the ideal of human life, etc. in the behavioural field. Adhyatma might do it too. But in the field of ethics, the difficulty Adhyatma faces is that the scriptures and the prophets’ words of different religions differ widely and at times contradict each others. Many times the ethical grain gets lost in this confusion and attention is concentrated on the sheer husk of rituals that remains. We all experience this every day.

So even in the ethical domain rationalism will have to undertake a critical appraisal of what is a ‘good life’. On the other side, in action, every rationalist will have to resolve that he will never loose the faith he has in himself. Dignity of a human being lies in living one’s life with the humanist stance, how and to what extent they can be solved. We all have a Guru in our own honestly and with courage. With the help of reason we are capable of identifying our problems and also understanding rationality to make us aware and alert. The individual’s journey on the path of life, under the guidance of his Guru within, is the essence of his life, liberation from Adhyatmic Buvabaji and also foundation of a healthy society.