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To the essence of spirituality the question is first of all: what is it? Is it New Age, is it religious, is it a cult, is it egoism staring for a selfrealization without compassion? What defines spirituality actually? What is this self that one has to realize? Where does the soul come in? This article revises the concept of spirituality against the light of ancient vedic values at the one hand and modern natural science at the other hand. It concludes wellwishing that this definition according to true time, loyalty to the celibate, economic austerity and vegetarian compassion, contributes to the interest of bringing more personal happiness in the first place and will also offer a broader perspective to a future world order. Don't miss the essence, all is nothing without it!

 

 

 
 

BY A.A.

Abstract:

This article revises the concept of spirituality against the light of ancient vedic values at the one hand and modern natural science at the other hand. It concludes wellwishing that this definition according to true time, loyalty to the celibate, economic austerity and vegetarian compassion, contributes to the interest of bringing more personal happiness in the fist place and will also offer a broader perspective to a future world order.

 

 Contents

The definition of spirituality

The essence

The story of our human values

Sexual abstinence

Three more values

Natural time

Spirituality revised

Hope for a worldorder

 

 

The definition of spirituality

Many wonder what spirituality is. What is the definition? The dictionary (the Merriam Webster) will tell you that it is something deeply religious, something relating to the spirit and sacred matters. The rest is to them for you to find out. You are left with questions: What is religion, is religion the purpose, the goal, or just the means to the spiritual end? What do we mean with the word spirit and what would be sacred? Or what of the sacred is of real importance? This article tries to give clear answers to these questions.

 

The essence

Of the definition of spirituality is first of all the concept of soul, the not materially to determine principle on the basis of which we live, important. It is called the essence of our being. Spirituality without a soul doesn't make any sense. The concept of the soul is used to contrast the human with the animal interest. If we are not just of animal interest we might be talking of human values, of remembrance, of compassion and conscience; or in one word of the soul. This animal interest is also called material interest. Someone pursuing the animal interest is involved in material actions. In fact this is the evolutionary beginning of the story of humanity. Undoubtedly we originated from God. But what God would that be, that has shaped this peculiar ape? What happened to us? If we fail to understand this, we will not be in touch with our history and therefore be alienated from the remembrance of what is to make up for the conscience of the soul. Therefore: how have we become human in the first place? The evolutionist will say that it has happened by natural selection: a conscientious ape would be more of an evolutionary success than one without such a compassionate remembrance. The creationist will say that we have been created after an ideal template called God, after the example of a Lordship that descended from heaven to redeem us from our sins. Of course both are right. The vedic scriptures confirm this, but the ideal template is not of any specific form. To the Hindu the Lord can take the form of a fish (Matsya) or a boar (Varaha), He can be the sun and sungod, the moon or the celestial sky, He can have a human form or a spiritual form like a Vishnu with four arms. As such we are created not as a form but as a spirit. The template is not about form, the template for the essence of our spirituality is an ideal spirit. If we would be turtles with the ability to speak and manipulate matter, we would have had the same questions and answers (In fact the tortoise is part of the vedic make up). Seen this way the controversy about the creationist or evolutionist view of our origin is of less importance.

If the question is where the ideal of the spirit comes from, the question is much more easy to answer: from our suffering in the material world, whether we are turtles or apes, we know of the desire not to suffer. And that desire shapes our minds into what we call the spirit of God, the Holy spirit or the mind of idealism that any materialist knows to call an illusion after the newest disappointment about material endeavors. And that is the God, the spirit and the ideal that molded us into what we are now. Our present state though is not one of clarity: the world is confused and uncertain about its survival and cultural future. Are we going downhill or will we rise from the ashes of our gruesome experiences of war and social decay? Many still have the question whether the soul, that leading ideal of human values, really exists at all. Many still see from the evolutionary point of view the social darwinist concept of society only: to belong to the survival of the fittest with a necktie and an automobile is the reality. The question remains: why do we see our selves in animalistic opposition beyond the rational control as depicted above? Why don't we have a worldorder that is founded on an integral vision of our historic and present human reality. Again the answer must be sought in the direction of the definition of soul that guarantees our human values: only a conflict about these values can be able to obscure a clear vision of the future. Only from this clarity, of not having a conflict at this foundation in the values of the soul, we can speak of an enlightened spirituality and liberated society.

 

The story of our human values

 

Sexual abstinence

From the evolutionary point of view we have begun as apes. Normal fruit eating Adams and Eves (or Lucy's) in the paradise of natural time. We had no sexual complexes and did not repress or deny our natural being: we were unashamed as any ape is, making for public sexual dominance in a social hierarchy, sharing food and territory pacifying with other species (except for a bout of a-vitaminose motivated killing), never being worried about any intoxication with tobacco or alcohol. Thus was our paradise, religious people as well as scientists agree about. Except for the sexual dominance the rational human being will subscribe to this concept of an ideal society. Many see sexual regulation as the mark of humanity while just as many recognize the sexual frustration as the great evil that has created the horror called warfaring manhood. Historical psychoanalysis concluded that for sure our problems relate to sexual trauma, whether we have too much of it (a fixation in perversion) or not enough of it (a neurosis in cultural hysteria). But religiously sex is not the dominant theme at all. The grace of the religion would cover the sexual as well as the asexual human being. Legitimate sex can be considered holy (there are official christian saints with offspring). The teachings of God and soul are always about compassion with the fellow man (or animal), loyalty to the community (and the marriage partner), about speaking the truth and about sharing possessions.

The abstinence of sex is the way we chastise us for the sake of this societal religious and soulful concept of health. The school works that way, but the community of people who are supposed to have graduated from it (or by it) live in sexual liberty (as far as hygiene permits). Classically we counter our troubles of management and futurology with the traditional chastisement: no sex and foolish infatuations of love until we have our clear vision back. Back to school and the 'drawingboard' if we didn't turn out to have our lessons learned. But after all of this classically chastising us with sexual abstinence we may wonder: is this the only and the proper strategy of attaining to knowledge? Sure it works in some way, although the religious examples are just as well of sex (with the Hindu's and Muslims) as of abstinence (the Christians and Buddhists). Psychoanalysis pointed out that civilization is much of sexual sublimation (if not frustration). Sex gives us the awareness of the duality of first non-subliminal man and woman and later subliminal knowledge of celibate loyalty as opposed to sexual attachments and their mind and motivation. Seeing the problems of the world this way only solved half (or better: for a quarter), we must conclude that we might have overlooked some other strategies of chastisement into the true intelligence of paradise.

 

Three more values

Going back to the theme of ape-paradise, we see two, or in fact three other natural disciplines that would apply for the status of schoolish chastiser next to the sexual theme of knowledge through duality and sublimation. We know that monasteries going to the limit of chastisement, also practice to the vow of poverty for the sake of sharing in a community. That is one value of paradise. Also the ape shares in community (although he doesn't really have the capacity to create the possessions he would have to share apart from territory, and tends to keep the women all for himself as a leader). The second lesson to learn from our 'ancestors' is that of pacifying as a vegetarian with other species (and greater nature). Before humanity developed its culture of status divisions and vocations becoming an agricultural civilized society we were predators: hunters and collectors. In fact the culture is still pretty much predator minded always hunting for the loot of commercial profit and chasing the woman for sexual gratification. The hunter is our second identity (next to the religious one which it is supposed to control). Television shows an abundance of crime-stories and other digestive personal drama about this predator nature of the human being (and we do not watch it because we long for it). Our complete concept of sanity and health is in fact thwarted by it: we think ourselves healthy thinking like cats and dogs, meanwhile suffering all kinds of 'welfare' diseases because our primate ape-bodies are not really built for it. The dentist constantly has to repair our teeth since they are not really fit for this kind of predator digestion and acid saliva. The doctor has to cut away and radiate cancerous growths losing control over our genetic program of cel-management (if it is not our body temperature in a flu).

The predator program is not ours. We have other teeth and longer intestines just like the apes. Biologists assure us: we are primates, not really predators. We only have the capacity to imitate predator behavior as well as the moral right of killing the way the predators do. But that is not our real nature, our philosophy of the paradise in which we are very well capable of staying healthy with dairy products, beans, cereal, vegetables and fruits. It is, apart from simply easy (but too complex) proteins, more of an anxiety neurosis with the trauma of vegetarian inferiority complexes facing the threats of predation (see also The Bible). Our primal motive is fear: we do not want to be eaten or even be threatened by predators. The meateater is afraid of losing his strength (read: his agression). And answering to that threat we have become the threat ourselves: now the fellow human being is the predator, the murderer and the thief we have to fear. The original threat is overcome long ago: all lions are in prisons (zoo's) or in reservates. They hardly exist anymore. So why continue with this neurosis? Do we like the killing? Are we addicted to violence and the excitement of stealing and breaking the law (to speed up the digestion of meat in our vegetarian-long intestines). This cannot be the formal belief and policy. And there is still another practice and value of paradise that has not been covered by laws (and 'medicine') against theft and murder and practices of religious sexual abstinence and sharing of possessions.

 

Natural time

This fourth natural value, so basic to the history of human values, is the one of the truth of the natural timing of the ape society: the apes do not need calendars and clocks. The inscrutable mystic and sacred time of nature that would be God Himselves according many philosophical accounts and religious sloka's is the time that conditioned the ape for his paradise. As the sociologist prof. K . formulated: "Sacred time involves the collapsing of the past, present, and future into an eternal now in order to, in part, allow heroics of the past be continuously part of the sacred present. Profane time is time as wear-and-tear, time as decay and death." The biblical fall into sin, having eaten the apple from the tree of knowledge, very well might have been the first knowledge of a timescale derived from the gnomon of a primitive sundial. The sin in this case would be the fixation of and attachment to a scale: an image of God was created, 'a golden calf of economy' and worshiped against the truth that God is life and change (or a person or prophet), the real mystic of subjective inscrutable time Himself. This was called primal sin as man realized that civilization without an agreement on time is not possible. Thus shame was born, since no fixation of time could ever hold or could be called absolute, and thus the necessity of religion was born that had to exercise the revival of human selfrespect on the schemes of the then religious called time not to pick the fruit of the tree any longer on the Ides of the lunar month or the sunday of the gregorian calendar. In fact the natural of time was called the truth or the true, and figured for the criterion of truth, not just by the religious lunar calendars, but also by scientists studying the stars and the planetary movements. True sidereal time and true suntime make up the times of the sundial and the passage of stars over the longitude. Later on it also was called apparent, as the mean (local or zonal) time we could really perceive on clocks wasn't really the true time it appeared to be in nature. This shift from natural values to cultural-political values defined modern consciousness ever since the julian reform in the year 689 AUC of the Roman calender, short before (46 years) the descend of the christian Lord that had to counter the then considered false authority of local priests and roman dictators.

Humanity had lost touch with the natural order of time as it could not decide between the sungod and the moongod. What would we need: a moon calendar unstable to the seasons or a solar calendar with a weekorder that did not longer align to the ancient natural 'fasti' (roman legal days for fruitive action) -order of the lunar calendar? We fell back into the school of personalistic ordering with its chastisement and confusions about how it really was and should be. How much money should be offered to the priests? Would the emperor (or Führer) be a God fit for worship? Confusion all around as well as many wars and reforms of the state and religion later on ensued: polytheism is wrong, monotheism is good, nobility is bad and the republic is good, mooncalendars are bad and suncalendars are good. All kinds of political local controversy and fugues rose and found wars according international oppositions. Many of the modern wars were accompanied by manipulations of the time-system as the one who would have the power also would determine the time with his own signature of ego. Roman emperors tried to make it a tradition to name the number of the month to their own name (hence the month August). Thus the calendar became a feat of the ego in doubtful respect for the discipline of the soul or the facts of science. The timesystem became a monster of repression and denial in egotistical opposites against the founder of Rome (once worshiped as the God Quirinus) and its first lunar calendar and against the Caesar the dictatorial reformer of it. The emperor of August changed (by commitment of his respectful senate) the 30/31 regularity of the julian calendar and later on the gregorian reform of the catholic rule changed the leaping tradition which was defied by russian orthodoxy (see also Sun Moon and the World Order).

There is no general religious agreement about respecting the dynamic God of change. There is dispute over fixations. The gregorian fixation is also a temporary fix that needs correction (after 2.500 years for one day) and thus is it also to be recognized as one of the same sins in the series called primal. The theory of relativity of modern physics that declared an absolute of time fictitious was considered as too intelligent and had no real practical societal and political conclusion in its wake (apart from maybe alternating summertime with wintertime). Nor could religion promote further reform as it is simply 'of the beast' to impose another time beyond the will (not to be confused with the consent) of the people, making that 'better' time in fact as secret as the old lunar calendar was to the common people of Rome in the old lunar days of our calendar history. The only right decision would be to hold on to the firm decision to confess against the false absolutes of whatever fixation for the sake of regular correction (penance). At the other hand all existing fixations should be considered equal of value (or equally false) although some are more egoistic and others more logical. As with sex the consciousness we need is that of the duality of natural time against cultural time or that of one timeculture against another. That duality could give us the consciousness and stability - or option for stability - that would give us a vision of a new world order of agreement about that duality and necessity of eternal selfcorrection and confession to the relative and dynamic of Gods creation.

 

Spirituality revised

Therefore, in consideration of all this historical rumination about the values of the soul, what would spirituality really be? Many adhere to the timeless concept in worship of the original inscrutable God of time of ape-paradise. But the other half of mankind does not hold this concept in respect, and considers it simply too aloof and escapist to be taken serious as a lead for a new world order. Considering the above, the classical vedic values of truth, purity, austerity and compassion (satya, sauca, tapa, dâya) should be revised if we want to progress with the definition of spirituality. From the above one can say that truth should be dually associated with as well the 'timeless' cyclic concept of (Newtonian) celestial bodies in their orbit as with the serial electromagnetic concept of cultured atomic time for the sake of a reliable and stable unit of measurement. And for this purpose indeed one should not have to drink alcohol or use any other intoxicant. Loyalty to the celibate (being married or not) should next be the virtue of purity as no 'dirty game' of sex should take the lead in settling an order 'of God'. This means that the natural love for sex can be as free as possible, but that it cannot rule without respect for the celibate (like with the ninetees president of the USA confessing his sins of sex to the christian commune). Thirdly will paying taxes for an austerity not suffice as simply the lack of control over the private possession of money will never make a world government that is in control at all (that's one for the 'saints and wise' of economy). In order to be able to share one will have to be motivated for the soul and its other values too, which can be an illusion in the world of material motives, but might become a reality with electronically managed money that can be monitored (and thus be controlled) by i.t-managers and a government that does subscribe to this definition of spirituality and world order. Fourth is the legal care for social security checks (even if implemented worldwide) not enough to guarantee a proper compassionate and righteous, non-violent world community. Also our predator motive of outdoing the fellow human (and animal or even floral) being will have to be revised, if only out of the practical impossibility of feeding an ever(?) increasing worldpopulation.

 

Hope for a worldorder

Along the lines of classical human values as well as those of natural silence, I hope to have sufficiently revised the concept of spirituality. I hope this definition according to true time-duality, celibate loyalty, economic austerity and vegetarian compassion, that is based on the old vedic and roman values of societal and natural order, can contribute to the interest of you as a reader in the first place. It can make one a better integrated and more happy individual that ultimately can deliver proof by societal success and longevity of a really effective, non-escapist and multiculturally tolerant concept of soul and world order. Our God in this, our essence in spirituality, is nothing but the full potency in all fortune, and full integrity of all basic visions to our love of spiritual knowledge or filognosy, of the purely good witness of consciousness, fortitude and knowledge that we find within ourselves when we with meditation and service hold on to the basic values of truthfullness, purity, sharing, and nonviolence with all living beings. We then also realize what the job is that we to this spiritual cause, this essence, have to do: time and again to excorcize from our hearts the devil in opposition that consists of nothing but the all too human justification and attachment of the bad habits of lying, lusting, gambling and committing violence, that lead into the egotistical opposition and mutual selfdestruction that is our misery.

sincerely yours, A.A.                  

 
Religion and spirituality reference-links

Specific vedic Links

See for a graphic representation of the basic values discussed above, their virtues and reality: the values-picture of the Filognostic guide.

Consult for a more elaborate exposition on the political ramifications the Filognostic Manifesto

Consult for more personal spiritual matters of order and discipline 'The Other Rules'

More on the history of time an its sciences is found under the science-department of this site.

 

©1999 The Order of Time, no publication elsewhere without permission.