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Namah Yogic insights into human psychology
touch and filled with a diviner breath, when tolerance and take away the drive of ambition
it has entered the frame of a spiritual being. and desire and hence it is concluded that
One could go on multiplying examples with these people become unfit for life, which
no end. This is not only in India but all over needs those aggressive instincts to survive
the world. and achieve. Besides with the great Nirvana
as the goal, whatever normal operations of
The difference however has been that in the life we may be engaged in are regardedonly
Western world, ever since spiritual impulsion as some kind of concession to the fact that
got divorced from life and became confined we are embodied beings and hence need to
to monasteries with the masses being content continue our outside life as before, under
with religious belief-systems, the impact of the stress of the past momentum of nature,
spiritual life has remained little known. Those while inwardly we are losing interest in it and
who were truly spiritual did not advertise preparing ourselves for some kind of a final
their spirituality and since they had pursued exit. Then there is also this conception that
it independent of the religion they were at the root of things is Nothingness which
born in, their spiritual side did not receive makes a mockery of ‘everything’.
much support from the organised religious
institutions. In fact if facts were to speak for
themselves then, the great days when intense
creative impulsion moved India were also
those times when the spiritual impulsion
was at its peak.
But the misperception is there that spirituality
is other-worldly and hence has little role in
our everyday life. The spiritual man must
abandon normal ordinary life to pursue
his spiritual quest. This misunderstanding Life denying and life-affirming spirituality
is largely due to identifying one kind of
spirituality as the only one. Most people We usually identify spirituality with the
regard spiritual life as asceticism and think denial of life, but there is also a world-
of a spiritual man as someone who wears a affirming spirituality as given to man by Sri
certain kind of robe, who has no house or Krishna and Sri Aurobindo. Besides, denial
bank balance and who wanders from place to is also sometimes a step towards a greater
place begging for alms for sustenance, since affirmation. Spiritual life may find life as it
he has lost all interest in his self-preservation, stands today very inadequate and imperfect
reducing it to a bare minimum. Even when and hence it may go far away from it in search
one admits some kind of a meeting- ground of a more perfect existence. But having found
between spirituality and life, one identifies this, it may return to life as it stands today
spiritual life with learning and practising and pour its riches upon the world to try and
some form of meditation techniques which make life perfect with the Divine Perfection.
calm us and give us peace, which fills us with There is in fact, another line of spiritual living
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