Patience... bitter sweet...

I shaved my head the other day. It’s impossible to perceive the hair growing on a moment-to-moment basis, though the growth is clearly noticeable after a few weeks. While cruising above the clouds in an aeroplane it’s difficult to appreciate just how fast you are traveling. A few hours later, as you end up on the other side of the world, things become more apparent. A tiny stream in the mountain ranges can drop away at a solid rock and it seems insignificant. However, if you return there after 100 years you may be surprised to find a huge dent.

The aspiring spiritualist must recognize the absolute necessity of patience in their practice. There may sometimes be doubts over whether any transformation is occurring, whether there is really any change of heart, but determined practice over years will surely bear fruit. According to the Bhagavad-gita, souls have passed through many chapters of existence, repeatedly seeking happiness in the wrong places and cultivating perverted worldviews. Our misdirected desires and deep-rooted conditionings will naturally take time to transform. They are like warm soft beds in the winter – easy to get into, very difficult to get out of!

The Roman writer Phadreus once remarked “patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet”. There are times when we may feel far from spiritual, but to patiently continue, knowing that spirituality is not just a momentary emotion but rather a lifetime's mission, is the advice of great teachers. The spiritual path is full of inspiration, insight and amazing fulfillment – but this is only available to those who are willing to also embrace the not-so-glamorous need for patience.

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Artificial Intelligence

Every living being, human or animal, performs basic bodily activities. They all eat, sleep, mate and engage in protecting their life situation. Of course, the intelligence of man has allowed our civilized society to pursue these four fundamental activities in a more refined manner. Animals eat and sleep quite modestly, whereas man has created luxurious facilities to relish such activities. Animals may engage in the sexual act in an unmannerly way, whereas humans have developed innumerable social subtleties which surround their union. Animals may use their claws and teeth to defend their homes, whereas man has created weapons of destruction and innovations like insurance policies.

However, we can’t ignore the problems. In today’s world, people have to take drugs to cure insomnia and sleeping troubles. Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are widespread, sexually transmitted diseases and promiscuity-related social problems are well documented, and threats of terrorism, political instability and natural disaster thwart our sense of security. For all the intelligence we have applied to making life more pleasurable through these basic activities, it actually looks like we have created more problems and complexity!

Desires to derive pleasure from artificial sources create artificial problems. We try to solve such problems with artificial solutions, which ultimately seem to escalate the problems. To improve our standard of living and sense of comfort is not a sinful desire. However, it may be considered wasteful to engage all our time and intelligence in developing temporary arrangements to improve activities that even animals perform. According to Bhagavad-gita our intelligence is meant for finding fulfilment and happiness from activities which transcend these basic demands.

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Its all in the mind

Excluding extreme cases, nobody really wants to die. Furthermore, we’d all like to live a happy life. These innate desires within us are ultimately frustrated in this world, since death and unhappiness are inevitable realities. Philosophers like Ludwig Feuerbach thus concluded that religion could be explained psychologically. According to them, if one is willing to buy into religion they can escape their deepest fears and live in blissful ignorance of their mortality and suffering. Spirituality or religion, he argues, has no solid divine grounding, but rather is just a response to drives from the unconscious mind. Just believe… and you will get what you always wanted – immortality and eternal happiness.

Over the centuries, different thinkers have reduced spirituality to something designed for the weak – people who are unable to deal with the anxieties and uncertainties of the ‘real world’. Philosophers like Freud built on such ideas which considered religion to be a childish delusion concocted by mankind. Atheism, on the other hand, was seen as a grown-up realism. The attractiveness of religion and the strength of its grip on the human mind was thus seen to be rooted in the psychological issues of the individual.

One may question, however, why the yearning for immortality and happiness is common to every entity in the universe? Instead of minimising our deepest and innermost desires to be simply imagination and wishful thinking, it may be worth exploring where such universal longings come from? Maybe such desires reveal to us something about our higher nature and self? The fact that we are thwarted in our attempts to fulfil such desires may also expose deficiencies in our worldviews and ways of living. Feuerbach and Freud may have done well to explore these questions first.

Another small point. While speaking of the unconscious mind pushing one to believe in an ‘imaginary God’, we should also consider how the unconscious mind may also push one to quickly reject God. Eliminating any spiritual element to life liberates us of ultimate responsibility, frees us to exercise full independence over our decisions and directions in life. In trying to remove God from the picture, maybe we are trying to become God ourselves - the autonomous, independent entity who is not answerable to anyone. Interesting how the human mind works.

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