Hari wrote:
Many of those who come to this site, I am starting to see, are new to me and are not aware of the last seven years of my presentations. Without entering into a thread of explanations which are far too broad and demanding for me to handle, let me simply offer that I have a very different way of seeing 'matter' and that my comments about social, emotional, psychological, or familial structures are not presented with the idea that these things are divorced from spirit. But alas, I have let out the cat and it is running wild! Maybe not... (My dog looks around. "A cat?" he says, "Shall I chase it?" "DoggieWog," says I, "please cool your jets!")
I have read a small bit of things you have written and I was impressed, although I have not read a great deal. When I said "material" I meant it as a way of describing anything not directly involving a purely spiritual activity, like say kirtan or hearing from a person give a talk on a spiritual topic. I understood that you weren't writing about the psychological/emotional interplay of a varnashrama community divorced from the holistic spiritual dimension, I was just saying that your comments could apply to any type of social/communal interaction, not necessarily varnashrama. The uniqueness of varnashrama is in it's vedic theological milieu, in it's specific spiritual ideology. What that is, is of course open to interpretation. That dynamic and living interpretation is what makes a "spiritual" community, as opposed to a "religious" community. One is based on a living dynamic expression from the timeless dimension being expressed through individuals, the other is all about following dogma and suppressing or invalidating the dynamic living expressions if they aren't found explicitly stated in dogma.
In a few words: your endeavor to create a social organization and it spiritual relevance depends far more on who does it than what they do with it.
Very true. I realized that long ago. Thats why I stress non-judgementalism when it comes to people's lifestyles. The ISKCON or Gaudiya Math or really any or most overtly "religious" communties, usually impart a very judgemental mentality onto the members. They look at people by a set standard of what is acceptable behavior, if people don't live up to that then they judge them to be "fallen" or unworthy of being treated as an equal. I come across this problem all of the time among ex-gaudiya/iskconites. They are not only judgemental with others but also with themselves. They view "spirituality" as being cognate with renunciation of pleasures that are not explicitly spiritual acitivities. So they view life as a battle where they are trying to defeat their own desires to do things that are not explicit "spiritual" activities. And because they cannot they then judge themselves and others who cannot in a harsh uncompromising way.
For them I can only say that "spirituality" is not the renouncing of something, it is the addition of something. There may be things that can impede living a spiritual life, like excessive intoxication (you'll end up sleeping all the time or too wired to be happy), or other excesses, but simply renouncing everything but explicit spiritual acitivity is not really the yoga tradition. Yoga is all about being comfortable with your life, enjoying your life more, not less. Adding spirituality, not renouncing "material pleasures". The monastic renunciative model preached by various yoga groups and other religions as being absolutely necessary for spiritual growth, is really not supported in the traditions they claim to represent. They produce self loathing, and harsh judgemental attitudes towards others, including spouses, children, parents and other family members. The overall dysfunctionality of those religious communities is a product of the members dogmatic following and enforcement of improper teachings. In a way they need to be "de-programmed" from self destructive self denial and judgementalism.
Then as you rightly pointed out, a viable spiritual community can succeed. As we have seen so far, none have succeeded. Eventually everyone leaves feeling disgusted with the dysfunctionality, the few that stay do so because there is some economic situation favorable to them. And the few that join do so out of ignorance of what they are getting themselves into.
What is needed is more or louder voices of sanity in order to give an alternative to the one dimensional "spirituality" which has achieved dominance in the minds of so many as being the "only
authentic way".
