What is Spirituality?

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

Whenever we use the words ‘spirit, spiritual or spirituality’ people generally relate them to life after death or life before birth. Some will even relate it to ghosts. But alas, it is entirely different! We have words like matter and energy. All forms of existence in the universe are traceable to either matter or energy. But, does it explain everything? Look at your own body and personality. Is it merely matter and energy? You may not be a scientist to investigate the universe and its constituents. But so far as you are concerned, you should certainly be able to examine yourself and find out – ‘Am I all matter and energy?’

You are not these two alone. You are thinking, sensing, knowing, remembering, forgetting and so on. Sensation, cognition, thinking, understanding, intellection – none of these emerge from either matter or energy. If you were simply an aggregate of energy-matter combination, you would not have a mind at all. You would have been absent as far as intellect is concerned. You wouldn’t have any kind of feeling. You would have been at best a robot. 

Do we know of any energy and matter that is capable of thinking, feeling and knowing? Wherefrom do thoughts come? Wherefrom do feelings proceed? How is it that emotions are constantly generated in our personality? Can matter or energy be the source of it? Certainly not. Then what is the source?

That source, my dear souls, my dear managers, is the Spirit. Spirituality is a subject that directly addresses this issue. So, when we say spirituality, we are referring to something very dear and near to ourselves. No, we are referring to something that is you, yourself. I ask every one of you – Are you primarily a material person or a spiritual being?

If you were only a material individual, you would have been a dead body. You are a spiritual person. We know that the cornea of a dead body can be grafted into a person and that biological body begins to see. The cornea was in tact, but the seer was missing. That is why when grafted to a spiritually vibrant body of a ‘living’ person, that person begins to see. Does the seeing really belong to the body or does it belong to something else?

By ‘spirituality’, I mean this kind of wonderful source that encompasses all the powers and potentials that you find manifest in the whole visible creation surrounding you.

[Poojya Swamiji was invited on 22 Jan 2000 by the Trichur Management Association to address its members. The association felt the need of expert advice on achieving professional excellence and sought Poojya Swamiji’s guidance. Here is an extract from the talk. The talk had been titled - Spirituality – The Missing Dimension in Professional Excellence]

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