SPIRITUAL SIDE OF LIFE
To be spiritual is to be connected
with the human spirit rather than the body or physical things.
Man’s spiritual needs are
non-material, sacred, divine, devotional and other-worldly.
According to the Indian political
ethicist Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi, (1869-1948)
: Spirituality is not a matter of knowing scriptures and engaging in
philosophical discussions. It is a matter of heart culture of un-measurable strength.
The spiritual side of life is moral. It abides by all the cardinal
virtues mentioned in religious texts. Its main relationship is with God and His
everlasting laws.
The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) said: Either we
have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first
and wisest of beasts it may be; but still beasts. We only differ in degree, and
not in kind; just as the elephants differ from the slug. But by the concession
of the materialist, we are not of the same kind as beasts; and this also we say
from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a
soul within us that makes the difference,
The word ‘soul’ has several
meanings such as ---inner self, vital force, animating principle, true being,
and the immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
According to the Hindu scripture
the Bhagavad Gita, composed in the second
or the first century BCE : the soul is eternal and the body is temporary ---- like
clothes that are shed when worn out. It further says: the soul is indestructible,
unchangeable and unaffected by birth or death, while the body is material and
perishable.
The British historian and philosopher
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) asks: Can there be cumulative progress in the
improvement of our social heritage in terms of the spiritual life of mankind
---which means the spiritual life of individual souls, since man’s relation to
God is personal and not collective?
His own answer to the aforesaid question
is that “under the old and the new dispensation alike, the opportunity for
obtaining salvation in this world would be open to every soul, since every soul
always and everywhere has within its reach the possibility of knowing and
loving God.
Toynbee justifies his belief by saying: The actual ----and
momentous ---effect of a cumulative increase in the means of Grace at man’s
disposal in this world would be to make it possible for human souls, while
still in this world, to come to know God better and come to love Him more
nearly in his own way.
*****
G. R. Kanwal
13 October 2025
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