Cut-and-Paste Spirituality!

Internet has brought many boons–it has provided us with an easy access to information; through better connectivity, it has redefined our social outreach–we can now be friends with people we may possibly never meet and post what we ate last night for dinner on FB, as if anyone really cares!

Internet has brought many banes in its wake as well.

Someone recently posted the picture of a new, “internet-ready toilet” which can post the “s…t” directly on all the social networks, with just one click. It does not seem to have any normal “flushing” option. 🙂

Soon, we will have our toaster and ovens with texting and email facility thrown in as extras.

One of the other areas that has become quite pervasive is what may be described as the “cut-and-paste-spirituality.” You can now Google anything and everything—from one minute relaxation technique to instant Nirvana through 10 easy steps that would make even a Buddha chuckle. People are wont to attributing words to spiritual teachers of the yore which they never uttered, with their own convoluted commentaries. Everyone is quoting sayings of the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and other masters, thanks to cut-and-paste option.

There are certain common features about this type of up for grabs-free-for-all-cyber-spirituality. It is presented as easy to practice, quick-results, methodology, which requires no change on the part of the practitioner. It like the promise to lose all the weight one wants, without having to change one’s food habits and without exercising!

Phrases like—“Go within” “Go beyond the mind,” “Get in touch with your deepest self,” “Enlightened living,” “follow your inner light” and so forth abound. When you ask them what it really means to “go within?” or to “go beyond mind,” one gets stock answers like, ‘dive within’ to discover your true self. Dive within? Really?!! What does that really mean?

Then this cut and paste spirituality has a distinct disdain for studying source books or learning from real teachers. For it, Googlānandā is suffice to get all the answers. It thrives on bite-sized morsels of easily digestible, spiritual fast food.

Such approaches only result in spiritual-indigestion. There is nothing called rapid spiritual enlightenment, there is no fast lane to self-realization. Buyers beware!

Recently, a real teacher of Vedānta explained, “Spiritual knowledge does not take place in the spirit. It takes place in the intellect. Self is beyond the intellect, no doubt, but the spiritual knowledge is understood through intellect to be beyond intellect.”[1]

How can it be otherwise.

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[1] Swami Paramathananda, Brahm-Sutras, concluding Pravachan no. 389, entitled “Refinement of Desires.”