GOT ENLIGHTENMENT?
ASK SWĀMĪ GOOGLĀNANDĀ
The Saga of Cut-and-Paste Spirituality!
Internet has brought many boons–it has provided us with an easy access to information. We can search for almost anything on the net now. 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!
You do not have to make friends anymore; you can just add them on FB.
Internet has brought many banes in its wake as well.
Someone recently posted the picture of a new, “Internet-Ready Toilet” which claimed that it can post your “S…t” directly on all the social networks, with just with one click.
Unfortunately, the toilet 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. Perhaps, toasters will also be able to network with other toasters.
Someone just forwarded to me the following on the WhatsApp:
The two biggest challenges facing organizations today are—how to deal with
- Artificial Intelligence, and
- Natural Stupidity.
In this rampant information megalomania, one other thing 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.
An example is the following hilarious refrain:
Do not believe everything you see on the internet. ~ Abraham Lincoln
There are certain common features of 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! Better yet, it is all free.
Phrases like—“Go within” “Go beyond the mind,” “Kill the Mind,” “Get in touch with your deepest self,” “Enlightened living,” “follow your inner light,” “Go with the Flow,” 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? As if mind is a swimming pool or something. And who is to go with in? Mind? One can see the ridiculousness of it all.
This cut and paste spirituality has a distinct disdain for studying source books or learning from real teachers. For it, Swami Googlānandā is suffice to get all the answers. It thrives on bite-sized morsels of easily digestible, spiritual fast food.
You just have to find yourself;
Everything else can be Googled.
Such approaches only result in spiritual-indigestion. There is nothing called rapid spiritual enlightenment, or spirituality to go. 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 else can it be?
Like in any field, if we want to achieve anything, we have to know certain preliminaries, such as:
- What is it that we want? What is our goal?
- What are the means to the goal?
- What is the relationship between means and goals? Sādhan-Sādhya-sambandha.
- Do we have the necessary qualifications to pursue the quest competently?
- Are we willing to do what it takes, to make sacrifices?
Nature is willing to give us anything we want; not for free.
This is as true for the sacred as it is for the secular pursuits.
Why should it be otherwise?
[1] Swami Paramarthananda, Brahma-Sutra, concluding pravachan no. 389, entitled “Desire.”
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