SPIRITUALITY
-- What it is
III
IDEAL MAN
Man is essentially a social being.
He is born in society and cannot live without society. As such, the Master-souls
do not interfere in his social conduct and religious mode of life. They
tell us to lead a life of purity and chastity within the framework of the
social order in which we are born or to which we belong, but that we should
not dehumanise our human nature, which has been given to us as a sacred
trust from God. The outer differences of apparel and mode of life, social
or religious, should not affect and interfere with the inner life in man,
which is the same within the folds of every human breast. They emphatically
deal with man as man (an individual as opposed to a social being) and try
to inculcate in him the importance of cultivating qualities that go to
make him an ideal man, full of love for God as Father and His creatures
as his brethren. They say that man should engage in honest pursuits, making
an honest living, both for himself and his family, love all sentient beings,
and treat them with loving sympathy.
Man is the roof and crown of the entire
creation. He is an embodied soul. From the bodily point of view, he must
live and act as an ideal man would, and also from the point of view of
the Spirit, which is in essence the same as God. Kabir informed us: "Soul
is the same essence as that of God." He must manifest Godhead or God's
light. Christ therefore declares:
"The light (of Spirit) shineth in darkness (body)
and the darkness
comprehendeth it not." -St.
John 1-15
"Take heed that the light which is in thee be not darkness."
-- Luke 11-35
"Be ye perfect as thy Father in heaven is perfect." --Matt.
5-48.
Man and God are fully embedded in each
other. It therefore, behooves man to reflect the light of God around him.
God is the soul of his soul, and his body is the veritable temple of God.
Without the light of His life, a human body is just like a husk without
a kernel, useless and inconsequential trash, fit to be cremated or consigned
to the grave.
"Man is an embodied Truth, for Truth is his very
life. Without the light of Truth,
how can man live?"
Again:
"God speaks through a human pole,
Without such a pole, how can He speak?"
Hazrat Attaar, a great Muslim Divine,
says: "O man! thou art the very center of creation. In fact, the very macrocosm
is in the microcosm of thy body. Thou art the living book of God, for in
and through thee alone, God speaks, and reveals Himself."
If man were to take care of his latent
Godhead and make it patent, a practical workaday principle, this mundane
world full of evils would become a veritable Garden of Eden, or Muqam-i-Haq
or Sach Khand. Then His Kingdom would come on earth as it is in Heaven,
for which the Christians and others so fervently pray from day to day.
It therefore behooves us to convert
this world into a veritable land of the pious, peopled by persons with
purely human instincts in them, unalloyed by feelings of hatred and animosity,
pride and prejudices, and impervious to satanic influences and animal passions
which degrade man to the level of a beast. It would then be a world of
free and loving persons, each respecting the rights of others, with no
room for courts to adjudicate disputes, nor police to keep the peace, nor
armies to keep down aggression. The inhabitants of the world would then
be the living embodiments of the life and love of God, walking freely and
fearlessly in Heaven's light, dressed in pure godliness, in the land of
the pious and the pure (Pakistan) and the really righteous (Khalistan).
The ideal of the saints is not to depopulate the world but to humanise
it.
The only ideal for man is to be perfect
and complete. This would distinguish him from the imperfect and mutilated
man, completely ignorant of the Godhead in himself, torn as he is by petty
jealousies, avarice, greed, deceit, enmity, recriminations and all types
of vices, a true abode for Satan as at present. Saint Paul states: "Ye
are complete in Godhood." Every religion enjoins the worship of perfected
beings who are at one with God. In the Bhagavad Gita, it is mentioned
that the roots of the creation are set down in heaven, but its branches
spread as far as the earth. So is the case with man. His roots too are
implanted in Godhood, though he moves about and works on earth. Behind
the apparent consciousness that works in the world, lies the entire mystery
of the Motor Power-the great dynamo without which this outer consciousness
cannot operate. We are aware of this outer ocean of consciousness only
so far as it operates on the plane of senses, but the major part of it
lies hidden at the root or center of the soul in the eye-focus within,
and of which we are totally ignorant. It is no wonder, then, that the Master
laid great stress on self-knowledge and preached that one should know of
his conscious self before anything else.
From time to time, Master-souls come
into the world and place before it the fundamental truth of the ideal man,
that one must acquire all-round perfection. "Know Thyself!" has
always been their slogan and a clarion call to the society steeped in stark
ignorance and dead to the higher spiritual powers lying dormant in man.
"Gnothi
Seauton" was as much an article of faith with the ancient Greeks as
"Nosce Teipsum" was with the ancient Latins. Their cry has been:
"Awake,
arise and stop not, until the goal is reached." All the
ten Sikh Gurus, from Guru Nanak down to Guru Gobind Singh, placed before
the Indian society the ideal of a Sikh (a true disciple), and of
a Khalsa (the pure one) who render selfless service to humanity
born of genuine love for mankind. These constitute the bedrock of spiritual
life and quicken the latent spiritual
aspiration in man by gradually freeing him from narrow
bigotries and sense of false pride.
The Muslims gave to the world the
ideal man in the form of a Momin, and the Christians, in the form
of a Puritan. In fact, all Master-souls have emphasised the need
of developing an ideality in man so as to raise him to the level of a superman,
far above the plane of senses. Iqbal, a great Urdu poet of the Punjab,
relates: "Moses went to Mount Sinai to witness the glory of God, because
he was not aware of the great mystery within. 0 thou, the seeker after
truth, seek out an ideal man-for God, too, seeks one who can truly manifest
Him in the world."
All the scriptures and all the world
teachers have laid emphasis on the greatness of man, for he has vast potentialities
in him, which he can, if he will, develop to any extent he may like, leading
to Godhood. The pelf and power of the world are nothing in comparison to
the spiritual treasures lying within man, while he, in ignorance, is like
a mendicant roaming about in search of pebbles, and in the end barters
away his precious life for such trash.
Ruskin, too, likewise expresses this
idea: "There is no wealth but life, life including all its powers of love,
joy and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the
greatest number of noble and happy human beings. That man is the richest
who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has
also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of his possessions,
over the lives of others."
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