SPIRITUALITY
-- What it is

XII
RIGHT TARGET






    To escape from sorrow and suffering, and to achieve supreme and everlasting bliss, everyone makes a headlong dash but achieves nothing. A wise man is one who always makes a sincere effort in the right direction and never loses sight of his objective or ideal. In the absence of a definite goal or a target, one aimlessly and endlessly wanders in utter darkness. On the other hand, a clear-cut destination serves as a beacon-light that guides at every step, and each stride takes the weary traveller nearer to the journey's end.
    Mere effort, without well-directed attention focused on the object of quest, cannot lead a person anywhere. Object and effort must, therefore, be in one straight line before there can be hope of success. A life of all effort with one's back to the objective will surely achieve nothing.

"A search for a thing in the wrong direction can never be fruitful." - Kabir
    It would just mean blindfolded and endless gyrations, like those of an ox yoked to the oil press, for he moves all the day long with blinkers on his eyes. He actually does not get out of the vicious circle, and so makes no progress whatsoever.
    In the world, wheresoever one may turn his eyes, one sees nothing but universal strife and unrest, creatures feeding upon creatures, and endless struggle for survival. All this plethoric confusion is indeed born from ignorance or lack of knowledge of the end or aim. Human life, like any other kind of life, has its own El Dorado, of which one can learn from the very Book of Life itself. All the sacred texts and all knowledge of the world are nothing but the result of unfoldment of the spirit at the intellectual centers within the human body. All inspirations come from the soul within, the source of all knowledge and wisdom. Wonderful indeed is the house in which we live.
God, even today, as of old, reveals Himself to the human soul, provided it is neat, clean and receptive. This body is a veritable temple of God, in which the spirit of man and the spirit
of God both live together, or else this body were a carcass fit to be consigned to the flames or to the graveyard.
    Shamas Tabriz, a great Muslim saint of repute, says: "By the side of this grass blade of the human body, there flows an endless stream of life. Hidden in the heart of this atom is the light of a hundred suns." But alas! it is not given to man to know the mysteries of life without the aid of a Master-soul. The entire macrocosm lies buried in the microcosm. One has to dig deep within to get at the untold treasures of spirituality at the roots of the soul. One who wanders without in search of God, is but a sceptic and a heretic, and knows not the real Truth.
"Everything is in the body and nothing without it;
 He who seeks without wanders in delusion." - Majh M.5



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