Erasing all differences: spiritual philosophy as a remedy for world's problems

Erasing all differences: spiritual philosophy as a remedy for the world's problems

A practical philosophy can serve as a great guide
to living properly and correctly. 

The modern society is riddled with differences – barriers that seem to alienate us from each other. You might be a Christian, I might be a Hindu – You may be a woman, I may be a man – You might be from USA, I might be from India, and so on. These differences have always existed, and were even more powerful dividers or separators in the past. And who can forget the infamous Caste System of India, that aimed to divide the whole social structure into a narrow, despised and mindless hierarchy on the basis of birth? And what incident can be more heinous than the infamous Final Solution deployed by Adolf Hitler and his view-sharers?

In the recent years, as a result of modern facilities such as sharing of information and views over the Internet, better and more structured education system etc we are slowly emerging from the hallucination of a divided mankind. In my long experience of dealing with the world, I had been a racist, castist (that's if you consider it to be a legitimate term), a sexist, a misogynist, a religious fanatic and nearly everything you can imagine. I attempted to derive a practical world-view that would give me peace, and in the process I've personally experienced being a part of all these different world-views. But never did I find a practical solution in the process of fragmenting and dividing the world.

Why divide the world when you can unify it? All sorts of group-based superiority, including racial pride, the feeling of being superior by virtue of being a male/female, the idea that my religion is truer than yours and so on, are actually misleading, because never do they contribute to the upliftment of the moral character of a person, and never do they add to our mental peace, either at the individual or the collective level.

How are differences destructive?

Is this attack on a follower of Hinduism, by the
extremist Muslims in a Dhaka Mosque justified?
The man was later killed by his injuries.  This is
what extremist difference does. 

It is the evolutionary nature of man to identify himself or herself with something that is actually different from our true selves. For example, one might be born a Jew, and so he immediately identifies himself or herself as a jew, and thus identifies himself/herself with Judaism. Any apparent assault against the ideas of Judaism them appears to be more or less a personal assault against the person. Similarly, one may be a woman, and feel disgusted after reading the news of a recent sexual assault on some other woman by a man. Immediately, she identifies herself with the female gender, and thus categorizes the entire male gender as antagonistic and sadistic.

Differences always seek to separate and alienate us. And once we're divided, the Fog of War kicks into effect. For example, during the Indo-Pak partition in 1947, Hindus and Sikhs were agitated to see their kin and breathen slaughtered, and the same went for the Muslims of West Pakistan. This resulted in an endless cycle of vicious slaughters, robberies and rapes. Whenever challenged, the Muslims of Pakistan would reply “The Hindus and Sikhs are doing the same thing in India to our breathen. So we're justified in doing it!”, while the Hindus and Sikhs of India would say “Do you not see what's happening in Pakistan? Hindus and Sikhs there are being butchered! We're morally right to slay these beasts”. While the governments tried their best to peacefully resolve the situation, not much success was met, and the partition continues to haunt our dreams as the bloodiest of events in the recent times.

Differences are thus misleading, and destructive. With an increase in knowledge, spiritual and scientific alike, we will begin to see that these barriers that we've erected between ourselves, sometimes socially, sometimes on the basis of nationality and language, sometimes just because of race or gender, are actually illogical, needless and volatile.

The myth of differences

Muslim Victims of Mujaffarnagar riots become tearful as
they narrate their troubles to the Indian Prime Minister
Dr. Manmohan Singh and INC Chief Mrs. Sonia Gandhi

Simon de Beavouire, the associate of Jean Paul Sartre (who had been perhaps the most influential philosopher of the 20^th Century), famously modified Sartre's beautiful and elegant philosophy of Existentialism to give a new meaning to feminism. In her version of the theory, a human being is born without the idea of a gender. And then, the idea of a perfect role-model, containing the elements constituting the role and position of each gender (essentially what's expected from the member of each gender) is them imbued on him or her. Thus, a girl who's born as a human being, gets taught by the society, the milieu itself, how to behave as a girl. And the same goes for a boy.

The essence of Existentialism is that, our existence comes first. It's of primary importance. And then follows essence, which is secondary by itself. In Sartre's philosophy, a knife is first conceived by the mind of man, and it is required because of its importance, i.e essence. Thus, the essence of an inanimate object such as the knife, is primary. Then, it is built by the human, and thus it derives its existence from its essence. The same doesn't go for human beings.

In our case, a newborn body is the master of uncountably many possibilities. He or she can be a dancer, a swimmer, a scientist, a firefighter, it doesn't matter. Likewise, he or she may be a happy kid, an angry kid, a pampered one, it doesn't matter either. Because all these are essentially secondary. In our case, existence comes first, and essence follows that. Thus, essence owes its existence to our very existence itself.

Since the early days of the Buddha, to the modern day when we can access and learn from the world-views of notable spiritualists such as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Pankaj Mishra, we see that this simple principle, that essence is secondary to existence, is of crucial importance. It lies at the heart of Eckhart's own teachings. A human being doesn't have to role-play. Our existence as a life-form is of primary importance, and it matters more.

Thus, a Hindu is a Hindi because he follows and accepts the path of Hinduism. An Islam isn't born as a Islam either. One may at best say that he or she was born to Islamic parents, but does that mean he or she is also Islamic? I beg to differ. All religions, castes, creed, nationality and even gender itself, are secondary, and are only sets of interconnected ideas. These idealistic systems develop as our minds develop. But they don't make us different from other human beings, or even other animals, in that regard.

Role-playing

Corpses of Hindu children killed by an
Islamic attack on a Hindu temple

All the parts we play on the stage called life, sometimes as a follower of the specific religious paths we follow, sometimes as a good-looking guy or girl, sometimes as a patriot devoted to the cause of our respective nations, we're essentially role-playing. And while roles may not always be harmful, what they do is simply covering up our true selves. And hand in hand with role-playing, emerge differences and intolerance. Simply because I'm a Christian and you're Hindu, I begin to feel that you're incorrect in your pursuit of spiritual upliftment as a Hindu. This dangerous feeling gradually evolves (in a negative way), and I begin to feel that it's my sacred duty to bring you back to the true path. And then, my idea of religion, which is only a set of ideas which are not necessarily true or false, conflicts with your ideas. Thus, clashes break out when you begin to defend your ground.

This seemingly harmless persuasion had resulted into the deaths of thousands of innocents in my country India. Christian missionaries, often with the aid of trickery and deceit (to prove their so-called miracles) managed to convert a lot of Hindus. Hardcore extremist Hindus felt threatened, and they gave rise to extremist and racist organizations. In Orissa, for example, 6 Hindu saints including the well-respected Swami Laxmanananda, were shot dead by local Christian extremists. The result? Hindus launched a vile counter-attact, and burnt alive some Christian monks. Yet, who's there to decide neutrally, whether Hinduism is closer to truth than Christianity, or vice versa?

This myth of differences is thus the root of much evil that plagues and haunts our society. Although we've often tried to preach tolerance at a national level, sometimes with the use of force, sometimes through explanation, not much has been yielded. This is where spiritual philosophy comes to the rescue.

The idea of Epicurus: spirituality as a remedy

May the light of peace shine in us brightly. 

The followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, stressed on the use of practical philosophy rather than pondering on abstract thoughts that virtually yield nothing. A philosophy is generally considered practical, when it can be effectively applied to our lives as a whole. Epicurianism was such as a philosophy, using which Epicurus tried to cure his followers of the fear of death, and give meaning and purpose to their lives.

Sartre's existentialism, spiced up with Eckhart's perhaps interpretation of it, is a beautiful example of such a modern practical philosophy. Now the problem arises. Let us take India as a case-study, simply because I am quite acquainted with it. People of India are eager to hear what the lying politicians have to say, and they're quite concerned about what's going on in the arena of cricket. IPL or the Indian Premiere League, has demonstrated how an investment in style and mass-appeal generates much craze in a nation of billions. And similarly, to eradicate differences, the time has come to organize rallies, circulating the healing ideas that I mentioned above. For such ideas to be famous, it must be maintained that they should be simple to understand, easy to apply, and intuitively elegant. I believe the idea of existence over essence is one such idea. Our government can make a special department, whose only task would be to broadcast these ideas, and go on improving them and making them more practical and effective in countering poisonous ideologies. And believe me, ideas are very powerful. Properly crafted systems of ideas can lessen the crime rate, because they'll help us control our anger, our sense of pride, our latent sense of inferiority or superiority for that matter.

Teachers like Tolle, Mishra and Chopra, along with their followers and students, should be consulted by the government of India, and this should be followed by every nation. A potential rapist will then pause for a moment, and think “What am I doing? Is this the only way to get what I want? Like a fool, I'm going to destroy a flower while that same flower can be mine if I care for it”. The potential murderer will then think “Here, how is the victim different from me? He breaths, he eats and drinks, he has a family as well! Why destroy a family? This very act murders him physically, and it also murders my humanity!”. The Muslim who raises the dagger to stab a Hindu during a riot will then realize “He too is a creation of nature. Who's given me the right to slay him, just because he harbours a set of different ideas?”.

May we all learn to live happily as one race, the human race.
May all artificial and natural differences cease to be.
May the light of wisdom and acceptance drive away the darkness
of insanity.
May peace reign supreme. 

This practical world-view will serve as the healing shower that will liberate humanity of the terrible mental diseases we are all suffering from. Let the light of sanity eradicate the insane darkness in us all.

Lastly, what I wrote above might be totally bullshit according to some of you, and some others might welcome it happily as a solution. I know that I'm not 100% correct, and my set of ideas need modification and rectification. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say about it.