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Seeking the Cosmic Spirit

Murad A Baig April 29, 2006

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Our little world is just one out of many billion, planets, suns, moons and other solid bodies hurtling through vast distances of space. Science today shows us that even this apparently solid world that we live on is actually made up of many smaller molecules that
like the planets in a galaxy are separated from each other by vast distances of empty space. These tiny molecules are further composed of still smaller atoms that are made of even more tiny electrons and protons moving through expanses of space in charged energy fields.

Man does not yet know if this vast world we live on is not just a particle in a still greater cosmos nor whether there will someday be the discovery of even smaller worlds than the tiniest electron that science has, so far, been able to identify. All observable matter is, therefore, no more than insubstantial fields of energy moving in a great void. The great ’Shunya’, or great emptiness, that pervades and surrounds everything.

All objects and all living things thus have no substance except as bundles of energy. All the great edifices of man, all our proud possessions and all observable objects are also doomed to decay and die. And all our hopes, fears, dreams, philosophies, arts, literature and historic achievements are nothing but transitory mists floating on the endless ocean of the cosmos.
Man’s unanswered questions remain...

Who or what is the subject that directs these objects on their microscopic and macrocosmic cycles of movements and change?

Who or what is the subject within all living things that directs their continuously changing process of birth, growth, decay and death?

Is this subject within all animate beings and the inanimate things, a separate entity, or are they just drops in some great encompassing cosmic river flowing, in eddies and swirls, towards some even greater cosmic sea.

All our transitory possessions, objects, passions, ideals and even our mortal bodies are destined to be deserted by this transitory spirit as it moves in its undeclared way towards some unimagined destination. In this spirit, and around it, may be another unchanging void. The nameless, formless, Nirvana. The great inert stillness where nothing changes.

For every individual, our seemingly momentous passions, thoughts, traditions, pleasures and pain are mere expressions of a solitary transitory spirit on an often tiresome and sometimes joyous journey through an allotted span of life. A spirit that comes to the world alone and leaves it alone but is never alone as long as it regards itself as a part of some greater subject.

The cosmic creator, without name or form may be a great stream of cosmic energy in which every living soul is but a tiny droplet. A stream which surges over, under and through us as it joins other streams to flow into some greater cosmic ocean from where, like water, droplets evaporate again to resume the endless cycle of creation.

An increased awareness of our inner spirituality may mark a new consciousness because evolved spirits will find no purpose for the wood, brick or stone with which Man makes his deities or places of worship. They will understand that this Great Spirit sometimes called Ishwar, Allah, God, or what you will, was the inspiration of all the sages, prophets and the founders of all religions and is therefore greater than any of them. They will then need no priests who claim they are the sole selling agents of their brands of God having divine powers to insure the future for the fearful or the superstitious with supposedly sacred words, rituals or beautiful objects of worship.

If people can learn how to find the glory of this spirit within themselves they will be freed from the bondage of sacrifices, penances and rituals. It will be the triumph of inner spirituality and the end of raucous religiosity.

Previously published in The Times of India

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