THE CONCEPT OF SPIRITUAL DISSENT:a critical note

A.V.G.Warrier:

The theme note started with the phrase “spiritual dissent”, but somewhere downstream we find ourselves drifting to the idea “dissident spirituality”. For me the superposition of the two is what, I feel, is the source of confusion.

When spirituality is the cause of dissent we have spiritual dissent. Spirituality is the cause and dissent is the effect. This dissent is the discarding of the several hypotheses we come across while searching for the universals. The spirit of this dissent is embedded in the neti neti approach where one keeps dissociating from the imminent things while searching for perfect immanence.

Dissident spirituality could mean something quite different. Here dissident is someone who has decided to strike out a path that differs from the mainstream. The dissent could be for any reason. It may or may not be on account of spirituality. When dissent is not on account of spirituality, the spirituality of a dissident could vary widely from each other and from those sticking to the mainstream. Anybody who flouts the norms could get himself branded as a dissident. A dissident could also very well be a very non-spiritual person. Ali Baba who decided to live in the caves with his band of forty thieves could also qualify himself to be dissident. So where is the common thread in the variety of spiritualities of the innumerable dissidents that is worthy of serious exploration!? Even though the small band pursuing spiritual dissent also is a subset of the domain of dissidents, it is unproductive to club them with the rest for any analysis.

A classical example of spiritual dissent is Prahlada. By all worldly standards his dad Hiranyakashipu was a fantastic man. People burn midnight oil and write entrance examinations to emulate him. But his standards were not good enough for his son. Prahlada felt, and advocated, that the recipe for true prosperity and happiness is something that transcends material wealth. For Hiranyakashipu his son was a horrendous fundamentalist. He tried his best to suppress Prahlada by all means available to him. But the grace of the higher spirit made Prahlada immune to all attempts to destroy him.

In the final encounter Prahlada imparts to his father the wisdom of looking for the higher spirit in all mundane phenomena that appears to be grossly different from each other. The energy released by this revelation was so great that it consumed the ego of Hiranyakashipu and liberated him from his shell.

The lore of Hindu religion is full of such examples of spiritual dissent. It is quite possible that it is so in the case of other religions too. The picture of Christ driving away the potbellied priests is not very different from that of a serene Buddha revolting against gross ritual practices. And was Muhammad very different? Or for that matter Moses? Perhaps the spirit of Nachiketas lived through all of them.

In all these cases the dissent was from the corruptions of established practices. We run into problems when we focus on the dissent of the follower of a particular path from the followers of other paths or from the mainstream and arbitrarily assign spirituality with every instance of dissent. It is quite possible that in many cases the inability to conform to mainstream could be the result of inadequate development of spirituality. Focusing on avenues of dissidence and trying to look for the spirituality associated with them may not yield any useful results. When that exercise is used for making comparisons between them it could even be harmful. And when all differences start being equated with dissidence it could become totally absurd. Take for instance the possibility of male chauvinists and feminists arguing with each other over male spirituality and female spirituality. This possibility exists not only for men and women but for all complementary pairs. Playing on dissents generally yield to vertical divisions that compartmentalize the thinking process.

Spiritual dissent is a vehicle for the descent of spirituality. Kathopanishad talked about the descent of spirituality. “Rain that falls on a peak of subtleness flows down the slopes of the mountain. Like this the different paths of dharma are to be seen. Each person may follow a different stream. Pure water, when it is poured into a clean vessel, remains pure without contamination. Likewise a muni who knows the unity of the source of all dharmas becomes the seat of effulgence”. In recent past Aurobindo talked about the imminence of the descent of spirituality. More recently a team of German engineers brought down the spirit of enterprise exploiting the explosive developments in Information Technology to create paradigm shifts in the field of business management.

The relevant thing for society is spiritual dissent and the accompanying descent of spirituality. When Budhdha, Mohammed or Christ made a departure from the corruptions of their respective mainstreams they were operating in domains not affected by others. The question of how he can accommodate the followers of Mohammed or Christ never pestered Buddha. And same was the case with the others. The remaining together of many streams of spiritual practices in close proximity is a recent phenomenon brought into being by the growth of technology that closed distances and speeded up events. What ought to be the parameters for descent of spirituality or spiritual dissent in the modern scenario? How can a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or a follower of any other stream of spirituality be made to feel enriched and enhanced by the others in the neighborhood instead of being threatened by their presence?

This is not an easy question. The divisive powers are very strong and keep dictating what is progressive, what is retrogressive, what is just, what is unjust and so on and so forth. They even hijack the paths created by well-intentioned social reformers and palm off their agendas disguised in the respectability of the old departed souls. The collective intellect is chained to such an extent that one can predict the responses of most of the acknowledged cultural leaders to events. And when we can predict so easily, it means that nothing creative is actually happening. The voices are noises that keep eroding what ever little spirituality is there left in society.

I feel the relevant thing for present day world is to devise means to keep the divisive powers at bay. Just as the management scientists had caused the descent of spirituality to the field of management, perhaps, it is the role of philosophers to be instrumental in spiritual evolution of society. And I believe they can effectively perform in this role only when they keep the word ‘spiritual’ always in front of the word ‘dissent’. May be they should now be the vanguards of spiritual dissent in a world dominated by the politics of being.