Spiritual Disagreement

Arul Migu Sockalingum Meenatchee Ammen Tirukkovil

Returning to Mauritius to visit the family comes with the full package of being a product of this culture at a heart and soul level! Some might think this tiny island in the Indian Ocean is Heaven on Earth - which I can confirm to be true in terms of the utter beauty of the place. One can only appreciate God's creation at its most raw splendid beauty. Even as I write this, I can't find the words to describe such magnificent beauty sitting here on the balcony of my parents' house, facing a whole mountain range with the sun shining intensely on the green mountains and the sky framing the perfection of the scene with its pristine blueness!

But as we all know, there's always more to the picture than meets the eye! Yesterday, at the local temple, we celebrated the Swamiji's (the Guru of many other swamis) 60th birthday. On that occasion the Swami decided to do 5hrs of chanting for Lord Shiva and Parvati (Shiva's wife). I was brought up as a very religious Tamil for 18years of my life and that particular temple used to be the heart and soul of my being. I absolutely love that place. I used to learn the Tamil language there on Saturdays, and also I learnt the South Indian dance Bharatnatyam for 10 years every Saturday at that temple. But yesterday was the most profound and deepest devotional chant to the Lord that I have ever experienced in my life (maybe I'm appreciating more at a deeper level, being a student of American spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen for the last 7 years!). I was sitting right behind 7 other sannyasis who were chanting and I dropped into such a deep meditation with the chanting loud and clear in the background of my mind - it was profound! Also, the amazing thing is that what I've noticed about the Swamiji is that his attention is always on bringing everyone together in a deep religious context where we all have our attention on God, and so he used his birthday celebration as a profound act of bringing everyone together in devotion to our main Hindu god, Lord Shiva. That's always struck me about "Enlightened" individuals or great Swamis: they are always creating Unity and reinstating the fact that we are One in every shape or form - it seems like that's where their attention always is and that's what informs their actions.

You must be wondering, so where does the "spiritual disagreement" come in then? ... Well my mother has been studying as a dedicated student of the Brahma Kumaris for the last 6 years, while I've been a student of Evolutionary Enlightenment teacher Andrew Cohen, and we both went to the temple together, experiencing the profound religious Godly experience chanting for over 4hrs for Shiva! On our way back home, my mum said to me "...you see, the religious renunciate life should be one of total surrender and absolute abidance in the service to the Lord as a celibate"..."being a celibate is what the pure religious life is about, not the way you [meaning me] seem to live the spiritual life." ... Well, that definitely got me going.

I have been married to another student of Andrew's, Tom Huston, in the context of the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment for over a year. As a couple in this context, amongst many other couples, we are dedicated in creating a new culture where men and women come together beyond the structures of the separate self-sense, or ego, with a goal of "piercing through the romantic illusion." The idea is that by coming together in a context of enlightenment - or egoless consciousness - where our own inherent freedom and fullness is the ground for our relationship, we can have a peaceful, joyful relationship that stops karma before it even gets started and keeps our marriage free from interpersonal drama and unnecessary confusion. What I'm discovering is that the more I become conscious of the ego structures in me as a woman and I consciously choose to act different in such a way that keeps relationships free from my personal desires, neediness, fears, and wanting, this creates a deeper intimacy between men and women that is not based on the motive of wanting from one another but instead on, literally, wanting to evolve consciousness - pushing forward the evolution of God, in time and space, through me / you / us as human beings.

So I started to question my mother to find out whether man and woman being in a relationship is really that impure. We both fully disagreed with each other on that point - the spiritual questioning was intense! But the interesting thing is that I still have the same very deep belief of where she's coming from, in myself, and questioning this very thing was actually going against my own deep structural belief - I always used to think the same thing: that one is "purer" by being a celibate if one was to give oneself absolutely and fully to God! But is that really true? I ask myself...and my mother. She said that's what it says in the holy books and what the Brahma Kumaris also say. (In case you don't know, the BKs are a community of mostly women, administered by women, and inspired by their guru Brahma Baba. In a nutshell their spiritual belief and practice is mainly focused around meditation and the self-purification through what we discover in meditation, pure Being, in order to create a heavenly way of living.)

In what my mother was saying, there was no questioning for oneself, of course. In traditional cultures, we very rarely question deeply our own existence and purpose! But as we went into it, I was asking if man and woman are really so sinful then why did God create us in the first place? His motive must have been impure as well, dare I say?! It was an intense moment of disagreement / friction and we both walked home quietly after that. :-) We left the discussion with no answer as my mother really disagreed with me, although I could see how I have exactly the same deep belief in my psyche, too. But as a student of Andrew Cohen, I've learnt to question everything from the biggest context possible, beyond traditional religious structures and dogma, in order to pursue my own deep inquiry into the Truth and explore with others these deep fundamental questions.

So I was pleasantly surprised this morning when my mother came to me and said, "I was thinking a lot about last night, and I actually think that it's not the fact that being in a relationship itself is impure per se, but what's most important is the purity of our mind and soul. If anything and everything is done with purity of motive, then we can trust that as being the truth that would inform our actions." She went on to say that what matters is that each one of us purify our mind and act out of integrity and with that in our awareness, man and women can be together, but that would never be the main point; the main point would be each of us having our attention on God. And that was where we both finally met, in total agreement with each other!

Oh! To add to the spiritual friction, while I enjoy my last few days visiting my tiny island before returning to London, I decided to give the 60-year-old Swamiji of the local temple a birthday present: the latest issue of Andrew Cohen's magazine, whose title is the radical question What Is Enlightenment? :-)

Celebration at the temple