Self-improvement is not Spirituality. The two are inter-connected but different. Self-improvement movements focus on values like Non-violence, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Focus, Contentment, Detachment, Self-restraint and the like, pronouncing them as spiritual values. These are beautiful and important values but technically not spiritual values yet.
To me, a spiritual value is something that by itself can facilitate (if not cause) self-realization or enlightenment without the assistance of any other value.
- The values I mentioned earlier surely are amazing human values. They can create wonderful human beings. They can reduce suffering too.
- These values are also good moral values, guides for harmonious co-existence with others.
- These values could also get you into a state that’s very similar to the person that self-realisation can make out of you.
- Many of them are also the by-products of a self-realised state.
Studying some traditions has led me to exclude these values from the list of spiritual values. Ramkrishna Paramhansa used to eat fish (violating the value of non-violence). Nisargdatta Maharaj used to smoke beedi (violating the value of self-restraint). Raman Maharshi once ran behind an irritating seeker to drive him out of the ashram (violating the value of forgiveness). Jesus famously physically threw out the money-changers that operated around the holy premises (violating the value of love). And the four examples I gave above have been incontrovertibly declared as self-realised souls (unlike some of the other masters whose self-realization has been validly or invalidly questioned by many).
A few self-realised masters that I have most devotedly served happily violated most of these so-called spiritual values. Which brings us to the question as to what exactly is a spiritual value?
Self-realisation stems from ego-annihilation. All doing is about the ego. If self-realization is about the annihilation of the ego, then only non-doing can lead to that.
Non-doing is directly facilitated by dropping doership (akartabhav), action-orientation (akarma) or by surrendering to a power higher than yourself (Bhakti). These three seem to be the only three paths to self-realization (if they are paths in the first place). Maybe even truth or integrity (satya) is an equally valid spiritual value because it causes ego annihilation in a different way.
Love is a close contender but not the direct enabler. Awareness, witnessing, mindfulness too are close contenders but involve an element of ‘doing’. All other values like forgiveness, contentment and the like are just amazing human values. They are about self-improvement though.
However spiritual enlightenment or self-realization is not self-improvement. The self is not supposed to be improved. An improved self is still a self. The self is to be annihilated or transcended or integrated into a wider context – the Self with the capital ‘S’. In the words of J.Krishnamurthy, enlightenment is not a progression, it is a total transformation, a metamorphosis, a mutation, a quantum leap.
