Everyone appears to have a personal relationship with God. Even atheists appear to ignore or disbelieve Him with a passion. Does He have a role to play in a personal spiritual journey?
While God does have a central role to play in any successful spiritual journey, according to Indian spiritual texts, in my view His role should not be accepted merely on faith. Instead, His role should be evaluated as a person would scientifically evaluate a theory – through experimentation.1
A scientific method …. with a twist
The strength of Science is that is starts with the premise that it may not know the truth. But it has a logical approach to test theories through replicable experimentation. If you have a theory and it predicts something, then I can try and convert the prediction into an experiment that I can do. I can then publish the details of my experiment and others can also validate for themselves if the experiment also gives them the results that I claim to have seen. People can then work back carefully from the experiment to conclude what part of the theory has been proven by the experiment that they have conducted and successfully replicated.
Teachings of Indian spiritual texts can and should be similarly tested. The bedrock scientific principle of replicability is intrinsically linked to the religious principle of equality before God: all human beings are created equal. So, if one person is able to conduct a spiritual (or religious) “experiment” and get a positive result, then another should be able to replicate it. It is very important that the spiritual guidelines be practically applied and evaluated because accepting them merely on faith reduces them to the level of a dogma – and that can be worse than useless. Spiritual teachings are meant to enrich lives. So, it would be a travesty to not explore them rationally.
The important difference from a typical scientific experiment is that the spiritual experiments would be conducted at a personal level, where the outcome may not be visible to anyone other than the self. For personal and practical purpose, that should suffice. But, like a personal relationship with God, such experimentation would also make some parts of spiritual guidelines work better for one person and other parts for other people. This is to be expected since spiritual texts also advise that individuals have different spiritual-path preferences – which could (broadly) be those of knowledge, action, and worship.2 This creates the wrinkle that what works for one person may not for another because of factors such level of spiritual advancement as well as personal spiritual preferences. Take spiritual advancement: a person who has been practicing meditation for decades would find it easy to replicate a meditational experiment while another with little experience in meditation may struggle to sit still for a few minutes. On the point of spiritual preferences: a person with a keen interest in theoretical learning may find the mere reading of a spiritual text to be uplifting. On the other hand, another person may not feel anything till he acts on the reading (i.e. spiritual preference for the path of action). So, one should remember that although the scientific approach is important, what works for a person may not work for another due to personal differences rather than faulty knowledge or approach. In either case, one should only accept what he has personally validated and seen as beneficial. Thus, it may not be wise to be outrightly dismissive of others’ results that do not work for me and probably better to continue my search for what works for me right now – just as science does not abandon its search for advancement when some experiments fail. Put another way, spiritual experimentation becomes a very personal thing and we should pragmatically adopt what works for us individually (see article on the same logic for religion).
Closing note: Visualising God
In my experience, deep meditation like TAME works a lot better when the person tries to focus on a human form of God rather than an impersonal / inconceivable entity or energy. In my understanding, this is because of the way the mind works. Due to the limitations of my mind, it is a lot easier for me to relate to someone who I know as a person rather than an entity that I cannot possibly visualise. For this reason, ancient Indian texts provide stories and descriptions of God in human form.3 This helps people engaged in each of the three paths of yoga. Those in the path of knowledge can better meditate when they do so upon His human image. Those in the path of action can learn from his example (His actions when he faced challenges as a human). And, those in the path of worship can more easily relate to Him as a person through His human stories.
Footnote
1: Swami Vivekananda expressed a broadly similar view – as may be read in the book “The Complete works for Swami Vivekananda”.
2: Note that such preferences are directional and rarely demarcated clearly, even within a person. For example, a person who is inclined to spiritually advance through the knowledge path will also end up acting upon that knowledge in some way (path of action).
3: The most instructive in my view are the two epics – Ramayan (Lord Ram) and Mahabharat (Lord Krishna).
