Open Source Spirituality

This post first appeared at Intentblog.com under the Weekly Intent Column.

Iconoclasts of One Era are Icons are Another

What is it?

Open Source is a movement primarily concentrated in technology that has used Internet as a foundational platform for people often unrelated who collaborate and contribute to create tools and products that were hitherto outcomes of large enterprises. Not all products have been error-free and robust but the contributions have helped bring a new wave of innovations and often destructive technologies.

There are two essential components of the classic Open Source movement:

i. Though many players work – everyone is a contributor and no one is an owner;
ii. Since no one is an owner there is no one who can claim ownership rights for the final product.

Open Source Spirituality is about open, free and selfless contributions without the urge by the preachers and Gurus to “patent” a method/teaching/idea as his/her own, such that a “Wikipedia of Spiritual Content and Substance” can come about and grows and blossoms on its own. No one may need to call a path his/her own or the only one and everyone is a mere contributor.

There maybe many contributors of equal rights, powers, and intellect.

Not every thing may be complimentary, but one idea may be able to reside together with diametrically opposite viewpoints on the sheer strength of lack of sponsorship! When there is no one to back up an idea as his or her own, there is no other idea that can cause conflict with it! They both co-exist.

We need to come to the realization that Ideas never conflict, people do. If Prophet Mohammad had provided his ideas and then washed his hands off them saying that I do not care if you think what I say is more important or more worthwhile than what Mr. Christ said a few hundred years back – there would be no conflict!

Ideas stand on the crutches of Human Ego. Religions are no different.

Parsing the Spiritual Frameworks?

To any system, enterprise, undertaking and organization there are two parts to existence – Framework and Substance.

The Prophets, Masters and Gurus have concentrated on the Substance and substance only and failed to utilize the Framework of the Unframed Creativity despite saying that they do not encourage a rigid Framework. The issue, however, is that Substance articulated as an owner as opposed to a contributor creates its own irreplaceable and unchanging Framework, specially when it comes from an Enlightened Master.

If, on the other hand, the Prophets/Masters/Gurus were content to simply use the Abundant Ambiguity of the Creation with the conviction that the Universal Consciousness in even the uninitiated will articulate as well and as loud as in Him/Her, we will probably have a society full of quiet but Enlightened Masters and Prophets because, then, that Unframed Framework maybe able provide a topography for exploration by every soul as opposed to a sedentary fulfilled belief called Faith which exerts itself as the absence of motivation to experiencing as opposed to believing.

Everyone will, in that case, be able to Own and Experience His/Her own Spiritual Light rather than live in reflected and borrowed rays.

To work with Unframed Ambiguity and yet leave without any Framework requires a Master who does not have an ego – an ego that is often expressed through His/Her urge to preach and propogate and uplift; which is where the Mohammads, Buddhas and Jesuses have failed consistently and spectacularly!!

The Efforts to Uplift mankind have singularly been mankind’s worst failures! They have tethered the rest of the humankind, constituted of “followers” or “believers” to an existence of mere mortals and get progressively boxed into more and more claustrophobic compartments, as opposed to setting the Universal Spirit free to find its level through experimentation and exploration.

Lack of belief in the Inherent Ability of a soul.. any and every Soul to “wake up” on its own is foundational to the act of preaching! The conclusion that one needs to help starts with the basic assumption that the “other” is in need of help! When everything is One and Infinite Universal Consciousness, then who needs help from whom?? It is no surprise, therefore, that “Faith” is touted as the first step in the spiritual journey by the Gurus and Prophets.

How is it that the very Enlightened Soulswho preach Oneness of Consciousness go further on to provide straitjackets of codes of conduct as if that same One is weak enough in those souls to blossom on its own?

Yet, despite their great self belief (and doubts about others’ souls to blossom without help) the Masters/Gurus/Prophets have very little, if any, permanent progress to show for their efforts. Can we categorically say that world today is happier and Spiritually better off (not as in religion because Religions have a crude Stone-age vintage barometer – that of the numbers of followers to measure success with – Islam is the fastest growing religion or Asia is the next frontier for Christianity they say!) than it was before Jesus or Buddha set foot on this planet? I am not talking about the planes, computers and the science – but Happiness and Spirituality.

To grasp the dynamics of Good and Evil and the attempts to eliminate the Evil as well as the utter failure of such efforts throughout History, we need to properly distinguish between Equality and Equilibrium. At the origin of creation, as is the bedrock of the Space Theories, there was perfect Symmetrical Energy Form that had no manifestation or articulation – Perfect Equality. However, the chaos of Big Bang manifested the creation. Equality was the original state. Once that was disturbed, the only way to sustain the creation was Equilibrium. Good and Evil, Yin and Yang, Positive and Negative sustain each other! The pendulum can move on one side for only so long. For the creation to be sustained, it will resume its return journey before long. The only other scenario possible, therefore, other than equilibrium is equality, but that state of equality will preclude the creation as we know it. So, though the Masters, Prophets, and Gurus were working towards a noble goal, it was destined for failure within the confines of this creation!

It is interesting that the very reason why most Masters started on the endeavor to chart a new path was to get rid of the strangleholds in the existing ones. Buddha and Guru Nanak, for example, just like all others, had the same thought underlying their philosophy. They were Reformers first and Masters later. The truth is that there is NO Reform possible by creating another Path! Creating another line on a white paper that is longer or straighter than the one already marked out on the paper, does not in any way improve the existing one. We just end up creating another one. Soon every artist desirous of charting a “new” path, leaves a line such that the white space where the Universal could have expressed it self, is littered with just dark, opaque marks. While preaching the nobility of erasing the existing line, they – one after another and unfailingly without drawing any lessons from history of earlier artists kept creating new ones!!

Spirit now finds itself smothered in the magnanimity of the Reformers and the Enlightened!

Historical Verity*

Most Masters agree that accepting the distinction of being Me – just simply a Human Being (or any being for that matter) leads to the separation of that Soul from the Universal Whole and dissolution of this distinction results in the Merger – then how can more distinctions within the realm of Human Existence be any path to Freedom? Our primary struggle, therefore, now lies in becoming just Human Beings again – without any categories that is! Only then, can we, move ahead to dissolve that last barrier to Freedom!

For the Souls to be free – the Universal Unframed Framework sans any Substantive content needs to be opened up and used – and for that to be possible the existing self-obsessed structures which have been so far dictated by their substance need to be comprehensively deconstructed.

If we cannot dissolve self-made, external structures; dissolution of our internal ego-structures is well nigh impossible!

My Intention for the future is best expressed by this poet:

Safa-e-hasti kar raha hoon;
Ek badi umeed par.
Ki benishaan ho loon;
To kuch naamo-nishaan paida ho.

– Author Unknown to me

(I am dissoving my person;
with this great intent.
That I may remain no more;
So a new existence could emerge!)

* With Apologies to Sri Bal Gangadhar Tilak