Understanding the balance between spirituality and rationality for personal growth and meaningful existence

Prayer is communication with God; meditation is communion with God. The former connects us to God, but the latter connects God to us. Prayers, meditations, and supplications share a common goal — to comprehend the dialectics of life by understanding the importance of nights, sorrows, pain, and suffering as complementary to days, happiness, relief, and ecstasy. Death is not something frightening because it is complementary to life. We are born to die and die to be born again. This pattern sustains the thread of existence. We originate from inexistence and return from existence into it again. Being and nothingness collide, making life possible in between.

It is the dialectics of life that gives birth to the balanced growth and development of a human being. Shaheed Muttahari says that a grown and developed personality is one that achieves completion in every dimension of life. If one does not go through thick and thin, managing both properly and learning from them the dialectics of life, attaining a balanced personality is impossible. Pain and suffering embolden one’s personality and draw out the best potential. Shaheed Muttahari also says that a tree that grows in the desert becomes stronger than a tree that grows in the garden. The former is not taken care of and develops the strength to fight harsh winds. It must draw its nutrients from the earth by working hard. Its bark is rough, and its roots are deep. Wind storms fail to uproot it.

Human beings perish in the struggle to balance their inner selves and their outer life. The body-soul dichotomy presents a great challenge and breaks down a person’s morale. Osho, an Indian philosopher, writes that Eastern people developed a lopsided personality because they emphasized more on soul, faith, meditation, spirituality, and feelings while ignoring the outer world of science and technology. Western people have also been victims of the same lopsidedness. They focused more on the body, science, reasoning, and intellect while ignoring the spiritual part. Shaheed Muttahari writes that religion helps human beings explore the spiritual world, and science helps them explore the outer world. By faith, one can attain command of their inner world, and by science, one can attain command of their outer world.

The scientific world has penetrated so much into our daily lives that we have stopped believing in the emotional world of human beings. Feelings are no longer considered valid proof of liking or disliking something. Osho believes that rationality has pierced us deeply. If a person falls in love with another person, we rush to ask them why they fell in love, using scientific prisms and standards. Love is a pure, natural emotion that can’t be defined but is often spoiled by ego and the aspiration to dominate the other.

When Kahlil Gibran was asked to comment on joy and sorrow, he quickly said that they are emotions originating from the same source. A person can be found gloomy in the morning, but in the evening, the same person can be seen happy and enjoying life. These emotions don’t stay forever; they change quickly and suddenly because they share the same source — the heart of a human being. Although life demands that we use our head instead of our heart to prosper and progress, if the heart does not go along with the head, life becomes miserable. We develop unbalanced personalities. The solution is to maintain the balance.

To make life meaningful and beautiful, we need to understand the dialectics of life. Joy and sorrow are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin. Taking them together will ease the intensity of suffering and will double the taste of joy.

By Fida Hussain Bhat

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Fida Hussain Bhat