How then can we recognise a truly spiritual person? Do we not have to seek help from moral standards sometimes? Until humanity itself grows in spiritual consciousness, aren’t moral standards the only fallback we have? I am a bit wary of those who say that since spiritual life is all about inward measures and moral life about outward measures, it is better not to judge a spiritual person and apply NO human standards at all to them.
I feel that that is a charlatan philosophy trying to hide behind falsehood. Even though Gita mentions that a spiritual being carries no external signs, it does lay out a standard, nevertheless, for those who are on the path of Truth. For instance its great push for Sattva and its description of how a sattvic being lives, thinks, acts and feels.
What are your thoughts on judging a spiritual person? As long as they live among humanity, there must be some way to know who is authentic and inauthentic.
One should not judge anyone, I feel, especially in a censorial spirit. This is so because each one of us has a certain angle of understanding, a kind of conditioning based upon our upbringing and unique approach towards life. This comes in the way of our understanding of people. Secondly, human nature is quite complex and, as one rises in the scale of evolution, the complexity only increases, making it difficult to understand a person in his totality. The same person often carries within oneself different, even contradictory elements in his personality. It is well known, for example, that the same person’s beautiful side comes out in interaction with one person, while the shadow or the alter ego comes out with another. Given this inherent complexity of human nature, it is best to avoid sweeping statements about anyone. The moral standards themselves often differ from society to society. What is considered good in one society is often considered bad in others. Most importantly, the real test or value of an action depends upon the inner motive. As Sri Aurobindo reminds us in Essays on the Gita.
‘Action and event have no value in themselves, but only take their value from the force which they represent and the idea which they symbolise and which the force is there to serve.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/19/the-divine-birth-and-divine-works)
Since the motives remain unknown, it is near impossible to draw any conclusions from observing the outer acts, especially of a spiritual person. But even otherwise, the spiritual history of mankind is full of instances of spiritual awakening in the most unexpected, which includes great ones like Valmiki, Augustin, Arjun himself, whose deva nature is confirmed by Sri Krishna himself and yet who may not pass the strict test of the moralists. The Mother further reminds us with reference to the psychic discovery.
‘The first and perhaps the most important point is that the mind is incapable of judging spiritual things. All those who have written on this subject have said so; but very few are those who have put it into practice. And yet, in order to proceed on the path, it is absolutely indispensable to abstain from all mental opinion and reaction.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/psychic-education-and-spiritual-education#p6)
You are right that this does not mean a blind justification of anything under the garb of spiritual life and such a person being above all moral norms. He is above morality and not below it. There is a difference between someone who has gone past the moral stage of evolution and another who is still labouring below it. To take just a couple of quick examples, it is not immoral to get angry and retaliate if a wrong has been done to you, but it is yet unspiritual. Similarly, marrying again or living with someone whom one may genuinely love is immoral, but it may be seen as a kind of honesty to a spiritual vision, while continuing the marriage while love has passed away as hypocrisy. Besides, there are many things not conceivable to a moralist that are yet very much part of a spiritual consciousness. But leaving these grey zones aside, there are certainly markers or signs of a spiritual consciousness working within a person. There are plenty of signs that the Gita itself describes, such as inner peace and equanimity, Maitri-Karuna, love and compassion towards all creatures, one who is not disturbed by the world as well as the world is not disturbed by him, one whose actions stem from the sense of unity and converge towards unity rather than vice versa. Absence of pride and vanity, humility, gratitude, love for the Divine, service and devotion towards God not for any selfish reasons but for the joy of the Divine, self-discipline, self-mastery, Swadhyaya, Satsang, generosity and forgiveness, nobility of temperament, Absence of anger, fear, jealousy, possessiveness, selfishness and meanness, living for the Divine in oneself and for Divine in the world, love of solitude and an ability to find solitude even in the crowd, universal goodwill towards all, inner detachment from outer situations, circumstances and family even while in the midst of all, absence of egoism, ambition, lust, pride and vanity. There is a sense of peace and joy and clarity and benevolence and wideness that one feels in the atmosphere of a genuinely spiritual person; many other things besides that are hardly found in a moralist.
Moralists, on the other hand, are more often than not intolerant, judgmental, censorial and condemning others with a superior air of vanity, narrowness and rigidity, which is quite opposed directly to the spiritual life. Their virtues are often pretentious and not out of a genuine inner change. The differences, therefore, are many and while few, if any, can skip the moral stage of evolution, it is equally true that a moral man cannot understand the true spiritual life and, if excessively attached to his moral ideas, may delay or bar his way to the spiritual consciousness.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
