1. Home
2. eBooks
3. Empower Women
4. The Spiritual Perspective

The Spiritual Perspective

For what is a man profited, if he shall
gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?
_{Matthew 16:26}

We have seen how invaluable women are to the natural order; we have seen their current condition; and we have seen the social consequences of our actions toward them. The spiritual consequences of our actions, on the other hand, are far more subtle. Saints and great visionaries of every religion, in every age, have given us essentially the same unequivocal message again and again. What, we can ask ourselves, would be their perspective on this grave crisis?

There has always been a balance in nature. This natural, God-given balance in the universe comes from pairs of opposites complementing each other. Light and dark, day and night, young and old, aggressive and passive, masculine and feminine, man and woman – all are important to this balance and well-being of the creation. Human beings have both masculine and feminine characteristics, and men and women together contribute to a balanced society.

Why did God make some of us men and others women? Because a woman’s love is one image of the love of God, and a man’s love is another image of God’s love. Both are created to love, but each in a different way.
_{Mother Teresa}

Today, the massive scale of sex-selection threatens the male-female balance in our society. The absence of one gender, the female, upsets the natural balance. An excess of masculine energy without the gentling, harmonizing influence of the feminine to complement it, leads to chaos and destruction.

It is not our job to try to create the “perfect family;” it is not our job to “balance” the family. Nature balances itself. When we interfere with the processes of nature, we disrupt the natural order of things. Then nature asserts itself to correct the imbalance. This process of correction is inevitably a painful one.

What is our life’s ultimate goal? If our goal is spiritual, then let us ask ourselves, are our daily actions aligned with this goal? Many of us tend to fall into the trap of limiting our spiritual efforts to a particular time or place: We perform a few moments of ritual at a place of worship or a few moments of prayer at a particular time every day, and then for the rest of the day we forget our noble goal. At times we may even perform acts of such callousness toward our fellow human beings that every act of worship we have performed might stand cancelled. Is such worship acceptable to the Lord?

In the court of the Lord, an ounce of love
Weighs more than tons of religious faith.
_{Hazrat Sultan Bahu, BAIT 58}

To achieve the highest spiritual goal, we have to live the spiritual teachings at every moment. The spiritual way must become an inherent part of our lives.

Saints teach us about the sacred nature and oneness of all living beings.

From one Light all have emanated, then who can we call good and who bad?
_{Kabir Sahib}

Our soul, the life force that enables us to live, has no gender. In the eyes of God there is no difference between men and women: all are pure spirit, all are divine, all are equal.

Saints have always maintained that every life has value, that it is wrong to kill another being. They teach us only God has the power to give life and take life: it is not for us to decide on God’s behalf whom to preserve and whom to kill.

Thou shalt not kill.
_{Ten Commandments of the Bible as quoted in Matthew 5:21}

You shall not kill your children due to fear of poverty. We provide for them, as well as for you. Killing them is a gross offence.
_{Qur’an [17:31]}

Do not kill any creature;
  in all beings dwells the Lord.
O Ravidas, the sin of killing will not be atoned for,
Even if one were to give a million cows in charity.
_{Guru Ravidas}

Perhaps we are confused because we see the child in question as an unborn foetus, not a living baby. Infanticide, though still widely practised, has always been associated with guilt: the mother has a chance to hold her baby in her arms; the dayi (midwife) who usually performs the act, has a chance to see the face of the baby and hears her cry and struggle for life. In the old days, after killing a girl-child, a pundit was called to the house to perform prayers and make offerings to appease the gods. We have always known, deep down inside, that it is wrong.

Unfortunately with foeticide, because the baby is unborn and unseen, our conscience is relatively numb. Medical technology, the clinic and the professionalism of the medical team distance us from the cruelty of the act. Also, many of us find foeticide morally acceptable because we believe the soul does not enter the foetus until the end of the second trimester of gestation. We must ask ourselves: on what basis have we reached this conclusion?

Nature intended the mother’s womb to be a safe place for the baby to grow. A foetus has the ability to experience pain; a foetus is a human being in the making – the greatest of all God’s creations. A foetus is a human child born in the image of God; a child brings the promise of love. It is our responsibility to protect and nurture that innocent child as much and as far as we can.

When we view all beings through a spiritual lens, it creates compassion in us. We begin to understand that far from killing, we should not even injure another’s feelings. Daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law – we cannot expect to hurt her and find a place for ourselves in the court of the Lord.

Never hurt the feelings of anyone. This is a sin which even God himself does not pardon, because it cuts at the very root of spirituality.
_{Maharaj Jagat Singh}

Let us pause and reflect on our motivations. What is it that makes us demand a dowry? And even if we have not asked for a dowry, what makes us accept these gifts when they are given, as if it were our birthright to take, and their fate to give?

Do our expectations and desires exceed our needs? To what extent are we willing to go for a better TV, a newer car, a bigger house? And if all these desires were to be fulfilled, would we then be satisfied, or would our mind conjure up new wants?

We should remain, then, within the limits imposed by our basic needs and strive with all our power not to exceed them. For once we are carried a little beyond these limits in our desire for the pleasures of this life, there is then no criterion by which to check the onward movement, since no bounds can be set to that which exceeds the necessary.
_Philokalia

In our need to possess more, have we given any thought to the repercussions that will surely follow?

You clutch at things that belong to another,
But the Lord within knows and hears all.
Lost in greed for worldly things,
You fall into the pit of hell,
Unaware of what lies in store for you in the beyond.
_{Guru Arjun Dev}

The desire for sons and the desire for more wealth lead us to commit heinous acts against women. But do either our sons or our wealth truly belong to us? Will we be able to take them with us when we leave this world?

The fool is tormented, thinking,
“These sons belong to me,”
“This wealth belongs to me.”
He himself does not belong to himself.
How then can sons be his?
How then can wealth be his?
_Dhammapada

The law of karma is a natural law that governs the working of this creation. According to this law of cause and effect, our every thought and action results in an equivalent consequence.

Whatever we sow, it is that we shall reap; this life is a field of actions.
_{Guru Arjun Dev}

A record is kept by life itself of all our thoughts and actions. We may have to bear the consequence of these actions in this lifetime, or it may be postponed to a future lifetime. Either way, the consequence itself is inescapable. There is an apt saying: the wheels of karma grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

A story in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, illustrates the working of this law quite effectively. The king Dhritarashtra was born blind and he considered this fate a terrible curse. Due to great good karma, however, he was granted the spiritual power to be able to see his past lives. He looked back one hundred lives searching for some clue that would indicate why he had been cursed with blindness in this life, but he could find no action he’d done to warrant his fate. He turned to Lord Krishna, who advised him to look back beyond a hundred lives. When he did, he discovered that in one particular lifetime, as a young “ignorant” child, he had poked thorns into the eyes of some helpless animal. Due to this act he was now, many lifetimes later, born as a blind king.

O friend, the record of thy deeds cannot be effaced;
They are recorded by (the law of) God.
_{Guru Nanak}

Sometimes, after committing what we know to be a wrong act, we may feel complacent because we were able to escape the law of the land. Hazur Maharaj Charan Singh used to say that if a five-year-old child were in the same room with us, we would hesitate to steal even a pencil. Yet what do we not do in the presence of the Lord? We should be cautioned: the Lord who is all-knowing and all-seeing cannot be deceived.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked;
For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
_{Bible, Galatians 6:7 – 6:9}

Nor should we be beguiled into thinking that our actions are somehow justified because our circumstances are desperate or because we are doing this for our loved ones. On our Day of Judgment it is we who will be held accountable for our actions, not our loved ones. No one else can pay this debt for us.

Each soul earns what it earns for itself; and no man shall bear another’s burden.
_Qur’an

It is a sin to kill. Nothing in this world is free; everything we do comes at a price. We may have the sons, we may have the wealth, but we had to sell our soul in exchange for it: was it worth the price? Will we ever again be able to live in peace?

To accept the will of the Lord means to understand that the events in our life are not occurring arbitrarily. We made choices in our past lives and we are reaping the fruits of those actions. Therefore, if a daughter is in our destiny, then so be it; let us welcome her with equal love. Her presence in her mother’s womb is not an accident to be corrected, but an act of supreme will.

Not a leaf can stir without his command.
_{Punjabi proverb as quoted by Maharaj Charan Singh}

Why can we not accept the Lord’s will? What are we worried about? Continuing the family lineage? Keeping the inheritance within the family? Having financial and emotional support in our old age? Meeting our business and financial goals? Let us set aside these worries; let us just do what is right and turn to the Lord to take care of us in our time of need.

Your worrying shows that you have no faith in the goodness of God or even in God himself. Let him accomplish things in his own way rather than in the way you desire. Try to adjust yourself to all that he does and you will never be unhappy.
_{Maharaj Jagat Singh}

And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith!
_{Luke 12:23}

If we look at our relationships and possessions from a spiritualized perspective we will realize that, in truth, everything we have does not belong to us. What we have has been entrusted to our care for a time, so let us not cling to it, compromise our principles, or try to impose our will over the Lord’s. As caretakers our job is to take ourselves out of our actions and just discharge our duty with the utmost sincerity, honesty and love, and leave the results in the Lord’s hands.

If we can take what comes to us as from Him, then whatever it is becomes divine itself; shame becomes honour, bitterness becomes sweet, and darkness becomes light. Everything takes its flavour from God and becomes divine. Everything that happens betrays the invisible hand of God.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}

Let us ask ourselves an important question. Who are we? We think of ourselves as human beings struggling to survive, occasionally searching for meaning through an elusive spiritual experience. Saints, however, offer us a far broader perspective:

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
_{Pierre Teilhard de Chardin}

What a paradigm shift this is! Do we really see ourselves as spiritual beings? This is a question of fundamental importance because our self-perception is the lens through which we view the world and the driver of all our actions towards others. It is only when we respect ourselves that we are able to treat others with respect. It is only when we love ourselves that we can have any love to give to others. It is only when we consider ourselves to be divine that we see the divinity in others.

Our actions towards others are, in fact, a mirror which reflects how we view ourselves.

We cannot ignore this fundamental fact: To kill a child is a sin. To hurt a woman – by thoughts, words or actions – is a sin. When we hurt, abuse, or dominate anyone in our lives we will have to bear the consequences of our actions. Any pain perpetrated by us will stand in the way of our own spiritual progress and growth. Let us, instead, wake up to our great human potential. Let us live a life that gives equal value to each human being no matter whether they are woman or man, girl child or boy child. We are all born of one sacred reality.

1. Next: Old Traditions Can Be Broken