Spiritual journey was all about indulging in contemplation (chintan) to scale higher levels of consciousness. The real journey of life pertains to inner journey towards our soul atman, spirit existing in heart.
To maintain our family we have to indulge in external pursuits of life like working in a profession. But what of the inner journey, our actual goal of life!
The inner journey is always taken by one who believes in existence of god, existence of world of souls’ atmans and also has 100% faith in God. In absence of these important requisites spiritual journey cannot be conducted satisfactorily.
If we believed there existed a consciousness, spirit that manifested human form our journey of spirituality becomes easier.
Even while studying and subsequently indulging in a profession I continued my inner journey towards God all the time. The assurances from God on path of pure spirituality were nil. Spiritual journey is always a one-way path, an uncharted territory into the unknown.
Furthermore, the experiences on spiritual path of every single individual would vary. As our thinking process, thinking prowess accordingly the spiritual journey, the mental gains.
When plunging wholeheartedly into spiritual pursuit of life, we look forward to gaining jnana wisdom from scriptures of different religions of world. Initially we need separating all religious literature from spiritual. Our interest is only scriptures that promoted spirituality within.
Right from six years of age I realized that everything related to Lord Krishna, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Maharshi Ramana was truthful and could be followed. This I came to know from elders in the family as there were storytelling rounds every single day.
My interest in spirituality grew day by day. I stopped going to religious centres like temples, churches and mosques. I inherently realized going to a place of worship meant nothing on path of pure spirituality. God truly existed within us in miniscule form as our soul atman.
I thought if I were to ever reach God in present life time I must reach my soul atman and started my indulgence with pranayama (breathing exercise). In the meanwhile my father taught me art of indulging in shavasna (the dead pose). This increased my spiritual exposure multifold.
When going to bed in the night lying in shavasna pose of yoga I started my indulgence with self enquiry Neti (not this, not this), a practice followed and preached by Maharshi Ramana!
Remaining truthful all the time I could clearly hear dictates of Krishna coming from within. Allegorically Krishna means our soul atman existing in heart, the spirit following which we shall reach God one day.
Spiritual journey in a sense is an inward journey into the unknown. Indulgence in scriptures is necessitated to cut darkness of ignorance, dissolve queries within. By indulging in scriptures we do not expect to gain anything, increase our sphere of knowledge.
The sole purpose of indulgence in jnana yoga (path of absolute wisdom) is to realize the hidden inner meaning of sacred texts. This can be achieved by contemplation (chintan) on various inherent unexplained issues of life.
Indulging in spirituality as we progress, one gets farther and farther away from the family. Main reason being, on path of pure spirituality we need cutting all bondages of earthly life. State of total purity as a soul atman is achieved by negating karma to zero.
As long as a single query existed within us we could never reach state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi (state of absolute nothingness) when not a single thought entered our brain uninvoked.
Path of spirituality is long and also unknown yet, benefits are immense. We finally succeed becoming a pure soul atman in the cosmic journey of life as did Mahavira, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed.
Every single human being on mother earth shall one day become a Mahavira, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohammed. In the last about 150 years amongst 7 billion people existing world over only two spiritual stalwarts Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Maharshi Ramana finally succeeded in reaching God, becoming a pure soul atman forever.
Spirituality is not difficult to define, understand provided we had absolute faith in God and his creation.