The multiple senses of the word ‘spiritual’ can be
confusing. For example, the material body is said to be radically different
from the spiritual soul, and yet advanced spiritualists are said to see
everything as spiritual.
The Bhagavad-gita in its second chapter differentiates
between the body and the soul or more generically between matter and spirit.
And yet the same Gita later (04.24) states that in the process of yajna,
everything can be envisioned as spiritual (brahma). Is this a naïve imagining
that everything is spiritual? No, as is evident from the verse’s concluding
assertion that such seers will attain the spiritual destination. This assertion
implies that though everything is spiritual, still there exists a distinctive
spiritual destination to be attained.
To make sense of this, we need to first go back to the
constitutional or compositional difference between spirit and matter. Spirit
has the features of eternity, consciousness and bliss (sat-cit-anand) –
features that are conspicuously absent in matter. Indeed, matter exhibits the
utterly opposite characteristics: it is temporary, insentient and
misery-inducing.
And yet despite such compositional difference, matter and
spirit share a fundamental feature: they come from the same source, God. Both
are Krishna’s energies. And they are both meant to be connected with their
source. Of course, matter being unconscious can’t connect itself. But we
conscious beings can connect ourselves by learning to love Krishna and we can
connect matter with him by learning to lovingly use material things in his
service. Spiritual savants see in matter its spiritual potential, its potential
to be used in Krishna’s service. In this sense, they see everything as
spiritual.
When we consciously and conscientiously use the material in
the service of Krishna, we become increasingly conscious of him and thus
realize our spiritual constitution as his eternal enlightened ecstatic parts.
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