Can A Rationalist Be Spiritual?

Tear Down The Mosque And The Temple; Break Everything In SightBut Do Not Break A Person’s Heart, It Is There That God Resides

It is a poetic verse from the 17th century Punjabi-Sufi Poet, Baba Bulleh Shah. His poems were all about spirituality and being one with the one. The very ideas of spirituality and exploring the inner-self were the core aspects of his poetry. Shah would challenge the status-quo of spirituality at the time, in a non-traditional spiritual approach. After all, theocracy was born out of the need of being spiritual. In other words, organized religion played on it for its own material gains. Understanding the manipulative background (spirituality has gone through), could a rationalist human-being ever be spiritual?

Having faith (in non-religious terms) in something, an idea or even a person gives us an enduring comfort. For an example, having faith in your partner (who has been there for you in the past) gives you the strength you need to carry on. Similarly, having faith in anything generates a positive feeling of being looked after or cared for. Faith is a stage we reach when we have had a satisfying experience. I believe that you cannot have true faith in something without being able to be sure that the faith you are putting into is reasoned. Hence in other words if one needs to have faith (in something), they need to have a "bloody-good" reason. I believe that I have acquired my faith in mysticism, coming from a rationalist background.

In strict scientific terms, a mystical feeling is often referred to as a mere psychological experience. In religious terms, a mystical experience is when one communicates with the sacred. For me a mystifying experience has a broader meaning. 

I believe in mysticism that relates reasoning to gratification. How beautiful it is to realize that everything in this world is interrelated. To be part of this world, we are made from each other. We all living things lead back to the same evolutionary micro-organisms.  It is the core idea of the many scientific theories; such as the theory of evolution. We essentially come from the same matter and when we die we go back to the same matter. 

In a way we belong to the oneness of everything. I suppose, for me going to a beach and looking at my surrounding gives me a positive feeling; of realizing that all that matter that is around us is related to us. The fish in the ocean and the trees near the beach; they are all related to us. Not only that it makes me have a feeling of belongingness, it also gives me a gratifying experience of being one with the one. I always feel the same each time. For a while I thought, it was just a feeling. Later reading on Rumi and Bulleh Shah’s poetry, I was exactly feeling and appreciating what they taught. It is then I realized, being a rationalist, I had experienced mysticism.

Extraordinarily I can experience mysticism anywhere, all alone or even at a crowded place. I have started considering myself a spiritual person yet keeping a stronghold to my rationalist values. A balance that I struggled to maintain for quite a while. In essence, your "right-hand side of the brain" deserves a fair treatment just as your "left-hand side of the brain".

I leave this post with Rumi's beautiful poem on oneness.

My place is the placeless, the trace of the traceless

neither body or soul, I belong to the Beloved,have seen the two worlds as One and that One called toand know: First, Last, Outer, Inner.Only that breath breathing, human - being.