Spirituality and Stages of Life - aspects of Hinduism

The spiritual aspect of Hinduism is known as the sanatana dharma (the ancient, or eternal, dharma). Central to this is the tenet of ahimsa, or non-harmfulness, the absence of a desire to injure, which forms the ethical basis for vegetarianism Ahimsa is also a central tenet of the heterodox Indian religions like Buddhism and Jainism.

The Bhagavad-Gita describes three paths to religious realization. To the path of works, or karma (originally sacrificial and ritual acts, but more recently applied to selfless work without desire for the fruits of one's labours, or for the service of God), and the path of knowledge, or jnana (e.g. the monistic Upanishadic and Vedantic realisation of the Self), and the path of devotion to God, or bhakti, a religious ideal that came to combine and transcend the other two paths.

Bhakti in a general form can be traced in the epics and even in some of the Upanishads, but its fullest statement appears only after the Bhagavad-Gita, gaining momentum from the vernacular poems and songs to local deities, particularly those of the Alvars, Nayanars, and Virashaivas of southern India and the Bengali worshipers of Krishna.

The spiritual aspect of Hinduism represent the fourth (and final) stage and goal of life. In Hinduism there are four stages of life (ashramas), and four “goals of a man” (purusharthas). The ashramas are the chaste student (brahmachari), the householder (grihastha), and the forest-dweller (vanaprastha), and the renouncer (sannyasi). The purusharthas are artha (material success), dharma (righteous social behavior), and kama (sensual pleasures), and liberation or release from samsara (moksha).

This was later modified into:

1. A Brahmacharya : a person walking the path of brahmaan. He takes the vow of chastity (never to indulge in sex), Non attachment to money or any place. Sanyaas (being alone) is a small part of the brahmacharya's life, the terms are not synonynous.

2. Householder (grahasti) : a person who marries and along with his wife, walks the path of dharma. He has to take care of his family and also do social work for the society.

Obviously, there have been quite a few disputes between advocates of both the paths, on which is better. However, Vivekananda and most vedantists are of the opinion that both are great in their own place.

These themes are not unique to Hinduism. Carl Jung speaks of two stages, establishing oneself in the world (the first half of life) and attuning more to the spiritual (the second half). The American adept Da Free John (Adidam) has seven stages of life, which loosely correspond to the seven chakras.

Cyclic Existence

According to Hinduism and the heterodox Indian religions, existence is cyclic rather than (in the Judeao-Christian and secular West) linear. In fact there is an endless series of cycles in the Indian cosmologies.

Time is both degenerative - going from the golden age, or Krita Yuga, through two intermediate periods of decreasing goodness, to the present age, or Kali Yuga (a similiar cosmologyw as propounded by Hesiod, and the Kali Yuga has been confouned with hesiod's "Iron Age") - and cyclic: at the end of each Kali Yuga, the universe is destroyed by fire and flood, and a new golden age begins.

Personal existnce is cyclic as well. After death, the soul leaves the body and is reborn in the body of another person, animal, vegetable, or mineral. This process of endless entanglement in activity and rebirth is called samsara. The precise quality of the new birth is determined by the accumulated merit and demerit that result from all the actions, or karma, that the soul has committed in its past life or lives. Karma accrues in this way; they also believe, however, that it can be counteracted by expiations and rituals, by “working out” through punishment or reward, and by achieving release (moksha) from the entire process of samsara through the renunciation of all worldly desires.