Last summer, I posted an Instagram reel about how the principle spiritual equality provides a rational basis for social justice.
How so? Materially, none of us are equal. We all have a little more of this or a little less of that and when we add it all up, no one is materially equal to anyone else.
Spiritually, however, the yoga wisdom tradition tells us that we are all equal; that we’re all made of the same spiritual stuff and that we are all equally infinitesimal parts of an infinite and complete Absolute Reality.
At the end of the reel, I asked, “Does the idea of spiritual equality resonate with you? Tell me in the comments.”
Eight months later, this comment appeared:
I wrote a comprehensive yet concise — and therefore eloquent — reply, but when I tried to post if, a message popped up to the effect that my reply was too long and I should edit it.
The message should have said, “Your reply was too long so we deleted it. Try again. Good luck!”
I guess it wasn’t eloquent enough for the greater cosmic forces that govern social media, so I re-wrote it . . . and it’s still too long so I thought I’d share it with you here instead of wrestling with the Instagram gods:
“You’re right: there is no empirical evidence to support the existence of “spirit” in the yogic sense of a conscious entity that is a categorically different kind of energy from matter.
However, you’ll find a plentiful supply of rationally valid arguments to support such a claim in the scriptural and commentarial literature of the yoga wisdom tradition, which has a high standard of epistemology that requires logic as well as authoritative testimony and direct perception.
And direct perception is not in question: the subjective experience of consciousness is so widely shared and acknowledged that its existence is self-evident. The absence of any means to objectively observe the subjective experience of consciousness is what makes consciousness the “hard problem” of science.
Yoga is a subjective science, but a science just the same. Yoga wisdom presents us with a hypothesis, an experiment for testing the hypothesis, and a standard method for evaluating the result, which can be replicated by other practitioners.
The basic hypothesis is spirit (consciousness) is a categorically different form of energy from matter.
How are living beings who are comprised of this “superior energy” equal? In two ways: qualitatively and quantitatively.
Qualitatively, we’re all spiritually equal in the sense that we’re all made of the same spiritual stuff: brahman. The Sanskrit phrase “aham brahmāsmi,” “I am spirit,” carries a corollary implication: “I am not this material body.”
The distinction between spirit and matter — the self and the body — is the philosophical baseline from which the rest of yoga philosophy proceeds.
Quantitatively, it’s said that the size of all spiritual beings is equal to one ten-thousandth the size of the tip of a hair. This is a way to indicate both immeasurability and infinitesimal uniformity insofar as the size of individual conscious beings is concerned.
Same stuff, same size: equal.
The only way to prove it is by experimentation: the process of yoga. Yoga a technology that’s designed to expand conscious awareness beyond the usual limitations of the instruments of empirical observation; the senses, mind, and intellect.
If empirical observation is the only source of knowledge we have faith in, then we’re constraining our faith to a very limited bandwidth of experience with a high probability of mistakes and illusions due to the inherent imperfections of our instruments of perception: the senses.
If we have faith in the science of yoga as a rational methodology for expanding the bandwidth of our subjective experience, we open ourselves up to the possibility of acquiring knowledge that’s imperceptible by empiric methods.
Which is a good thing if you like justice because, empirically speaking, there is no such thing as equality and without equality, there’s no rational basis for justice.”
A closing note: I have not formulated a coherent response to the attack on Iran yet. As always, I trust that the yoga wisdom tradition has the power to illuminate a helpful perspective and, with any luck, such a perspective will be revealed to me in due course of time. Right now, my thoughts are with my Iranian friends and their families. My hope is that they remain safe and that, one way or another, this escalation will somehow eventually result in freedom, justice, and peace for the Iranian people and everyone who resides in the middle east.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k