Human nature is variegated. It is not all men and women that are fully human beings. We have animal nature in human nature mixed up sometimes, or oftentimes, and it gets rarefied as evolution rises higher and higher. So we may safely say that even among human beings we have animal-men, even as we have selfish men, ordinary men, good men, saintly men and God-men. We cannot say that all are of the same type or grade, and it is impossible therefore for every human being to entertain the same attitude towards life or put forth the same kind of effort. What is the ideal of life of a cat or a mouse or a buffalo? Well, one may think they have no aims. It is just munching food and chewing the cud, and they have no other aim except to yield to the instincts which preponderate in them. But, nevertheless, the Spirit is not absent there in its essentiality; it is a sleeping condition of the Spirit. Often we have heard it said that the Spirit sleeps in matter, dreams in plants, thinks in animals and understands in human beings. But it has not fully awakened itself to a comprehensive self-awareness even in the human nature. There is a gamut of ascent further up from the human level, about which we are told much in such scriptures as the Upanishads. There is no end to the aspiration of a human being and no one can rest peacefully, whatever be the wealth one has or the power one wields in life, until the Universal-Point-of-View becomes a part and parcel of one’s practical life. This Point-of-View is called the Spiritual Outlook of Life.

Now, the Universal-Point-of-View that we are concerned with here need not necessarily be God’s Point-of-View, because the Highest Cosmic Spirit may not manifest itself immediately in an individual’s life, but the ideal cannot be ignored. The essence of spiritual life, or spirituality, is the ability on the part of a person to keep before the mind’s eye the ideal of universal harmony and universal existence, though it has not fully become a part of one’s life now. We may not be God-men, God-realisation might not have come as yet, but the ideal cannot be missed. The judgment of lower values and the meaning of practical existence in terms of the requirements of the higher spiritual ideals can also be regarded as a step towards spiritual life.

A spiritual life is that conduct or way of living and mode of thinking and understanding which enables one to interpret every situation in life—physical, social, ethical, political or psychological—from the point of view of the ideal that is above and is yet to be reached, notwithstanding the fact that it is a remote ideal in the future. The inability to interpret the practical affairs of life and the present state of existence in terms of the higher ideal immediately succeeding would make us incomplete human beings and keep us unhappy. It has only the animal nature that is incapacitated in this respect. The animals and even human beings who have the animal nature preponderating in them cannot interpret present situations from the point of view of the ideal that is transcendent to the present state. And once we are awakened to the capacity of being able to understand and interpret the lower in the light of the higher, then it is that we can be called real humans, for the superiority of humans over animals lies just in this special endowment. Merely because one walks with two legs, one need not necessarily be regarded as truly human. Unless there is the human nature, human character manifest in a person, there would not be any meaning in holding that person to be entirely human. Such persons may have the physical characters of humanity and one may include them, thus, in humanity, but psychologically they are still lower—anger, jealousy and violence are sufficient evidences. It is these people who cause frictions, tensions, battles and wars in the human world. The psychological awakening of the individual into what is called humanity or human nature is really the beginning of spiritual aspiration.

To conclude, I would like to point out that there cannot be anything wholly unspiritual anywhere, and there are no out-and-out non-spiritual beings in the world, and even those who hold, apparently, the opposite of the spiritual ideal, and work for the contrary of it, are wrongly working for it;the very same ideal. They are like blind men searching for light in the blaze of the sun. Everyone, fundamentally, struggles towards the same Goal, the same purpose, which today we call the spiritual ideal, though everyone might not have awakened himself to the status of a really aspiring humanity, and one’s mind might not have reached up to the purified condition of the ability to grasp the meaningfulness of the internal relationship and the interconnectedness of all things in creation, which fact, fortunately for us today, even physical science is trying to demonstrate, and master-physicists seem to be stumbling upon the philosophical and spiritual levels by sheer force of logic and observation, which is indeed to be regarded as a ray of hope for the future of mankind. It is possible that a time may come when people will be able to recognise the real meaning behind even their errors, attachments and aversions, and the reason behind the restlessness and unhappiness that seeps into their vitals, some time or the other, a phenomenon which no one can escape experiencing in life.

Thus, the coming to an awareness of what people regard as international existence, unity of mankind, or the brotherhood of humanity, which everyone speaks of and aspires for in various walks of life, through social welfare service, philanthropic activity, cultural conferences, and the like, should be a practicable aim, without doubt. I am sure, God is not dead, and if He is alive, it is impossible for mankind to go wrong always, though in the beginning it may appear that there is perhaps an erroneous movement of feelings on account of the insufficiency of the awakening of the Spirit which is the Ideal, which has already manifested itself fully in some, and is trying to impose itself like a healing recipe, in many ways, in everyone’s life. What we call Spiritual Awakening is the inward urge and tendency and capacity of the psychological pattern of individuals which is able to comprehend and realise in its compass the universal reference and relevance that is perforce present even in the least of motives and the lowest of actions. Victory awaits us all.