Generally, our feeling is that spirituality is all about renouncing, isn’t it?
We have to abandon our family, leave all our worldly comforts and pleasures, sacrifice tasty food and do fasting, and do hard penance and meditation, to grow on given spiritual path.

But what if you are not asked to renounce anything, and yet you can develop spiritually?
Akram Vignan, the stepless path to Self-Realization, makes this possible, whereby we can realize our real Self (Self-Realization) in just 2 hours. In Akram Vignan, we do not have to leave bad things nor adopt good things to make progress on this path. Gnani, the Enlightened One, directly graces us with the real knowledge of two fundamental things. i.e.

1.Who am I?
2.Who is the Doer?
and we realize that ‘I am Pure Soul’ and ‘I am not the doer’; things just happen naturally in this world through the operating laws of Nature and my job is only to see and know what happens. Once we get this spiritual knowledge, it solves all our problems and we get free from all worldly unhappiness.

As long as we wrongly believe that, ‘I am the doer’, when we do good things, we bind good karmas and get worldly happiness; and when we do bad things, we bind demerit karmas which bring us unhappiness. By applying the right spiritual knowledge, we are not the doer of good things, nor the doer of bad things, and hence we do not charge any new karmas. This gives us ultimate salvation.
When there is so much of attraction towards material things, one cannot be spiritual.

True! But do you know this is a part of evolution of spirituality?
Pujya Deepakbhai, an enlightened being explains how we evolve from one sense to 5 senses and further to human, and with our mind, ego, intellect all developing life after life, we reach a point where we automatically search for permanent happiness. And once we realize our real Self, which is the abode of permanent happiness, we slowly work out our path to attain ultimate salvation. You can watch this video on https://www.dadabhagwan.org/books-media/videos/english/what+is+evolution...

Say there is a bright illuminated 1000 watts bulb. And it is covered with a pot such that not a ray of light can come out. Now as the pot goes through regular friction, some layers of clay shed and a small little hole happens from where the light of the bulb travels out of the pot. After some more time, as more clay sheds, second hole happens, then third, then fourth and fifth hole takes place.

In the above example, the illuminated bulb is like our Soul, which is covered with thick veils of ignorance and atoms of karmas. Our journey of evolution begins from this initial state where Soul is totally covered with absolute ignorance, due to which not even one sense (one hole) is developed. There are infinite such Souls who are completely covered, in the Universe.

After ages of friction, when little covering gets shed, some light of the Soul comes out from that small partial hole and knowledge of one sense i.e. the touch sense begins. One-sensed creature comes into this world and it gets a name eg. potato, rose, etc. Gradually as more coverings wear off the Soul, the development of the living being takes place naturally from one-sensed to two-sensed, then three-sensed, four-sensed and thereafter the fifth sense develops. Five-sensed creatures (having all the five material senses of eye, ear, nose, tongue and touch) eg. Cow, cat, monkey, etc. have little mind. So, the Soul (like the bulb in our example) remains constant and pure, it is only the coverings over the Soul that undergo change.

Finally, one comes into a human being where mind, intellect, ego, consciousness, awareness, etc develop. Life after life, the intellect of human being develops more and more, and along with it, anger, pride, deceit, greed, attachment, hatred too develop, on account of which one keeps binding lot of karmas. The fruits of these karmas bring immense discomfort, pain and suffering in life.

The Evolution of Spirituality
In every stage of development, one is attracted towards different material things one after another, and each of the five senses is constantly experiencing the material objects. One tries to find happiness in every object and after some time when he finds no more happiness in that object, he gets attracted towards another material object. This continues life after life until he arrives at a conclusion that there is no permanent happiness in any of the sense objects i.e. visible forms, sounds, odors, tastes and tactile objects, nor in wealth, possessions, image or status. He experiences that all material things are temporary and so is the worldly happiness derived from them too.

This is when the person starts hunting for permanent happiness.
He strives to find the place where he can find permanent happiness. The Soul is permanent! And when he realizes ‘I am Pure Soul’, he experiences permanent happiness, and charging of new karmas stops completely. Thereafter, as we stay in our state of Pure Soul, attachment or hatred towards any material thing does not occur. So gradually, all the old karmas give their fruits and get discharged completely too, and the Soul comes to a state where it is free of all karmas. When no covering of any ignorance or karma remain on it, the Soul experiences permanent happiness and gets ultimate liberation from the cycle of birth and death!!

Spirituality vs Materialism

•So being spiritual, one gets rid of all unhappiness and attains permanent happiness; whereas attraction towards material things gives only temporary happiness, followed by lot of unhappiness.
•To attain spiritual happiness we don’t have to go far, it is located right within us; whereas when attracted to material thing, it makes us constantly run after it all life and after life, but all in vain.
•Spirituality gives us an illumined life; whereas materialism makes us a slave for life.

Attraction of material things throws us into a whirlpool, dangerous are whose currents! However, it is Gnani alone, in whose heart compassion incessantly flows, who throws the net, stops us from being drawn into these dangerous currents, and saves us from the miseries of infinite births!!!

So now, have so much of attraction towards Gnani that no material thing can ever match!!…

Please visit www.dadabhagwan.org

Author's Bio: 

Ambalal M. Patel was a civil contractor by profession. In June 1958, spontaneous Self-Realization occurred within Ambalal M. Patel. From this point on, Ambalal became a Gnani Purush, and the Lord that manifest within him became known as Dada Bhagwan. A Gnani Purush is One who has realized the Self and is able help others do the same. Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan used to go from town to town and country-to-country to give satsang (spiritual discourse) and impart the knowledge of the Self, as well as knowledge of harmonious worldly interactions to everyone who came to meet him. This spiritual science, known as Akram Vignan, is the step-less path to Self-realization.