Spirituocracy

The Ultimate Form of Spiritual Democracy

Spiritual Masters by Meditation Practices

Can change their Brain Waves

(National Geographic: Your Brain 1oo things you never knew)

By: MIRZA IQBAL ASHRAF

PROLOGUE:

The Challenge! The period between 900 and 200 BCE, called by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers the Axial Age, was pivotal to the spiritual development and beginning of Spiritual Life of mankind. But a truly pragmatic experience of Spiritual Life was striven by Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). Inspired by the Spiritual Life of his mentor Rumi, (Sir) Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938), who disappointed with the flaws of modern form of democracy propound that Spiritual Democracy is the ultimate aim of Islam.¹ Though the term Spiritual Democracy is attributed to the American poet laureate Walt Whitman (1819-1892) by some Western thinkers as a new vision, uniquely reflecting the birth of an American nation of many nations and faiths without adhering to any one religion, it does not literally appear in any of Whitman’s work. But the term “Spiritual Democracy” appears in the work of Allama Muhammad Iqbal “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,” published in 1930.¹ In 1954, Fredrick Kettner (1886-1957) in his book titled “Biosophy and Spiritual Democracy” argued that only when man begins to realize the spiritual element in his life will he be able to progress toward the idea of spiritual democracy.

Today, as mankind is being challenged by Artificial Intelligence’s serious digital distraction, it is being realized that remaining glued with the IT and AI humans have no time for their “Natural Intelligence” to intuit, meditate and think about their natural categories of “doing, having, and being as real human beings.” Mankind is today heading fast towards Ray Kurzweil’s view of ‘Singularity,’ of an age in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and at the same time challenged by material progress. Trespassing the natural legacy of Homo sapiens, that man and machine will be one, my concept of “Spirituocracy” as an ultimate form of Spiritual Democracy or modern democracy will play an important role in ushering itself into the world soul when the Siliconian AI will pose many challenges to mankind’s survival as “truly human beings.”  My concept of “Spirituocracy” is an ideology of sublime form of Spiritual Democracy sternly taking command, dissolving the old and sloughing off digitizing surfaces, will develop its own interior and exterior principles by constructing a “Spiritual Society” founded on man’s intrinsic Spiritual entity covering every form of his theo-socio-politico spheres.

Almost six centuries before the American poet-laureate of mystical experiences Walt Whitman (1819-181892) and some other poets arguing the concept of Spiritual Democracy, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1274) a practitioner of Spiritual Life and a protagonist of Spiritual Awakening and Holistic Humanism, remaining broadly tolerant of every theistic or nontheistic belief, professed that an individual’s non-conscious and unaware “self” is the main cause of isolating him and curtailing his interconnectedness. Using the medium of poetry Rumi made a timeless appeal of a “universal-spiritual-existence” by unrolling himself through Time into Eternity. Depicting remarkably mankind and nature’s unity within the diversity of all races, faiths or faithlessness and everything in the universe as a living entity, Rumi professed a Spiritual Unity for everyone and everything. In his poetical work Divan-i-Shams he says:

Sometimes unknown, sometimes known:

              We’re Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

              No matter our race or creed,

              Our hearts are formed the same.²

Understanding the classical Greek philosopher’s view of man as naturally a spiritual animal, Rumi was spontaneously drawn to the spiritual traditions that had evolved with Islam as well as in other religions and cultures. He believed that just as man’s tradition of humanistic ethics seen in material-spiritual wholeness is based on his natural and spiritual dynamism, his imagination also has a natural leaning to a religious content. For Rumi to practice religion one needs intellect and that it is one’s intellect which induces him to indulge in Spiritual Life.

During the 13^th century when the Savage Mongols had shattered the world of Islam, Rumi’s concept of Spiritual Life not only invigorated a new life in the resurfacing of the Muslim world but also changed the ferocious character of the savage Mongols who embraced the Spiritual stance of Islam within decades. It happened all on account of a history changing leveraging of Rumi’s spiritual authority to promote peace ending the savagery based rule of the Mongols. Islam under the auspices of a newly converted Muslim, Amir Temur of Turco-Mongol race, following Sunni-Spiritually-oriented beliefs laid the seeds of Spirituocracy—a form of government by a “Spiritual ruler, for spiritual peoples.” Three great Muslim empires—the Mughals in India, the Safavids in Persia, and the Ottoman’s largest empire spread in three continents—instead of following the pristine Islam, adopted the spiritually inclined Sufi Islam.

Proclaiming Rumi as his mentor, Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938), recognizing ‘spiritual worth of the individual,’ philosophized that as a cultural movement, Islam rejects the old static view of the universe, and reaches a dynamic view based on emotional system of unification. Rejecting blood-relationship being earth-rootedness, he professed that the search for purely psychological foundation of human unity becomes possible only with the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin. . . It demands loyalty to God, not to thrones. Since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature. Therefore; “Let the Muslim of today appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam, that spiritual democracy is the ultimate aim of Islam.”³ After Iqbal’s conception of spiritual democracy, Dr. Frederick Kettner (1886-1957) a visionary leader  calling for a new social order based on his new term “Biosophy”—Bios meaning life and Sophia meaning wisdom—in 1939 came from Europe to USA. He explained the term Biosophy as “a doctrine of spiritual self-education and character improvement through one’s intuitive interpretation.” Realizing that in modern time of materialism, to understand the power of spiritual element uncovered by him in human nature—which was originally uncovered by ibn Arabi, Jalaluddin Rumi, and appropriated by Iqbal in 1930—Kettner prophesized that when humans will begin to use the spiritual element ingrained in their psyche only then will they be able to progress toward the idea of a “spiritual democracy.”  

Human civilizations have appeared having different ways of life religions, cultures, identities, and traditions. Defining their identities they have fought and are still fighting with their own species without realizing that spiritually they are all one humanity. A big global challenge to mankind will happen when the artificial intelligence (AI) outperforming natural intelligence (NI), digital dictatorship will pose an existential threat to humankind’s stance of being ‘truly humans.’ But human spirituality, with its emotional consciousness, sentience capability, limitless free will, and boundless desires, still being an improbable task to be digitized, it will be the ideology of Spiritualcracy emerging as an advanced form of political or spiritual democracy, can be the preserver of world peace and a savior of humankind as ‘truly humans.’

The cybernetic revolution has almost blocked humanistic renaissance and has brought the discipline of democracy to an end. In the light of this background and the conception of ‘spiritual worth of the individual’ I am dragged to the idea of Spiritualcracy instead of the Spiritual Democracy which will still be a democratic majority’s consensual oppression upon the opposing left out minority. I believe the “Cybernetic Siliconian” digital system will not be able to digitize human entity of spirituality to be downloaded into a soul lacking Robot leaving it unable to stand in the way of “Spiritual Power of man.” Human spirituality will usher an era of Spirituocracy forming “a republico-democratic form of government of the spirituals, by the spirituals and for the spirituals.”

INTRODUCTION:

In every era of human history, whenever human beings had to face a catastrophic situation or deadly turmoil, mankind has found solace in a period that the German philosopher and political thinker Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) called the Axial Age, an age pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. It all began during the first Axial Age when man the hunting animal eating raw meat like other fierce animals, became agrarian and laid the foundation of the human being as we know him today. It was an axis of world history found between 800 and 200 BCE which gave birth to everything, from spiritual to empirical process, helping human beings in fashioning their character, if not cogently evident, yet convincing to spiritual and empirical sight.¹

During the first Axial Age, in four distinct regions of the world man’s routine of living as a part of nature nourished him and the whole mankind developed new great traditions of life that Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Abrahamic monotheism and spiritual life in Mesopotamia, and the philosophical rationalism in Greece, came into being. Most importantly what was new about this age that Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Abraham’s teachings ushered a new kind of human experience that man became conscious of himself being as a whole, aware of his limitations, and his thinking became its own subject. This age marked the beginning of world religions revealing ways of living a spiritual life. In the event of spiritual and social crisis people have looked back to seek guidance from the geniuses of the age so far so that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam experienced the latter-day flowerings of this original Axial Age of first-BCE millennium.²

The word “spiritual” derived from Latin means breathing—which is a natural function of every creature living on this planet. But for humans who have language and can express themselves, the word spiritual means more than just breathing. Their spiritual urge based on the premise that their quest for material security alone does not satisfy them—not even knowledge is enough for the security of their life—and that they breathe and live to seek answers to greater questions about their life which are found outside the perimeter of their biological life. This took them far beyond their “self” to a higher state of consciousness.  In this quest, a spiritual traveler experienced “non-duality” appreciating an essential oneness to the universe. Thus journeying through their life, spirituality took humans through mythologies, religions, and philosophies, conceiving them their soul is a splinter of consciousness broken free from a Higher Mind above them.

Ontology establishes that human beings are spiritual by default and going against it is a violation of its intrinsic values. Though for the historians the event of Exodus from Egypt was an act of political resistance for the freedom of oppressed people, while it was a religious act of Israelites’ spirituality that helped them reject the way of Egyptian gods. Leaving Egypt was not just to break out of physical slavery but escaping out of an airless Egyptian spiritual prison. The episode that saved Israelites from Pharaoh’s furious oppression—which they saw as divine redemption—was so stupendous as to become for them and their progeny a dynamism of holistic spiritual existence.

            Though Abraham was the ancestor of Israelite’s race, Moses was the creative force and molder of their race. It was because of Moses’s leadership as a man of decisive actions supported by divinely supplanted power of prophethood’s electric presence and intense spirituality that a dynamic new idealism appeared into practical statesmanship. Above all, Prophet Moses was a lawmaker a judge and the engineer of a framework enclosing a mighty rectitude in every aspect of private and public conduct—rather a totalitarian of spiritual and worldly life to be viewed a protagonist of Spirituocracy. Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (20 BCE-50 CE) identified the first Jewish interpreter of Torah philosophically argued that since all were equally subject to the divine law—the system embodying the double merits of the rule of law and equality before law—called it ‘democracy as the most law-abiding  and best of constitution.’ By democracy Philo did not mean rule by all the people, rather he might have speculated it ‘democratic theocracy.’³ His concept was a discipline of Spirituocracy, the higher form of today’s ‘Spiritual Democracy’ written and defined by Iqbal and underpinned in Walt Whitman’s works. After the destruction of the Jew’s Temple and Pompey’s imposition of the Roman rule in 63 BCE, the independent Jewish state disappeared for nearly two thousand years. The Jews escaping persecution, dispersed and spread in diverse regions of the world.

The first phase of the Axial Age of Jewish history was though over, a second flowering of spiritual life marking Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity founded on the first Axial Age’s Jewish insights of Golden Rule and spirituality of yielding empathy and concern for everybody gave birth to Jesus as the last prophet of Jewish tradition. Into this electric atmosphere Jesus appeared bringing a message of love and peace based on ‘spiritual life’ and a tiding of awaited Messiah. Though Jesus lived and died as a Jew, his tiny group of followers believed that they have seen him risen to heaven. For this his first followers called him Christ—from the Greek word meaning the anointed, consecrated, or blessed one—and thus, they were known as the first Christians. Impressed by Christ’s moral and spiritual teachings focused on repentance and deliverance from sin, the faithless Romans declared Christianity to be their religion. The fusion of Christian faith and Roman political identity brought into the spiritual life of the Romans greater tolerance. Suppressing their savagery and adopting passion of love and peace—a message of Jesus—appeared as a practical role of Roman’s ‘Spiritual life.’ ⁴

Though, the first Axial Age is marked with the most seminal period of religion and spiritual life, the final flowering of the Axial Age, according to Karen Armstrong, occurred in seventh-century Arabia, when Muhammad brought the Qur’an.⁵ Although spiritual awareness was naturally embedded in the life of Muhammad, but when the message of prophethood was received by him, he and his companions started experiencing a practical role of Spiritual Life. During the eighth-century in the World of Islam, a period of spiritual movement defined as Sufism appeared. Hundreds of Sufi saints dedicated to Spiritual Life in their personal quest for a mystical union—for some a reunion—with his creator appeared in every region of the Islamic world. Some of them conflicting with the scholars of Islamic jurisprudence and the strict tenets of faith lost their lives.

Thus, the tradition of Spiritual Life remained a Sufi’s personal experience until the 13th century when the savage Mongols shattered the World of Islam. Though the Mongols were not followers of any classified religious belief, they were aware of element of spirituality embedded in their souls. They with all their ferocious savagery had a soft corner for all those whom they would find living spiritual life. For this there were two reasons, firstly; the Mongols needed local peoples as bureaucrats to help them in administrating the new regions they had conquered and secondly; those living spiritual life were peaceful and were best suited to administer the regions which were new for them.  

In Europe, a Russian mystic of spiritual life, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) appearing after Walt Whitman, began spiritual teaching as a subject of man’s conscious evolution—a way of gnosis or “knowledge of being.” Respecting the traditional religious practices Gurdjieff revered three general ways of spiritual quests: Way of the Sufi or Fakir related to mastery of physical body; Way of the Monk, based on faith and feeling; and the Way of the Yogi, which focuses on the development of mind. He introduced his spiritual teachings as a “Fourth Way” that integrates the three existing ways into a single path of “self-knowledge” of knowing and experiencing an awakened level of being which must be verified for oneself. For Gurdjieff every religion points to the existence of a common center of knowledge, and in every sacred book this knowledge is expressed, which is also a verification of the concept of Spirituocracy.

Today, it is the Age of Technology, an age according to Ray Kurzweil of Spiritual Machines, and of Singularity when man and machine will be one. But so far science and technology has played a role of mastering nature for the purpose of molding man’s existence not to over-power him and deprive him of his roots of a real human being. If the vision of Singularity is materialized, as the scientists assert, it will usher a period of catastrophic decent of man to poverty of spirituality, of love, of humanness and ultimately of creative energy of the human beings. Therefore, in the view of the merits of human natural intelligence (NI) the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and the concept of Spiritual Machine propounded by Kurzweil is merely a bold spiritual self-deception.

Philosophy of Spiritual Life:

It is generally assumed that the knowledge of philosophy was familiarized to mankind by the ancient Greek thinkers as a love of wisdom and understanding about reality. Even today, it explains to the humans the way things are by presenting objective pictures of reality without revealing how we should be in relationship to the subjective virtues of these pictures. Spirituality, residing in the realm of human spirit tells how human life should be in relationship to the way things are. Inclusive of philosophical explanation of the world and human life, spirituality provides holistic instruction to humans about how to live a spiritual and moral life.    

Philosophy of Spiritual Life, for some thinkers, emerges from the institutionalized religions using the practices of rituals and beliefs or thought system embracing the existence of a reality which cannot be physically perceived. Though it may incorporate religious or esoteric themes, it can include any belief or thought that embraces the existence of reality and cannot be physically perceived. It is not always defined by religion but is also explained by the exponent of atheism Sam Harris in his work, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, published in 2014 that there is non-religious philosophy of spiritual life encompassing spirituality which is not dictated by revealed religions. In his work, Harris shows how spiritual traditions provide important truths that have largely been missed by the scientific, nontheistic and secular communities.

An apprehension and practice of philosophy of spiritual life through ethical principles, moral thoughts and emotions can wake up humans to their consciousness. However, philosophy of a spiritual life, regardless of one’s standing in religion or ideology can be non-technical relating to discrete views and beliefs outside the framework of a religion. The basic difference between philosophy of spiritual life and the realm of general philosophy is that philosophy is the domain of worldly wisdom whereas spirituality is a prescription of a position that man as a human being should take the way things are.  The philosophy of spiritual life can be observed and implemented to practice speculatively and intuitively. Starting from the eleventh century—while the Europeans were still struggling to emerge out of the Dark Age—in the World of Islam many Muslim saints exponents of ‘Spiritual Life’ appeared, spreading from Arab Spain, North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and all over India, delivering the message of Islam and promoting Sufism based on the mystical tradition of the faith of Islam.

But during the 13^th century, foreseeing the advancing deluge of Savage Mongols, many great figures of Spiritual Life moved out of Middle East. I will mention two saintly scholars from Khorasan, Shah Ali Hussain Usman (1177-1274) moved out from Marwand went to Sind the south-eastern region of the sub-continent of India, where he is famously known as Ali Mardan Shabazz Qlander and from the same region and same reason Muhammad Jalaluddin Balkhi (1207-1274) a great mystic poet moved out of Balkh with his parents and family members went far north-west to settle in Konya—the region named as Walaya-e-Rum (what’s Turkey today) where he became famous as Jalaluddin Rumi instead of Balkhi. Regarding the concept of Spiritual Life he remarks in his Mathnawi:

Spiritual life is nothing but knowledge in the phase of trial.

More knowledge one has, the more spiritual life one has.

Our spirit is more than the spirit of animals.

Whereof? In respect that it has more knowledge.⁶

In Europe, during the 13th century a famous German mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) a contemporary of Rumi in his work Psychological Types expounded:

He that is right in his feeling is right in any place and in any company,

But if he is wrong he finds nothing right whenever or with whom he may be.

For a man of right feeling has God with him.⁷

In nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ralph Emerson (1803-1882), Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Herman Melville (1819-1891), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), William James(1842-1910), and Carl Jung (1875-1961), understanding Meister Eckhart’s God-concept—where the self is postulated as the common psychological bedrock of all religious experience⁷—the idea of religious equality appearing in Walt Whitman’s essay Democratic Vistas published in 1871, was viewed as the base of American Democracy’s futuristic conception of Spiritual Democracy. But the timeless appeal of philosophy of “holistic humanism” and the message of “unconditional love” of the great mystic poet Jalaluddin Rumi, is a teaching pertaining to “Spiritual Life,” which can be observed and practiced both speculatively and intuitively. Speculative philosophy of spiritual life is focused on gaining an understanding of spiritual life along with theoretical knowledge while intuitive philosophy of spiritual life suggests that one’s intellectual role beyond conscious inclination influenced by social identities, places priorities of the spiritual intuition over his rational thinking.

Rumi intertwining the speculative and intuitive philosophies of the spiritual life indiscriminatingly proclaimed in his famous poetical work the Divan-i-Shams:

            Why think thus O men of piety

              I have returned to sobriety;

              I am neither a Muslim nor a Hindu,

              I am not Christian, Zoroastrian, nor Jew.

              My place is the no place,

              My image is without face;

              Neither of body nor the soul,

              I am of the Divine Whole.⁸

In his magnum opus, the Mathnawi, Rumi speaking for the whole humanity turns spiritual illumination directly onto the nature of a relational human situation saying:

The lamps [faiths] are different their light is same.

              Concentrate on Essence, concentrate on Light.

              In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,

              The light streams toward you from all things,

All people, all possible acts of good, evil, thought, passions.

Though the lamps are different, their Light is same.

One matter, one energy, one Light, emanating all things.⁹

Walt Whitman reflected the concept of Spiritual Democracy as an undercurrent of his work perceives the “divine origin” of democratic brotherhood within the mankind. Iqbal seeks his motivation of Spiritual Democracy from the Qur’an: Humanity was once nothing but a single community [of believers], but then they differed.¹⁰ Believing that Islam is a universal faith and the Qur’an teaches the whole mankind that life is a process of progressive creation. It becomes imperative that the spiritual life permits every individual to solve his own problems. The Qur’an invokes that: And for women are rights over men similar to those for men over women,¹¹ bestowing women the right of inheritance in their parents property, right to divorce, and human rights as equal as men enjoy—early in 7th century when Islam was revealed to Prophet Muhammad.

            Within Islamic perspective of human beings’ equality—though not marked by Tocqueville—the first political institution of democracy according to the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is religion. This may seem odd when considering secularism but for Tocqueville the main reason to see religion as the primary political institution of democracy is religion’s conviction that human liberty is central to the entire purpose of the universe. He argued that religion adds to the morality of reason, an acute sense of acting in the presence of an invisible, but an Undeceivable-Judge and Omnipresent God, who sees and knows even acts performed in secret.¹²

Spiritual philosophy is not confined to the believers of divinely revealed religions, rather it appears in the teachings and rituals of secular faiths, for example Zoroasterism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shamanism, Shintoism, Sikhism and many other faiths. The concept of Samsara escaping suffering of the birth recycle and obtaining enlightenment reflects the philosophy of spiritual life in Buddhism. Though the origin of philosophy of spirituality in Hinduism is ambiguous, the teachings of reincarnation, moksha or liberation, and samsara, yoga or ashrams and karma are prominent in Hindu philosophy of spiritual life. Islam, the latest of the three Abrahamic religions, places its philosophy of spiritual life on the adherence of its believer’s actions, behavior and faith with the Qur’anic invoking and the precepts of the Prophet Muhammad.

Defining Spirituocracy

Democracy is a form of government invented and established in the ancient city state of Athens. The term originated from the Greek dēmokratía “rule of the people”— a composite of dêmos meaning “people” and krátos meaning “power” or “rule.” The democratic political system of the Athenians, granted right of citizenship and participation in political affairs to an elite class of free men, excluding women and slaves from political role. But this unique concept of people’s rule through a democratic system as a better alternative of an authoritarian and hereditary kingship died in Greece after the verdict of death penalty given by a majority of democrats to Socrates. The concept of democracy remained dormant for almost a millennium until it resurfaced after the French Revolution.

Progressing through the sociopolitical ethos of diverse nations, the Greek democratic system becoming incompatible with the way of Islam inspired Allama Muhammad Iqbal to propose “Spiritual Democracy” as an ultimate aim of Islam. His concept got credence during the nineteenth century in many Western thinkers and poets, especially the American poet laureate Walt Whitman who in his Democratic Vistas argued that the frame of democracy held together by only political means is not enough. It must go deeper and get hold of man’s heart. For many other Western thinkers, the rule of human spirituality being a greater sovereignty will lead him to an advanced system of democracy, namely, Spiritual Democracy.

Though democracy has been accepted as a great step in the evolution of people’s government, yet the achievements of techno-scientific achievements has ushered a new age of IT and AI with the possibility of a human digital double culture, democracy will become “the rule of robots, for the robots, and by the robots.” For human beings it will become an obsolete form of government. Thus, Spirituocracy defined as the ‘ultimate form of the idea of spiritual democracy which in itself is a super form of political democracy’ will be a boon for the mankind. It refers to a system or approach that integrates inner transformation and personal growth, compassion and empathy, kindness and equality, justice and inclusivity, mindfulness and awareness, based on conscious decision making by the natural intelligence (NI) of “truly humans.” Spiritual Democracy is a concept that combines spiritual principles with modern democratic values, while Spirituocracy as its super form is focused on cultivating a deeper sense of connection and understanding of human beings as one race creating harmony among the individuals and the communities. This approach seeks to balance individual’s freedom with the passion of love fostering collective well-being, promoting a more compassionate society and establishing an equitable civilization. Today, unpredictable situations curtailing world peace are being multiplied by the artificial intelligence’s digitized gadgets which are incapable of understanding the depth of human psyche’s spiritual and psychological harmony of heart and mind. Based on human being’s spiritually guiding natural intelligence, the discipline of Spirituocracy professing that equality is the center of everything will bring peace by its message of love for all.

With the advent of twenty first century the technological revolution of InfoTech and Biotech, created by the digital ‘Data Algorithms’—gathering momentum every other minute—marking the collapse of liberal democracy has started laying the foundation of ‘Digital Democracy’ or for some thinkers a ‘Digital Dictatorship’ established on ‘Digital Dataism.’ Since every single human being is structured both a corporeal and spiritual being, so being corporeal he will have to make sense of the Digital Democracy while being spiritual he will have to face the challenge of AI’s Digital-Dataism. But believing that spirituality has played an important role in the development of their natural intelligence (NI) humans in pursuit of their natural spiritual way of life will have no other choice than to form their sociopolitical discipline upon the ideology of Spirituocracy.

The term Spirituocracy is a futuristic projection of man’s survival as ‘truly human being’ within the spectrum of cosmic origin of spiritual life, the equality of human race, nation, ethnicity regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation which can be realized through the experience of oneness with nature and its miraculous energies. Spirituocracy being the ultimate form of Spiritual Democracy depends upon the presence of spiritual life of its citizens which has to evolve from a society’s intrinsic spiritual impetus. It has to pass through the channels of its cultural, environmental, social, and religious ethos. Since every human being is spiritual to one degree or another, for a practical role of Spirituocracy, a Spiritual Renaissance is need. Characterized by unprecedented amount of sharing of resources among peoples of the world, enabling them to widen and deepen their spiritual citizenship, Spiritual Renaissance will well be the meeting course in assimilating not just one’s own personal spiritual heritage but that of the community as a whole, which will be a distinctive achievement of Spirituocracy.

Notes:

1. Jaspers, Karl: The Origin and Goal of History, Routledge, New Jersey 2021 p.9.

2. Rumi: Divan-i-Shams, Rubai # 69.

3.  Johnson, Paul: A History of the Jews, Harper Perennial, Britain, p. 40-41.

4. Ibid; p. 40.

5. Armstrong, Karen: The Great Transformation, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, p. 385.

6. Rumi: Mathnawi, Book III, verses 1935-36

7. Eckhart, Meister: CW 6:417 and CW: 407-433.

8. Rumi: Divan-i-Shams, Rubai 69.

9. Rumi: Mathnawi.

10. The Qur’an: Surah al-Yunus, 10:19.

11. The Qur’an: Surah al-Baqarah, 2:228.

12. Tocqueville: Democracy in America, published in 1835.