What is Spirituality?

Are spiritual people those who believe in God? What about agnostics who seem to be living
more or less ideal lives? Without professing any devotion to God, they are a beacon light to
their society. Surely, it is better to live an ideal life than mutter the name of the Lord! Then
are the spiritual people, those who believe in goodness rather than in God. If goodness is
spirituality, then we seem only to have shifted the question. Who are good people? What is
the absolute measure for good? Would it not be easier to say what is better or worse rather
than what is good? So how about we say then that spirituality is about getting better. It is the
strife to improve oneself. If a man be very good, but does not conceive better, he stagnates
spiritually.
Another, not as good, but striving, will no doubt catch up with, and better him, one day.
Philosophically, what is important is not where one is, but where one is heading. The hunter
Valmiki became the sage Valmiki. The sinners will be deemed righteous, says the Gita , for
they have rightly resolved.
Thus, spiritual people are those who have resolved to improve. The desire to improve is said
to culminate in Enlightenment, Self-realisation, the merger with the Self.
It is the state of a Buddha, Christ, Ram, Mohammed and all those revered personalities. Thus
to be spiritual, then, must mean the desire for Self-realisation, the final Perfection. That
desire, accompanied by a systematic plan to reach there, is what is being spiritual.