Spiritual Reasoning

Written by Mathew Naismith

Spiritual awareness is all about being aware not unaware which also includes our reasoning processes we all use at one time or another. There are two main reasoning processes that us human use, deductive & inductive & of course there are also other reasoning processes we use as well like adductive & reductive reasoning however on most parts we use the first two mentioned here.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic or logical deduction or, informally, "top-down" logic,[1] is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion.

Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given.

Recently I have been in conversation with a person who only deductively reasons, anyone not reasoning deductively seems to be wrong to this person no matter what.  I should say here that at times I will also use deductive reasoning myself. This would seem this kind of reasoning process is ego controlled remembering this reasoning process is all based on logics, we must think here where this logics is mostly obtained from!! Logics are learnt through books & study which denotes knowledge but what is this knowledge?  Knowledge is only what we can remember in most parts from books & study so the more knowledge we can obtain/remember the more we can sprout about which is in most feeding the controlling ego.   The other problem with only thinking deductively with most people is because it’s mostly learnt through books & other people’s study very little actual experience has be obtained through all this knowing, we are obviously only gaining knowledge to feed our egos because if we are not experiencing this knowledge what else are we doing with it?

Inductive reasoning is quite different for the main reason it’s not based on logics & for this reason it is more open to various other possibilities & reasoning processes believe it or not.  Inductive reasoning, especially for a spiritually aware person, is more about experiences & feelings which in most parts is impossible for a person who only deductively reasons to understand & accept.  Inductive reasoning for a spiritually aware person is obviously more about awareness than knowledge & once you take away this egotistically empowered knowledge you are left with pure awareness which of course isn’t egotistically controlled, this to me seems like spiritual reasoning in it’s purest form.  Spiritually aware people can make the same mistake like people who only deductively reason by accumulating knowledge & calling it awareness & as soon as we have done this we are back at the ego being in control again unless we are able to use this knowledge to obtain actual experiences & even then this could denote the ego being in control .  We should also remember our ego will tell us one thing when it’s quite something else, our egos will tell us we are not egotistically driven when we are, just something else to be aware of.  

At the human level of learning awareness & knowledge are seemingly the same, the more knowledge you have obtained/remembered the more aware one is going to obviously be which takes the brain to analyse however spirituality isn’t just about  the human self but of all of what is. It is also not all about thinking either.  When we sit within our own quietness what are we doing, are we accumulating knowledge or are we just being aware? Knowledge has nothing to do with being spiritually aware, humanly aware yes but not spiritually. We in fact need very little knowledge to become spiritually aware just aware of our intuitive instincts & feelings, in other words becoming more in tune with ourselves instead of the ego self.