Are You Spiritual or Religious? (The Difference Is Big)
Questioner: I feel that spirituality— or rather, religiousness— is misconceptualized as spirituality in the current time. People are on the crux, they are religious, but they try to believe that they are spiritual, while these are very, very different things.
Religiousness is pretty rigid, while spirituality helps us or kind of sets us free. So, how do I try to bring this thought process from a religious mindset to a spiritual mindset? How can I influence others to do so? Or is it even required, or can they…?
Acharya Prashant: Religion, as it is commonly practised, is very outward-looking, very, very outward-looking. How? It looks at others, it looks at the past, it looks at practices, and it says, “I will do all those things.” It looks at particular books, it looks at everything outside of the looker.
It need not be like that. Religion; in its classical definition, is not this, but unfortunately, this is the way religion is practised nowadays. In fact, religion has been practised this way more or less throughout the course of history.
So, that’s Religion. There are these rituals that have been followed since two thousand years and I am following them. You are not looking at yourself, you are looking at past and the ritual and your forefathers and all that stuff, right?
I am Hindu, or I am a Muslim, or I belong to this set; I have that belief, so I will do all these things. That particular temple is great, so I am going to that particular temple, right? That particular Guru is wonderful, so I am approaching them. So, that’s religion.
Spirituality, though really, it is the center of religion, yet it is very distinct from religion. Spirituality looks at oneself; spirituality keeps all this external business aside.
Spirituality says, “But before I look at anything, I have to ask, who is looking? Before I say anything about anything, who is this ‘I’ that says anything?” Is that not the first question?
You see, one cannot be completely sure of anything, right? I am looking at the screen right now. Maybe I am dreaming. Why is it not possible? Tell me. Maybe you don’t really exist. There is at least, you know, a marginal possibility. No? When you are in your dreams, aren’t dreams all too real, As real as this moment, right now? Is that not the case?
So, you can never be sure of what is happening. Let’s say, you are a religious person, and you say, “Such tradition has been followed by my community since so many years.” Now, how do you really know? How can you be sure that this tradition has indeed been followed in this particular way? You cannot be sure of anything. You cannot be sure of your thoughts. You cannot be sure of your beliefs. But there is one thing that you can be sure of, that if there is thought, there is a thinker; that if there is suffering, there is a sufferer; that if there is a question, there is a questioner.
So, you— this entity that asks, listens, suffers, feels confused, falls, rises— this entity is the only thing you can ever be sure of. Everything else might be a mirage, or a dream, an apparition, you don’t know.
That’s the point spirituality starts from.
Spirituality says, “I will start from the point, the only point that I can be fully confident of, and that is ‘I.’
About everything else, I will be a little skeptical. I am not rejecting everything else; I just want to doubt, I want to question whether things really are as they appear. But before I’ll say whether this thing is really as it appears to me, I have to test my eyes, right? This thing comes later; my eyes come first. When you cannot look at this towel properly, do you go and get this towel tested? Or do you go and get your eyes tested? So, that’s a difference between religion and spirituality. Religion is just too much concerned with the towel.
Spirituality says, "I need to get my eyes tested. The ‘I’ need to be tested.”
Are you getting it?
Questioner: Yes
Acharya Prashant: So, though really spirituality is at the center of all Religion, Religion is the circumference, the periphery that is supposed to gradually draw the religious one to spirituality, but that often not is the case, one gets caught at the periphery, one remains at the circumference all his life. In fact, one starts resisting the center itself.
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: There is often a great conflict between the spiritual mind and the religious mind. In fact, really spiritual people have been badly persecuted by none other than religious people.
The Sufis, for example, and even in India, if you are really a spiritual person, then you will find that the community that opposes you the most is not of atheists, it is of religious people. They will be the ones who would be opposing the really spiritual person the most, which is an unfortunate thing because the way religion was designed, it was designed to gradually make a person spiritual.
Today, the situation is that these are not in sync or harmony with each other. Rather, these two have become greatly separated.
Some fundamental questions that you need to ask may be a religious person; maybe they might work, depends a lot on chance, and your effort, and the intensity. Having done all that you have been doing all your life, are you really at peace? Because that’s the only thing that you want. No?
If you are at peace, do you really need to follow any religious practices? If you are joyful, then the ultimate has already been achieved. Then, do you really need to remember and chant verses? You don’t, right?
So, have you really achieved something? In the moment of your crisis, does your religious practice really help you? Do your beliefs really stand the scrutiny of time and circumstances? But there has to be a sharp and smart occasion to do all those things, as they say, strike the iron when it is hot.
So, it is only at certain opportune times that you can ask these questions. Otherwise, usually, the traditionally religious mind is just too unavailable to any kind of enquiry.
Questioner: After listening to all this conversation, I had a very basic question, and when it comes, again it comes to the religion versus spirituality debate. So, when it comes to religion, there is a question, 'Who created us?' So, religious people say, “God created us.” There is someone who is up there who created us like that, but what is the real answer for that in spirituality? And again, why are we here, what are we doing here?
Acharya Prashant: Are we really anywhere? First of all, let me answer that. The religious person says, “Who created us and what is the purpose of this life?” Do you see the implicit assumption here? First of all, it is believed that you exist. When you are confident that you exist, you ask, “Who created me? Who created my body? Who created the trees, the rivers, the buildings, whatever, the entire universe?”
And when you are confident that you know what life is, then you ask, “What is the purpose of life?” So, the religious question is based on some very dubious assumptions. The spiritual approach is far more rigorous. The spiritual mind does not ask who created us or who created me. The spiritual mind asks, “Do I exist at all?” If I exist at all, only then the question of my creator becomes relevant. For the creator to be there, first of all, there has to be the creation, right?
Now, you do not know for sure whether even the creation exists at all or if it exists in the way it does, you think it does.
Okay, take this example — I am drunk and I ask, “Who created these eight fingers?” I am drunk, and I am asking, “Who created these eight fingers?” Now, should I answer this question, or should I first look at my own state? The religious mind does not understand that it is drunk and it is asking about the fingers that do not exist at all.
Does the world even exist in the way you think it does? In your life, has anything ever been, even one single thing, ever been the way you have thought it is? Are even your parents really the way you take them to be? Are even you the person you think you are?
So, we do not know anything for sure. When we do not know anything, then we have to focus on the knower. Let me, first of all, look at the knower, correct him, liberate him, purify him. Only then am I entitled to talk about anything else. Otherwise, I am taking undue liberties.
The eighth finger (while directing attention to the moving hands), and when nobody is able to tell me who made the eighth finger then I come up with the story. One day, God, after his lunch, was in a particularly bad mood, so he called his pet dog, clipped his tail, and with the tail, he made my eighth finger.
And religious literature is agog with such stories, is it not? This happened, that happened, then God did this, then God did that, then finally man was made.
Spirituality does not live in stories. Spirituality is extremely rigorous, very, very rigorous. It is more scientific than science itself. It says, “Wait, before I answer the question, may I please ask who is questioning?” It starts from there and, believe me, it ends there as well; it is so rigorous. It has no scope for entertainment. It does not allow you to roam astray and talk about this and that, this planet, that planet, this seed, that food, this particular auspicious day, Sun and Moon, and thousand other things. Spirituality has nothing to do with all that.
