Comparing spirituality to religion is
like comparing trust and belief. They're exactly the same. Belief is
implanted in you as you grow. Trust you learn and grow with it.
Spirituality is the same thing. Religion is like belief. It's thrown
at you and you must just follow. Because of that you'll have sixteen
different people doing the same thing in different ways. That is religion.
The best definition of religion for Hindus is relating to your language because
if someone dies in a North Indian or Hindi home it takes ten or
thirteen days to do your prayer. In a Tamil home it takes sixteen
days. Diwali falls on two different days for Tamil and Hindi people.
And yet we strongly believe that we all follow Sanatan Dharma, and that
we're all under the same religious body.
Spirituality is like trust; it's a
development. You might believe somebody but you won't trust them. You
might be religious, but not spiritual. Spirituality is more than
religion; it's more than turning the camphor around a murthi (effigy).
Spirituality is knowing the inner Self. No matter which spiritual
belief you follow, everything leads to Jivan Atma, the inner Self. In
religion you don't need to know anything about the inner Self. The
priest knows what is in the book. He cannot give you a spontaneous
discourse. He'll give you the same discourse given from the time his
grandfather was little. With spirituality you don't have that. Each
one of you is different. Each one of your abilities is different on
this journey. Some people might take one year to reach a state of
bliss. Others might take five years. It depends on how you develop.
That is spirituality. In religion there's no development. The Hindu
religion is based on rituals and rites. What are the rituals? For
everything in the Hindu religion there is a ritual. In spirituality
there are no rituals.
Every person on the journey is seeking the same
thing – that inner Self, the same state of eternal joy or
bliss – Each wants to find it. In religion
there's no state of joy or bliss. In spirituality it has to be a
routine. It's called sadhana – spiritual practises. But in
religion we don't have these routines. We might have what we call routines but we follow them once in twelve months, like Janda Pooja (flag
prayer). In spirituality we don't have that kind of routine. We
have a daily routine called sadhana and in that we find the Self. And
that is important – to find the Self. So the difference between
spirituality and religion is the same as the difference between truth
and belief. One is thrown at you; the other you develop.
All of you will tell me
the same thing. You say that you pray, but don't you put more
emphasis on your prayer when you're in trouble? The same prayer you
usually do for ten minutes a day, you're now doing for one hour:
“Please, please, help me, please - you're the only God I love”. At
other times we'll walk in the garden and pick the flowers – a red
flower on Tuesdays, Hanuman flower, and we'll place it by the janda.
Then you put nine flowers there, one for each planet, to put more
emphasis. Why can't you exert that emphasis continuously? When we're
not in trouble we don't care. It's not the number of janda flags you
display, it's your effort that matters. By that I mean – how did
you emphasise God in your thoughts? Were you thinking about your job,
or your son? Or were you thinking about God? That's where we've failed
– because we're not praying right. We've become mechanical. We go,
take the water, look at the sun, pour it – Surya Japa done for the
day. No emphasis, no emotion, no love, no want, no need, no God.
My mother told me every
morning before seven o'clock to pour the water on the rose tree. The
energy was so bad that the rose tree died – because there was no
emphasis. When the rose tree dies you go to the priest and he points to the
neighbour's house. But it's your energy – you poured the water. I'm
sure you've heard these stories. What were you thinking when you were
pouring the water on the rose bush?
This whole universe of ours
is built on this thing called energy – our energy. It goes out into
the universe. Can you imagine the collective energy emanating from
all the politicians simultaneously. What will happen to us? Luckily
they don't know anything about energy, because we would all die,
their energy is so negative, based on money and greed. In the
Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about divinity to such an extent that,
after reading it, you want to become like Krishna. Being like Krshna
and becoming like Krishna are two different things. Throughout the
Bhagavad Gita, Krishna only gives positive comments to Arjuna. He
always says 'almighty warrior', not 'you idiot!'. And that is
what's important.
