Spirituality: Growing beyond Religion

Spirituality is about making peace with yourself & with the world around you.

A spiritual person aligns his conscience with the universal principles.

A spiritual person aligns his behavior with his conscience & then becomes fearless.

A spiritual person gets transformed from a 'God fearing person' to a 'Self conscience fearing person'.

A spiritual person doesn't need any governor. He is controlled by his conscience.

A spiritual person goes beyond the religion & redefines the institution called God.

A spiritual person understands the limitations of the concept of God as defined by religion.

A spiritual person understands the God better than a religious person.

A spiritual person understands "I" properly. He knows "I" is soul & not body.

What is Spirituality? The universe operates with some principles & properties. Understanding these underlying principles & properties is important. Respecting those makes our life easy. Hydrocarbons are inflammable whereas water is a fire extinguisher. They apparently look alike. Understanding their properties and using them to your advantage is a science. Spiritual person understands science well. Water cannot be stooped hence there can't be a perfect waterproofing material. The longer the material holds water the better waterproofing material it is. The property of waterproofing material is not stopping water leakage permanently. Its property is delaying the water leakage for the maximum possible period & prolong the life of the joint from water leakage.

The spiritual wisdom is looking at things in totality & identifying the root causes

Wisdom & Spirituality Spiritual person has wisdom. He can see the obvious even if it is not apparent. His research orientation & questioning mind helps him to get connected to properties & principles of the universe. He develops the 'third eye of wisdom' which can see the futility & hollowness in the material things which are hyped beyond their significance.

Spirituality is identifying underlying principles of the universe, knowing yourself and aligning your self with the universe.

I believe that the last person we know very well is our own self. Discovering yourself is important. It involves identifying what the God has given you and how he wants you to use it. It involves understanding the purpose of your life and channelizing energy and resources towards it. In other words, spirituality is aligning inner world with the outer world. Spirituality involves knowing what you can do & what you can't. Spirituality also means knowing what you are expected to do & what you are doing. It requires working on this gap & narrowing the gap to the minimum.

Spirituality is knowing what you can do better & aligning it with what you love doing

Spirituality means knowing who you are, what you can do, what you can't do, why should you do something that you do, why only you should do it & why not somebody else. Spirituality is learning expectations management. It means understanding the power of 'no expectations-no frustrations'. Spirituality means knowing that you can only try very hard to achieve something but there are many uncontrollable factors which determine the result (spiritual word is 'Bhagya'). Spirituality also means knowing that even if all such extraneous factors are positive, doing (Spiritual word is 'karma') is important. A spiritual person knows anything is a product of Bhagya (fate) & Karma (deeds). If one of them takes zero value then by the law of multiplication the result will be zero. Bhagya is fixed. It means Karma takes value from 0 to 1. Nearer it is to 100% (or 1) higher will be the gains from Bhagya. Mathematically, the value of 'Bhagya' can be maximized by maximizing 'Karma'. A spiritual person knows the concept of 'Bhagya' well. Hence he doesn't pass on the blame on others. He focuses on doing his part well & leaving the result to the fate.

Spirituality is being at peace with yourself & with the world, particularly with people.

A spiritual person understands 'what is in here & what is out there'. The least human knows about is what lies in the sky and what lies in the human body. In spite of big claims, the human knows very little about these two worlds. A spiritual person develops a conscience. He uses it to decide what is right & what is wrong. He becomes a 'self-conscience fearing' person & doesn't need external control.

Religion & its great work Those who criticize religions must understand their important role in the formation of the modern day society. Hundred years before the year 620, the 12 clans of Medina fought fiercely for the power. It was only the mediation by Prophet Muhammad ("sallallahu alayhi wa salaam") that the manslaughter was stopped. He created a religion to establish peace among warring tribes in and around Mecca. He provided prosperity to the desert by creating a strong religion.

'Might is right' was the only rule which prevailed in the early stages of human life. People feared only weapons. Christ demonstrated 'the power of prayers' to his people and also to the enemy. He proved himself to be the most fearless man by embracing the death. Christ also showed an unmatched commitment to peace by requesting the God to forgive those who killed him. That is the religion and its commitment to creating a peaceful society. We owe many things to religion. It helped in changing the personality of men.

Religion made men put down their sword & taught them to control their emotions. Religion converted warriors to rulers and then rulers to politicians. The task of moving from barbarian society to spirituality couldn't have been achieved at one go. One had to go in stages. Religion provided those steps. Even today most of the masses could not reach perfect spiritual level. They still need religion. Religion hits at the need for love, affection & the sense of belonging of human. The warring men could be brought to peace only by entangling them in families. Then creating societies to provide the sense of security and belonging. Religion taught people to trade off personal ambitions & false egos in favor of families & societies.

The credit of transforming the nature of leadership goes to religion. Religions shaped up human behavior. They played a key role in transforming barbaric human tribes to modern day society. Religions understood the power of women. They created a society as a group of happy families which centered around women. It also empowered women, nurtured family system, created relationships & bonds among people. Religion is a way of life which sets up the society. Religion laid down rules which governed the society. It understood the value of peace, faith, patience, hope, love & fear. Any religion is standing on these 6 strong pillars. (In the Picture, see Christ with the power of prayers). Religion provided families and created a fear to lose family in the case of war. It helped bring the peace. Other fears like hell, curse etc were created to facilitate smooth day to day functioning and harmony in the society.

Religion replaced fear of weapons with fear of the God.

Religious leaders wanted to create fearless societies but they understood the power of fear very well. They knew that some people can only be controlled by creating fear. They also realized the helplessness of the human being in many situations and the importance of faith & hope. This need gave rise to the concepts like heaven & hell, re-birth & reincarnation, fate, blessings & curse. Religious leaders were storytellers. They understood how effectively the messages penetrate and travel when they get converted into stories. Religous leaders created stories to build harmony and develop happy families & societies. Bible is a philosophy narrated through true stories, depicted nicely. The message is communicated through the moral of the stories. Same thing with Hindus. The stories of Ramayana, Mahabharat imbibed values of Hinduism.

Religions had to glorify the concept of God and make him the icon of fear, faith & hope

Common people could not understand the abstract concept of God and hence some religions created physical & human-like forms of the concept of God. Idols of the God became popular among the masses because they were the visible & physical form of the 6 pillars of religion. The God was projected as the custodian of the law & order in the society. The nature of rules & code of conduct were adopted to the local conditions where the religions were born. Different religions were born in the different parts of the world. India was agriculturally driven geography and hence the concept of God revolved around nature & agriculture. Hindus worship Sun, Earth, Wind, Fire, Rain and other elements of nature. The festivals were embedded in the agricultural reasons. (In the picture you can see the Hindu God, Ganapati, depicted with flowers, grass & fruits). Muslims stayed in the desert land and traveled during the night and hence Moon became a religious symbol. The rules laid down by every religion were the outcomes of the collective values of those societies. Religions were also influenced by the geography, food habits, occupations etc. Together these things were identified as the culture. Every culture created their mark by their clothes, festivals etc, Hence different religions have different cultures, different festivals, different food, different clothes.

The Telugu word for less is 'Takuva', in Hindi it is called 'Kam', in Marathi, it is 'Kami'. The result is same but the words are different depending on the regional languages. Similarly, the God is called with different names in the different religions. A spiritual person understands this logic well. The law in science says that energy can't be created or destroyed. It changes its forms. The spiritual person knows that this law is also applicable to soul or spirit. It only changes the body & remains eternal. Hindus call this transformation as 'Moksha'. It is getting relieved completely from the world of the earlier life & getting into the new life. Hindus strive to complete all desires & wishes in their life. They believe that they may not get 'Moksha' without fulfilling all desires & responsibilities. This belief makes a person work harder.

Why China & Russia Banned Religions? These physically different symbols & culture created feeling that different religions stand for different things. It created the race to prove that my religion is superior to others. Some religious leaders tried to hijack religions for their personal gain. They understood the importance of the mass base for the religion and hence accelerated the process of religious conversion. Poor people were lured to change the faith. The unhappy sections of one religion were targeted for conversion. The willing conversion was always acceptable but the rift between religions started when conversions were forced. Some religions took exactly opposite stand as they wanted to maintain their 'purity' by prohibiting the inward conversion. The greed for power created enmity among religions and also strong conflicts among different factions of the same religions. Eventually, religions became the cause of quarrel. Different countries started a war against each other over religious issues. The irony is that religion which was formed to attain peace became the bone of connection & cause of unrest. A few communist countries like China & Russia went to another extreme of banning religion to avoid any divide among their people.

Women & Religion Some selfish people understood the power given by religion to a lady. To undermine their power certain restrictions were put on women. This was done by using the power of the religion. Otherwise, Hindus worship mother 'Durga' & 'Laxmi' (the Goddess of wealth). The first wife of the Prophet was Khadija bint Khuwaylid. She was a very successful businesswoman in Mecca. She expanded the business of her father to many countries. Prophet supported her strongly. But over a period of time women lost their power in all religions & it was projected that the religions don't allow the freedom to a woman like it offers to a man. Such twist & turn deteriorated the nobility of the cause of religions.

From Religion to Spirituality The harmony created by the religions was conducive for the thinkers, scholars & philosophers. They studied religion. Identified the gaps in the logic. Connected it to science and developed the concept of spirituality which goes beyond religion. Spiritual person knows he can't do anything about the past because it is already history, he can't create tomorrow hence he focuses on one principle, 'Live today'.

Do we need religion today? As explained in the article, religion creates peace. It creates the society and also happy families with women dominance. Religion creates & maintain bonds. It also maintains identity in the form of culture. In today's diverse world we need to develop tolerance. The environment is very volatile we need to develop patience & faith. Economies are very dynamic we need to develop hope. From this perspective, we need religion even today. But it is also creating divide, violence & wars. We need to modernize our religions. We need to maintain the core & change the frills. Religions can still survive if they radically overhaul themselves. Religions have to transform themselves & maintain relevance to the new generation. They have to identify fears of the new generation & address them. They have to work in the line of the aspirations of the new generation. To be precise,

Religions have to transform & become 'cool' to appeal to the new generation.

How are Spirituality & Religion related? It is expected that a religious person should get transformed, in stages, to a spiritual person. But the process depends on the intellectual ability of a person. Most of the religious persons become monotonous & get bog down with the rituals prescribed by the religion. Rituals make religions heavy & they lose the agility & adaptability required to appeal the new generation.

When the historical reasoning behind rituals becomes obsolete, they become objects of ridicule for the new generation.

The millennials are very logical. They don't accept things at face value. They find it difficult to follow things blindly. They want to be seen as their cosmopolitan friends rather than maintaining their religious identity. The kids in Punjab are not prepared to maintain long hair & wear a turban. Brahmin kids in the central & western India are not wearing 'Janua' (the holy thread around the chest). Similar behavior is seen in the new generations of other religions. The challenge of the religious leaders is to keep their religion contemporary or else it would perish. The spiritual person understands the religion well. He can also identify the outdated rituals well. He develops an ability to maintain the core of religion & throw away the frills.

The new generation can travel from religion to spirituality faster because they carry lesser baggage of religious rituals.

A spiritual person doesn't need the boundaries suggested by religion. He develops a conscience and gets driven by it. As explained earlier, a religious person is 'self-conscience fearing' person rather than 'God-fearing person'. He always talks to his conscience & decides what is right & what is wrong. Once he makes up his mind he doesn't care about the opinion of others. A spiritual person aligns his behavior with his conscience & then becomes fearless. His conscience understands principles underlying the universe and hence his thinking & behavior is tunned to his conscience.

Spiritual person makes decisions with his conscience instead of brain, heart or gut.

A spiritual person has a positive attitude towards religion. He understands the limitations of the religion & the way it defines the concept of God. He knows that the religious rituals are mostly ill-logical but they are tools to imbibe and engrave the preaching of the religion among followers. He appreciates the fact that the religion has to deal with the masses & hence they have to define the God differently. He approves the mutual coexistence of the different concepts of God. A spiritual person never fights over religions. He understands that they vary on geography, culture and many other factors. But they all serve the main purpose of forming human societies & binding them together firmly. A spiritual person goes beyond religion.

About the Author: Prof Dr Ajit Patil was awarded 'Top Voice on LinkedIn - 2017'. He is a Management Writer; Marketing, Business Development & Retailing Consultant. He conducts Management Development Programmes; trains & coaches Sales & Marketing teams. He has been teaching MBA students in India & overseas for over 18 years. He can be reached at [email protected]

Prof Dr. Ajit Patil teaching his case study to the Executive MBA students of the Mercer University, Atlanta, USA.