​How can spirituality help amidst increasing social polarisation, often caused by religion?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so we see today a lot of polarization happening and people are getting violently antagonistic to each other even in the name of religion and love of God, shouldn’t it lead to love for one’s fellow human beings so what can we learn practically about this yeah, actually there is the understanding of religion in terms of rules and practices and there is an understanding of religion in terms of purposes and principles I just came from America and if you consider America and India or America and Britain the traffic rules are exactly the opposite in one country you travel on the left side and you travel on the right side now the rules are opposite but the purpose is the same in both cases the purpose is the regulation of traffic but the rules for regulating traffic they are not just different, they are opposite now if we just get hung up on the rules say you are wrong and I am right but if we have the understanding to move from the rules to the purpose then we will see that both of us share a common purpose so now in general people often get caught in externals and when they get caught in externals externally there are going to be differences there can be two different political parties and they can be practically in each other’s throats but if we look at it in a deeper level in all political parties there are some people who are exploitative there are some people who want to do something for the nation so the more we look at externals the more there is going to be polarization and this obsession with externals comes because of a lack of spirituality sometimes even one’s religion can actually make one unspiritual religion is supposed to make one spiritual but if it just sticks to the letter of the law without going to the spirit of the law that religion can actually make one unspiritual so when people commit violence in the name of religion then quite often they are not worshipping God they are not worshipping the God who is revealed in scripture they are worshipping a God who is simply a projection of their own conception that means they are worshipping a God who hates the people whom they hate that God is simply a projection of their imagination and same way in any field of life when people get too caught in externals then there is there is aggressive aggressive attack on aggressive denigration of others and it leads to very distasteful kind of incidents yes we are seeing this more and more in American elections it has become very distasteful here also as you said now we understand at one level this is because of the influence of Kali Yuga this age is the age where the lower kind of mentalities grow more and more generally when we say that whatever happens is God’s will we have to be a little cautious about that so there is a difference between God’s will and God’s sanction God’s will means what he wants us to God’s sanction means what he allows us to see God does not interfere with our freedom ok I will come to that point so see in any situation if there is there is something which we can do about the situation and something which we can’t do so what we can’t do if we worry too much about that if we get too caught in that it only leads us in a feeling of helplessness of frustration and it is very disheartening for a period of time but if we focus on what we can do then we can become small agents of change suppose at this moment suddenly the power goes off now one option could be we could groan, we could curse where the power has gone we might do that but then after that we will reach for our mobile I will turn on our flashlight the flashlight can’t replace the main power light so it is always better to light one candle or one flashlight no matter how small than to curse the darkness and all of us have the power to light our own small lights and if we look only at the darkness even after I light my light but if I focus on the light at least the area around me will become illumined so each of us can be not just agents of change we can also be radiators of change because we are all influenced by people around us so anyone who has a desire to make a positive contribution they need to focus on what will be their power to do and there are things which are beyond our power even when Krishna was here in this world at that time there was a evil king Duryodhana he just refused, Krishna went and petitioned lets have peace, lets avoid a war so even God does not force his will on anyone even God respects individual free will sometimes some people just misuse their free will we can’t do anything about that if they misuse their free will their actions will have consequences and those consequences will hit them in due course but we can focus on what is in my power to do and as you rightly said there are different kind of activists and devotees also there is a lot of similarity we could say devotees are spiritual activists spiritual activists means revolution of consciousness so with spiritual consciousness if whatever causes we are having we are inspired by we can bring sustainable change see pollution is a big problem at a practical level we need to counter pollution by decreasing the effluents going to water decreasing the toxic gases going to the air at the same time at a deeper level if we see why are people sending such chemicals because of the lack of consciousness because people are so self centered that they are not aware of what they are doing or they don’t care about what they are doing so that expansion of human consciousness from selfishness to selflessness that happens by spirituality so spiritual activism actually it can become the foundation on which other forms of activism can have a more sustainable effect sometimes it happens that some people are activists for a particular cause and without a spiritual foundation they make some contribution but then people don’t change sustainably before I was introduced to Krishna consciousness more than 20-25 years ago I was part of a social welfare organization I was a college student but I used to go as a part of the organization’s drive to slums I was studying in Pune and I used to I used to educate slum children like free tuitions and I found that that time many of the slum children, most of the slum children actually their parents were alcoholics, fathers were alcoholics and a lot of domestic abuse in their houses so I felt really by teaching English or History or Mathematics how much am I really helping them so I was doing that and we decided as a part of the organization that we should try to also help the fathers to get off alcohol so one of my friends was much more into social welfare than I was so he would go to a nearby village and he actually made the whole village free from alcohol by his efforts and then one evening he came back I had gone to the nearby slum in the city and he came back from the village I was crestfallen, I asked him what happened he said just a few days ago there was an election and in that election the local candidate he had brought two truckloads of alcohol for free distribution to everyone and not only the fathers but even their kids had taken alcohol so at that time I started thinking that we worked so hard but there was this total relapse and there was a time when actually I was introduced to Bhakti and I started practicing it, I also had my weaknesses I still have many weaknesses, at that time I was notoriously short tempered so I found that just by practicing Bhakti my short temper went down considerably so then one of my friends, a close friend he was just a nice boy from a very cultured family but he was just sinking into bad habits and he just somehow he started having a program in my hostel room itself and he also started practicing Bhakti and he was transforming just effortlessly and gave up all bad habits so I found that actually this was a way in which I could contribute to society so what happens sometimes, there is social activism and there is spiritual activism so if spirituality is done without caring for society then it doesn’t have much positive contribution, on the other hand if social activism is done without any spiritual awareness, then again it is not going to sustain so if people, individuals who already have the zeal to make a change in the world and then they get a spiritual orientation to their lives, then actually they can make a far greater contribution than what would otherwise be possible either by people who are only social activists or people who are only spiritualists without the zeal of activism, so you have the opportunity to combine both and make a sustainable contribution thank you