Spiritual but not religious – Analyzing four permutations

[Talk at ISKCON, Las Vegas, USA]

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Om Jnanati Mirandasya Jnananjani Shalakaya Chakshurunmilatam Yena Tasmai Shri Gurave Namaha Nama Om Vishnupadaya Krishnakrishtaya Bhutale Shrimate Bhakti Vedanta Swami Iti Namine Namaste Saraswati Devi Gauravani Pracharane Nirvishesha Shunyavati Pashyatya Deshetarine Panchakalpatarubhyasya Kripasindhupya Evacha Patitanam Pavlebhyo Vaishnavebhyo Namo Namaha Jai Shri Krishna Chaitanya Prabhu Nithyananda Shri Advaita Gadadhara Shri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna The world needs spiritual fruits, not religious nuts. So what is the difference between the two and how do we move forwards in understanding this? I was in Texas and I saw one person on that car bumper. They had written, Oh God, please save me from your preachers.
Oh God, please save me from your preachers. Normally God saves us through his preachers. But if the preachers are holier than thou, righteous, self-righteous, condescending, then people, I don’t want anything to do with this kind of people.
So spiritual, so I’ll talk about four different categories here. Spiritual but not religious. Spiritual and religious.
Religious but not spiritual. And neither religious nor spiritual. So let’s begin with some basic terms.
At one level, words can mean anything we want them to mean. So let’s clarify what we are meaning by these terms. And we also see how these words are understood in general parlance.
So when people talk about spiritual, they have the idea of something that makes me feel good, something that makes me feel broad-minded, something that makes me open to experiencing the sweetness, the goodness, the greatness of life. So in that sense, the word spirituality is associated with open-mindedness and experience. Experiences that make us feel good.
On the other hand, the word religion is frequently associated with narrow-mindedness, dogma, self-righteousness, sectarianism, religious one-upsmanship. My religion is better than your religion. So naturally, if we equate spirituality with open-mindedness and religion with narrow-mindedness, then nobody, no thoughtful person would want to be narrow-minded.
They think, let us be spiritual but not religious. Well, this is one understanding of these terms. And yes, there are many religious people who are narrow-minded, who are sectarian.
But that is not the only thing that is there in religion. There are also people who are religious and also broad-minded. So, let’s take both examples.
Three people go to God. They have religion A, religion B and religion C. The person from religion A goes to God and prays, Oh God, please destroy the followers of religion B. Then the follower of religion B goes and prays, Oh God, please destroy the followers of religion A. The follower of religion C goes and says, Oh God, I don’t want anything for myself. Please just fulfil the prayers of religion A and religion B. So, religion A and religion B will be destroyed and religion C alone will remain.
So, it’s basically one-upsmanship. Everybody tries to prove that their religion is the best. So, this is an example of people who may be religious but they are not at all spiritual.
That means, they see religion as a way to prove their superiority over others. As their way is the only way. On the other hand, what would be religious and spiritual? One of the great saints in our tradition, we hear we have Shila Bhaktivinod Thakur, he gives a very profound and inclusive expression of religious and spiritual in one of his books named Chaitanya Shikshant.
There he says that if we go to a place of worship of some other religion, some other faith tradition, some other path and we enter that place, what mood should we go there? So, he says that we should go there in a mood of respectfulness. Respectful appreciation for the Divine who out of His compassion has manifested here in a form different from our own. He says, my dear Lord, because this manifestation is different from what I am familiar with, because the practises to worship you here are different from what I am familiar with.
Therefore, I cannot understand this properly. But still, thinking how compassionate you are that in order to attract these people you have manifested in this form. Therefore, my appreciation for you is increasing and my commitment to becoming devoted to you in the form that I am familiar, that is increasing.
There are two things over here. You see, Divine is manifesting here and I appreciate how compassionate the Divine is manifesting and attracting these people. But that doesn’t make me feel insecure.
Oh, their path is right, their worship is right, mine must be wrong. No. I see that one Divine is manifested in different ways and seeing how the Divine is so merciful to attract people from that path, by that path, I feel more inspired to commit myself to my path.
So, there can be broad-mindedness coupled with commitment. We can be broad-minded about other paths, at the same time we can be committed to our path. To understand this, let’s take two examples.
One example could be of a mountain. The bottom of the mountain is materialistic consciousness. The top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness.
And the process of spiritual growth is basically like the process of going up the mountain. From material consciousness to spiritual consciousness. Now, it is possible that there may be different paths to go up the mountain.
And all these different paths, if somebody goes up them systematically, steadily, strongly, they will eventually ascend to the top. So, similarly, there are different paths which can take people from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness. So, the various faith traditions of the world comprise different paths up the mountain of higher consciousness.
And by this understanding, what do we see? Okay, there is divine over there, at the top, and people from here are being attracted. People from here are being attracted. Let me become devoted.
Let me climb up this path steadily so that I can get to the top. So, with this understanding, we can be spiritual in terms of wanting to raise our consciousness up to the top. At the same time, we can be religious in the sense that we are following a path to go up to the top.
So, now I will come to explaining what do we mean by these two terms, spiritual and religious. So, earlier I said people think spiritual means anything which makes me feel good, broad. And religion is actually narrow-minded.
But that is a general understanding. A more precise understanding would be that spiritual is not just a state of mind. Spiritual is also a state of being.
It is not just how I feel, but who I become, or what I am. It is a state of being. Spiritual is not just a state of mind.
That means, many people think that whatever makes me feel good, that is spiritual. So, before, about 20-25 years ago, before I was introduced to Krishna Bhakti, I was exploring many different spiritual paths. So, I had gone to one teacher’s programme and he was telling, you can be spiritual any time, any place, any way, whatever you believe, whatever you practise.
I said, how do you do that? He said, actually, being spiritual is being peaceful. And the way to be peaceful is to project your consciousness. He said, now all of you, I will make all of you spiritual.
He said, close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting at the foot of a mountain. There is a mountain behind you from which cool breeze is coming. There is a river in front of you and you can hear the motion of the water in the river.
You can hear birds chirping in the sky. You can see a mountain on the other side and you can see clouds touching the top of the mountain. As you hear the chirping of the birds, the swirling of the water, the movement of the wind through your ears, you are feeling peaceful, peaceful, peaceful.
The peace you are experiencing now is spiritual. And as he was taking us in this projection exercise, suddenly, there was a car crash outside on the road. Bang! And have you enjoyed it or not? What happened? So, there are many thought exercises like this by which we project our consciousness to some natural place, some scenic place.
Some people may think, okay, maybe to turn some light, maybe to turn some candle. And this way, we may become peaceful. Now, as far as becoming peaceful is concerned, these exercises may help.
You may feel very good. But feeling good alone is not spiritual. That way, if we say, if feeling good were spiritual, then anybody can do anything and they may say, that makes me spiritual.
Tomorrow, I get a depression and I take some tranquillizers, antidepressant pills. All these are spiritual. Is that spiritual? It makes me feel good.
Drug addicts, they can take drugs. That makes them feel good. Is that spiritual? If something which makes me feel good is spiritual, then anything which anyone does, which makes them feel good, that can be called as spiritual.
Now, of course, people say, Oh, it should make you peaceful. It should make you feel good. It should elevate your consciousness.
Yes, that is good. But spiritual is not just a state of mind. It is a state of the mind, but it is more than a state of mind.
It is a state of being. What do I mean? What is the difference between state of mind and state of being? The spiritual wisdom traditions of India, especially the Bhagavad Gita, explain that our existence is two-dimensional. It is material and spiritual.
So the objects around us, they are made of matter. And when we are conscious of these objects, we are in material consciousness. And none of the objects around us are conscious.
This table is not conscious. If I ask any of you, do you exist? Do you exist? What do you think? Sorry? Maybe. To even say maybe, you have to exist.
Isn’t it? If I ask this table, does it exist? It can’t say. It can’t think. It doesn’t know.
Actually, beyond exist, does this table exist? It also exists. But it is not aware of its existence. We are aware of our existence.
So this awareness is the characteristic of the spark of spirit within us. That is called the Atma or soul. So the soul is the source of consciousness.
And the soul is spiritual. That spiritual soul is present within the material body. And I’d like you to do another thought experiment.
I just described one. Now I’d like you to do one, which will give us some idea of what I am talking about. So I request all of you to kindly close your eyes and take, sit comfortably wherever you are and take three deep breaths.
One. Two. Now, with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you.
Your eyes are closed, so you can’t see what is physically in front of you. But, you will see an inner screen on which you may see the beautiful mountains here in Las Vegas. You may see a loud one.
You may see a sports match that you had watched recently. You may even see this, some image of this room. On this inner screen, many different images keep coming and going.
Or sometimes, you may just see a colourless haze on the screen. But, something or the other, you see as if on an inner screen inside you. Now, as you are observing this inner screen, try to take a step back and look at who is observing this inner screen.
With your eyes closed, inside you, you are seeing an inner screen. Take a step back and try to see who is seeing this inner screen. Take a step back again and try.
No matter how many times you take steps back, you can’t see the inner seer because that inner seer steps back with you. What you are looking for is what you are looking with. You are the inner seer.
Take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes. One. Thank you.
So here, the outer world that we see, right now you are seeing, this is material reality. This is physical reality. This gets replicated inside us on an inner screen that is called the mind.
In the Bhagavad Gita in the 15th chapter, 8th verse Krishna says that, 8th, 9th verse he talks about how the body and the mind interact. So there he says, So from the five senses, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the skin, information is streaming into us. And this information comes and is integrated on the mind.
And that is observed by the soul. So, the inner screen is the mind. And the inner seer who is seeing that screen is the soul.
So basically there is an outer scene. All of you are looking at me, I am looking at you. So this outer scene is physical reality.
The inner screen, which is what is projected, is mental. Or from the physical world, what is projected there. Where it is projected, that is the mental reality.
And the one who is observing it, that is at the level of spiritual reality. So you are the inner seer. You are a spiritual being.
And when most people talk about being spiritual, when they talk about feeling good, which is what they think of as spiritual, what they are trying to do is get good images on the inner screen. The more nice, soothing, comforting images come on the inner screen, they say this is spiritual. However, what comes on the inner screen can change in one moment.
Like the thought exercise of being in a peaceful place, the next moment there is a car crash. So, what is actually spiritual is not just what comes on the inner screen, but realising ourselves to be the inner seer. That is being spiritual.
So yes, getting good images on the inner screen is good. But that doesn’t mean we have become spiritual. To be spiritual means we have to see, we have to realise who is the inner seer.
That inner seer, the Bhagavad Gita says, the Atma. The Atma is Sat, Chit, Ananda. The Atma is eternal, conscious, and joyful.
And when we realise ourselves to be the Atma, we become naturally joyful. At that time, we don’t have to imagine something good to feel good. We don’t have to have something good coming on our inner screen or on the outer scene that we see.
Internally itself we become joyful. To understand this, this image was more horizontal. There is outer scene, inner screen, and inner seer.
The outer scene in the physical reality, the inner screen is the mental reality, and the inner seer is the spiritual reality. I’ll use another metaphor now, which is more of a vertical metaphor. Imagine there is a two-story building.
The ground level is like the material level of reality. The first level is the spiritual level of reality. Last year, when I had come to America, I was in Florida.
At that time, Hurricane Irma hit Florida. So, I had an early morning, so I left there. I went to New York and the East Coast to do some programmes there.
One of my friends was on a retreat at that time in Florida. It was a seclusion. All alone he was staying, doing some reflection, doing some reading.
He was cut off from the world. He didn’t come to know there was a hurricane. One day, he just opened his window.
He felt a lot of rains were coming. He opened the window and he saw the water level rising, rising, rising up. He became a little apprehensive.
He tried to turn on the internet to see what was happening. There was no internet over there. He tried to call someone.
The phone was dead. The water was rising, rising. What to do? He was becoming panicky.
He was staying in this house. Another friend’s house where he had just come. That friend was not there.
He was all alone in this house. He started looking around frantically. What to do? Suddenly, he saw there was a closet.
Behind that, there appeared to be something like a door. He pulled the closet aside, opened the door, and from there he saw there was a way up. There were small stairs leading up to the attic.
He had lived throughout the ground level. He didn’t even know the attic was there. He quickly ran to the attic and then he stayed there.
From the attic window, he could see the water rising, rising, rising. The ground level got covered. But he at the first level was safe.
And then the hurricane subsided. The power came back. The net came back.
And he was rescued. So similarly for us, our existence is two dimensional. Material and spiritual.
But most of our life, we live in this house not even knowing that there is an upper level to the house. We just stay at the ground level. And we face problems.
We try to deal with them. We try to improve things at the ground level. But sometimes, when a terrible crisis comes, at that time if we are fortunate, we explore and we discover that there is a whole higher being to be, higher side to which I did not know about.
So that first level is the spiritual level. The ground level is the material level. Now, both the levels in the house are already there.
But the resident in the house doesn’t know that there is a higher level. Our situation is like that. So from this metaphor, becoming spiritual doesn’t refer just to state of the mind.
State of the mind means that I stay at the ground level and I do something which makes me feel good. But becoming spiritual is a state of being. What that means is that we rise to the higher level.
We go to the higher level and there we experience serenity. There we experience peace. There we experience joy.
So spirituality is not just a state of mind. It is a state of being. And of course, when you get to that state of being, just like when he went to the first level, he became peaceful.
But that was not the state of mind. He had gone to a higher level and that’s how he was peaceful. So similarly for us, to become spiritual means to rise to this higher level of reality.
To rise to this higher level of awareness. And for rising to this higher level of awareness, we all need a staircase. We all need a path.
And the path that takes us from the material level to the spiritual level, that is our religion. So religion is meant to be a path which will take us from material level of consciousness to spiritual level of consciousness. However, for many people, they just practise their religion ritualistically, not knowing that there is a higher level or that they are meant to go to higher.
One of my friends is a Jew and he has become a Hare Krishna devotee now. He is a Krishna devotee. So he had gone to meet his relatives and friends and the family again together.
And he started talking about his faith and his practises. So his uncle became very suspicious. Are you trying to convert me? He said, I didn’t know that you belong to any religion.
He knew that his uncle was an atheist. I didn’t know that you belong to any religion. He said, I’m a Jew.
I’m an atheist. But I’m an atheist Jew. I’m an atheist Jew.
Now, in Judaism, the first commandment is to love God with all thy heart and all thy soul. So, if somebody says I’m an atheist Jew, what does that mean? That simply means that Judaism is not a religion at all for them. It’s just a cultural designation.
I was born in a Jew family, so I’m a Jew. So in this case, what has happened? People, they are not even practising their religion properly. They’re just being nominally religious and they’re not using their religion to go up to the spiritual level of humanity.
So this kind of religious but not spiritual is undesirable. Why? Because people are not rising to a higher level of reality. So religion is simply a nominal practise where it’s only nominal, there’s nothing transformational about it.
At the same time, there will be the other extreme where people simply imagine I’m spiritual, but they don’t follow any path to rise to the spiritual level. I was at an interfaith meeting in D.C. and there I was talking with a Christian pastor and he was telling his experience with the crowd who are SVNR, spiritual but not religious. So he said he was on a TV show and in this TV show, or it was a radio show rather, and different people would ask questions on that radio show.
So one person came and he spoke that I’m a Christian but I don’t go to any church. I don’t belong to any church. So this pastor very cautiously asked him, is there any reason why you don’t go to any church? This person replied, I haven’t yet found a church that agrees with my philosophy.
I haven’t yet found a church that agrees with my philosophy. That’s why I don’t go to any church. At one level, okay, that makes sense.
You don’t find anything just like-minded. But at another level, we go to the church or we go to some religious place to learn philosophy, to learn spiritual wisdom. So people who are in this category, they are not spiritual seekers.
They are spiritual shoppers. Like when I go for shopping, I’m not going to learn anything from anyone. I think whatever are my likes right now, they are good.
And whatever appeals to my liking right now, that’s what I like. Okay, that’s one way to live. But if I want to learn music, I want to learn art, I want to learn aesthetics of any kind, then I have to go to a school.
And in that school, I have to learn. If I just continue, if I want to expand my understanding of literature, then if I just keep reading the books that I like, I want to expand my taste. I’ll just stay wherever I am.
If I want to expand, then I can’t be a shopper. I have to become a seeker. I have to go to someone who, say if I love fiction, but I want to learn, appreciate non-fiction, then I have to go to someone and learn from them.
What do you like about non-fiction? Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I would also like to read it. So basically, as long as you’re spiritual shoppers, then what are we doing? We are simply doing anything that makes us feel good.
And in that sense, we will not rise from the physical level to the spiritual level. We’ll stay at the physical level, at the material level, and imagine ourselves to be spiritual. Spiritual seeker means that person finds a path, to find a staircase, to go from the ground level to the first level.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that that staircase is the only staircase. There can be different staircases also. But for that person to climb up, they have to take that staircase.
So we need to be religious and spiritual. We need to be religious in the sense that we have to practise a path which will be like our staircase, to take us up from the ground level to the higher level. If we are only religious but not spiritual, then we stay at the ground level.
If we are only spiritual but not religious, then also we stay at the ground level. Imagine we have gone up. We got some good feelings, but we have not risen up.
So, if we wish to be religious, now I conclude with two reflections. How this idea of religious and spiritual can be seen positively and can be seen negatively. One of the things that puts off people above our way of religion is the perceived narrow-mindedness of religious people.
So, there are some religions which say that. My way is the only way. No, no, no.
These statements are there and they are there for a purpose. Suppose there is a doctor and this patient comes and tells the doctor this problem, this problem, and the doctor says, okay, you can take this treatment, you can do this, take this medicine, do this. And the patients are saying, but I have gone to that doctor and that doctor had said this.
And then I have gone to that doctor and he had said this. And I have gone to that doctor and he had said this. Now, when the doctor hears this, a doctor will tell the patient, just forget what all the doctors have told you.
Just do what I am telling you and you will get cured. When the doctor tells the patient, just forget what all the doctors have told you. The purpose of the doctor is not to say that all other doctors are quacks.
It is not that all the doctors are false. It is just that you have to focus. If you want to be treated, you have to follow one doctor’s treatment.
And when you follow that treatment, if the doctor’s treatment is good, if the doctor is bona fide, you will be cured. If it is not, you will come to know and then you can go to some other doctor. The purpose of statements like this, this is the only way, they are contextual statements and it is meant to create a focus.
They are not necessarily meant to reject all other paths. Srila Prabhupada, the founder Acharya of ISKCON, when he was in New York once, at one time he gave a class and after that a hippie who was sitting behind asked, Swamiji, your philosophy sounds like that of the Buddha. So Srila Prabhupada compared him and said, do you follow Buddha? No.
Prabhupada said, follow Buddha, follow Jesus, follow Mohammed, follow Krishna. Follow someone, don’t just talk. What does it mean, don’t just talk? What it means is, that if we just stay idle, minutes like this, minutes like that, minutes like that, that will not lead to any elevation.
We follow a path. If it is a staircase which takes us to a higher level, we get to the higher level. If it is not a staircase, it is a dead end, we will come to know that.
And then we can choose something else. We will go to some other path. We just stay.
This makes me feel good, that makes me feel good, maybe this is good, maybe that is good. Then we are staying at the ground level and we are not going to a higher level. So if we can actually rise to the higher level, then we can experience peace and we can renew peace to others.
Anshula Prabhupada was in Iran. At one time he was talking with the devotees who were there, trying to share Krishnamurti there. And while he was talking in the background, the prayers the Muslims offer, namaz, they started loudly, they were sat in the background.
Anshula Prabhupada folded his hands, closed his eyes and silently he heard out the full prayers. And after that when he opened his eyes, his eyes were bright. Wasn’t that beautiful? So one of the devotees said, Prabhupada, but wouldn’t it have been better if there was chanting Hare Krishna instead of Allahabad? So Prabhupada looked at that.
Prabhupada said, why are you making me sit there? He says, we are glorifying God in our way, they are glorifying God in their way. So if the world had more broad-minded religious practitioners who understood the purpose of religion is to become spiritual, then we would have much more harmony and far lesser agrimony. But unfortunately, instead of having spiritual fruits, spiritual fruit is a higher level of consciousness.
Spiritual fruit is experience of life’s higher side. Spiritual fruit is an inner peace that doesn’t depend on externals, be they physical or psychological. If those spiritual fruits are not there, then in the world we have religious nuts.
Religious nuts means people who believe my way is the only way. And based on that, they are ready to not just condemn others, some people say, if you don’t follow my way, you are going to go to hell. And not only are you going there, we will help you get there faster.
So this kind of religious fanaticism that comes when people do not have spiritual understanding, that is the cause of big problems in the world. So some people just say, better let’s not have this religious business at all. Let’s just be at least.
Let’s not be religious, let’s not just be spiritual, let’s have nothing to do with this. Because they see there is so much religious violence and they get put off by that. However, just being materialistic or just being atheistic, what is the result of that? This was tried on a massive scale by communism in USSR and China.
Both the countries followed Marxism and Marx considered religion the opium of the masses. So the governments that were followed under his inspiration, Stalin and Lenin especially, they were officially and aggressively atheistic. And what is the result? The result was that during the communist rule in USSR, five times more people were killed by the government itself than the number of people who were killed in the First World War and Second World War combined.
So the biggest mass experiment in administered atheism resulted in the biggest genocide in recorded human history. So if we just live at the material level of reality, then there is only going to be competition and destruction. Why? Because at the material level, everybody wants more and more and more.
And there are only so many things available. So that will lead to competition, that will lead to destruction. We need spirituality to find inner contentment.
Otherwise, at the external level, if our pleasure is coming in externals, then we’ll always be fighting for the externals. And that’s why we don’t hear not religious, not spiritual, that will lead to materialism, that will lead to problems. Only religious, not spiritual, that will also lead to sentimentalism or fanaticism.
Only spiritual, but not religious, that will just lead to feel-good kind of things, which will not lead to any transformation. What we need is religious and spiritual. We want to follow a particular path, but we want to follow it for the purpose of raising our consciousness.
So the path of Krishna Bhakti, which is described in the Bhagavad Gita, is both religious and spiritual. In the 9th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, the second verse Krishna says, राज्यविद्या राज्यगुण्यम् पवित्रमिद्वत्तमं प्रत्यक्षावदन्धर्म् सुखंकर्त्मवेहम् राज्यविद्या राज्यगुण्यम् This is the most confidential knowledge. It’s pure.
अद्धमं It actually raises one’s consciousness. It takes one beyond darkness. प्रत्यक्षावदन्धर्म् It gives us a direct experience of reality.
It gives us an experience of a higher reality by which we understand that there is more to life than what I am living on a daily basis. सुखंकर्त्मवेहम् And what is that higher experience? Ultimately, it is the experience of joy. And it is this experience of joy that will elevate our consciousness.
So the Bhagavad Gita offers us a path of bhakti. It is not narrow-minded because it acknowledges that there are many different ways to God. But at the same time, it gives us a path which will give us experience of God.
सुखंकर्त्मवेहम् The first time I came to America in 2015, I had gone to university and I gave a talk on regulating our mental diet to vegetarian society students. After that, one boy came and told me that just before this programme, I was contemplating suicide. He said that he had been in a relationship with a girl and she had broken up with him and he was shattered.
So as he was contemplating killing himself, he was just walking along on the campus and he saw a poster of the programme which I was doing. Something within him told him, just go for this programme. So he came for this programme and when he came, he heard the class and he said, now I understand, actually it is not I who want to commit suicide.
It is just the mind within me which is impure, which is contaminated that is telling me, commit suicide, commit suicide. He told him, yes, you are not the mind. Like this example of inner screen and inner sphere, a damage will come on the inner screen but you don’t have to act on that damage.
You study the Bhagavad Gita, practise the Bhagavad Gita’s teachings, practise Bhakti Yoga and then you will go beyond this. So after that, every year I come once or twice to America. So whenever I go to the university, I meet him, talk with him.
We are stably practising Bhakti. So last year when again I had met him, he told me that he had gone through a similar situation. He had been in a steady relationship and again that girl broke up with him.
So this time, as soon as he got that text from her saying that she was breaking up and she was blocking his phone, don’t try to call him, he straight went to his room and he shut the door, pulled down the windows, closed the curtains, turned on the lights and then he he liked to play a violin. So he picked up his violin and he started singing Hare Krishna and he said for six hours continuously I was singing the Hare Krishna mantra calling out to Krishna and he said that time I experienced the sweetest moments of my life. I felt as if I was bathing in a sublime light.
I was enveloped by an indescribable softness and sweetness. I felt as if I was submerged in love. I could feel the presence of God.
The very moment which could have been the most depressing moment of my life it turned to be the most enriching moment of my life. That happened because he took shelter of Krishna. So at that time it’s like I told in the beginning this person who was trapped in the hurricane, he climbed up to the higher level and then he was relieved from the flood.
So at this point this breakup was like a flood coming in his life and at that time earlier he had been suicidal but now he had the Hare Krishna mantra he had the process of bhakti yoga that was in the staircase and through that staircase he went up to the higher level and he experienced a higher level of reality. So that experience is available for all of us. If we are just religious but not spiritual when we have reversals, when we have problems we just start blaming God.
We’ll give up our faith or we’ll do something else to try to get a solution. If we are spiritual but not religious when bad things happen to us we want to feel good but we have no process to feel but if we are religious and spiritual then when bad things happen in life we will have a process by which to raise our consciousness above those bad things and that’s how we can realise our spirituality. The adversity at the material level can become a spiritual opportunity for experiencing the higher reality of our own being for experiencing the serenity and spirituality that defines us.
Thus that in religiously spiritual we can transform our lives and we can experience life in its fullness and richness at the spiritual level. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I started by talking about discussing spiritual but not religious.
So I said there are people who are people think of religion and narrow-minded and spiritual as open-minded. So and there are people who say Oh God, save me from your creatures. Why? Because they feel the creatures are narrow-minded.
Now if this understanding that spiritual is open-minded religion narrow-minded everybody wants to be open-minded but that’s not the only understanding of these terms. I said we can have people who are religious and spiritual that is, I gave the example of Bhaktivinod Thakur who says that we go to a place of worship of another religion we stay reverentially appreciate how the Divine is manifesting to attract these people and at the same time become inspired to commit to worshipping that Divine in our own way. So this is acknowledge there are other paths but we come to us as to our path.
It’s like the mountain, the top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness, the bottom is material consciousness. There can be different paths to go up that mountain. So when we are only religious but not spiritual that means we just stay at the bottom of the mountain, doing something ritualistic but not rising up.
So then religion is nominal, not transformation like somebody saying that I am a Jew, atheist. On the other hand somebody says I am spiritual but not religious. Then that means they don’t, they are equating spirituality with anything that makes them feel good.
Spirituality is not just a state of mind it is a state of being. To explore this difference I did two thought experiments. One was how there is outer scene, inner screen and inner seer.
So the outer scene is the physical level of reality the inner screen is the mind and the inner seer is the soul. So what people call as spiritual is try to get good images on the inner screen. But what is actually spiritual is realising ourselves to be the inner seer.
The inner seer is by nature joy, it is Atma, Satchitana, it is a source of consciousness. And to realise this inner seer we took the effort of a two level building. So there is a stairway needed to go to the upper level.
Like this person in the hurricane found a stairway to go to the attic. So the stairway, the stairs to go up to the higher level, that is religion. And the higher level of reality that is the spiritual level of reality.
So we need to be religiously spiritual, that means we follow a path to rise to a higher level of consciousness. So if some of the religious traditions say this is the only way, that is not to reject other ways but to create a focus. Like a doctor telling a patient forget all other doctors, just take this treatment.
So if we follow Jesus, follow Buddha, follow Krishna. So we take a path, then we will know whether it is taking us up or not. If it is not taking us up, we can take some other path.
We just keep talking, we won’t get anywhere. And he concluded by talking about how if there is neither religious nor spiritual, then there is atheism. The result of that is the greatest genocide in human history, in recorded human history.
So we need some higher shelter. This boy was suicidal because of a stormy breakup. When he understood that there is a spiritual level and there is a spiritual situation, he took that path and the moments which would have been the most depressing turned out to be the most enriching for him.
So like Shri Prabhupada, he said don’t make me sectarian. He said they are worshipping God and we are worshipping our way. So we can be both open minded and at the same time focused.
We can follow our path but appreciating other people’s paths. And the test is whether we are rising to a higher level of reality. Whether we are experiencing our own spirituality by realising the core of who we are.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments? Anya. Anya.
So you say that we have to be religious and spiritual. So I think it’s beautifully asked by Arjuna and answered by Bhagavan Sri Krishna about that intro chapter that Krishna asked, I mean Arjuna asked which path is better, is it non-manifested or manifested one. And Bhagavan Sri Krishna said that the non-manifested one is the place of Adhikara.
So if you take the same metaphor like the bottom of the mountain, people are trying to go to the cliff side or there are people who are taking the rope way or the way of spirituality. So Bhagavan Sri Krishna said that my advice in Bhagavad Gita is to take this Vyakta path or start doing my self manifestation. Personal good.
So there is the difference between different paths. So that’s why people have sometimes fanaticism about that. I know this path good and why I’m not taking that.
But actually this should be spiritual and people have time. Okay. That’s a good comment and question also implied in the comment that Krishna says in the 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita worshipping Him in a personal form is better than worshipping His impersonal manifestation.
So we can say there are different paths of the mountain but can we say that all paths are exactly equal or is there some path which works better for some people, some path works less for some people. In the spiritual realm there is both the objective reality and the subjective experience of the reality. What that means is that objectively as Krishna says in the 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita if we want to rise to spiritual consciousness becoming devoted to a personal manifestation of the Absolute that is easy.
Why? Because we live in a world of relationships we live, we are persons, we respect other persons, we long for love. So if we can direct our loving propensity towards a supreme person then that helps us to rapidly rise to the spiritual realm of reality. So how is that? That is at one level to go from the ground level to the first level we have to have some amount of detachment and I am going to leave the ground level so that I can go to the first level.
So there is a process of material detachment and spiritual attachment that is required to rise from the ground level to the first level. Now in the process of bhakti we focus primarily on spiritual attachment and the material detachment naturally comes. It’s like say if I have this glass and I want to create a, I want to remove all the air from the glass Oh the air here is polluted, I don’t want the air in this glass.
Now to try to pull all the air out is extremely difficult. To create a vacuum there is almost impossible. Even if I create a little shaking the vacuum will be disturbed.
But if I fill it with water the air will automatically go out. So similarly the process of bhakti yoga is the process of not trying to remove our material attachment that’s like trying to remove the air. The process of bhakti yoga is just fill it with water.
That is fill your consciousness with Krishna. Become attached to Krishna. And by that attachment will automatically come.
So in this sense it’s an easier and more effective process. But there are some people who may be very scarred by negative experiences with relationships negative experiences in interpersonal dealings and because of that for them the idea of approaching God as a person is very difficult. And for those people the path of impersonal worship may in their situation be what they can take in that.
So in an objective sense as Krishna says becoming devoted to a personal absolute is the easiest path. So there are many paths up the mountain some may be easier than others. And the path of going up the mountain to the personal by becoming attached to the personal absolute is easier.
But for some people in specific situations the impersonal path may be what they are ready to take in that. So in that sense there are different paths. They all take one hour.
But they are not all equally easy or necessarily equally effective. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Good question. When Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says he comes to establish Dharma what exactly does he mean? The word Dharma is multivalent. Multivalent means it has many different meanings in different contexts.
We consider fundamentally Dharma comes from the Sanskrit root Dhruv which means to sustain. So Dharma refers to that which sustains our very nature. That means the course of action that enables us to live true to ourselves that is Dharma.
The course of action that enables us to live true to ourselves that is Dharma. So now what exactly is our Dharma? Our defining nature if we see we all want to love and to be loved. And we all long for a lasting object of love.
Most of the movies and novels are about romance. And most of the romantic movies and novels they end with H-E-A happily ever after. So we all long for lasting love.
So this actually to want to love and to be loved that is what defines our existence. That is our nature. That is our Dharma.
Now we all have a nature to love and to be loved. So the path, the course of action that enables us to develop our loving nature in a proper way. In a way that leads to fulfilment.
That is called Dharma. So Sanatana Dharma refers to the eternal Dharma. That means, that is the process which will enable us to direct our love towards the eternal.
We are loving many different objects in this world. Unfortunately none of these loves can last forever. But we direct our love towards the eternal, towards the supreme.
That is a love that will last forever. So Dharma in that sense refers to our nature to love and serve. And the Dharma in its highest expression is the course of action that will enable us to love the eternal.
Now in the Bhagavad Gita when Krishna says I have come to establish Dharma. Dharma samsthāpanāthāya sambhavāmi you gave me. He is referring specifically to the social order that will facilitate spiritual growth.
So at that time when Krishna came, the vicious Kauravas had unscrupulously grabbed power and they were breaking havoc in society. So Krishna wanted to establish Dharma. So paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya dharma samsthāpanāthāya sambhavāmi you gave me.
In 4.7 he says that those who are disrupting Dharma, I want to sideline them. Those who honour Dharma, I will enthrone them. And in that way I will establish Dharma.
So Krishna is talking about establishing an external order which will help us to establish the inner order. Establishing the inner order means learning to love the eternal. Learning to live in a way that helps our loving nature to guide us towards eternal life.
So in that sense bhakti in its fullest sense is the pinnacle of Dharma. It is paro dharma. And the outer social arrangement which can help us to practise bhakti and develop love for Krishna that is also Dharma.
So we try as much as possible to have an external order in today’s world also by which we can develop the inner order. So arranging society as much as possible in a way that is spiritually harmonious that is one level of establishing Dharma. But the ultimate purpose of establishing Dharma is to bring order in our inner world.
To make the ātmā attached with bhakti to the Paramātmā. That is Krishna’s ultimate purpose. That is why 4.7, 4.8 he says dharma samsthāpanārthāya but the next verse 4.9 is that janma karma ca me divyam evaṁ yo viddhi tattvata tyaktvā deva punar janma naiti mām edhi surjana and 4.10 is vīta rāga bhaya grodha manmayā māṁ pāśhvatā bhavo jñāna tapasā uttamaṁ dharmā māṁ vata So he says that when dharma is established what will happen by that? Then people will understand my mysterious appearance and activities my divine appearance and activities they will become attracted to me they will attain love for me and when they attain love for me they will attain me in my eternal abode.
So the establishment of dharma is meant to help us to come to the level of bhakti and ultimately prema love for the Lord as the culmination of bhakti. Okay? Thank you. Yes.
Thank you. Any other comments and questions? Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
if somebody has a bad experience with religion and because of that they either become spiritual but not religious or they become atheistic then what will be their destination in the end? In the Bhagwan Gita, in the 8th chapter Krishna talks about the general principle in 8.6 He says we will attain after death the consciousness that we have cultivated during this lifetime. So our consciousness at death determines our destination after death. So broadly speaking, believers and non-believers are one way of categorising people.
The Bhagavad Gita offers another way of categorising people which is based on three modes of material nature. Sattva guna, Prajona and Tanuva. Mode of goodness, mode of passion and mode of ignorance.
These are basically ways in which we observe the world and function in the world. Broadly speaking, we could say that mode of goodness means there is first contemplation and then action. Mode of passion means there is first action and then contemplation.
Some people speak to express their thoughts. And some people speak to discover their thoughts. The speak thing, I didn’t want to speak that.
So there are some people like that also. So the mode of goodness means first there is thinking and then there is speaking. Mode of passion means first there is speaking and then thinking.
And in the mode of ignorance, there is neither speaking, there is neither action nor contemplation. There is simply delusion. So they are just lost in their imaginary world.
Not doing anything, not thinking clearly, not acting properly. So another way to put these three modes is that some people make things happen, some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened. So these are three modes, goodness, passion and ignorance.
And all kinds of people will fall in these three categories. There can be religious people who are in the mode of ignorance. Like I said, oh God, destroy the people of religion, they envy.
That’s a desire in the mode of ignorance. There can be atheists who can be in the mode of goodness. There can be atheists who live moral lives, who are gentle, who are sensitive.
So the religious categorisation is one kind. The categorisation in terms of religious faith is one kind of categorisation. It is important in terms of ultimate conceptions.
But in terms of functional living, you have to see who is living which mode. So many times people who are in goodness, if they encounter religious people who are in passion or ignorance, they are put off. And then on top of that if they meet some other atheists who are relatively speaking in goodness, they feel atheism is better.
If there are people who meet religious people who are in passion or ignorance, and then they may feel, okay, I want to be spiritual, but I will be spiritual but not religious. So if we see from the perspective that there is goodness, passion, ignorance. I was at an interfaith conference.
I met a Muslim over there. The Muslim told me, he is a good friend of mine, he said, it is easier for me to discuss things with moderates of other traditions than extremists of my own tradition. So you could say moderates are broadly in the mode of goodness.
And there are moderates in every tradition. And there are extremists who are in the mode of passion and ultimately ignorance. So people who are in goodness, they are relatively speaking like-minded.
So for such people who, because of bad experiences of religion, have become averse to it, we have to see how they are living. If they are overall living in the mode of goodness, they will be elevated. Krishna says in 14th chapter, 18th verse, Those who live in goodness will get elevated.
Those who live in passion will stay where they are. Those who live in ignorance will get degraded. So if somebody is just atheistic, they just don’t want anything to do with God.
Those people are not so much atheistic as you could say apatheistic. They just don’t care about it. But there are some people who are aggressively atheistic.
They have a mission to reject God and to preach atheism. That is undesirable. That will lead to an auspicious destination.
But somebody just because of bad experiences they have gone off, then if they are sincerely inquisitive to know what is the truth, then sooner or later they will meet religious people who are in the mode of goodness. They are people who are religious and who are also spiritual. And that is how their conceptions will change.
And that is how they may change their orientation in this life itself. If they are not offensive towards God, then their destination will intervene primarily based on the way they are living in this life. And if they somehow can meet somebody who is in the mode of goodness and is a religious practitioner, then they can see that one can be religious, another can be spiritual, both.
And that actually helps us to become better people. That is how they can give up their sceptical orientations. Did you answer the question? Yes.
But that led to another question I was raising. Yeah. So like also you mentioned in your talk that there are different paths.
So if somebody takes up the path with good intentions, he will go up to his satisfaction level, and then he may choose to go for a different path. But some people, they are supposed to be in a secular way, and they keep on following God all their life, until the life comes to an end. And I don’t know what they will do.
But I am giving an example also. This is one aspect. The second aspect is famous people.
So people like him also. What happens sometimes. Because even though he is a popular person, scientist, everything, for me I do not consider him at all.
But even though he was, he directly is something, because there was not much knowledge of him. But he was still worshipping the famous scientist. What happens to him, and for the people who fail in a particular path, then you have to live your own life.
Everyone questions two questions actually. Okay. So let’s take one question first.
So if somebody follows a particular path faithfully, but then that is not a path which is taking them up the mountain, then what happens to them? See, we shouldn’t think of spiritual growth as simply a destination. It is also a direction. That means, yes, there is ultimately a destination to be attained.
But as I said, the spiritual perfection is spiritual love. And love is never a destination. Love is a direction.
You can’t say that I love you, and it’s over now. If I love you, I keep loving you. It’s a reciprocation.
So rather than thinking of the spiritual journey along a particular religion as a one-zero thing, that is a digital logic, that is succeeded or failed, you can see that there is an evolution of consciousness that is to be done. And your person has been following a particular path properly. By following that path, that consciousness to some extent will expand.
So that may not take them all the way up to the mountain, but whatever way they have climbed up, in their next life they start from there. We don’t start from the mountain. So we are souls who are on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution.
And in this journey, our starting point in this life will be determined by where we left off in the previous life. And where we end in this life will be our starting point in the next life. So in that sense, if somebody has been sincerely following some path, whatever expansion or evolution of consciousness that they have done, that will stay with them.
And with that they will carry on in the next life. Now, as far as the destination of some people like Stephen Hawking, who was very much respected as a great scientist, but he was not a believer in God. What is their destination? First of all, once it gets to specific people, it’s very difficult to know, because we are not God.
What their exact consciousness was, and that is something between them and God only. So I would say that it’s not healthy for us to try to speculate about specific people’s destinations. And having said that, we can look at broad patterns and make some general inferences.
When a human being is living in this world, there are many different aspects to their life. So, like even in day-to-day life, somebody may be a great person, may be great in office. They do their job so well, but completely lousy at home.
They can’t get along with anyone at home. And they may be brilliantly successful at office, but pathetic failures at home. Or some people may be great, say, at language.
They get grammar, they get science, they can write, they can speak fluently. But when it comes to maths, they just don’t get it. So, let’s say there are different fields in which some people look very good in some fields and not good in other fields.
So, success in one field does not necessarily compensate for failure in another field. Somebody may be a great, great professional, but if familiarly they are poor, then their family life will be a wreck. And their professional success won’t substitute for that.
So, success in one life does not necessarily mean success in another life. It does not necessarily mean that because they are successful in this field, they have to be successful in that field. If they are poor in that field, then they will be poor in that field, and that will also have its consequences.
Similarly, applying this, there may be people who will be brilliant. Stephen Hawking, the way he battled against his debilitating disability and still used his brilliance to come up with many remarkable advances in physics. That is both a testimony to his the ability that he was gifted and the determination that he brought into life by which he tapped his ability.
So, as far as the realm of physics is concerned, he is spectacularly successful. And he is, as a human being also, we could say, the way he struggled against his disabilities and he succeeded, that’s also very great. Now, as far as spiritual understanding is concerned, as I said, success in one field does not compensate for failure in another field.
So, there is science and there is scientism. Scientism is scientific imperialism. Scientism is the idea that science alone can answer all questions.
Scientism is the idea that science is omnipotent. That any and every question that is there in the world, that can be answered through science. Now, actually, scientism is unscientific.
Why? It’s not just different from science. Scientism is different from science, but scientism is also unscientific. Why? Because, in scientism, there is no scientific experiment to prove that science has the answers to all questions.
You cannot even conceive of an experiment like that. So, Einstein himself recognised the limitation of scientism. He said that gravity can explain the falling of objects, but it can’t explain people’s falling in love with each other.
Isn’t it? There is a whole aspect of human behaviour which can’t necessarily be explained by gravity. If we were simply physical objects governed by physical norms, then, say now, if I have this mobile, if I drop it, I won’t drop it, but if I drop it, the mobile has no free will whether to fall or not. It is going to fall.
But we all have free will. Isn’t it? And because of our free will only, we can hold each other responsible and accountable. If I come to one of you and slap you, you will ask, why did you slap me? Now, when you ask, why did you slap me, what does it mean? That means I had a choice not to slap you.
And you are asking, why did you lose your choice in this particular moment? So, we all function based on the assumption that we have free will. That’s how we can have accountability. That’s how we can have relationships.
Einstein survived the… Einstein was in Germany when the persecution happened. He fled from there and came here to America. So now, he recognised that if Scientism were true, that would mean the Nazis were not responsible for the Holocaust.
Because they are just… they are just biological robots. And they are functioning according to the programming of their brains. They have no free will.
But, we can have no system of relationships, no system of justice, no accountability of free will. Why am I going into all this? I understand that even an eminent scientist like Einstein recognises the difference between science and Scientism. So, science is a very powerful body of knowledge, a powerful tool for acquiring knowledge about the physical world around us.
But there are many things beyond the physical for which science doesn’t have answers. Stephen Hawking was a scientist who towards the end of his life moved from science towards Scientism. He moved from science towards Scientism.
So, in his second book, one of his books he wrote, The Grand Design, there he says that philosophy is dead. And therefore, science has provided answers to all the questions. But then, the rest of his book is actually philosophy.
Because, when he is talking about how everything began, now, there is no scientific experiment. If you read most of his book, there is no scientific experiment to prove most of the things that he said. There are some things, of course, as a scientist he is brilliant.
But the point is, when he talks about the origin of everything, that is not a scientific question. That is a philosophical question. What is science? Science basically observes the world around us and tries to discern patterns.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, he asked, why did this fruit fall? What made this fruit fall? And then he discerned the law of gravity. So, science discerns patterns in the observable world around us and by discerning those patterns, it helps us better understand the world. But for science to discern these patterns, first of all, the world has to exist.
And the patterns have to be existing in the world and science can discern them. But why does the world exist in the first place? That is a question science can’t answer. Why are there patterns in the first place? That is a question science can’t answer.
The Science Magazine on its 125th anniversary published a special issue in which they had 125 questions for which science did not have answers. And the first question was, where did the universe come from? So, the point I am moving towards through all this is that Hawking was brilliant as a physicist. He was inspiring as a human being.
But as far as his take on philosophical, spiritual questions was concerned, he was out of his depth. That’s why we don’t consider him as an authority on spiritual subjects. And based on the way he has lived his life, based on the way he has cultivated his consciousness, accordingly, he will get a destination in the next life.
Okay. Shall we stop here? So, thank you very much. Chitra Prabhupada ki, Gaur Mantra Vrindaki, Hai Gaur Premahande.