What is the difference between being religious and being spiritual?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and being spiritual? There is a whole group especially in America and other parts of the world they call themselves the SBNR group. SBNR is spiritual but not religious. They say that I’m spiritual but I’m not religious and they have reason for that feeling because they feel religion makes you close-minded, makes you bigoted, it creates division, it creates intolerance so I don’t want to be religious but I want to be spiritual so that feeling is understandable at the same time we have to understand actually what is the meaning of spiritual what is the meaning of religious so generally when people use the word religious they refer to a person who sticks to one path and becomes close-minded about other paths that’s their idea of being religious and their idea of spiritual is you know I’m open I’m open to new experiences I’m open to exploring life’s higher side I’m open to wisdom that’s their idea of spiritual so this openness to spirituality is good at the same time spiritual is also a state of consciousness often the word spiritual is used in a very hazy sense that means people say that anything that makes me feel good that’s spiritual it may be but it may not necessarily be spiritual also it is actually spirituality is not just about feeling good because there’s a body there’s a mind and there is a soul the good feelings may come temporarily because of some titillation of the mind you know I may take a painkiller and I may feel good so is the painkiller spiritual no not really so spiritual is a state of consciousness so essentially we at our core are souls and to realize our spiritual identity and to pursue the higher spiritual dimension of life that is being spiritual so currently we are at the material level of consciousness and there is a spiritual level of consciousness and to rise from the material level to the spiritual level there is a path and that path has to be followed by which one will come to the spiritual level so that part is religion so somebody says I’ll be spiritual but not religious I mean they are saying I want the destination but I don’t want to do the journey it is difficult to do that so another way of understanding this is like in science we have two aspects there is theory and there is experiment so the theory tells gives us propositions okay Newton saw the fruit falling okay why is it maybe there is a came up with a theory of gravity the experiment okay not just fruit does a stone fall does a does any other object fall does it fall in various parts of the world so the experiment helps us to verify the theory so spirituality is like a higher dimensional science and you said in science there is theory and experiment so like that in spirituality there is philosophy and religion so philosophy is like the theory of science and religion is like the experiment of science so by our philosophy we get propositions for example it’s a proposition okay we are not just our bodies actually at our core we are spiritual beings this is a philosophical proposition that the bhagavata gives us now at the level of theory we can’t know whether theory is right or wrong in science we do the experiment the experiment is religion so the bhagavata tells us that okay we are souls and the soul is a part of god and then how do i really know whether this is right or wrong i can use my logic and intelligence to analyze but then the religion gives us the process by which you can experience what is told by spirituality by the philosopher so for example if i’m a part of god then by connecting with god i’ll become i’ll experience some higher happiness so when we chant hare krishna when we practice bhakti do we experience bliss do we experience joy if we do experience that then that is like the experiment which is confirming the theory so religion gives us the process by which we become spiritual and just as uh if somebody at the bottom of a mountain and they want to go to the top of the mountain they have to follow some path from here to the top there are many different paths so some religions are very narrow-minded where they say you know my way is the only way i say if you’re not following my way you’re going to go to hell and there are some religions are even more extreme they say not only are you going to go to hell we will help you get there faster so this is the idea that actually you know you have to get to the top of the mountain but and they say this is the only way and quite often those people who are saying the only way but they are themselves not even climbing up the mountain they’re just going at the bottom of the mountain and beating up others who are not who are going on other paths so neither they are going up nor are they letting others go up either only so this is narrow-mindedness and they so in the bhakti path we acknowledge that there are different paths to go up the mountain you know prabhupada was so inclusive that he said that jesus is also the son of god he said that he is a shaktyavish avatar so prabhupada would say that jesus he had so much love for god that he was ready to lay down his life for the service of god so he said jesus is our guru now when prabhupada only once he came to the middle east he came to iran once and there he was talking with some devotees at that time in the background the namaz prayer started and prabhupada actually stopped talking and closed his eyes and folded his hands and the prayerful disposition just heard out the full prayer and then after that when prabhupada opened his eyes were shining he said wasn’t that beautiful so the devotees generally when we take up a path we think everyone should come to this path so they said then devotee asked for prabhupada but wouldn’t it be better if they chanted hari krishna instead of allah omar so prabhupada look almost hurt prabhupada said why are you making me sectarian they are worshipping god in their way they are worshipping god in our way so this in some religions there may be narrow-mindedness and by seeing such narrow-mindedness people feel i want to be spiritual i don’t want to be religious but the bhakti path acknowledges that there are many different religions by which people can rise to the spiritual level but it is not that just by being religious we become spiritual religion has to be followed so that we become spiritual and if somebody says i’ll be spiritual but i’ll not be religious then they’ll really not be able to become spiritual because we to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness we need a process and whichever process we are following to rise to that level that is our religion so we could say that religion is the process and spirituality is what we achieve by that process is the answer to thank you very much so we’ll stop here and tomorrow we’ll have a longer question answer session also i’ll speak briefly thank you for your participation