Thursday, January 27, 2011

Spiritual but not Religeous ??

I have seen many people using this expression – ‘I am spiritual, but I am not religious’. I used to say that about me too. But I don’t think I’d fully understood what it means and I still don’t. It is just one of those intelligent sounding sexy expressions. I’d love to hear if someone can tell me the real difference between the two.

To me it is like saying -
I am not superstitious like some rural construction worker, I do not perform all the rituals blindly the way prescribed by the books, but I thoroughly believe in religion and wholeheartedly worship (or fear?) god.
I do not paint my body with colorful powders and ashes, but I prefer to a carry a signature of my belief on my forehead in rather aesthetic way.
I do not listen to mythological dumb folklore stories, but I am generally overwhelmed by the talk of some suave sadhubaba, living in five star aashrama having commode toilets and A/C meditation halls, preaching banal discourses on life, sufferings, happiness, austerity and pseudo-science of metaphysics.

I do not participate in religious processions where people are coarsely singing religious hymns, beating the drums to add to the cacophony and wildly dancing on that tune half drunk, half naked. But I proudly carry the CDs of stotras, bhajans, prayers, mantras in my car and occasionally listen to them as a mark of my spirituality.

So if that is spirituality, then is it just not an uptight, upscale, presumptuous version of gross religiosity?

You either fully agree with it or you dont, whats with this boundary condition? If you can think of a reason to reject some things in religeon then clearly if you think hard enough you would have reason to reject most of it.

So In or Out ??

1 comment:

  1. No, it is not a binary answer, not like black or white. I came across this article for some keywords on secularism. I would call myself an eclectic spiritualist, not sticking to one religion.

    For people who say that they are spiritual and not religious, I would think that it is about their degree of religiousness. It does not need fear to have spiritual thoughts, people also seek spiritualism for something more, and for its aesthetic appeal.

    ReplyDelete