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Everyone in the world is on the spiritual path. By no means everyone, however, is aware of being on a path at all. Most people see their efforts to avoid sorrow and find happiness as episodic, not as the unchanging motivation behind everything they do.

Spirituality & Religiosity: What's the Difference?

Spirituality is often, but not often accurately, identified with religiosity. Although one naturally expects the two to be synonymous, they differ in several important ways.

Spirituality is conscious aspiration, and is therefore individual. Formal religion, on the other hand, is a branch of civilized society — like business, politics, and the arts. It may be described as a social activity, designed to uplift humanity generally, and institutionalized to benefit as many people as possible.

Spirituality, by contrast, is relatively exclusive, for it demands not only personal involvement but serious personal effort. Its ideals challenge the integrity of all who aspire the truth.

Religions Asks for Outward Conformity

Religion asks, instead, conformity to what might be called a "law of averages": lowering the heights to which people are expected to aspire, and — by acceptance of the desire for temporal fulfillment as right and natural — filling in the depths from which they are expected to climb. Formal religion, essentially, is outward, public, and (to gain the widest acceptance) a dilution of the highest truth.

Spirituality Requires Personal Effort

Spirituality's focus, on the other hand, is inward, personal, and (for the greatest personal gain) uncompromising, Religion is intended to be embraced by all; its teachings, therefore, are relatively easy to follow. By contrast, the demands of the spiritual path may seem austere, but their austerity is only a seeming. For life's true goal, which is to avoid sorrow and attain bliss, while wonderfully inspiring is also exacting. People's eyes reveal the contrast persuasively. Inner joy shines brightly in the eyes of those who live by high spiritual ideals. In the eyes of those who accept the compromises religion offers them, there are still lingering shadows of pain.

Spirituality requires one to assume personal responsibility for his own development. Formal religion makes fewer such requirements. It is, in a sense, a social contract between man and God, drawn up by religious institutions. The main responsibility of the individual in religious matters is that he accept the rituals and dogmas his institution has prescribed for him. Assumed on his behalf is the burden of determining the difference between truth and error, right and wrong, more or less as one leaves to lawyers the burden of clarifying legal matters. Religious tradition, then, like legal precedents, serves the purpose of perpetuating the practices that have been established.

Religion, Science & the Spiritual Path

There is a natural opposition between formal religion and the sciences. The pioneering efforts of science, which have uncovered countless numbers of Nature's secrets, provide a very different view of reality from religion's. Science rejects altogether the idea of a contract between man and his maker. It seeks to discover the facts of things, whereas religion simply declares truth, claiming that it was revealed to mankind long ago and never changes. Science's ongoing search for the facts poses a clear threat, therefore, to the concept of revelation. Religion, under pressure of countless and incontrovertible new facts, has had to accept its need to co-exist with science, and has therefore admitted that there do seem to be higher and lower levels of reality. Religion cannot change its insistence, however, that the higher level will, in the end, prove the only true one.

The path of spirituality stands in contrast to both religion and science. In some ways, however, it is more like science, for it, also, seeks truth rather than simply declaring it. The spiritual teachings do announce the discoveries that have been made by individual seekers (comparable to scientific researchers), but, like material science, they urge people to verify every claim, and not to remain satisfied with mere belief or mere assertion no matter how convincingly it is stated. Like science, moreover, which contemplates no fixed conclusion to its seeking, spiritual development is never ending. The only "end" it contemplates is endlessness!

Difference Between Science & Spirituality

There is, however, one essential difference between the discoveries of the spiritual search and those of science: Whereas the spiritual search, like that of science, is continuous, its discoveries once made are universal and unvarying. The spiritual path, then, achieves something science will never achieve, for the phenomena explored by science are themselves subject to numerous shifts in perspective. Reason, too — the tool science uses — keeps the mind penned within the narrow enclosure of sensory perception. It cannot perceive with the far greater clarity of true intuition.

Science, moreover, though it reasons from facts and doesn't draw conclusions from untested theories as theology does, is only slightly less shackled than theology is. It clings to its laws, sometimes even fiercely, as theology clings to its dogmas. The spiritual teachings, by contrast, urge people not to be satisfied with definitions, but to soar upward in direct perception until eternal truth is experienced, as it were, "face to face."

The Dogmas of Science and Religion

The world's religions, from a study of their dogmas, seem in wide disagreement with one another. Science itself, though generally assenting to facts that have been proved, is by no means open to "inconvenient" ones even after they've been proved to the satisfaction of a young generation of scientists. Scientists too can be dogmatic, in other words, when their view of reality has been boxed by lifelong habit. They are human beings, after all. Even so, science — unlike religion — has been known to change some of its "fixed" dogmas officially from time to time, when the proofs have become incontrovertible.

The spiritual teachings, by contrast, have never had to be changed, for although they are not stated dogmatically, people of deep spiritual insight in every country, every age, and every religion have declared the same experiences of truth. Regardless of cultural and religious heritage — some of those seers were actually illiterate, and therefore unfamiliar with their own heritage — they have announced the same basic discoveries, based on direct experience. In their communion with a higher consciousness they heard a great sound (the Amen, some called it; or AUM, or Ahunavar, or the biblical "sound of many waters"); they beheld an infinite light; they experienced an all-consuming love; above all, they discovered a bliss ineffable. Enlightened souls like these have always urged others to abandon all desires as self-limiting, and to seek transformation in infinite self-awareness.

Self-Discipline: Path of Spirituality

The word "religion" derives from the Latin, religare, "to tie back, to bind." The "binding" intended here includes various types of self-discipline, but is not meant to impose on anyone. A tepid and reluctant populace, unable to accept religion unless it is administered as a kindly admonishment — or else, occasionally, thundered in wrathful anathema! — is not likely in either case to welcome the concept of self-discipline. Institutionalized religion, therefore, does not particularly encourage self-discipline. It enlarges on that concept, rather, by seeking to control the way others worship and believe. Indeed, self discipline implies to institutional leaders a certain autonomy, and therefore independence, which might lead in time to heresy.

The truth propounded in the spiritual teachings is not afraid of questioning. Like the sunlight, it simply shines. People who cling forcefully to religious dogmas do so because they lack full confidence in them! They fear to be questioned lest their beliefs — like a snowman under a hot sun — melt shapelessly. Dogmatic religion treads cautiously, as if walking through a dark tunnel, fearful that the candle it holds might be extinguished unexpectedly. Every new idea seems to threaten it, like a fresh breeze which might at any moment make the candlelight flicker and die.

Religion: Committed to Dogma?

Definitions cannot equal what they define. In religion's firm commitment to its dogmas, so carefully worked out by learned theologians, those definitions seem preferable to reality itself.

At lower levels of religious activity, service is rendered to the public directly. People in the role of serving others may sometimes be aware that a conflict exists between the obedience demanded of them by their superiors and an awareness of the specialized needs of individuals. Perhaps one person needs an answer to some nagging question or doubt. Why, the administrator asks, cannot everyone simply accept the official explanations, so painstakingly worked out for everyone? His preference is for simply announcing the truth, instead of explaining it with careful attention to the wording every time the same subject is raised.

This is the particular advantage of dogma: It settles the need for endless further explanations. Administrators, and others in high position, prefer to concentrate on broad policies. Generally, they are impatient with exceptions — particularly with questions that are too reasonable! Policy is their "home ground." It has the same advantage as legal precedents, for it obviates the need to think things through every time anew.

The Need for Religion: Pros and Cons

Everything under the sway of duality has its strengths and weaknesses. The need to control people's beliefs is a weakness of religious institutions. It can be neither legislated against nor avoided, since it is simply rooted in human nature. Despite this weakness, however, institutional religion is necessary, and is one of the chief ornaments of civilization. Formal religion helps to raise humanity above the level of the animals, and inspires people to include something nobler in their lives than mere instinctual satisfaction.

Institutional religion also, however, in its urge to control, nourishes the craving for power and for the wealth that bestows power. Religion ought to help people out of delusion, but often it manages, by egoic involvement, to steer them back into it again. The theological D.D. degree (Doctor of Divinity) often suggests another meaning to my mind: "Doctor of Delusion."

Religion Requires Obedience

Religious organizations almost always insist on the importance of obedience. Obedience to whom? Well, since everyone in religion is of course supposed to obey God's will, the only question left is, How to know God's will? The authorities answer this question by claiming that it is they themselves who express God's will. Many of them, indeed, are more interested in imposing their own will, or perhaps in advancing a purely organizational convenience, than in serving people's personal needs. Rarely do religious authorities express what they call "God's will" in such a way as to demonstrate concern for those needs.

Even when human guidance is offered humbly and sincerely, it is fallible. It may be divinely inspired. Even so, its inspiration must pass through the filter of human understanding. Only one who has attained perfection in God-consciousness can be relied on fully. Such cases, however, are like lonely islands in a vast sea. How should one respond to directives, otherwise, if one considers them unreasonable, or even unrighteous? The wisest of unenlightened human beings can make mistakes.

Courtesy and Respect for All

Two essentials in human interaction are courtesy and respect. These qualities, like lubricating oil, keep the machinery of human relations running smoothly. Self-righteous or angry confrontation always leaves a residue of negative vibrations, even when the motives are sound, and even when the displeasure is justified. In any disagreement, particularly with one's religious superiors, one should take care to express oneself sincerely and kindly. Never brandish your feelings emotionally, but try to be charitable. Charity is God's way. If you find yourself in disagreement with someone, then, be as much concerned for that person's feelings as for your own. Try to see all people equally as your brothers and sisters in God. Reflect that your superiors, too, are probably only doing their best, according to their own understanding. With a little kindness on your part, you may find it possible to reach some sort of accommodation.

This article was excerpted with permission from the book:

God Is For Everyone
by J. Donald Walters.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Crystal Clarity Publishers. ©2003. www.crystalclarity.com.

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About the Author

 J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) has written over eighty books and edited two books of Paramhansa Yogananda's which have become well known: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained and a compilation of sayings of the Master, The Essence of Self-Realization. In 1968 Walters founded Ananda, an intentional community near Nevada City, California, based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Visit the Ananda website at http://www.ananda.org

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