True spirituality
Spirituality is actually Life Engineering. In colleges, they teach you different types of engineering. Life engineering is what needs to be taught to each of us. Spirituality teaches you to live like a Paramahamsa or a realised one, in the material world, neck deep in water, yet untouched by it.
It teaches you to live an intense and fulfilling life without violating any person or property. It teaches you to disconnect from your intellect and see with wide-eyed innocence the wonders of Existence. It teaches you how to move synchronously with Existence and experience the power of coincidence, where things happen automatically in response to your inner joy.
It teaches you to be in an ever prayerful and grateful mood. It helps you enjoy every moment from your inner core, instead of being swayed by your emotions. It shows you how to celebrate life every moment.
It kindles your inner intelligence and accelerates your performance in the outer world. It awakens your awareness and takes you to deeper consciousness. It takes you from lust to love, from worrying to wondering, from false to truth, from pain to bliss, from jealousy to celebration.
People think that they need to allot a separate time for spirituality; not at all. You will know from what I have just said that this is not required. The people who claim that you need to allot separate time are not spiritual people; they are religious people.
Religion needs time because of rites and rituals. Spirituality has nothing to do with quantity or time. It has to do with the quality of your life. If you have the sincerity to seek the truth, it is enough. You can then devote all your time to doing everything as an earnest meditation and you will attain your goal. You will automatically shine at work, at home, and in interpersonal relationships, without energy blockages.
You will adapt yourself to any kind of surroundings easily. You will feel at home at any place and with any type of people. Home will not be just the place you live in but the whole of Existence. You will break free from mental and physical conditioning and rise to merge and become one with Existence.
The problem is, people are contented with just following rituals. There is a certain security they enjoy in it. The science behind the rituals is no more known to people but the rituals are ego-fulfilling to them. Rituals are complex and we always find it a challenge to do complex things.
People come to me with their problems and ask me for a solution. I tell them that I will take care and suggest to them to sit for a while under the banyan tree while they are in the ashram. The banyan tree in the ashram is an energy field. But they are not happy with that answer. They ask me what rituals they should do to make things better.
If I tell them that they should go 108 times around the banyan tree, they will be very happy doing it! You see, when you go 108 times around the banyan tree, it becomes ego-fulfilling for you. You then feel that you have worked hard and that you deserve to get the benefit out of it.
Even in religion and rituals, I have seen people compete with each other! If your neighbour has done a particular offering in a particular temple, next you go and do the same offering in that temple. What is the focus on? The deity or the neighbour?
People feel proud in saying that they have visited so many holy shrines all over the world. Immediately, the people who listen to these stories make an effort in surpassing these achievements.
After visiting all these holy shrines, your chakras are still locked! Have you ever thought about that? All these things are done only to progress in the inner world, to be free from comparison, jealousy and similar things, but here also you miss the point. You do things for the sake of the outer world.
I have seen people reading recitations in front of the deity*.* They will read a few lines and then call out to the maid to find out if she has finished the job she was asked to do. Or, they will read a few lines and see how many more pages there are to finish! This is how they relate with God and they feel satisfied at having read the recitation.
And on top of it, they will repeat such recitations for 21 days because they have taken a vow to do so. Then they will proudly go and tell their neighbor or relative that they fulfilled such an arduous vow!
Everything that we do is mostly just to tell people that we did it and sow a seed of comparison in them. If you decide to follow rituals, do it with utmost sincerity, with a feeling of deep connection with Existence. When you do it this way, you won't even talk about it outside.