Can spirituality exist outside religion?
Spirituality vs Religion
According to ‘Sanatan Dharma’, religion (dharma) means not only believing in one particular God or having specific creed system it literally means responsibility or way of leaving, for example ‘Raj Dharma’ means ‘way of the Warrior-king’; how a king should live, behave, so he can give maximum justification to the powers vested within him and perform all his duties with maximum effectiveness. So dharma means responsibility of every man towards mankind. Most of the religions in the world are documented to help and guide average or uninitiated person to live his life in most ethical and sustainable way, hence some rules are crafted to guide us. But unfortunately as time passes, these soft rules became iron laws and salient feature of any religion.
At initial stage some rules were kept rigid to make life of the human very easy and some rules were kept fluid and abstract so it can be helpful to mankind with ever changing time and society. The stagnant part of these rules became Religious rituals and misunderstood as religion as whole and this fluid part which is abstract in nature became the Spirituality.
Spirituality recognize your role in life and can help you to find higher purpose for your life, it is all about gaining perspective. Religion can do the same. Neither rituals of any religion are negative elements of any religion, nor there is any question regarding their effectiveness in Modern times. Spirituality and Religion are intermingling, they both complement each other and they both complete each other. Being spiritual doesn’t make you religious automatically or vice e versa.
Most of the religion emphases on creator of the universe and center around pleasing ‘the man in the sky’, while spirituality focuses on inner peace and pleasing ‘the divine within us’. One is based on the God, who is all above us and another is based on God living inside all of us.
Spirituality is based on personal beliefs and personal view; therefore it is very much personal experience and somewhat extension of our own personality. While religion is mostly operates on dictated beliefs, which may or may not be kindred to individual beliefs and values.
Spirituality mainly focuses on goodness and peace; it is based on reward system. For example, empathy and mindfulness-living, develops through spirituality gives the feeling of joy and satisfaction. On other hand religion focuses on staying away from the sins. It is based on punishment system, for example different religions have different punishments for lying or stealing or just feeling greedy.
Religion is future oriented or more specifically control our present by our status in the after-life, simply as per religion we live our entire life just to secure our position in the heaven or we will be banished to hell. In spirituality, hell or heaven is only state of mind; we live in heaven or hell as per our mindset, hence spirituality is mainly present oriented.
Then the answer is why to seek for greatness if you can achieve excellence as per your need. In short, both are equally important and one is always remain incomplete without other. Introspect yourself and decide which pathway is more suitable for you. Many people believe that you have to be pious to attain spirituality but it is not like that. Likewise, many believe spirituality is varying esoteric phenomenon it is also not like that. Everyone has soul hence all of us are capable of attain spirituality no matter what creed, caste or religion you have your faith in or whether you are atheists.ess and to develop overall well-being.
There are some religions that emphasis on spiritual aspect then rituals, like Buddhism and Hinduism. Likewise there are some ideology can help you to achieve spirituality beyond the dimension of religion for example Humanism and environmentalism. However, important question is not whether spirituality can exist outside the religion or not? Important question is which is the best way for me ?
We can kick ball in empty field or place and play with ball without thinking about goal or score, even sometime we don’t require ball itself, empty plastic bottle or tin-cane can be good proxy for it. So in this case we can enjoy football without scoring single goal, even without football. Important thing hear is gratification not winning. On polar end we can divide players in to teams, set rules for game and play football to win, in presence of referee. Hear important thing is scoring goal, putting best defense and win, without braking any rules of the game, hence gratification takes backseat and it comes by winning the game not by playing with ball. The same thing happens in spirituality and religion one has little to no rule and only goal is to achieve solace and absolute while other is defined by rules and main goal is achieve by performing numbers of other correlated tasks. Both are great methods, it’s up to us, which is best suited for us, complements our personality and can help us to obtain absolute peace.
| Spirituality | Religion |
| Believes in divine within us (अहं ब्रह्मास्मि– I am God) | Believes in God who is creator of the universe |
| Personal believes | Dictated believes |
| Focuses on goodness | Focuses on staying away from sins |
| Joyous living with openness | Joyous living inside the narrow creed |
| Present and present life oriented i.e. heaven and hells are state of mind. | Future or after life oriented i.e. after death you will go to heaven or hell based upon your deed, sin, and absolution. |
| Based on reward system (Positive reinforcement) | Based on punishment system (Negative reinforcement) |
| Fluid in nature, but abstract | Bound by rules and rituals |