Page 2 - An Introduction to Spirituality

AN INTRODUCTION TO SPIRITUALITY

The objective of our life is to form a contact with God
and the process through which we unite is called the spiri-
tual process.

Spirituality should not be misunderstood. Many of us
do not know that there is a difference between Religion
and Spirituality and it is essential to realise the difference.
All of us have grown up with one religion or the other.
Religion has no doubt established God in our lives. We
have become aware of God through our parents and have
accompanied them to temples, mosques and churches as
the case may be. Religion was never started by the original
saint; it was turned into religion by the disciples later on
and then as time passed the message, which was originally
spiritual, got lost and we got involved in the surface part
of religion which is as it stands today — full of rites and
rituals without much substance. However, religion has
played a role but the time has come to go beyond religion
and reach the Spirit. Religion, as Sri Aurobindo says, is like
a scaffolding which is used to construct a building and dis-
carded once the building is completed. The time of religion
is gone and we have to go beyond it.

What is spirituality? Spirituality is related to the Spirit,
what we call the soul. Each one has a soul which is the
spark of God in all of us. In other words, the individual
soul is a part of the Universal Soul. Who is God? God is
not a person who sits on a throne somewhere in the skies.
He is Absolute and total Perfection, a Perfect Force which

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