Consciously or even subconsciously, every society and culture has its own idea of the Supreme Being and they consider this Supreme Being to be all powerful, all knowing, all encompassing, omnipotent and omnipresent. And they fear and revere this being because they consider him to be someone who delivers justice by rewarding the good-doer and punishing the wrong doer. Therefore, in every society and culture, pleasing the deity has been a most important phenomenon. And religion has thereby made man to do some of the craziest and most illogical things down the ages. Crazy things like killing one’s own child, public beheading, throwing oneself in the funeral pyre, sacrificing animals and even humans and many others which may have no logical explanation were done to please and appease a so-called god. All these may be considered as religious but not necessarily spiritual because what some consider religious may be mere foolishness and stupidity to others.
Yes, there is a big difference between being religious and being spiritual. You may do something because you believe that your god or religion demands it. But such kind of activities may not have any appeal or logic for others who do not believe in your god or religion. But when it comes to spirituality, I think spirituality has a much wider appeal and is much more accommodative and may have many more takers than religion. Religion or religious activities are more ceremonial and ritualistic in nature which is done in a routine or certain manner at certain points of time. And this makes religion and religious activities a little artificial and flamboyant. Moreover to follow a certain religion or carry out certain religious activities may require some effort on the part of the person and in due course of time, the person may feel tired and uninspired because there is a certain element of compulsion and blind obedience attached to religious practices.
But on the other hand, spirituality is much more spontaneous and there is no artificiality, compulsion, pressure or blind obedience attached to it. A spiritual person may not necessarily have to carry out or perform a certain set of rules or activities every day or at certain points of time. Rather a spiritual person is always at peace with himself and whatever he does is not done out of compulsion or pressure but he does them because it comes naturally to him and he is not doing it to impress anybody or to be seen by others or because his belief demands it. Far from it, whatever a spiritual person does is usually done in privacy when he is all alone by himself.
It is said that prayer is you talking to god or the universe whereas meditation is god or the universe talking to you. While a religious person may be more interested in prayer – that is talking to god or the universe, a spiritual person is actually more interested in meditation because he wants to hear what god or the universe wants to say to him. If we are to go by this yardstick, Nagaland has much more religious people than spiritual people because we Nagas are more inclined towards talking rather than listening and this may be at the root cause of many of our issues. Religion is much more at work than spirituality in many societies including our society.
The Holy Scriptures clearly says, ‘Be still and know that I am God’. This would mean that in a way we cannot know god unless we are still sometimes. But today our worship and pursuit of god is more about talking, praying, asking and begging rather than about listening, obeying and doing.
For a person who is really after God’s heart and wants to experience His love and presence, the arena is not just the place where we offer our prayers or where we go to worship him. The arena where we can experience God fully is the whole universe itself. And everywhere we are surrounded by the universe and that means we can experience God everywhere. Even if we do not encounter a great saint who can quote the entire Bible or any holy book to us, one can still find and experience the truth and righteousness of god through any of his five senses i.e., seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching or even through his experiences. As is rightly said, for any person who is sensitive and has a desire and longing for the divine, everything around him is a finger pointing towards god.
Yes, it would not be wrong to say that our worship has become too ritualistic and ceremonial. There are so many dos and don’ts that it tires the man who is trying to please god through these rituals and ceremonies. But, on the other hand, a spiritual person may not need any specific temple or may not need to perform any religious activity in order to feel spiritual because he is in a worship mode everywhere and all the time. For a spiritual person, even doing simple domestic chores may be a very spiritual experience because he acknowledges God for giving him the strength and power to do even these things.
I guess this is the reason why Gandhi once said to the western missionaries, ‘I like your Christ but I don’t like you Christians’. The missionaries were probably more interested in converting people to Christianity but were themselves not reflecting the true nature of the one they professed to be following. I guess the great man would have said the same thing to us Nagas also if he happens to see us today. We have become very religiously busy and occupied that we are missing out on the real power of meditating and self-introspection. We move around from one church service to another, from one fellowship to another, from one prayer service to another and do not have any desire to sit down, relax and have some quiet time with ourselves.
Religion may turn out to be a great dividing force amongst people. People belonging to different religions may have disregard and alienation towards each other. We carry out or perform our religious activities because there are certain meanings and significance attached to it. But when an outsider who is not familiar with these meanings view our activities, they may laugh at us and label us absurd. In the same way, we may find the religious activities of other faiths funny and abhorrent because we do not know the meanings behind these activities. So we have no right to laugh at others when we do not know the reason why they perform those activities. In this way religion has a way of its own to create division, hatred, misunderstanding and enmity between people belonging to different faiths. This is why in a multi-religious country like India, religious intolerance is still always a very big and real threat.
But spirituality has a universal appeal and spirituality does not create division but rather it makes an indelible impression wherever it goes. Religion may have many words to say and many works for its followers to do but spirituality is quiet, submissive, unassuming and often aloof and alone by itself. Religion may have something to show and prove to others but spirituality is content in itself and has nothing to show or prove.
So, in the present Naga context, we need more spirituality rather than religion. We have been fortunate enough to be associated with the gospel for over a century now. In every Naga village and town, the most prominent structure visible is the church. We go to church every Sunday, we go to prayer services to pray and fast, we pay our tithes, we read our bibles everyday and do many other things in the precious name of our Lord. But we may be missing out on something that really matters if we are not leaving an indelible mark or impression in the hearts and minds of the people around us and the places we go. If we are not leaving a footmark behind which people can cherish and value, then there must be something still amiss because our arena should not just be the church but the whole world.
Being just a devout religious Christian may ultimately tire us and make us disoriented, uninspired and unappealing to others. And we may end up as nothing but a people who simply inherited a foreign religion which came to our lands from across the seas in the 19th century.
But if we can become more spiritual and meditative in our walk with the Lord, our story will be much more appealing and resounding to others because we will be labeled not as a people who just inherited a foreign religion but as a people who received true enlightenment and divine realization from across the seas.
