Ignorance cannot lead to liberation!

Again and again we confuse spirituality with religion. As I have said before, at the very basic level, spirituality is flowering of internal awareness. Religion is a very poor external tool that pretends to achieve this.

Religions, as they evolve, can converge towards spirituality. But this happens at the individual level, through individual effort, and not through any institutional support. The institutional support may help, if you see many others moving in the same path with the right qualities, but it can never substitute individual effort that we call sadhana or tapas, practice and penance.

At the lowest level, religions can be based on ignorance. Unfortunately, many religions are. They force you into believing what they say without questioning. They say this is what God said. They do not give you the freedom to approach God.

Ignorance based religions subjugate you. Their only purpose is to control you. The problem with unquestioning faith is that there is no awareness behind it and it can be destroyed in a second. Secondly, there is no God who is interested in laying down dos and don’ts for you. That is the job of control-freak humans, not an all seeing compassionate God. Neither He has time to lay down regulations for you nor the inclination to watch over your movements to check whether you are doing right or wrong.

Unquestioning beliefs, based on regulations, can only lead to bondage. Such bondage leads to intolerance of others and beliefs of others. It leads to the fanatic belief that I am alone right. That is what leads to terrorism and all other negative acts against humanity.

Shedding of this ignorance and moving to a greater level of awareness about ourselves and all that exists around us helps to move to higher planes of existence. This can only be done at the plane of aloneness, the plane when you are all in one. When the ‘I’ merges into a compassionate embrace with the ‘all’ in this universe, you move up and you are liberated. Yes, it can and will happen.

Institutions cannot do this for you. They create boundaries, whereas liberation is breaking down boundaries. Institutions fragment so that they can control, but spirituality is about integration. Question your beliefs? If those beliefs do not work in this time and space, you have nothing to lose by losing them.

That will be your first step in moving towards Nithyananda, eternal bliss.