Culture

We should forget all these funny notions of class and caste, and community. Culture is stupid, ultimately, because it makes us slaves. Anything which imprisons us is a jail. Don't think jails are made only of concrete and steel. Culture is a big prison. You see, music is a prison for those who are entranced by music and say, "Oh! Nothing else exists." So whenever we find something is closing in upon us, run away from it.

Our attitude must be like that; this culture is imprisoning me; God help me throw away the culture. This religion is imprisoning me; God help me throw away the religion. This Earth is holding me down with its gravity; God help me fly away. Otherwise, we are slaves, more and more slaves, and we breed more slaves. To our children, we give the same cultural, shall I say, indoctrination. We spoil their future; we put them in the same prison in which we are. How can they even have liberation?

So, all our education, our culture, is only a superficial veneer on the skin, like the powder and the rouge on a woman's face. Beautiful? Yes. But wash it off, and what remains? Skin. So remove culture, remove the linguistic influences, what remains? It is a twitching, fearful, humble human being, who is afraid to show his or her fears and therefore he puts on a brave show of bravado. Therefore simplicity is a sign of total self-contentedness.

It is one of the fundamental concepts of the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga that, "spirituality begins where religion ends". In the Hindu society too there seems to be a sort of intermingling between religion and spirituality, and few people are able to distinguish between the two, their place in life, their relative importance or capacity to liberate us from not merely our material circumstances but also from life itself. So it is, perhaps, necessary to distinguish between religion and spirituality. My Master has said, "Where religion ends, spirituality begins; where spirituality ends, Reality begins; where Reality ends, Bliss begins." It seems to go on and on.

So the message of spirituality is: Look within. This is the message of the Gita, this is the message of the Upanishads: I am in the heart of every creative being. Look for me there. I am you. You foolishly think you are you, but it is I who am you.

"If what the Guru says goes against the tradition,
throw the books out of the window and obey the Master."