Religion

I liked this line that dad quoted me from some where...Hinduism, Islam, Christanity etc are religious followings; religion however is a very personal thing.

The religious followings are just a helping mechanism, all the chants, the rituals, the scriptures...

While our religion is our approach to spirituality, and each individual chooses his own path there.

Another aspect of religion is the concept of guru / guide. And here another famous saying needs ponderance...the guide chooses the follower. Which basically means that the lucky ones will get to meet the right guides, for since when i am ignorant it is quite impossible for me to know who is knowledgeable...And that is why quite a few people fall for godmen across all religious followings.

As the Gita points out the way to spiritual awakening can take various paths. The toughest one being through meditative process...or gyaan maarg...Then there is the one where you dedicate all your activities in the name of god and be the hand through which god acts or the karam maarg...and then there is the bhakti maarg...where in you devote your thoughts to God as a superior being and praise him through chants and try and follow on the ideals set by him...this is the route which is quite deeply entrenched in idolization of god as a being.

All of them are quite interesting and would probably lead to the same result with each being suited for people of different temprament

My trysts with spirituality have been quite interesting albeit inconclusive...probably by the end of time here on earth i'll be able to write a book similar to my experiments with truth...for essentially that is what it is ....a series of experiments...