Your triple responsibilities, the real meaning of religion and spirituality.

My Guru spoke, having born as a human being you have triple responsibilities to execute. One, he said, you need to take care of the physical health of yourself so that if your body is healthier it can give you happiness and it can be very helpful, a beautiful chariot to live and move in this world; this is possible.

Whereas we all understand the limitations of the physical body, after some time when the aging process happens it will become old, it can lose its health and become ill and one day it will die also, whatever it is. But, however, as long as it is available, our efforts to keep it as healthier as possible; so we need to undertake such exercises and about food also, these two things are important to keep the body healthier. So if we are doing this, the first responsibility is executed properly.

Now, after the physical body we have a mind. So we need to take care of the health of the mind also properly. Health of the mind means it should be able to give you happiness at all times and it should be under your control. Means you should be able to stop the mind when you want to stop that one and when you want to think you should be able to think. When you are thinking also you should have overcome selfishness and narrow mindedness. Selfish means considering this physical body as yourself and then always act upon only for the selfishness of this physical body, and your inability to be considerate to others in this world, in your surroundings or anybody else other than yourself. So this we call it as selfishness.

So you should overcome this selfishness and narrow mindedness. If you are thinking that you are this physical body, your thinking will also be like a small-minded, narrow-minded. You won’t be able to show grace, magnanimity, real friendship, all these things to others. You will always be acting upon your selfishness, whatever that you imagine you need for this physical body. You will be able to overcome this if you undertake proper exercises. Meditation is one such exercise, this is done.

And now, the third responsibility is when you are able to uphold moral values. Moral values, it’s very difficult to define 100% exactly. However, a basic definition is this: consideration to each other. Your ability to consider about others. Like I told, if we are hungry, all of you will also be hungry. If I want happiness, all of you also want happiness. So this consideration to each other. If the entire humanity is able to execute this, how beautiful the world can be, you can imagine.

Now, I will come to the point of religion and spirituality. So today very often it is natural for the younger generation particularly and many others also to be averse about the word of religion. Instead of talking about this thing, suddenly if I tell, ‘I want to teach you all religion, come’, you may not like the idea. ‘We don’t want any religious teachings, no, no, no, no, we do not.’ However, if I explain to you what religion means. I also used to think as a student, we went to school, college, everywhere. We had a lot of thinking. ‘Why were these religious practices given to us by our forefathers or our ancient people or whoever were the founders of these things? What was the reason, what is the basic idea that they wanted us to perform religious duties?’

So in my due course of onward journey toward spirituality, what I understood is, religion means, I tried to find out in the dictionaries also, this religion word is taken out from the Latin word meaning obligation. Means, obligation; you are obliged to do these things, so you have to undertake these exercises. You have a duty, that’s why you have to take. The three, triple responsibilities I explained is the basic idea of giving religious practices to human beings. So a religion is actually a phenomena where various exercises are prescribed so that you can keep your physical health, mental health and moral values upholded at all times. Then only you are a religious person in my opinion. Other things are all rubbish that we try to misuse, misinterpret, all these things have happened. That is where people have lost faith in religious things at all. The younger generation, modern educated people don’t want religion at all. Instead, I tell youngsters, this is what religion means. You are upholding your physical health then mental health. Try to be a perfect human being.

Like my Guru always told, ‘Try to become a perfect human being first, becoming gods and angels comes later, that is afterwards. Means, when you are thinking in the mind, you should have overcome the selfishness of the physical body. You should be able to consider of a larger cause in action, in thinking, at all times. Not to show it to four people and then when we go behind, we behave something else. That should not be. So thus when you are able to behave like this then your mind is healthier. If you are not behaving like this properly, consideration to each other in this world. If you are totally selfish and you are thinking, you are talking, your behaviour, then you are mentally ill in my opinion. So then, when your mind is ill you are unable to uphold moral values, the third responsibility. Consideration to each other again.

So if you are upholding all these three, imagine, you are the right religious person. The rest is all a rubbish thing. Well, in recent times, more use of ‘spirituality’ has come into effect. When people saw the ‘religion’ word has been misinterpreted, misused, so people are becoming averse. So they have started using ‘spirituality’. Means study of yourself as that infinite spirit. Infinite means, basic clue I will give you – your own mind. Your own mind is so infinite. You cannot show your mind to anybody. In its form, in its shape, in its colour. Nobody has seen the mind in naked eyes but everybody knows they have a mind, based on the thoughts and visions. So from the worldly point of view, mind means it is a bundle of thoughts but if you go further deeply, means through the practice of meditation when you are able to clear all the thoughts and visions, then the mind regains its pure form of consciousness and energy. Try to watch that one, you will know how infinite.

The same thing I told, amongst the millions of thoughts, you have one thing which is not a thought – consciousness of your existence. When you are able to zero in on to that, watching that after getting rid of all thoughts and visions in meditation, you will be able to experience this yourself as the pure consciousness then you will understand how infinite it is in form. So this infinity is also known as spirit form. Some people call it as soul, atman and some people call it as immortality, eternity, all these things, so many terminologies have been used but it is infinite to be precisely more understanding of what it is. That is the infinite form.

So this is what triple responsibilities are, how it is connected to religion, how these exercises like meditation and all these things are actually part of these exercises prescribed so that you can uphold your moral values, keep your mind healthier, know yourself better and try to keep your physical body as healthier as possible. Now you think whether you would love to be a religious person or not, from this point of view.