We must stop confusing religion and spirituality.

Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia

A friend of mine asked me to reflect on a quote from Haile Selassie. The emperor of Ethiopia gave a speech where he questioned fanaticism and called for harmony. I often hear quotes like this. I like the quote, but it raises some questions. Since my way of examining an idea is to write about it I offer the following to my friend as a response.

In a speech on religion, Haile Selassie was trying promote harmony between sectarian religions, observing:

“The temple of the most high begins with the body which houses our life, the essence of our existence. Africans are in bondage today because they approach spirituality through religion provided by foreign invaders and conquerors. We must stop confusing religion and spirituality. Religion is a set of rules, regulations and rituals created by humans, which was suppose to help people grow spiritually. Due to human imperfection religion has become corrupt, political, divisive and a tool for power struggle. Spirituality is not theology or ideology. It is simply a way of life, pure and original as was given by the Most High of Creation. Spirituality is a network linking us to the Most High, the universe, and each other…”

Haile Selassie was the former emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 famous for trying to modernize his country before and after the Second World War. In an ironic twist on his above comments, Haile Sellassie is worshipped as a savior and God incarnate by the followers of the Rastafarian faith. During his reign he struggled with many conflicts, not the least of which was sectarian violence and religious intolerance, not only between Muslims and Christians, but even between Catholics and Protestants of different faiths. In his time there was an effort to merge Muslim Eritrea with Ethiopia, a nominally Christian nation.

Leaving aside the question of how this speech came to be made, the religious issues that faced Ethiopia at the time, or the questionable idea that of whether “The temple of the most high begins with the body which houses our life, the essence of our existence,” let’s take a look at what seems to be the core argument here.

Haile Selassie asserts that “We must stop confusing religion and spirituality. Religion is a set of rules, regulations and rituals created by humans, which was suppose to help people grow spiritually.” This is the kind of popular “quotable quote” that ends up on Facebook pages. It’s a facile claim, one that is easy to make in the kind of conversation that comes up on a first date, as in “I don’t believe in religion, after all isn’t it just a bunch of rituals invented to control people?”

But let’s take a moment to analyze the language and see if it means anything at all. The key to meaning here is a good definition of “spirituality,” an understanding of what “religion” is, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Oxford tells us that “spirituality” means The quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

“Religion” gets a different definition: “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” These are, of course, superficial definitions.

It is interesting that both of these phenomenon, “religion” and “spirituality” are covered by the Vedic Sanskrit word dharma. Vedantic spirituality may include a number of different paths and spiritual practices in our individual journey towards liberation and self-awareness, towards the discovery of inner truth and higher consciousness.

But while dharma may be used in this universal sense, it also includes an important bifurcation. There is a dichotomy between social dharma and “spiritual” dharma. Social dharma is the practice of piety and duty within the role assigned by society. In this sense Haile Selasie’s critique is true. The majority of rules and rituals governing how caste society plays out in India have been “a set of rules, regulations and rituals created by humans,” even while Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita insists that varnashrama-dharma is God-given:

चातुवर्ण्यं मया सृष्टं गुण कर्मविभागशः | तस्य कर्तारमपि मां विद्ध्यकर्तारमव्ययम् || १३ ||

cāturvarṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇakarmavibhāgaśaḥ sya kartāramapi māṁ viddhyakartāramavyayam

Speaking as Divinity, Krishna asserts “According to the three modes of material nature and the work ascribed to them, the four divisions of human society were created by Me.” The caste system and the Laws of Manu governing propery duty and human behavior are supposed to have a divine origin. As Selassie puts, the idea was supposed to help people grow spiritually. The idea that, as Selassie puts it, “religion has become corrupt, political, divisive and a tool for power struggle,” is irrefutable. There is no need to give examples. We all know the story.

But there are some important ideas at the core of his argument that need examining. If, for example, “Religion is corrupt,” then it must be rejected as the root of all the world’s present evils from war, to sex abuse to the ignorant anti-science attitude that rejects vaccines and virus treatments. But this is unfair. It is not “religion” that is corrupt, but human perversion that allows it to be so.

If spirituality is a beautiful muse, religion is her ugly sister. It is important to remember that if God exists, if the soul exists, then both spirituality and religion have their place.

Spirituality is divinely inspired; religion is an attempt to keep spirituality alive, to create a favorable environment where spirituality can go on. But sometimes the two work at cross purposes.

Before Saint Francis was recognized as a saint, he was a thorn in the side of the Church as were Francisco Loyola and Joan of Arc who was burned as a heretic.

There is a constant conflict between “society consciousness” as seen in religion and “God consciousness” as seen in religion. Mystics and saints are concerned with God consciousness, but such saints and divines operate outside society and their behavior is often abhorrent. The poverty and simplicity of Francis ran against the idea that bishops should be rich. The ability of Saint Joan to hear angels was considered heresy and she was thought to be in league with the devil. Francisco Loyola wanted to put preaching on a war footing--the church fathers found him extreme. And so on. Mystics are heretics before they become saints because “religion” rejects “spirituality.”

On the other hand, rules, traditions, and scriptures provide us with a rich background against which to contrast the teachings of new mystics and saints. In India the tradition of guru, sadhu, and shastra is respected as a way to understand human spirituality.

Whenever spiritual adepts form a sangha, an association, a community tends to spring up. There may be a leader, a mentor, a teacher or guru who leads them. As a small community grows, they find that they can no longer live in a cave or in the forest. A group of hermits may live simply for a time as in the Vedic age, but sooner or later women and men are integrated in the group and soon there are children and a new generation.

At some point in time, ethical problems arise within our spiritual community. Is everything community property? Real spiritual adepts have no possessions. What about property? If our community is devoted to spiritual love, what about earthly love? If we are to love God and love our neighbors, what about our neighbor’s wives? Rules must come into play. Our spiritual community may invent their own rules or consult the ancients, the scriptures, the elders. As they do so, what was “spiritual” becomes “religion.”

But conflict seems to be baked into the human condition. If by dharma or religion we mean the caste system, just look at the mess that has created in India. In the Western world we’re not supposed to have a “caste system,” but practice systemic racism against those who are different from us. All of this makes a perversion of social or varna-dharma.

The attempt to codify spiritual association into a kind of religion as ashram-dharma means that we seek to regulate human society as that society congeals into a spiritual community. But even here, we face the same problems. It is said that it is more difficult to live with saints than to be a saint. Spiritual societies also tend to face problems over sex, money, and power. When the hermits get together and build a church, sooner or later someone needs to control the land-deeds, charters, and contracts. When a schism divides the followers they fight over the church property. Rules, regulations, courts and judges may intervene, but this is not true spirituality.

Indian philosophy contemplates the existence of paramahamsas who exist above and beyond the twin systems of social dharma and spiritual dharma. Paramahamsas or “swanlike souls” have no interest in money, sex, or power. But at the same time they are above the rules. As such, they do not offer us a practical teaching example that we can easily copy and follow.

This is why most gurus or mentors approach us on the platform of madhyama-adhikaris, or intermediate spiritual adepts. We can understand their teachings and follow their examples. A true Paramahamsa, like Nityananda or Ramananda Roy is impossible to imitate. Their spirituality is above our capacity to decode.

So the great spiritual teachers always adapt something from religion in order to be able to teach. Those who are merged in divine love are unable to teach. Those who teach need to maintain contact with the rules of this world.

This is why I say that Haile Selassie´s talk is sweet speech. He wants us to find harmony in spirituality and avoid the rules and regulations of sectarian religion even while, as Emperor of Ethiopia and the head of a government his business is to enforce rules and regulations. So he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

He explains disingenuously that spirituality is not theology or ideology. It is simply a way of life. At the same time Haile Sellassie encourages his followers to worship him as God Himself. Of course, he is right. India´s Vedanta teaches us to develop a kind of transcendental vision, or Yogic vision by which he understands a higher reality.

This sort of spirituality is described in the 5th Chapter of the Bahgavad-Gita.

A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping, and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them...The yogis, abandoning attachment, act with body, mind, intelligence, and even with the senses, only for the purpose of purification. When, however, one is enlightened with the knowledge by which nescience is destroyed, then his knowledge reveals everything, as the sun lights up everything in the daytime. The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste] .

As Haile Sellassie points out, then, true spirituality transcends religion. But spirituality and religion are intertwined. Human society rejects either at its peril. My guru used to say, “Society consciousness and God consciousness are always coming in clash.” It may be that spiritual realization is an absolute consideration where society consciousness and religion are really a relative consideration. But the absolute and relative considerations are always coming in conflict. True spiritual wisdom then means discovering the proper adjustment between the two.

The Vedas classify social classes generally as intellectuals and clergy (brahmanas), royalty and military (kshatriyas), mercantile and business classes (vaishyas) and the working class (shudras). For an elaborate discovery of how social dharma plays out in the world of brahmanas, kshatriyas, vaishas, and shudras, the important work to read is the Mahabharata, which shows how these classes interact with the law of karma over generations. But for a better understanding of spirituality, the greatest treatise is the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, or Bhagavat Pūrana. In the Prologue to that great treatise, Vyāsa writes about religion versus spirituality: