Reflections on a Good Friday. Writing Easter reflections has been a tradition. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday collectively represent one of the most intense spiritual constructs of human Truth. The inability to suppress it. It’s inherent ability to re-surface, and resurrect. In the process, the physical being of God goes through deep pains of torture, testing the boundaries of tolerance. But pain purifies. That enduring deep sense of tolerance helps the Man overcome, resurrect and present himself as the triumphed Truth. The man himself becomes the Truth, and that has been a God moment for the rest of humanity.

This is what I wrote on last year’s Easter Day:

“It is Easter today. The Resurrection Sunday. The resurrection of God, His message and the truth that ultimately truth alone triumphs. Then for centuries since AD 30, mankind to remember, observe and live Him as a way of life. The message of love, tolerance and forgiveness when observed and lived truly and deeply, life in itself manifests into a bliss of peace. Pain purifies. Sins to be forgiven. Today is yet again a reminder to live that message. Having observed fasting through Lent for a long 40 days starting on Ash Wednesday, having observed Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Silent Saturday – today, on this Easter Day, let’s pray for Peace for all. All the more when more than half of this world is ravaged by wars. In Yemen, Iraq and in Syria; a genocide in Darfur, children in masses being killed in Nigeria, and a massacre in a college campus in Kenya last week. Events which are passive news for many of us in BBC World or the international news section of the Times of India. Let this Easter Day be a remembrance of those in pain and a prayer for Peace.”

But today, thinking of it, and asking good friend TK this morning why haven’t you gone to Church; made me think of the distinction between being spiritual and being religious. Irrespective of what religion we are born in, and follow, the biggest challenge facing humanity, I believe, is the inability to recognize, and realize the distinction between being spiritual and being religious. Human mind most often look for physical manifestations of God and religions to conform to ‘values’ they prescribe. To remain kind, compassionate, to love, to be tolerant, to be truthful, be responsible, to trust and be trusted – we need prescriptions, practices and physical embodiments of God in our lives. Overtime, the institutions of religions have come to create systems and processes to further material desires of humans, and even cater to the animal feelings humans still possess as a species. So a God becomes a partner in companies; religious heads determine election outcomes; and clergy across religions become powerful influences in political processes – where is spirituality in all this? Where are the teachings that should show a path to a deeper actualization as beings. Shouldn’t the ultimate function of religions be to help human beings see the deeper self in them; help actualize; help accelerate the process to discover the divine elements in them – a path towards Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative; or the Aurobindonian Ontology of a Higher, Illumined Mind.. What use if we go to a place of worship, enter into a car park, and this is a usual scene in Delhi, to begin an intense quarrel with the parking attendant who asks you to park properly.

The distinction between being spiritual and being religious is among the most challenging paradoxes of human life. Are they interconnected; is religious process the only method of mind to evolve spiritually? Are there other routes for that inner evolution; will all those journeys have the same end.. of the same universal Truth. Questions to ponder over and self-reflect on a Good Friday.

Happy Easter.