Spirituality??. Review on Artofliving

I believe a lot of people do not understand the subtle differences between religion, alternate living and spirituality.

Arun Jain, the CEO of Polaris, once said in an interview that the most fascinating thing for him was the power that religion exerted upon people. All people throughout the world are living a life related to religion. The athiests are trying to negate/deny it.

The difficulty of presenting spirituality, especially in this age, has been that people, being consumeristic by nature, do not absoutely know how to approach it - in other words, how to know what we want to know.

Every religion has some degree of philosophy. Without philosophy, no rational man could accept religion. It is also true that people shy away from philosophy, because that is all there is to it - once you know your ropes, there's nothing to live for.

People's acceptance of religion, therefore, has been limited to their circumstances and their experiences. They are satisfied with some amount of philosophy and rituals. To what end? Most people want an objective to be solved. Religion just becomes a means. You develop contacts, exert your political will using religious connections and, of course, pray hard for success. But what many people don't do is question: why all this at all??!!

I had a flat mate some years back, who was glowering in his appreciation of AOL, how it helps him acquire mental concentration, good health... the feelgood factor. But I doubt if he could have answered why he got those problems in the first place. True there is the valid theory of rebirth. But again, what caused the first birth? There is no answer to these questions, instead, AOL has been propogating sudarsan kriya.

Which brings me to the subject: is this spirituality? How can doing bodily exercises, relate to the spirit? I feel, the AOL movement, should be honest about what they are doing - that is to introduce an alternate living. They are doing a disservice to the masses by ripping off some yogic exercises and philosophy from the Vedic scriptures.