Religion is nothing more than crystallisation of spirituality

Hoping to help people open up their lives to a myriad of opportunities, writer and life coach ADITYA NATH has come up with his maiden book, Awaken Your Soulprint (Rupa Publications; Rs 295; 200 pages). This book, says Nath, postulates the concept of soulful living, a spiritually evolved way of modern-day thinking, based on the realisations of thousands of years of human evolution and is a guide that enables you to discover your own special path to happiness and success, both within yourself and the external world around you.
Nath, an MBA from USA’s Wake Forest University, worked with a Fortune 100 company and achieved immense professional success but his quest to seek a balance between the material and spiritual worlds made him return to India. At present, he runs his family business even as he practises the virtues of living soulfully.
In an interview with SAURABH TANKHA, the debutant author talks about soulful living, difference between spirituality and religion, the successful formula to lead a happy life and how to change the path of life and more…

 There are four tools Awaken Your Soulprint delves into for inculcating soulful living into our everyday life – spiritual wisdom, spiritual practice, devotion and faith

What is a soul print?
Just like a thumbprint, every single human being on this planet has a unique soul print. Nature never repeats itself in anything it does. Thus two soul prints are never alike and nor their material and spiritual journeys!

How can one lead soulful living?
You do not need to sell your Ferrari to be a monk! That is possible when you attain a balance between your material and spiritual worlds. Enjoying in this material world goes hand in hand with being ‘soulful’. This realisation was the basis of the Vedic era referred to as Satyug or the Age of Soulful Living. There are four tools that the book delves into for inculcating soulful living into our everyday life. These tools are namely spiritual wisdom, spiritual practice, devotion and faith.

Living a completely materialistic life without an awakened state is bound to create an imbalance in our lives. When I faced life’s imbalances, I started to seek answers for my life’s existential questions

When did it occur to you that there was an imbalance between the material and spiritual worlds in your life? And why did you have to return to India to strike that balance?
I returned to India to get closer to my roots. There is so much to learn from Indian sanskriti and history that I felt one lifetime should be spent judiciously. Whenever we see a problem or a challenge in our life, we can see an imbalance. Living a completely materialistic life without an awakened state is bound to create an imbalance in our lives. When I faced life’s imbalances, I started to seek answers for my life’s existential questions and that is when my journey began.

You have dedicated Awaken Your Soulprint to your great-great grandfather Shri Lala Rai Bahadur Baij Nath for he changed the course of your life. How?
My great-great grandfather led a very successful material life. However, on reading his books I got a sense of calmness and depth in his thoughts which were based out of his immense knowledge and understanding of the Vedic literature along with other religious texts. The life and time of Lalaji gave me insights into seeking solutions to my everyday problems based on spiritual wisdom. I realised that the answers are all in front of us, only to be seen by an awakened soul print. This awakening changed the course of my life and eventually got encapsulated as a humble prayer offered through the book for other seekers. I believe in the existence of the Vedic concept — Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam meaning the whole world is our family.

What is spirituality and how does one experience it?
Spirituality pertains to the knowledge and science of the spiritual world. Each soul print is unique and experiences spirituality in its own special way by practicing soulful living.

Life is just like a candle that burns to spread light all around and perhaps illuminate other candles. And death is the shortening of the candle due to its burning state. They both happen simultaneously

How does one differentiate spirituality from religion?
Religion is nothing more than crystallisation of spirituality. All religions are founded on the principles of spirituality.  Just like curd made from milk cannot be turned back into milk, religion formed from spirituality cannot be converted back into its purest form. However, we can consume curd (religion) and still get the nutritional value we seek from it. This can be done when we fragment the truth by a process of distillation (digestion) of its essence.  Awaken Your Soulprint talks about seeking spirituality from across religions.

How can one tread on a spiritual path by staying in the material world?
Each soul print is unique and thus have to walk on its own special path laid out for itself. The path within is as important as the path outside. You can be sleeping while you are awake and be awakened while you sleep. So, one’s awakening leads the way of balancing the two worlds and living a life of comforts (maybe even enjoying a Ferrari if that’s what a soul prints desires) while being soulful.

What is life and what is death?
Every moment we experience life and death at the same time. Life is just like a candle that burns to spread light all around and perhaps illuminate other candles. And death is the shortening of the candle due to its burning state. They both happen simultaneously. There cannot be life without death, for a candle has to burn to live. Similarly, with passage of time, when we are in an awaken (enlightened) state our spiritual world grows while our material world shortens in this process. When the candle completely burns out, we experience a change in our material world, but the light continues to spread in this world.

What is me and what is not me?
‘Me’ is just a reference word used to differentiate us in a crowd.  If we take away the crowd, we will lose the meaning of ‘me’.  For instance, we are Indians when we travel the world. But when we are in India, we don’t refer to ourselves as Indians as everyone around us is an Indian.  Perhaps then we choose to refer to ourselves as a Mumbaikar or a Delhiwala. The more micro we go and remove all our external references we realise that we are left with our unique soul print which becomes indescribable as we do not have any surroundings to differentiate it from!

Winning is based in the material world whereas life is governed by the spiritual world. Thus, to excel in both worlds, the first step is to balance the two worlds

How do you win at life?
Life is to live. Winning is a competitive (exclusion) concept whereas living is a familial concept (inclusive). Winning is based in the material world whereas life is governed by the spiritual world. Thus, to excel in both worlds, the first step is to balance the two worlds. Both worlds should be commensurate with each other in your life. Once, you learn to balance yourself then there are limitless possibilities for your existence!

How do you change the path of life?
We should not try to change the path of life, but rather evolve on its trajectory. Like a shoot grows out of a seed evolves into a big tree and enriches not only itself but also its surroundings, similarly ‘path of life’ needs to be embraced and enjoyed and all our energies should flow without any resistance towards its evolution.

Is there a successful formula to lead a happy and healthy life?
The shortcuts and quick fixes are what have led to the mental fog that we experience in our modern-day life challenges. Myopic sightedness gives us formula like approach which throws at us unsustainable answers, whereas long-sightedness gives us a wholistic approach with everlasting solutions. There are many solutions available to each soul print depending on the horizon it has to solve. Awaken Your Soulprint gives a wholistic and logical answers in leading a happy and a healthy life.

Why is there so much discontentment, sorrow, and jealousy around?
Tamso Ma Jyotir Gamaya is a couplet from a wonderful Vedic prayer. In this couplet, the seekers ask the universe to take them from ignorance/ darkness towards enlightenment/ light. When there is ignorance in a soul print or in the collective soul prints (society), there is discontentment, sorrow and jealousy or other trappings of an egoistic state. Awakening is the first step to open one’s eyes towards the possibilities of a sparkling universe that we never thought existed for us before.

What’s today and what’s tomorrow?
As we give reference to ‘me’ and ‘not me’ in the material world, similarly we give reference to time by calling it yesterday, today or tomorrow. Time is like a flowing river. We cannot stand in the same river twice for the water would change and even we would. Flow of time is eternal in our life as it was always there and will always remain. Our scope of influence only extends to what we can do in our present moment. The same is postulated in the Bhagwad Gita, that is, to focus on your actions without attachments to its results.

When there is ignorance in a soul print or in the collective soul prints (society), there is discontentment, sorrow and jealousy or trappings of an egoistic state

Who has been the most inspirational person in your life and why?
On my spiritual path, many spiritual warriors have inspired me, starting from the times of Tirthankar Adi Nath to Adi Shankaracharya and moving to modern-day enlightened souls. I believe in learning and seeking from every source one can get and then to walk on your own path. Every soul print looks at only a part of the reality or the complete truth. Complete truth is also evolutionary in nature. Thus, to keep learning the latest software and hardware and continue to upgrade your technology is the way forward for any soul print.

A message for our readers.
Just like you learn Math in school to make your material living meaningful, similarly learning the basics of spirituality is important to live a happy and peaceful life. Please awaken your soul print and do it now!