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I've been thinking what is the future of spirituality?
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It's been something that has been consuming my mind, shall I say, for quite some time.
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I've been thinking you know what does it look like Now, when it comes to my podcast, I have a lot of fact, the large chunk of my audience that listens is mainly young people below between the ages, I'd say, of 17 and 40.
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That's the chunk of my, you know, audience.
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That I've received from a number of them is that what you teach on your podcast is not necessarily what we hear when we go to the temple or wherever they go for their spiritual place of worship, wherever they go.
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And in a way this is sad because really, what I teach on the podcast, it should be like a supplementary kind of information.
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But when the information I give becomes what should be taught in the temples or in the satsangs, wherever they talk about, that's scary.
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So for me, I've been thinking about well, where does this leave young people like will they still go to the temples?
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Will they still go to the satsangs that are arranged, regardless of what spiritual institution has them?
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And what are they looking for?
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Are they looking for more, more quality content where they can reflect?
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Are they actually looking for knowledge of the scriptures.
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Now, what I teach on here, a lot of it is based on the scriptures.
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We've also looked at the Bhagavad Gita, and so there is obviously a desire for people to listen to that, especially young people.
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And I think the times of just doing the run-of-the-mill type of spirituality has kind of diminished.
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And now if you go to a satsang or you go to the temple, it's not about just marking your attendance, it's actually well, what am I going to get from here?
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And especially now when our mind is divided in so many different ways?
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What I mean by that is our attention is going in many directions.
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What purpose does places that offer satsang have in the future?
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Like, how can you convince a 20 year old, a 30 year old, a 40 year old to not look at their phone and pay complete attention to you?
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How can that be possible?
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And you know, funny enough, I thought I'll ask.
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You know chat GPT about this, and they literally say that youth demands relevance.
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So, before we go any further as we discuss this aspect, welcome to the Bearded Mystic Podcast.
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I'm your host, rahul N Singh, and please do like, comment, subscribe.
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You know the drill and share it.
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Share it.
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So, yes, young people, but they want relevance.
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So, you know, today, when we have in New York I often say this if you have in New York, where people are talking about consciousness studies, vedanta has the answers, indian spirituality has the answers, and so the youth are looking for that.
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It's not just a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of being relevant.
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I want to feel something more than just a body and mind, because I can sense that something about it isn't complete, you know.
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So how can I get to that feeling of being complete?
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How can I get to that feeling of feeling full, feeling like there's nothing left to do in my life In a good way, not in a way where we give up, but more in the sense of well, you know, I'm satisfied with life, and whatever I get from now is amazing.
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I'm not going to like chase it, but I'm happy.
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I'm not going to like chase it, but I'm happy, I'm content.
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So, if you think about it, the only way that any satsang will have any relevancy is if they cater to the youth.
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And this is a big thing, because what I mean by catering to the youth, it's not merely getting them to be involved more like you may hold a discussion or you may hold um retreats for, especially for the youth, I would say giving them actual leadership positions would be more beneficial.
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Interestingly, there's um, there is a spiritual institution that's doing that right now.
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I think it's a whole load of young people who are kind of leading departments and you're kind of sensing that there's an energy there and, you see, if your wisdom is based on scripture and not based on hearsay from many different people, you're going to have wisdom with you easily.
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But if you have, if you only, kind of the fear that people have, like, for example, people I know who go to the temple, to the mandir, they say, well, you know, it's the same thing that's said again and again.
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You know, we know what we have to do, we, we know what puja we have to do, we know what arati we need to do.
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They tell us a particular, you know, puja that we have to do because of our certain circumstances.
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So we kind of know what's going to happen, what's going to be said, but is it really relevant?
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Is it actually giving me peace of mind?
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Because that activity at the time, yes, my mind is distracted from it and so therefore, I feel peace because I'm not thinking about my problem, but as soon as I leave, the problem appears again, and so that means whatever our suffering is, or our pain is, is not being dealt with.
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In fact it's being allowed to grow, and that is more dangerous than anything else.
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So I feel that you know, you'd really want those answers.
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You know to who am I, you know what am I, why is this suffering, and you know how can I live a purposeful life, a meaningful life, and I don't think we have to go far.
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We, if we are to remain relevant, we are to go to teachings that are timeless, because they will, that will be able to kind of infuse itself in every generation.
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That's the point of it being called timeless wisdom.
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So I would say it's time that maybe I feel that the future of spirituality would be more based on actually going deeper into the scriptures and not allowing the surface level to kind of I think I've got bitten but not allowing the surface level to kind of present itself as the depth, if you know what I mean.
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So we want something deeper.
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We're not going to settle with what's just said as a nice little headline type of thing.
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So the future is really in the hands of the youth and when the old guard, I would say, is willing to give that to the youth, I think there will be a difference in in spirituality.
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And and that doesn't mean that and I'm not actually talking about age specifically, I'm actually talking about attitude, because I I feel that when you're younger you're willing to learn more.
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You, you know, you're willing to kind of soak in more information and you know that there's more to do.
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I think as you get older you can become more rigid.
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I've noticed that creeping with me too and you know, thankfully, I'm able to kind of take to get lost.
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But not everyone will do that.
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They will become rigid too.
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So it's really important that we understand that the future of spirituality is in providing depth but at the most, you know, giving youth that kind of empowerment to drive things forward, to drive initiatives forward.
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And if you have, for example, you know you may have a temple in the temples in the mondays, you have committee members and you'll see that most of the committee members are old people.
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How are they going to relate to the youth unless they have a young mindset that they're adapting to the times?
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Like, how can you guarantee that?
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And for that you need to have young people on board to even to understand those views.
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You see, the generation gap isn't actually coming from the younger people, it's actually from the older people, and that's what I found too, that that tends to be the case where the younger people will be willing to learn, but it's older people that are more like kind of again enclosed and and I guess that comes with age and you want more security and all that type of stuff.
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So it makes sense, but it's not what is going to allow, you know, satsangs or any spiritual institution or the mand is to grow and remain relevant.
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So I think that will be important for sure, and I think it's.
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And the most important thing, if I must say, is that direct experience is what matters the most and if that is not offered, then nobody really is going to care about what you say or teach or present.
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I hope that through my podcast, that there is at least a sense that you can experience Brahman, you can experience the divine, you can experience what this ultimate reality is when we talk about it, when we talk about it being formless, when we talk about it being awareness and when we say that, you know, be aware of awareness or rest in formless awareness.
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Be aware of formless awareness.
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I hope that all these little reminders that we give, they bring you back to your true self and so when you come back to your true self, you want to remain in that more and more, because you know the taste of that is something that, once you've tried it, you can't let it go.
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You want that moment to become eternal and that can happen and that does happen and it is happening and this is what I feel if any spiritual institution wants to last for the future.
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Because you got ai coming up and trust me, ai could possibly replace gurus, and I think that's scary.
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In fact, that's one thing I am totally not for.
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Like I believe, yes, ai can help you, but no way can you replace the spiritual transmission that a guru can give you.
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I have benefits, benefited so much from having a guru that can personally bless me and I don't think that can ever be replaced.
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So, but that only is there, because I felt the direct experience of the divine when I was with my guru and I think when I'm with my guru and even now, when the guru is not even physical present in this location, regardless, one can still connect to it, but that only happens when we have the direct experience, and the direct experience is the most important thing.
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So that's really what I fundamentally wanted to say today, and I hope I've presented my views clearly.
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But tell me, what do you think?
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Do you think what is the future of spiritual institutions, how can they remain relevant, and is there anything you agree or disagree with me on, or a point that I didn't think about maybe I could talk about in a future episode?
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Let me know.
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Okay, thank you very much for listening.
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Take care, namaste.
