Are religion and spirituality the same? Ira Trivedi Mantena answers

To her, spirituality means being conscious of the spirit that all of us have within us, that is also present outside of us. She says that there's often confusion about religion and spirituality, and they're not often the same things. Religion is a tool to get to spirituality and to understand spirituality, but not all spirituality is necessarily religious.

So for her, spirituality is all about expanding your own consciousness by becoming more aware of consciousness.

Talking about Karma , she explains that it is very simple. Karma is the result of your actions and these actions can be thoughts, it can be emotions, or it can be real physical actions or verbal actions as well.

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Ira shared that “All of us go and search. We're always searching. We search through travel, we search through apps now, we're searching, right? All of us. Sometimes we search for adventure, we search for excitement in our lives. But that journey, I realised, is actually an inward journey. The most excitement and the most joy you get is actually the journey within, not the journey outside. This is coming from someone who's travelled to like 100 countries, who's worked across the world, done all sorts of crazy things.”

What she learned in her journey is that the inner experience is so beautiful. And when we spend just a little bit of time with ourselves, just sitting in silence, it begins with that. People begin to understand that their own company can be so good. And often they don't even realise that they are being pulled in so many directions all the time, through WhatsApp, through social media , through people around us. So just remember, being with yourself is so important, and that has sometimes the biggest joy.

About social media, Ira says, “The world is pulling us outwards at every point in our life. And because of the advent of social media and everything becoming E, now the world suddenly is on a phone. The whole phone becomes our world. So to understand now that consciousness is not on your phone, but it's in you and it expands to everything outside of you is very, very important, especially now with the advent of technology. It's so important for everyone to focus on consciousness, to focus on what it means to be conscious, and what it means to be spiritually alive.”

Talking about the effect of books , she says, “Yes, books have played such a big role in my life. I really feel that whenever I'm looking for answers for anything, for me, I find those answers in books, not in people, but in books. So I have some very favourite authors, including my own guru, Swami hSivananda. His books have been amazing. The Bihara School of Yoga, Swami Naranjan Saraswadi, his books are amazing. So for anyone who wants to start a yoga journey, I promise that these books will definitely help you. Swami Sivananda, Swami Niraanjan Saraswati, etc. I also feel that there are many modern people who help explain spirituality in such beautiful ways, whether it's Louis Hay, or whether it's Paulo Coelho, whether it's Robin Sharma. I think all of these people have actually taken our Vedic sciences and put it in such modern, easy to understand formats.”