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Aman Nath - author, art restorer and founder of the Neemrana chain of hotel

What does spirituality mean to you?
It is not about isolation, sitting alone on some mountaintop. It is under my skin. It always is with me. I can be in contact with it at any time. It is indestructibly packed within my body and soul.
I cannot take it out like a currency note from a pocket, nor flaunt it. But it can be depleted. It is an internal glowworm covered within my cocoon. It is that inner silence that can always speak silently, if I know how to consult it quietly.
But I also connect with it at the macro level, imagining the vast outer shell of the cocoon of the universe – which I guess isn’t there. It’s just comforting to be a cocoon within a cocoon; you can’t have a boundless womb without frontiers. That would be an eternal winter without any spiritual summer.

Is there any role for religion in your approach?
I am a non-practicing Hindu, I am an atheist actually. Anyone who cares to look beyond the scum, can actually easily sense that our cosmos is the fountainhead of spirituality –-- not religions. Religions are the myopia of mankind. With an incomplete scientific knowledge of the universe and of the natural phenomena, what was imagined for the people in different parts of the world, was only a part of the whole, but it was both understood and described as if it was The Whole. Essentially, all religions are territorial and thereby parochial. Over time, if they are not updated, revitalized and adapted, they are destined to become outmoded. Religions have served their purpose from darkness to light – because faith governed morals. But today, everyone defines and justifies their own morals. Globalization has certainly meant a widening – and loosening of morals. Today, more than ever people practice double standards: when they play, they play hard, party, sin, whatever. And when they meditate, they wash and clean slate what they have accumulated as anti-spirituality.

The holy books were written in another age and time. They need to be edited, rewritten, re-interpreted, not just followed by the word. If the new generations in all societies feel a generation gap between their parents and themselves, then how can centuries-old books be 100% unquestionable wisdom? Just because we were once told to keep it out of the realm of logic or beyond global wisdom and learning?
I do agree, religious discourses by extraordinary people like our sages do help touch this nebulous thing we call spirituality. Gurus can give you a taste of it but they can’t really put their finger on it forever, nor hold on to it for others. So when their fleeting glimpse of spirituality escapes their followers, they feel vacuous and bereft. That’s why gurus are ringed by lost, rich people more than the rural poor, for whom the spirituality of the sunrise is at the end of their fields – not at the end of a flight away in Goa! But for both it must be a private search and path.

... contd.