A spiritual process can take shape in any culture only after material needs are taken care of. It is natural for people to initially believe that if their food, housing, clothing or the little luxuries they wish they had are taken care of, everything will be okay.
Once all those things are taken care of and you realise that you are still not fulfilled as a human being that is when you naturally turn inward. So if that has to happen, you need a social and cultural situation which is peaceful and well established for a long period of time.
Then people could look beyond material comfort towards inner well-being. Because of this, culture evolved such a powerful spiritual process. There are a million different ways through which you can attain to your ultimate nature.
Every aspect of life from something as simple as breathing, eating, sitting and standing was evolved as a spiritual process. The ultimate nature of a human being, the nature that is beyond the physical, has been explored so extensively.
A lot of it is unfortunately being lost; we are unable to really preserve that. But still it is a live culture; still a certain strand which is thousands of years old has been kept alive. Whether it is vibrating and resonating in people's lives or not is not certain, but as a thread it has survived and continues to exist.
Mark Twain was intrigued by Indic mysticism. He spent three months in India. While leaving he said: “Anything that can ever be done either by man or God has been done in this land”.
This is the only culture which does not have a religion as such. Religions have cropped up now only because of external influences; otherwise as a culture, there is no religion in this place. We have something called Sanatana Dharma, that means a universal religion. We're not talking about one religion for everybody. We are talking about all of us having our own religion.
Hindu is a geographical identity; anybody who is born in the land of Indus or the civilisation that came from the banks of Indus is a Hindu. So you can worship a man, woman, snake, cow, monkey or a rock and still be a Hindu. You can worship your spouse or child, you can abstain from worship of any kind and still be a Hindu.
This is not a religion; this is just a possibility. Everybody can do whatever means most to him. No other culture has given this freedom for the people in their land.
Every other culture insisted that people must believe in something, whatever was dominant in that culture. If you did not believe that, you were an outcast who needed to be dealt with. There was no persecution here simply because nobody had any particular belief system.
Even now, different members of one family can be found worshipping different objects or deities. Every individual can seek his own way. But the most important thing is, everybody ought to strive for ultimate liberation. By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev