What is it that spirituality has to offer? Now the term ‘“spirituality' has nothing to do with religion, as commonly understood. According to my Master spirituality really begins where religion ends. While the basic education of man can be undertaken by religion, his further development when he has reached what may be termed adulthood can only be offered by spirituality. Spirituality is easily identifiable with mysticism in all its aspects. Religion enforces an externalization of the mind in man's search for God. Mysticism or spirituality internalizes the search and directs the mind to the heart of man where the search should really commence. One of the great tenets or principles of all religions has been that at the heart of the human being God Himself resides. Of course this may be thought to be the mere doctrine of immanence; but it is true that God is immanent within us. When the search is externalized, the first thing man loses sight of, or touch with, is himself. The goal is taken to be far away, very often in some far distant sphere of existence not easily accessible to us. The search is therefore begun on the premise, often founded on solid theological doctrine, that the search will in almost all cases be futile and the goal inaccessible. The search is therefore begun and undertaken in a spirit of frustration and a foreboding of non-achievement of the goal. How can such a search ever help anybody? On the contrary spirituality focuses man's attention on the Divine effulgence radiating in one's own heart, which effulgence is created by the presence of the Creator himself in the heart. This immediately presents the Divine in an altered light, and brings him to a proximity with one's own person which can hardly come any nearer. Being within us such a person is not only always accessible but readily reachable, and all that spirituality requires of us to achieve the sense of oneness with the Ultimate is to focus the mind inward upon the Person. Apparently, therefore, spirituality is by far the easier method of the two to achieve the goal of human life.

Principles Vol 1, p. 6

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In religion we are taught to worship a God outside us or external to us, what we call the theory of emanations. God is outside in his heaven, somewhere far off; unattainable; unachievable; the journey is very far; the travails are many; the renunciations called for are tremendous. This is the sort of worship that we are taught. From that external worship of divinity which we put into forms of the Divine, we have now to transfer it to the concept that God is within us too. If God is omnipotent and omnipresent there is no reason why God should not be in us, as he is in everything else. So religion leaves and says good-bye, and mysticism must now take over.

In mysticism we have the approach to the eternal presence of the Ultimate in our own heart as the spark which we call consciousness. This is the spark or the voice of God present in us. In most cases, unfortunately, that spark seems not to exist, for the simple reason that it has been covered over by ignorance, covered over with conduct which is not conducive to its development. Therefore all that is necessary is to uncover it. Remove the covering of ignorance, of all conduct, and there the light begins to glow again. So spirituality means first the concept that God is in us, to be approached by the inward practice, so that our communion with the Ultimate should be an inner communion with Him by us rather than an external communion or form of worship of a Divinity that exists outside us. Spirituality does not say that God does not exist outside us. But what spirituality says is, when He is inside you why take all the trouble and all the expense to go to all those places of worship when he is right inside you.

Principles Vol 1, p. 51

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….”Where religion ends, spirituality begins.” …religions have served to divide humanity and human beings into different cults, different sects, different religions, warring with each other, hating each other, suspicious of each other. Spirituality unites, because here we worship not a god with a name, we don't subscribe to any principles such as are embodied in a particular text, but we stand by morality, by ethical life, and by the need to love everyone as ourselves, by the need to love, meaning, therefore, to sacrifice….

So spirituality, as my Master said, unites people. There is no more the bigotry of religions. There is no more the separatism of worship. Thee is no more the problem of which is the true religion, which is the true god – as if there can be a true god and an untrue god….

So, spirituality seeks to bring people together in an enormous, transcendental synthesis of oneness of humanity, where human values have to be crystallized by practise of meditation on the heart. What are the human values?…love, compassion, most of all.

Heart to Heart Vol V, p. 385-386