As America Loses Faith, is Yoga the New Religion?

A recent Gallup poll reports that the average soul out there is now floating about the place without the usual confidence in the salvation that organized religion extends as part of its packaged deal. Where just three years ago, half of the American population declared the influence of religion on their lives to be on the climb, new numbers show that just a quarter of them are as optimistic today. And a full two-thirds say religion as a whole is losing ground in their daily grinds.

What’s more, a decided trend toward secularism is afoot. Since 1990, according to the recently released American Religious Identification Survey, the number of folks laying claim to no religious affiliation at all has nearly doubled, from eight percent the last time the survey was conducted (1990), to 15% today. What’s more, the “nones” have overtaken every other religious group save Baptists and Catholics (both of which also clocked in on the decline).

All of which is to say what? That nobody believes anymore?

Not quite. People believe just as much as they ever did, I would submit. They just believe in different things.

I am not a regular churchgoer by any stretch, nor ever have been. I have my own sense of spirituality that’s no more precious or individualized than the next guy’s. But organized religion is not the point. At least not in its conventional form. I’m suggesting that our embrace of yoga, meditation and other highly personal spiritual pursuits is every bit as impassioned as before. Indeed, perhaps we cling to these things more fervently than ever, relishing the sense of calm they offer to an otherwise anxious and increasingly desperate scene.

Yoga, with its poetic discipline and muscular values, with its rigid adherence to physical excellence and its fluid progression from ambition to conclusion, with its engaging efforts and glorious rewards, is my religion.

It’s not a new idea, this. The “is yoga a religion?” debate has long raged among devotees and detractors alike. The latter argue that, as yoga has no deity to worship, no dedicated place of worship, no requirement for religious reverence and no formal statement of religious belief, calling it a “religion” is just convenient cutesiness. Perhaps. But the less dogmatic considerers of that epic question might extend a bit more generosity to the definition of “religion,” and might resoundingly find in its favour.

In his “guidebook for spiritual transformation,” Conscious Living, Swami Rama said it best when he urged us all to, “realize that the kingdom of God is within you, the Lord of life is the highest of all.” Anyone who takes this on board, he believes, gets to go to his innermost self. “I am not talking about Hinduism, I am not talking about Buddhism, I am not talking about Christianity, I am not talking about Islam,” Rama clarifies. “I am talking about something universal. The moment you realize that the absolute truth which is not subject to change, death, and decay is within you, then you attain a freedom, freedom from fears, all fears. That is called the state of enlightenment and that can be considered to be a state of perfection.”

Sticklers for formal definitions be damned. A state of perfection sounds pretty divine to me.