Spirituality and Religion

This, in a nutshell was what I spoke in the Literature Club meet a couple of weeks back. The topic was a very thought provoking one, "Can a person be Spiritual without being Religious". "Ive got to tell you that I was initially confused about the topic.. I thought it was to do with spiritualism, which I later found out was a subject dealing with ghosts and Haka Mari's and some such! Anyway, I realized in time that the topic is about Spirituality.. thankfully.
I think it has always been easier to cultivate among people a 'way of life' as compared to actually instilling a principle. I think it was my grandfather who told me once about the ingenuity of the Hindu priests. They said that it was a great religious custom to go to the temple. And the temples were generally built on a hilltop. It was also made customary for people to go many times round the temple, and then prostrate before the lord.. atleast 3 times. This was a great way to get the people to engage in some physical activity. I am fairly certain that if a village elder had tried to tell people about the advantages of exercise, the idea would have gone nowhere.
I think it was in this way that religion tried to create in common people a certain quantum of spirituality. Religion was more of a dictation of how exactly a person can be spiritual. However, religion does not restrict itself to spirituality. Religion has a much wider scope, as it governs the entire way in which people live their lives. Apart from many other things, it tries to encourage arts, culture, and very importantly, it tries to unify a group of people. Although it may be extraneous to the topic for today, I feel that we are today living in the best possible times. There were wars ravaging the entire world in the earlier centuries, and justice was an impossibility for the under-privilaged. It was a case of survival of the fittest and the most powerful. In those days of turmoil, unity was of paramount importance. And this was one of the important effects that religion had on society.
While we talk about all the good things that religion did, lets not forget that each religion came across a period when it underwent corruption. For Hinduism, it was between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, when things became overtly ritualistic, and people, for the lust of power began to manipulate society. Even today, we have extremists who use religion to serve their lust for power.
It is true therefore, that I feel that religion is a pathway to spiritualism. What then, is spiritualism? Spiritualism is a very wide term, encompassing a whole host of issues. Among those, it tries to keep us sane, moral .. I think a moral person can very likely call himself spiritual, and happy. To digress, I think happiness is something that is felt when a person does a particular task with single mindedness. If various other thoughts do not enter his mind, he is sure to feel happiness while doing what he is at.
Spirituality is something that can be achieved by different people and different religions in their own way, and all the major religions that I am aware of try to instill spirituality among its people.
I think I have overshot my time. Thank You."