Within the Indonesian state framework, Kejawen does not stand as an officially recognized “agama,” or formal religion. The government recognizes a limited number of religions—Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—and Kejawen does not appear among them. Instead, it is situated in a different legal and social category, one that reflects its fluid, syncretic character and its deep roots in Javanese culture. This positioning already hints at how Kejawen is lived: less as a rigid institutional system and more as a way of being and perceiving the sacred woven into everyday life.

Legally and administratively, Kejawen is treated as a cultural practice or belief system, often referred to as *kepercayaan* or *aliran kepercayaan*—streams of belief that are distinct from the officially recognized religions. It is regarded as a mystical and spiritual current within Javanese tradition, blending Islamic, Hindu, and animist elements without crystallizing into a separate, codified religious institution. This status has practical implications: Kejawen is not categorized alongside the six state-recognized religions, even though its followers may now have some space to indicate such traditional beliefs on official documents.

In lived practice, many who follow Kejawen are also formally registered as adherents of one of the recognized religions, especially Islam. The syncretic nature of Kejawen allows practitioners to maintain an official religious identity while at the same time honoring ancestral, mystical, and cosmological understandings that are distinctly Javanese. Rather than competing with formal religion, Kejawen often moves in the background as an inner orientation, a subtle layer of meaning that infuses rituals, ethics, and relationships with the unseen. In this sense, it functions as a cultural-spiritual matrix: not an official religion in the eyes of the state, yet profoundly religious in how it shapes the inner life and worldview of its practitioners.