Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures [Hardcover]

This book explores varieties of spiritual movements and alternative experiments for the generation of beauty, dignity and dialogue in a world where the rise of the religious in politics and the public sphere is often accompanied by violence. It examines how spirituality can contribute to human development, social transformations and planetary realizations, urging us to treat each other, and our planet, with evolutionary care and respect.  Trans-disciplinary and trans-paradigmatic to its very core, this text opens new pathways of practical spirituality and humanistic action for both scholarship and discourse and offers an invaluable companion for scholars across religious studies, cultural studies and development studies.

Practical Spirituality, Human Development and  Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures: An Introduction and an Invitation.- Part I  New Visions and Cultivation of Practical Spirituality and Human Development.- On the Holy Ground: Practical Spirituality and Practical Moral Courage.- Multidimensional Mysticism.- Practical Spirituality: The Art and Science of Conscious Living.- The New Spiritual Paradigm as Facilitator of Social Change.- Expressions of Self in Market, Society and Self: Towards Spiritual Praxis for Human Development.- Cultivating Practical Spirituality: Soil, Soul and Sarvodaya.- Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Circles of Gender Liberation and the Calling of Lokasamgraha.- Part II Creative Experiments in Practical Spirituality and Human Development.- Practical Spirituality and the Contemporary City: Awakening the Transformative Power for Sustainable Living.- Practical Spirituality: Dabbawala Case.- Practical Spirituality and Developmental Challenges among Tibetan ColSÆ