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Nootan Kumar | The Evolution of Consciousness
process, such as the search for inner truth. 22 In contrast, religion is the
external manifestation of that process 23 , involving a collective experience in
associated forms of community, culture, values, identity, and sense of
belonging. 24
From a deep ecological perspective, which views the planet Earth as
one vast, inter-connected ecosystem of which human beings are one part, the
concept of spirituality can be expanded to a “way of being in and part of the
world as a whole, of our acting within and through it, and in connection with
25
other people”. In this light, spirituality is more than just an individual inner
process that may externally manifest as a collective practice. It is also a deep
interconnectedness, not only with other people but with the natural world as
a whole. The Sankhya school of thought extends this sense of
interconnectedness beyond the Earth to include the entire universe and even
further, to that entity from which the universe was created, Parambrahma
22 While it can be argued that ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ are not simple, neatly defined
categories, in that religious movements concerned with spiritual transcendence attained
through the physical medium of the body cannot be separated from political, economic
and cultural aspects of human existence, this paper is concerned only with spirituality as a
philosophical concept, rather than the variety of ways in which it is interpreted and
practiced around the world. As such, the paper is not concerned with how spirituality can
be exploited to advance political interests or forge identities, nor with how certain forms
of spirituality tend to appeal more to certain regions of the world or peoples of certain
education and income backgrounds, nor, finally, does this paper address the
commodification of perhaps the most widely recognized external practice of Indian
spirituality – yoga – practiced by 13 million people in the US alone. See van der Veer,
Peter. “Global breathing: Religious utopias in India and China.” Anthropological Theory 7
(2007): 315-328, for a discussion of these topics in his examination of the intersection of
Indian spirituality with imperial modernity.
23 Rifkin, Spiritual perspectives on globalization.
24 Helminiak, Daniel. A. Spirituality for our global community: Beyond traditional religion to a world at
peace. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2008.
25 King, “One planet, one spirit”, 70. Emphasis in original.