BUILDING A VALUE-BASED, PEACEFUL AND PROPEROUS SOCIETY THROUGH SPIRITUALITY

Values and Spirituality are central to the moral philosophy of human civilization and its legal institutions. Values Spirituality is considered traditionally to be the prerogatives of the religions and they are viewed as being embodied in the family unit. Yet the great and the little known civilizations have been struggling with the issues of human frailty for the last 25 centuries. Our collective inability to live up to our espoused values and moral principles, with the exception of a few outstanding individuals, has paved the way for a long but slow moral decline. Today we face a crisis of values. Conventional education in the present economic framework has become oriented toward acquiring specialized skills and knowledge for the purpose of obtaining remunerative work. Competition has become so intense that higher education has either chosen or been forced to compromise on education about life, values, culture, integrity and other skills and dimensions of understanding that make you a better man or woman Swami Vivekananda defined education as,‖ The manifestation of the perfection already in man". By using the expression perfection, he directed attention to the divinity inherent in everyone. An institution or education becomes truly educational when it turns its attentetion inward, towards the discovery of the self in relation to the vast, 4 infinite creation of the Divine. Moral values were not only to be made a part of education in schools and colleges but also it was necessary to inspire all age groups and all professions or sections of the society to internalize moral values, for without that it would be almost impossible to educate successfully the children and the youth in values or to end the moral rot in the society, for the print media, the electronic media and the corruption among the bureaucracy, the businesses and others would spoil the effort. This view is now being expressed increasingly by the intellectuals.