Exploring the Prospects of Interspirituality in Higher Education: An Interspiritual Perspective

Proceedings of The 5th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Exploring the Prospects of Interspirituality in Higher Education: An Interspiritual Perspective

Dr. Hari C. Kamali , Dharama Raj Awasthi

 

ABSTRACT: 

Interspirituality is the understanding of different spiritual/religious thoughts and the practice of applying these thoughts in daily life to make a complete living and to create a better world. It is rooted to the spiritual thoughts propounded by Wayne Teasdale who coined the term “interspiritual” in 1999 and defined it as “the sharing of ultimate experiences across traditions . . . an enhanced understanding of the inner life through assimilating the psychological, moral, aesthetic, spiritual, and literary treasures of the world’s religions . . . a strict adherence to ecological justice” (cited in McEntee, 2016, pp. 392-393). As higher education thrives for these issues, the interrelation between interspirituality and higher education needs to be explored. In this regard, this presentation is an attempt to explore the interrelation between interspirituality and higher education and argue for some prospects that interspirituality is more likely to offer for higher education. For this, we affirm that of the six principles declared in the report “Global ‘Roadmap to 2030’ for Higher Education” after the UNESCO World Higher Education Conference 2022, Spain; the principle—”Integrity and ethics, ‘generating a new kind of citizenship’ for the future” (University World News, May 2022)—can be best employed through the practice of interspirituality in higher education as interspirituality focuses on integrity founded on ethics. Similarly, we also argue that interspirituality can be more useful to address the call made by Stefani Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education —the call “for change, for transformation for shifts in mindsets and behaviours” in higher education (cited in O’Malley & Warden, 2022).

Keywords: interspirituality, interspiritual qualities, higher education, roadmap to 2030 for higher education .