Contemporary Views on Spirituality

Abstract

Spirituality literally means the state of being with spirit. The English word spirit has come from the Latin word Spiritus, which means breath or that which gives life or vitality to a system. But it also means soul, courage, vigour and inner strength. The word spirit is used in different contexts, for example, group spirit and national spirit, referring to one’s sense of affiliation to a group or to a nation and one’s willingness to sacrifice personal gains for the well-being of the group, the community, the nation and the world. In spiritualism, in which it is believed the dead communicate with the living through a medium, the spirit means the soul of the dead. The term ‘spirit’ can also be regarded as being a ghost, manifestations of the spirit of a dead person. It may also refer to any being imagined as incorporeal or immaterial, such as a demon or deities. In philosophy, spirituality is often understood as a view opposite to materialism. Materialists generally hold that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Even consciousness is explained simply as an emergent phenomenon of the physical brain. Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century philosopher, maintained that absolutely nothing exists except matter. In his view, if there is a God, he must have a physical body.