ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Spirituality in Religious Education: Implications of Changing Contemporary Contexts A new consciousness: social and educational considerations Most of us are hesitant to fancy that we might be living through one of the most fundamental shifts in the history of Western civilization (Harman, 1998, p. xviii).

Given the daunting and discouraging scenario that has been discussed in the first part of this paper, there is a distinct need to find ways to transcend it and it is, therefore, heartening to discover signs that proclaim a shift in human consciousness; a move towards a more connected way of being; indeed, a ‘spiritual awakening’.

Groome (1998) used these words to describe ‘people’s abiding desire for something more than possessions or personal success… a renewed consciousness of the hunger of the human heart that only Transcendence can satisfy (p. 323). A particular viewpoint offered by Willis Harman (1998) is that there are various signs that the Western world is going through a paradigm shift.

Harman argues that at one level of Western society there is an emerging consciousness which is tracing a move away from a positivistic, reductionistic scientific worldview to one that is grounded in the totality of human experience, that is, an integration of an objective and subjective reality. He reflects on the duality that pervades western thought generated by the compartmentalization of science and religion.

It is Harman’s contention that every knowledge system reflects and is shaped by the society that constructs it, and it is sustained because it satisfies the tests that are put to it, that is, it is confirmed by lived human experience in the society of its origin.

In other words, western science is what it is because of the particular nature of the society in which it was developed and other knowledge systems (for instance, in the East) differ from it because they reflect the characteristics that were valued in the particular societies where they evolved.

In noting the implications that arise from this contention, Harman suggests that while the West has assumed a certain confidence and superiority that its scientific view of reality is essentially correct and all other views are wrong, there is a need to consider that other views may perceive reality through different cultural windows which emphasize other aspects of the total human experience. This would make them complementary rather than wrong.