Spiritual Consciousness as Evolutionary Learning : Exploring Myth, Metaphor, Magic for Sustainability

Navigating a diversity of religious myths and worldviews in both conventional and nuanced secular ways, this edited volume explores transdisciplinary common knowledge and global citizenship ideology through the lens of spirituality, depth hermeneutics, and multimodality.

Guided by a broadly semiotic approach, the book explores ancient spiritual myths, metaphors, and magic/wisdom, raising crucial questions of identity, current conflicts, military power, and crises which threaten mental health for many. Chapters take an anthropological and chronological approach through targeted case studies, in part using Systemic Functional Semiotic (SFS) frameworks and linguistic anthropology to tackle issues of contemporary importance such as human rights, conflict resolution, environmentalism, and sustainable development. Featuring a truly international, multidisciplinary team of contributors applying the lenses of mysticism, neuroscience, quantum theory, psychology, and phenomenology to the themes discussed, the book ultimately uncovers the deep connections between different religious and philosophical traditions, highlighting shared metaphors, narratives, and allegories that transcend disciplinary, cultural and geographical boundaries.

Driven by a collaborative attempt at achieving spiritual understanding, this book will be of interest to postgraduate students, researchers and scholars working in global citizenship education, philosophy of education, cognitive linguistics, and semiotics more broadly. It will also be useful for scholars of spirituality, philosophy of language and ancient religions.