Spirituality : Past, Present and Future Perspectives

The hermeneutic pluralism of religious and spiritual healing and its evangelical roots are studied by means of the conceptual systems of religious anthropology and medical anthropology. The next chapter analyzes the relationship between spirituality and psychological well-being. The authors focus on agnostics and undecided people who lie between theists as certain believers and atheists as certain non-believers. The authors also assess how spirituality in the African American community influences end-of-life care decisions. In his The Sea of Fertility tetralogy of novels, Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima outlines a philosophy of life and death that bears profoundly transgressive spiritual implications. This compilation discusses how, through his blending of Buddhist notions relating to reincarnation and the insubstantiality of all phenomena, Mishima constructs what amounts to a new spirituality committed to immanence. In the penultimate chapter, the concept of dark spirituality is discussed through what Francois Laruelle calls the "lointain", an unnameable, ineffable "distance" without measure. This concept is then examined through Bonnie "Prince" Billy''s musical work and how his song, "Black" defines blackness in terms of irreducible alterity. Lastly, while Bhoodan accentuated upon land donation from a resource ownership perspective, Vasudhaiva Kuáumbakam based land acquisition stresses upon land transfer from the stakeholder concept. Implications for research and practice are discussed in the closing chapter.