Law and Applied Spirituality

The following is the Abstract for the longer write-up

Click here for the Full Write-up

Legal systems govern social behaviour. They attempt to regulate order, collective peace and harmonious developments in society. The external social behaviour that law deals with is also a part of internal human behaviour. This external and internal nature of human behaviour, needs to be consciously studied and interlinked when legal systems desire elements of justice, equality, liberty, fraternity, dignity, integrity and unity for social collectivity. These elements, that legal systems guarantee, come from an integration of individual and collective life on matters of social, political, economic etc., of various levels. 

The individuality and collectivity on these matters and levels are deeply psychological and spirited in sense as human behaviour operates through stimulus from inside to leave external effects outside or vice-versa through a function of thought-emotion-sensation-body complex. Thus, we see, our behaviour gets shaped by a two-way process of inner motivation and outer circumstance, individual and collective dimensions on a given matter and level.

At this juncture, a critical study on this two-way relation in human behaviour and a set of unifying values to be identified for progressive intersections seem to be the future of legal systems for achieving greater goals of humanity. Additionally, legal systems that deal with justice are now becoming more than social, economic and political justice as new knowledge is revealing interrelations of spirit-mind-body or thought-emotion-sensation-body complex leaving us to think of new dimensions in justice. Thus, spirituality, as an exercise of human experiment and experience, provides a new scope for legal systems to deal with human and social behaviour to achieve order, peace and development.

At this juncture, one even finds another unknown dimension gaining grounds and sinking to integrate or bring holistic responses to human problems and social challenges of the collective is the actual linking of spirituality through or with psychology or vice versa. Law and legalities of the thoughts and norms are interspersed in between these two disciplines. This is indeed a welcome trend as the psychological human and the social collective have become the axis on which every wheel of knowledge is tested and allowed to represent as spokes for inclusive, sustainable and harmonious inter-relational movement of things. One might see, know, feel or even ought to bear this interconnection that very often come in the actual spiritual practices where psychological dimensions emerge leading to wholesome experience of the state of our own individual and socio-collective nature.

Among many kinds of spiritual experiences and experiments, two of them stand out for our legal consideration. One, an experience of timeless, space-less and boundless consciousness-awareness beyond life and world with which we witness, observe and understand the movement of things inside life and world, without our participation into them. Two, an experience of consciousness-awareness as power and force operating and animating through thought-emotion-sensation-body complex with our active participation in the movement of life and world.

The former experience prepares the ground to remain free from all fetters of self-aggrandizing individualization before wider collectivity and, the latter experience prepares us to re-enter into wider collectivity to contribute with a freed sense of individualization, not imprisoned by its ego-aggrandizement that cuts the individual from the collective. These two spiritual experiences, one of the consciousness-awareness of freedom and, another of the consciousness-awareness with all potentials, when allowed to animate inside the human, it gives crucial understanding of the challenges of life and, pro-activation of solutions for those challenges that are extremely crucial for law and legal systems.

A power of understanding the knowledge using spiritual experience of these two states of consciousness-awareness along with rationality, reason and logic, a strength operating through concentration of the energies in body aiding movement of knowledge, a harmony releasing itself through motivating-empathy and mutual-collaboration using knowledge and strength and, finally a near-perfect action operating through strategies, stages and steps in organizing daily life, human capital and all kinds of the systems of the world using knowledge, strength and harmony become our positive tools of empowerment. The combination of these two spiritual experiences of consciousness-awareness is useful to legal systems that look for solutions to human crises using interactive nature of individuality and collectivity on all issues of life, world and society.

The chapter attempts to demonstrate that this kind of spirituality and its applied processes thus provide us the clue and strategy to achieve what the human nature and social existences of all kinds all over the world seek and aspire in the form of individual as well as collective peace, joy and compassion. It is also argued that this peace, joy and compassion that is spiritual in nature are in fact the origin and source of inspiration and stimulation for social, political and economic equality, liberty and fraternity in law, and the harmony and perfection of these elements seen as the justice that balances everything. The chapter demonstrates how applied spirituality can be used in law in the sense of law-making, judicial-interpretation, executive-governance, legal profession and finally a grand introduction of spirituality and its values into legal academics and research that are waiting to be liberated from the clutches of mere analytical knowledge of life and world moving towards new enriching powers of radiant collective life and wonderful harmonious world.

- K. Parameswaran, Dr (India)

Full Write-up - 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1usw5iqAAc7t14_2fjpQkSxolVAQetG5K/view?usp=share_link

 

Originally published by Emerald Publishing Limited, 2023.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-83753-380-020231007/full/html