Triune altruism and mindfulness as predictors of happiness in non-practitioners and practitioners of diverse spiritual techniques

Angebote / Angebote:

ABSTRACT There has been a proliferation of spiritual organizations across the country as more number of people are looking towards spirituality to address their mental, emotional and social concerns. Moreover with the breakdown of the Indian family systems and the disenchantment with religious institutions, a larger sect of the population is looking at Gurus as anchors and spiritual mentors. Moreover, India has shared a deep connection with spirituality since thousands of years, however much of it is lost in the current modernization and urbanization where tradition and the spiritual ethos has taken a back seat. Thus, a revival of Indian spiritual techniques to attain higher consciousness has been on the rise propagated by different spiritual organizations with the intent to uplift and resolve social issues through individual transformation. It is with this rationale that this investigation was conducted to explore how those who practice spirituality (practitioners) differ from those who do not pursue a formal spiritual path (non-practitioners). Further, how do these members seek happiness? And what are the personality differences between the two groups. Does the benefits accrued from spiritual practices extend to being more mindful and altruistic than those who do not formally practice spirituality. Through the medium of this research it was also attempted to understand how triguna which is derived from the Indian personality system impacts happiness and our individual preferences to seek either pleasure, meaning or engagement in life. The impact of mindfulness and altruism were also assessed in relation to different orientations to happiness. For this purpose, a comparative investigation was undertaken between practitioners (N=250) and non-practitioners (N=250) from 5 different spiritual organizations in India. Additionally, 65 qualitative interviews were taken from those who were willing to share their spiritual journey however were not interested to fill the questionnaires. Differential analysis revealed a significant difference between practitioners and non practitioners on all variables. Practitioners were more sattvic, mindful and altruistic than non- practitioners and preferred to pursue a more meaningful life. Non-practitioners revealed higher rajasic and tamsic tendencies and shared a higher pleasure orientation than practitioners. Correlation analysis revealed that sattva correlates negatively with