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The goal of the envisaged spiritual education is a clear communication of the core spiritual principle that the universe is an indivisible whole thoroughly pervaded and intimately connected by its ground of being. The purpose of human life is to intimately learn this principle taking it deep into our consciousness in order to live our lives by it.

There exist divisive forces that use human differences like religion, race, sex, etc. to manipulate, control and exploit. These forces can to be countered effectively only by raising deep human consciousness through education in our connectedness and our underlying oneness.

I haven't read Christopher Hitchens' recent book, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, yet its title compels me to present an opinion for discussion.

Religion has two faces: one unites and the other divides. Religion unifies people into communities and simultaneously divides by building tight boundaries around them.

Tradition has intimately linked moral values to religion. People talk of Christian values, of Islamic values, and so on. Ontario is a pluralistic society. So which moral values do we decide to teach in our schools and colleges?

Religious prophets, sages and seers spent lifetimes researching humans' relations with each other and with nature. One of their key insights is the existence of an Unseen Reality that causes everybody and everything to exist.

This post is my story of how I came to discover the principle that the light of core spirituality instantly removes the darkness of ignorance born out of misunderstandings of what religion truly teaches.

APJ Abdul Kalam, the president of India, in the opening chapter of his book entitled Ignited Minds (Abdul Kalam, APJ, “Ignited Minds”, Penguin Books, Delhi, 2002) clearly points out the need of integrating spirituality with education. In so doing, he sees hope for pluralistic democratic societies such as India for harmony, peace, progress and prosperity. He says, “Self-realization is the focus”, and “The radiance of such minds embarked on constructive endeavor will bring peace, prosperity and bliss to this nation.”

Some would consider it an anathema to put spirituality and science in the same sentence. But to me, they both have one thing in common, their search for the truth. The truth is defined as something that does not change with time, place or the environment.

But our perception of the truth is a process which is dependent upon the vagaries of time, place and the environment.

The understanding of the truth in both science and spirituality depends upon our capacity of subtle perception.

This article is inspired by an op-ed entitled Why We Built the Ivory Tower by Stanley Fish published in the New York Times on May 21, 2004. In this article, Stanley Fish advises his academic colleagues not to surrender their academic agendas to any non-academic constituency advocating a particular point of view. It is hard to disagree with this view, but Stanley Fish’s view on moral and civic education is another matter. In the latter case, he asserts that the academy must first decide which of the competing views of morality and citizenship is the right one before disseminating it in the classroom.