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Incorporating Spirituality in Higher Education and Patient-Care:
Innovative Practices
Dr Bhalendu Vaishnav, Dr Param Pathak, Dr Smruti Vaishnav, Dr Vibha
Vaishnav
Abstract
This article is an attempt to outline various innovative practices in education and patient-care
implemented over the past two decades by the Sri Aurobindo Chair of Integral Studies at Sardar Patel
University, Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat, and by the Pramukhswami Medical College at Bhaikaka
University, Karamsad, Gujarat. These practices are deliberate efforts to raise awareness about
spirituality and integrate it into mainstream educational and healthcare programmes. The practices
mentioned are formal educational activities with a significant student participation.
and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are
the great sowings (1).”
It is impossible to deny the obvious; there is
a growing awareness about spirituality and
its application in higher education. Efforts
by academia to rediscover the meaning and
application of spirituality represent, as it
were, a way of re-casting in a scientific
framework the concepts that diverse ancient
cultures across the globe had known and
Background imbibed for millennia. The ancient Indian
civilisation considered that every human
Sri Aurobindo, watching the march of human being holds an immanent Godhead, known
civilisation, declared more than a century ago, as Soul, within oneself, but most are only
“The world knows three kinds of revolution. faintly aware of the same. Spirituality is
The material has strong results, the moral and defined as a process of a more complete
intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope awareness and expression of the immanent
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