Spiritual Economics

Discussion

Amit Goswami

"A spiritual economics must address:

• Satisfaction of emotional needs (positive emotions such as love, compassion, and satisfaction itself), both conditioned and unconditioned

• Pursuit of meaning, including the pursuit of new mental meaning that requires creativity

• Pursuit of spiritual and supramental (soul) needs such as altruism, love, and happiness

And in truth, this ladder of needs is not entirely hierarchical. If one satisfies higher needs, the urge to satisfy lower needs actually decreases. The opposite is also true. If a lower need is satisfied, the demand for satisfying a higher need increases. In this way, strategy for a more suited idealist economics than capitalism is to address all the needs simultaneously.

Whereas capitalism is an economics of physical well-being based on the satisfaction of our conditioned physical ego-needs, idealist or spiritual economics must be an economics of holistic well-being based on the satisfaction of both our (physical) ego needs and higher needs (pertaining to the exploration of the vital, mental, soul, and spirit)." (http://www.realitysandwich.com/toward_spiritual_economics)