Spirituality is not a utopian ideal but a practical philosophy which can be practised and realized in day-to-day life, however mundane it be. Spirituality stands for evolution and elevation, and not for superstition in action or pessimism. All fissiparous tendencies and group or clan philosophies which tend to create the shackles of narrow-mindedness are in no way connected with spirituality and should be discouraged. That which leads to broadness of unison alone should be accepted. Spiritual philosophy does not recognize any distinctions and differentiations unnaturally made between one human being and another, and stands for universal fraternity.
Spirituality must inculcate sense in human psychology, and develop a natural affinity amongst this species of the creation. The approach of spirituality should be psychological and rational, and should offer a touching appeal to the deepest psychic sentiments of human beings. Human beings should appreciate by a rational analysis their relationship with the Cosmic Entity and recognize the most benevolent kindness of the most beloved Entity. Spirituality should lead human beings to the one Cosmic truth from which they have derived their selves, and which is the ultimate destiny. That ultimate and absolute ideal is the Cosmic ideal – an ideal beyond the scope of time, place and person. It is the Absolute, without and beyond relativity. It stands with its own lustre for all times and for every factor of the Cosmos, may it be a human being or a less-evolved animal. The Cosmic ideal alone can be the unifying force which shall strengthen humanity to smash the bondages and abolish all narrow domestic walls of fissiparous tendencies.

All the sentiment-provoking ideas should be firmly opposed. This does not mean an attack on those sentiments, traditions and habits which are innate in human beings and which do not hamper their Cosmic development. For example, the movement for uniformity in dress for all people will be but a ridiculous and irrational approach. Different selections of dress are the result of climatic factors and corporal necessities. Moreover, dissimilarity in dress is not detrimental to world fraternity.

There will also be many zonal or regional differences as regards other traditions and customs. These should be appreciated and encouraged for the indigenous development of society. But under no circumstances should there be a compromise in principle or yielding to tendencies detrimental to the inculcation of Cosmic sentiment.

The inspiration of Cosmic sentiment will depend upon certain objective physical problems which must be solved on a collective humanitarian basis. In the relative objective sphere the following few fundamental problems must be attempted at [tackled] and solved. These are:

1. Common philosophy of life
2. Same constitutional structure
3. Common penal code
4. Availability (production, supply, purchasing capacity) of the minimum essentialities of life

Common Philosophy of Life

A common philosophy of life demands a clear conception in the human mind that the development of the human personality means an evolution in all the three spheres – physical, metaphysical or mental, and spiritual. The logical analysis of spirituality is the summum bonum of life in all its aspects.

Those who think dharma to be an individual’s concern conceive it in a very narrow sense. Dharma leads to Cosmic unity, inculcating in the individual mind Cosmic idealism. Religion, in the sense of dharma, is the unifying force in humanity. Moreover, spirituality provides a human being and humanity at large with that subtle and tremendous power with which no other power can be compared. Therefore, with spirituality as the base, a rational philosophy should be evolved to deal with the physical, psychological and socio-philosophical problems of the day. The complete rational theory dealing with all three phases – spiritual, mental and physical – of human development shall be a philosophy common to humanity in general. This will be evolutionary and ever-progressing. Of course, small details may vary according to the relative environment of the age.

Same Constitutional Structure

Despite these obstacles, a social blending of humanity is in progress and needs a common constitutional structure to be evolved to cement the solidarity of the world. A world government is also very essential for exercising full control in certain spheres; for example, there should be only one world militia.

The world government should form certain autonomous units, not necessarily national (based on problems of education, food supply, flood control, public sentiment), which should look after mundane and supramundane problems. The boundaries of these units may be readjusted to suit any change in the environment – for instance, development in the techniques of communication. Development in the means of communication brings the different remote parts of the world nearer, and the world, therefore, grows smaller. With this well-developed swifter means of communication, units with bigger areas can work smoothly and efficiently.

A language must also be evolved as the lingua franca of the world. (At present English is most suitable for the purpose and no national sentiment should be encouraged to go against it.) But the local languages must be encouraged to help the indigenous literatures develop and contribute towards world progress, and thereby contribute to the common brotherhood of humanity.

Common Penal Code

A common penal code must be evolved. Legislation must be progressive and capable of gradual adjustment with the prevalent conditions. Any theory which does not hold a parallelism with the ever-changing conditions of time, place and person, is sure to decay and be lost in oblivion. Hence, there must be a never-ending effort for amendment with a view to rectification.

Crimes are acts forbidden by the law of the government concerned, and virtue and vice (puńya and pápa) are the outcome of traditional customs. The sentiments of the lawmakers are very much influenced by the prevalent traditions and customs regarding the concept of virtue and vice of the locality or of the people concerned. The sense of crime, therefore, has a parallelism with the concept of virtue and vice. The idea of virtue and vice is different in different countries. The aspirants of world fraternity should try to lessen the difference and reduce the gap amongst cardinal, moral and human laws. All those actions which help in the growth of the spiritual, mental and physical aspects of human beings in general should come under the category of virtuous deeds, and those actions which go against humanity in its spiritual, mental and physical development must come under “vice”. This conception of virtue and vice applies commonly to humanity in general.

Minimum Essentialities of Life

The availability of the minimum essentialities of life plays a vital part not only in achieving world brotherhood, but also in the development of human personality. This should be tackled on a world footing, and should be based on certain fundamental presumptions. Every human being has certain minimum requirements which he or she must be guaranteed. Guaranteed availability of foodstuff, clothing, medical assistance and housing accommodation should be arranged so that human beings may be able to utilize their surplus energy (energy up till now engaged in procuring the essentialities of life) in subtler pursuits. Side by side, there should be sufficient scope for providing other amenities of the progressive age. To fulfil the above responsibilities, enough purchasing capacity should be created.

If the supply of requirements be guaranteed without any conditions of personal skill and labour, the individual may develop the psychology of idleness. The minimum requirements of every person are the same, but diversity is also the nature of creation. Special amenities should, therefore, be provided so that the diversity in skill and intelligence is fully utilized, and talent is encouraged to contribute its best towards human development. It will, therefore, be necessary to make provision for special emoluments which can cater for special amenities of life according to the age and time. But at the same time, there should be a constant effort to reduce the gap between the amount of special emoluments and the bare minimum requirements of the average individual. The guaranteed supply of minimum requirements must be liberalized by increasing the provision of special amenities pertaining to the age and also, simultaneously, by bringing about a decrease in the provision of special emoluments given to the few. This never-ending effort of proper economic adjustment must ceaselessly continue at all times with a view to assisting the spiritual, mental and physical evolution of human beings, and to let humanity develop a Cosmic sentiment for a Cosmic ideal and world fraternity.

In this socio-economic set-up people are at full liberty in the spiritual and mental spheres. This is possible because the spiritual and psychic entities for which people can aspire are themselves unlimited, and the extent of possession in this sphere does not hamper the progress of others in their quests. But the supply in the physical sphere is limited, and hence any effort for disproportionate or unrestricted acquisition of physical objects has every possibility of creating a vast majority of have-not’s, and thus hampering the spiritual, mental and physical growth of the larger majority. So, while dealing with the problem of individual liberty, it must be kept in view that individual liberty in the physical sphere must not be allowed to cross a limit whereat it is instrumental in hampering the development of the complete personality of human beings; and, at the same time, must not be so drastically curtailed that the spiritual, mental and physical growths of human beings are hampered.

Thus, the philosophy of PROUT advocates the development of the integrated personality of the individual, and also the establishment of world fraternity, inculcating in human psychology a Cosmic sentiment. The PROUT advocates progressive utilization of mundane and supramundane factors of the Cosmos. The society needs a stir for life, vigour and progress, thereby progressive utilization of all factors. Those who support this principle may be termed “Proutists”.

The principles of Prout depend upon the following fundamental factors:

1. No individual should be allowed to accumulate any physical wealth without the clear permission or approval of the collective body.
2. There should be maximum utilization and rational distribution of all mundane, supramundane and spiritual potentialities of the universe.
3. There should be maximum utilization of physical, metaphysical and spiritual potentialities of unit and collective bodies of human society.
4. There should be a proper adjustment amongst these physical, metaphysical, mundane, supramundane and spiritual utilizations.
5. The method of utilization should vary in accordance with changes in time, space and person, and the utilization should be of progressive nature.

World economy is facing the worst time since the great depression of 1930. This recession started with the reduction of Business and Banks having the credit crisis for conducting their further business in December 2007. Banks either started defaulting or getting acquired by other bigger banks. This resulted in huge job loss across the world. US have seen that largest bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers which owed as much as USD 613 billion when it collapsed. The economic turmoil didn’t stop here itself. As the time progressed the manufacturing industry and retail industries also started showing the worst sign. They started filing bankruptcy. Another biggest bankruptcy was in the form of GM defaults. The unemployment rate in US soared from 4.6% to 9.5% within a year. The foreclosures increased all across the US. Consumer habits started changing due to the ailing economy and start impacting the retail sectors heavily.

The US S&P 500 figures have seen a drop of 41 percent in stock market just in 2008 which is huge and definitely one of the worst considering that the biggest yearly drop ever was in 1931 during the Great Depression when the S&P dropped by 47.1 percent. In 2008 US equity performance has seen a USD 7.3 trillion of stock market value vanishes.

To counter the effect of downtrodden economy the US Govt and even all the Govts of the world had only one plan to pump trillions of dollars of artificial money in the economic system. Govt started bailing out the banks with the logic that the current forms of banks are the savior of economy of the world. US itself pumped USD 700 billion in 2008 which was increased further by additional USD 150 billion. These money was definitely a savior for these banks for not to file bankruptcy. But the market was not getting stabilized and was witnessing continuous fall. Banks were still facing the credit crisis to operate and continue their business smoothly.
US got a new and dynamic president in the form of Mr Obama in 2009. He looked very promising leader and claimed to bring a change. After getting into the office he had the toughest task in the US history to rescue US economy to crumble completely. He also used the similar weapon like the previous administration to rescue economy. In Feb 2009 US administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion — $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.

Starting with the monthly view of the S&P 500 trend chart, the bull market of the last five years turned down, as the index fell below the 24-month exponential moving average. The Relative Strength Indicator (RSI) is below 50, indicating a downtrend is in place. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) fell below zero, a sign stock market trend has reversed and we have entered a bear market. Finally, the Slow Stochastic fell through zero, another sign of a bear market.

US Market Trend for last 10 years

With the advent of the huge artificial money market started showing the sign of the progress. Banks hands again started getting little free to operate and provide market credits. The stock market started showing an early sign of improvement. Slowly consumer behaviors have also started showing the sign of improvement with increase in their expenditure. The consumer behavior researchers started commenting it to be stabilizing. We have to keep in mind that 71% of US GDP of around USD 10 trillion is generated by consuming habits. The current results of stabilization can be considered as a very significant sign of market stabilization.

The trend for the US Consumer behavior for last 2 years is as follows:

US Consumer Behavior

The overall Consumer Mood Index (which is based on a combination of current economic conditions and economic outlook measures), now at -98, improved by 15% from February to March, and has essentially returned to its level of a year ago (-94).

The market signs are looking very good that we will be out of recession very soon and again the economy will be very strong and free from any fear. The investment tendency of the common man will improve and will provide an additional strength to the US economy.

My perspective differs here. In my perspective the current sign of improvement of economy is artificial and will stay only for short time. The current visible improvement of economy is just due to the extra credit available in the market due to the artificial money pumped by the US Govt. Consumer habits seemed to improved as US citizens are thinking that their Govt has nailed down the problem and now they have the safe gateway. I will go back to the basics of economics to support my theory. The economy can become stronger if there is balance between demand and supply. The demand is nothing but the purchasing power capacity and supply is in the form of production.

The rate of increase in unemployment rate has definitely reduced compared to last year but still there is no significant sign of improving job market. Until the jobs will start creating we can’t say that we are over with the recession. The improvement can be a short term effect and the condition can become worst due to the negligence.

The unemployment forecast for US is as follows:
U.S. Civilian Unemployment Rate
Past Trend Present Value & Future Projection
Percent Unemployed Seasonally Adjusted.

US Unemployment Rate

The average consumer spending seems to be improved but it’s among the Americans who were able to afford and already possessed surplus and were reluctant to spend because economy was continuously going down. The data to support my logic is in terms of average consumer expenditure per day is as follows:

US Consumer Spending 2008 - 2009

Upper Class Income US Spending 2008 - 2009

From the above data we can easily analyze that there is significant improvement in the upper income Americans which is the main reason of improvement of average consumer spending. In reality the average American household income has not stabilized as the job condition for them has not improved and neither there is any visible sign for the same. Still the job loss is continued and the rate decrease in job loss seems to be promising but most likely that seems to be temporary to me due to the huge amount of artificial paper money pumped into the market. Sooner the artificial money in the market will be exhausted and we’ll be again back to the same condition which we witnessed in 2008. This time the effect will be much grave then 2008 as it’ll be proved that artificial pumping of money will not help in stabilizing the economy. All the Govts of the world is going to be clueless for the action of economic reforms. This will result into the longer period of economic chaos. Everyone will start realizing that there are very big flaws in the current system of economics and it requires a radical change to build economic strength.

The efforts are required to strengthen the economic strength of common man by decentralization of economic development rather than giving power only to big giants who commits all sorts of mistakes in the greed of accumulation and maximization of personal profit. The concept of profit maximization of the firm should be changed to the increase in purchasing power capacity of larger group so that there would increase in consumption which will balance the increase in production due to technological progress. The concept of empowering every producer who physically and intellectually directly participates in the increase in the production should be implemented by allowing them as the share holders and profit sharers of any economic organization. This will help in increasing the purchasing power capacity of larger population of the world; which will result into larger consumption of the available production. The ratio of conversion of need into demand will be increased which is going to build economic strength of any economic zone.

One precaution will also require to be implemented is to restrict the pressure from the production from external economic system. In true sense the free trade has to be balanced with local production strength and capacity. Regular endeavor is required to build the strength for local production for local needs. This will result in making every individual economic zone stronger to support them and do the economic development planning. Another best practice to implement would be providing more control to the individual economic for local economic planning and decision making process. The locals understand best of the local problems hence they should be allowed to take the decision for local progress. The administrative system and economic system should be separated so that the economic corruption due to the result of central administrative system can be avoided. This type of radical change in the system is not going to come until the locals are better educated with the economic system and start participating in building the economic system. It’s like when more hands will join to build the economy the stronger will be the effort and there would be multiple gateway of control which will result into the better quality of the economy. It’s my vision but you are the one who can implement it for your own progress.