Lietuvos universitetų studentų dvasiniai poreikiai

In Lithuania educational objective of human spirit’s education was actually brought up-to-date in 1988. It happened on the eve of independence, when scientists of the country, inspired by the ideas of the Movement, turned to a human as a spiritual being, preached down functional education, regulated by educational institutions of the totalitarian state. In the recent years, when Lithuania joined Western European structures and accepted the challenges of Western world, the issues of human’s identity, the essence and meaning of life have become very urgent. Educational content of nowadays is purposefully related to moral and social problems; it also highlights questions that require decision of a person concerning values, ones’ moral and social position. Therefore, life requires a spiritual human. Spirituality is a complex phenomenon that is explained by the representatives of various science spheres in different ways. In the works of M. Lukšienė spirituality is interpreted as a phenomenon that has several aspects. Spirituality is: • orientation to values, which make up the essence of a human, thus, spiritual ones; • not only a perception ofvalues, but also an ability to live them through and interiorize; • a turn of experiencing values as a feeling of life’s necessity; • active participation not only living the values through or bringing them closer to the others, who haven’t reached this level of development (the latter group should consist of heads of culture clubs and youth organizations, also lecturers, teachers, clergymen, etc.); • creation of values that is everywhere and it has to be. L. Jovaisa notices that spirituality is a permanent state, when the world, life, people, works, relationship and duties are being estimated by the highest inner measures, which have been consolidated in a human by ones intelligent and emotional nature, encouraging him to live justly and honestly. “Spirituality is a priority of conscious to biological and material turns; it is a practical living to the holiness of truth, good and beauty; it is living notional contact through the world and metaworld”. Hence, spirituality lies in the nature of a human. Appealing to the data of empirical research, V. Aramavičiūtė notes, that spirituality can be defined as a spread of spiritual spring, showing oneself in authentic personal relations with the world, predicating on the highest values and covering all natural human powers. Having accepted such understanding of spirituality, the underlying selection of values and their internalization becomes a fundament of a personal development. V. Aramavičiūtė states that in today’s world, on the basis of various philosophical conceptions concerning a human’s essence, educational aims are outlined differently. Nevertheless, in the scientist’s opinion, the most perspective guide in today’s sociocultural context is the ideas of idealism, concepts of neotomism and personalism. These are assigned to the paradigm of classical education, and also concepts of existentialism and humanism, assigned to the paradigm of the free education. The followers of these conceptions pay attention to a spiritually rich personality and relate the final destination of education to a spiritual education of a human. The empirical data of this research proved that explaining the essence of spiritual human, students have chosen materially not interested person’s relation with reality as the main criteria. Those who state that a spiritual human retakes cultural values, which help one to develop, uphold the ideas of classical huif #ism. Students uphold the attitude that a human’s relation with God is a point to spirituality and that a spiritual human has an active inner world. A certain part of students relate spirituality to the expression of altruism, morality and sociability. Students confirmed that turns such as seeking for the essence of life, developing moral qualities, strengthening mental powers and relation with God, being able to control anger, meditating, learning about the values of art, seeking for the highest values, cherishing the wish to help the others, being interested in science achievements, communicating with God, interesting people, experiencing favor of people, experiencing success, are the turns of a spiritual human. It has to be stated, that in that case when spiritual turns of research’s participants’ are related with their self-perfection, the bigger part of the respondents state, that they have those turns. In that case when questions are related with the participants’ orientation to the problems of society’s spiritual life, the bigger part of the respondents state, that they don’t have such turns. The problem of students’ spiritual education exists.