Spiritual practices among Kalpvasis and daily devotees

There are many spiritual practices which are performed by Hindus for attaining mental and physical well-being and for many other purposes. Spiritual Practices Scale (SPS) developed by Singh and Husain was administered on 100 Kalpvasis and 100 daily devotees. t-test was used to examine difference between the mean scores of Kalpvasis and daily devotees on spiritual practices performed by them. Kalpvasis and daily devotees were drawn from the Maha-kumbh Mela held at Allahabad district of U.P in 2013. The main finding of this study was that Kalpvasis’ as compared to daily devotees have high level of involvement in performing spiritual practices. Kalpvasis scored significantly higher than daily devotees on the following practices: reading scripture and religious literature, watching and hearing religious programmes on T.V or Radio, to pray privately other than at temple, going to temple, fasting, attending satsang, meditation (concentration on the self) in which attention is focused on thoughts and direct experiences, doing yoga, charity, doing havan-yagh, doing or hearing psalms, hymns and chanting mantras apart from prayer.