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The word psychology itself, translated from Greek, means "knowledge of the soul". People in ancient times understood that all the troubles, diseases of the material plane are external, and the causes lie deep inside us, in our essence, true nature - the soul. The outer is just a reflection of the inner state, and therefore ignoring this fact will lead to the fact that troubles will be repeated again and again in a person’s life.
The inhabitants of the East have the deepest knowledge about the structure of the world (and man in particular). That is why Western psychologists turned their gaze to the East. By combining modern psychology with knowledge of the soul, they obtained spiritual psychology. This allowed them to make modern psychology integral, since knowledge about the soul, about the inner world of man, was now attached to the knowledge of the external body. Specialists in this area carefully study the philosophy, theology, religion, psychological and spiritual traditions of the inhabitants of the East.
This happened around the 60s of the 20th century. Prior to this, spiritual psychology was preceded by such directions as humanistic psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviorism.
This section of psychology explains that everything that happens to a person now is a Game that he has chosen for himself. A person, with his consciousness in previous lives, determined the role that he plays now, all the events and the environment. Behind everything is the choice of man. And therefore consciousness needs to be worked on.
Spiritual psychology — practical psychology. It offers a person concrete steps that encourage a person to start changes in his life, to live by his own will, not to allow others to manipulate his consciousness.
Spiritual psychology suggests starting to deal with your life on a spiritual level, and then moving on to changing the physical plane, including health issues. After all, it is no longer a secret for anyone that there is a certain connection between diseases and the character, with the mood of a person. The same headache that many people suffer is due to the lack of love that a person feels towards himself. At the same time, he does not understand that, first of all, he lacks love for himself, acceptance of himself to the full, awareness of himself as a Personality. This rejection entails the rejection of the surrounding world and the rejection of everything as hostile. Spiritual psychology just helps a person to solve this problem, to see the world with different eyes. It changes a person's attitude to the situation, happening to him resulting in a change in the situation generally, as well as the surrounding area.
The main method used in spiritual psychology is knowledge, which are given to a person as a tool that will help him change his consciousness, and therefore life.
Spiritual psychology refers to scientific direction, and therefore it cannot be considered a religion or an ideology. Each specialist in this area may have their own religious or atheistic beliefs.
Spiritual psychology is currently developing methods for use in the social sciences and medicine. Her discoveries are applied in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, pharmacology.
It includes the following schools and disciplines:
- Spiritual Psychology (Robert Sardello).
- Psychosynthesis (Roberto Assagioli).
- Theoretical studies of Abraham Maslow, Ken Wilber, Michael Washburn, Charles Tart.
- Studies by Stanislav Grof.
Transpersonal psychotherapy has received official recognition from the Professional Psychotherapeutic League of the Russian Federation. Stanislav Grof became Honorary Professor of Moscow State University.
Spirituality- the highest level of development and self-regulation of a mature personality, at which the highest human values become the main motivational and semantic regulators of its life activity. The problem of spirituality in psychology was posed for the first time in descriptive or “understanding” psychology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (W. Dilthey, E. Spranger). The concept of spirituality is closely connected with Spranger's concept of individual values. The spiritual inner world of an individual is characterized by integrity, which cannot be derived from its individual elements and is based on semantic connections between them, as well as teleological (purposefulness, intentionality).
In post-war psychology, the problem of spirituality was considered in a number of approaches of humanistic psychology, mainly its transpersonal and existential branches.
Common to many approaches to the study of spirituality is the recognition of its connection with supra-individual meanings and values, divine or cosmic forces.
The current state of domestic psychology has shown that the materialistic paradigm has exhausted itself today. Along with the materialistic concept of man, which has existed for six centuries, religious-idealistic conceptions of man have continued to exist for twenty centuries. Therefore, it is no coincidence that many modern psychologists turn to all kinds of religious and spiritual practices, turning their attention to the Christian doctrine of man and Orthodox spiritual practice.
V.P. Zinchenko sadly noted that the assessment of psychology given by the Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky at the beginning of the 20th century: before, psychology was the science of the soul, but now it has become the science of its absence. The soul turns out to be in the remainder, about which psychology shows complete indifference, does not feel remorse, because it itself does not suffer from an excess of the soul. Together with her soul, she lost the sense of time, which cultural-historical psychology and some other areas are trying to regain. But so far only him, not the soul. We can say that an ontology of the psyche has been built, but not of the soul. So far, only literature and art have been able to come close to understanding the soul (15).
B.S. Bratus also emphasized that psychology, breaking with philosophy, ethics, theology, has lost its understanding of the soul, because embarked on the path of a natural-scientific approach to man as an object, a thing among things. The soul and spirit began to be considered secondary from the material world. Now there is a gradual turn, if not towards the soul in its full understanding, then at least towards soulfulness (9).
The humanitarian approach is a spiritual manifestation of a person, a support, an adequate mirror, moral and Christian approaches are aimed at revealing spirituality. These three approaches are successive, where the next one does not destroy the previous one, but absorbs it by adding new principle consideration, elevating, building up to the whole image of a person. “But today, most of all, we need to rise first to the moral level, and then to the religious one” (A.I. Solzhenitsyn)
B.S. In this regard, Bratus identified three lines of psychology:
Humanitarian psychology
It is the humanitarian line that is designed to expand the possibilities of consciousness, make room for spiritual growth, for development, self-actualization of the individual. The humanitarian ideal of scientific knowledge, according to V.M. Rozin, involves the study of unique spiritual phenomena, which contributes to the spiritual process in a person and frees up space for its development. But development where, for what?
Moral psychology
The line of moral psychology does not close the personality in itself, does not make it exist for the sake of itself and its growth, because the central, meaning-forming characteristic of a person is his way of relating to another person. It is ethics that is the doctrine of moral principles, but ethics is anti-psychological, because its provisions are normative, they prescribe to act one way or another, not correlating with the psychology of a particular person. Therefore, many psychologists are not particularly interested in ethics, and after Z. Freud they learned that morality is often just a falsehood, a pose, a cover for the true face, external pressure, censorship. But this view is legitimate in the study of personality and the criteria for its development without correlation with the path of human development. If this correlation is made, the meaning of the personality itself changes, on the basis of this, psychology enters into ethics. The common territory for them is the relationship of a person to another person. And this attitude is the center, the core of ethics. The health of the individual to the greatest extent ensures the ideal of a disinterested attitude towards another. Therefore, moral orientation is not only external pressure, but is the essence, the guiding thread of normal development, is a criterion and reflection of personal health, it sees the other person as a value in itself. That is why the next step is possible from moral to Christian psychology, which gives the other not only universal, but sacred value, considering it as the image and likeness of God, and normal development - as a real experience of imitation of Christ.
Christian psychology
The line of Christian psychology implies the recognition of the absolute foundations of morality, a conscious orientation towards the Christian image of man. The territory that this time is common for psychology and religion is faith. Faith is an undoubted psychological fact, a prerequisite for realization, a necessary support, a condition for any human activity that is organized in any way intricately. A person needs a holistic image of the future, which is supported and lives in it, with which he has an emotional, warm connection, in which he believes. Therefore, faith is not only a religious phenomenon. It cannot be received from outside, transmitted by instruction or example, because the believer testifies only to himself, it cannot be thought up, created by reflection. Non-religious faith provides the meaning of the current activity, religious faith ascends, clarifies the connection with the final, ultimate issues of life and death, creating, holding the spiritual sphere as a completion, the dome of the human appearance.
At the same time, the forms of religion reflect the well-established answers to questions about human existence that have passed the test of centuries, to the very presence of a special metaphysical space in it. In Christian culture, the central image is the figure of Christ. The Savior is the focus, salvation, justification and hope of our culture, the personification of the true image, that point, the point of aspiration, above which it cannot be set, but should not fall below (9).
Zinchenko V.P., working on the text “Reflection on the Soul and its Education”, noted that, working as a psychologist in science for more than 50 years, he first undertook to prepare a text in his direct specialty, and this turned out to be the most difficult task that he had to decide. The upbringing of the soul is an eternal problem, but, according to the bitter remark of V.P. Zinchenko, psychology cannot boast of success in solving it, because psychologists almost 150 years ago began to divide the soul into separate functions in order to study them objectively, continuing this activity to this day. Attempts to collect the soul together are rare and unsuccessful.
The soul, in contrast to the psyche and consciousness, is universal, non-historical and archetypal. She is involved in the absolute, in the truth, and at the same time manages to be on the border of the past and the future, to maintain a sense of time, without which she cannot live. The soul does not so much develop as it reveals itself. The soul is a gift of my spirit to another person (M.M. Bakhtin), and it is good when the donor has something and to whom to give. The soul is an amazing gift that does not diminish from giving, but grows. Therefore, a spiritually generous person will return to God a greater soul than he received from him. The presence of reason, feelings and will, as components of the soul, according to Plato's fantasy, does not guarantee its wealth. As B. Pasternak sarcastically remarked, there are many talents - there is no spirit. The relationship between soul and spirit is paradoxical. On the one hand, the soul feeds on spiritual energy and spends it generously for peaceful purposes. On the other hand, according to V.V. Nabokov, the removal of the soul multiplies the spirit tenfold, but the goals are soulless and inhuman. Tyutchev characterized the soul as a spirit imprisoned in bonds, with which it cannot always cope.
Zinchenko paid much attention to the space in which the life of our soul flows. There are at least three spaces in which the soul is located: between people; between the external and internal forms of the person himself; between past and future. She does a lot of work, linking the listed pairs horizontally, and possibly vertically. The idea of a borderland, however, deserves the closest attention. The boundary of the soul does not contradict the fact that it can manifest itself by influencing the external and internal forms. G.G. Shept wrote: “In general, is it not because philosophers and psychologists failed to find the “seat of the soul” that they were looking for it inside, while all of it, the soul, is outside, with a soft, airy cover, enveloping “us”. But on the other hand, the blows that are inflicted on her are wrinkles and scars on our face. The whole soul is appearance. A man lives as long as he has appearance. And personality is also appearance. The soul is an essence, a kind of form of a natural body endowed with life - this is how Aristotle considered the soul. Therefore, the soul is the completion of the body. The soul is not only virtual, potential, but also real (9).
The attitude to spirituality in modern humanistic psychology is evidenced by the material of J.J. Shea about the views of V. Frankl: “Existential analysis is focused on the spiritual dimension of man. Here is freedom, responsibility and the will to meaning. Within the spiritual dimension, there are paths of transcendence that reveal religiosity: both innate and repressed” (5).
V. Frankl noted the need for existential analysis, which is of a psychophysical-organistic and spiritual-personal nature. Thanks to this analysis, it is possible to descend not only to the unconscious, but also to the spiritual unconscious. If, on the contrary, we consider the spiritual in man as the highest, then it is precisely existential analysis that is the pinnacle of psychology. The concept of "top psychology", Frankl believes, is applicable to any psychology that, in its practical application, does not forget the spiritual in a person behind the somatic and mental in a person and strives to be a psychotherapy of the spirit and in this sense knows about the existence of a spiritual dimension - a higher dimension of human existence. (31).
E. Fromm argued that it is possible to understand an individual patient or any person only by establishing his answer to an existential question, his secret private religion, since most of what is considered psychological problems is only a secondary consequence of the basic answer, and this individual religion may not coincide with a consciously declared religious affiliation. It is the intense energy of personal faith that keeps the spiritual realm from destruction. “If there is no God, then everything is permitted” - the famous words of F.M. Dostoevsky.
In the spectrum of humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow noted that “the spiritual is an integral part of the real “I”, a part of a person’s identity, his inner core, his species, his incarnation and has an instinctive similarity, and the highest values that serve these goals are “transhuman and transindividual” (twenty).
R. May emphasizes that “any picture of a person that does not include religious tension is incomplete. Purely naturalistic psychotherapeutic techniques cannot be effective. It can be concluded that a healthy person must be creatively adapted to God, and a stable religious feeling is an essential condition for the health of the individual. Based on this, R. May derives the following guidance for counseling: “the counselor’s task is to guide the client to release from painful feelings of guilt, courageously help him to accept and strengthen the religious feeling that is inherent in his very nature” (21).
“The transition from neurosis to personal health is truly a miraculous process. Man rises from the depths of despair with the power of hope. In place of cowardice comes courage. The hard crust of selfishness dissolves under the influence of the pleasure that unselfishness brings. A torrent of joy washes away the pain. And love, entering a person's life, triumphs over loneliness. He finally finds himself, finds friends and his own place in the universe. Such is the transition from neurosis to personal health. And this is the meaning of faith ”(21) - these words of Rollo May reveal the strength and power of the revival of the human spirit.
M. Bowen in her work “Spirituality and Person-Centered Approach” became that one of the main bases of this approach, its spiritual aspect is the existence of the Inner Self. what is evil, K. Jung’s description of the Self as a construct as God within us, as well as the spiritual traditions of different peoples, she comes to the conclusion that: “philosophy, science, art, religion and psychology deal with the existence of a source of wisdom and knowledge that comes out beyond reason" (8). This source of wisdom, knowledge and love, which can be perceived in direct experience, she calls the Inner Self, noting that the source of the Inner Self goes beyond the boundaries of the "I" and is associated with the energy of the Universe.
Relationships between people can thus arise in a way that transcends space and time. An example is the collective unconscious of K. Jung as preserving the common psychological heritage of mankind. It is here that the source of religion and God, because. the idea of God is an archetype, an "original image". Therefore, Jung believed that “the idea of an omnipotent divine being is everywhere, and if not recognized consciously, then accepted unconsciously, because it is an archetype ... That is why I think it is more reasonable to recognize the idea of God consciously, otherwise something else will become a god , something absurd and stupid" (33). In the process of healing the neurotic, writes Jung, “the archetype comes to live on its own and acts as a spiritual guide to the personality, thus repressing the imperfect ego with its worthless desires and struggles. As a religious person would say, this is the providence of God ... To put it more modestly, I will say that the soul has awakened to natural life ”(34).
Rollo May noted that “…the roots of the collective unconscious go into the creative structure of the universe, to which we have given the name ‘God’…. Here it is enough to say that when a person really finds himself, he finds his place in society and in a certain sense finds God. He also drew attention to the spiritual component of man, establishing three basic principles necessary for the human personality: free individuality, social integration and religious tension, pointing out the need to understand this when psychological counseling . Human nature is contradictory, because it consists of flesh and spirit: “If a person tries to lead an exclusively mundane existence, in other words, like an animal, he becomes neurotic; if he tries to withdraw completely into the spiritual world and refuses to admit that he has a body (such are spiritualism and some extreme forms of Christian science), then he too becomes neurotic. A person must keep the internal tension under control, the tension that arises between two opposite aspects of the same world - free from conditions and dependent on them. It is from this primary tension that the religion of man is born. The inconsistency of man, therefore, proves the fact of the presence of the divine in human nature. Christians express tension on the basis that man is the son of God” (21). R. May considers the feeling of guilt experienced at the same time to be evidence of great opportunities and great destiny, and more highly developed individuals feel guilt more acutely than most people, using this for their further development. Showing the structure of moral archetypes, he considers these to be manifestations of "innate morality", moral patterns that we inherit when we are born human. Universal human morality is transmitted from century to century in the collective unconscious of man. Specific forms of morality depend on the culture in which they develop, but their basis is universal. “The greatest geniuses of virtue are Jesus, St. Francis and many others are also great in that they penetrated through the depths of their own subconscious into the collective unconscious of humanity and discovered universal archetypes there. Their expression of these archetypes became exemplary for world morality” (21). May, considering the moral problems of man very complex, emphasizes that “the only adequate structure of morality is based on the primary meaning of life. Each person by all his actions indirectly expresses a certain structure based on his belief in the primary meaning, even if he never tried to understand it ... The primary structure is the nature of God. Divine laws underlie life from the moment of creation to the very end. And human life must be brought into line with these laws. This is the form that the primary and universal channel of expression of basic human instincts takes" (21). That is why the moral commandments of Christ are eternal truth. We recognize these God's laws as his will, but we do not live in accordance with them - this reflects the sense of contradiction in man.
A person understands that he should not be an egoist, he should love himself, but he does not do this. Man is the Son of God, and this true image of man is his essential nature. Therefore, the command "Love your enemy" evokes a response in a person, it is not alien to him, but ... He lives with this formula very imperfectly in this imperfect world. Such is the contradiction between what a man is and what he should be, between his Divine foundation and selfishness. God's will here speaks to a person from the very foundation of his personality, sounding like the voice of conscience - Socrates called it the "inner voice", which indicated which way to go. R. May defined the answer to the problem of morality as follows: instinctive self-expression through the universal structure, which is God (21). “For whoever wants to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his life for the sake of Me and the Gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). Then a person realizes his connection with the primary structure, the contradiction is partially smoothed out. Now he is free to move forward and courageously express his true motives. Love God and do what you will - this is indeed true, but the truth is that to love God is to keep his laws.
"Grace" is a theological term, but in the psychotherapeutic dictionary there is a synonym for it - "enlightenment". The neurotic, suffering from his own egocentrism, is now eager to surrender, he is ready to give up everything, even life. The person yields, he has ceased to think that he deserves help. A sense of one's own futility and insignificance in the face of the universe and God's providence, a readiness for humility is achieved. A person is freed from the burden of pride, feels his insignificance, but at the same time, as a participant in God's plan, he feels his own significance more strongly. Having lost his life, a man saves it. He reaches enlightenment. This experience of enlightenment and grace brings a unique, unparalleled sense of freedom to the individual. Man is no longer in conflict with himself, he is free to make the right choice.
Spiritual psychology. E. Krishnamacharya. This is a book that can be recommended as a guide to students of practical occultism in the 21st century. It is in itself the key that unlocks the aspirant's latent psychological faculties. It gives many practical explanations for understanding this very abstract subject - psychology. The study of this book will enable the reader to realize that the training of the mind is main aspect on the path of yoga.
Read Spiritual Psychology book online
We are happy to release this amazing book of Master again, and it is a blessing for us. This is a book that can be recommended as a guide to students of practical occultism in the 21st century. It is in itself the key that unlocks the aspirant's latent psychological faculties. It gives many practical explanations for understanding this very abstract subject - psychology. The study of this book will enable the reader to realize that the training of the mind is the main aspect on the path of yoga. This book, though small in size, gives all the connections that exist between yoga, astrology and the teachings of the scriptures. The practical instructions given in it are simple and clear to aspirants. The meditations given at the end of the book are translations of the Vedic mantras. Those who practiced them at the prescribed times attained the promised result.
May Master bless Brother B.V.S. Shastri who printed this in a fairly short time, Devi Prasad who did the cover design to perfection, and all the other brothers who helped us in this effort.
E. Anantakrishna
Foreword
The mind has two faces. One of them is addressed to the body and its needs. This mind includes ambitions, desires, emotions, instincts and reflexes. The second person is turned to himself, to the true Self, often called the Spirit. Between these two faces is the essence of the mind. It is the gate between the known man and the unknown man. Psychology deals with that face of the mind, which through the senses is turned to the body and the external, objective world. However, no matter how much a person knows about this mind and its object - the objective world, he cannot achieve dominance over his mind. A process is required which will reverse the mechanism of the mind, and this process is the eightfold path of yoga. But before following this process, the objective mind must accept the primacy of the Spirit and stop its wandering in search of the good in the world of objects. The knowledge of some facts will force him to do this, and this book is precisely intended to give the mind this required knowledge.
They were put into book form thanks to my spiritual companion, Albert Sassi, who came to Visakhapatnam from Spontin in 1970. He received the typewritten manuscript of this book, returned to Spontin, and left his physical form a few days later. Therefore, the book waited for publication until it was published in separate issues in the monthly magazine "My Light". Now its reprinting was undertaken by active employees from the Institute of Planetary Synthesis in Geneva, who in a short time prepared a layout ready for printing. I thank our brother Rudolf Schneider for his interest, and the younger souls from the institute for all the effort in inputting the text and preparing the final version.
Dr. E. Krishnamacharya,
SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Thorough knowledge of intricacies human psychology inevitably required by the student of practical occultism. A person is a well-planned volume of subtle forces that are always in action. They exist hidden, like delicate folds of petals in the bud of a flower. The future colors and fragrance of its heyday exist in the bud stage potentially. Improper handling of the bud can ruin the future flower. Whenever a person makes an attempt to do something with subtle forces, he sets off a series of chain reactions that operate both subjectively and objectively.
The human mechanism includes structural and functional bodies. The structural body is only a conductor and instrument of the inner man. The functional body determines the qualities and forms the vital, mental and buddhic planes of a person. It is essential to the practice of occultism to have a clear knowledge of the anatomy of both the physical body and the subtle vehicles. Let us first try to acquire the concept of a physical conductor.
What is familiar to us as a physical body is not a body at all in the scientific sense of the word, but only the result of the balance of many acting forces. The physical body is only an appearance to the mind. It is forced to exist by a set of chain chemical reactions. Every second there are reversible reactions between two states of matter - organic and inorganic. The process of fertilization and growth of an embryo into a mature human body involves the activities of the inorganic and organic kingdoms. Air, food and water enter the form of organic matter. Metabolism maintains an even flow, and this uniformity is understood as health and longevity. If it is not disturbed from the outside, then it goes easily and conveniently in a natural way. Therefore, the first duty of a yogi is to ensure that this balance is not disturbed either by himself or by the environment.
To maintain this balance in the physical tissues of a person, there must be an effective mechanism. It is called the vital body (prana sharira). Prana exists in space and is inherited by atoms in the process of their formation. Organic cells absorb it from space in many forms, and its widely known form is what we call sunlight. At a coarser level (gaseous), we understand it as oxygen, and at an even coarser (liquid) level, as water. At the grossest level of life that can exist on planet Earth, we understand it as a line of demarcation between the food taken in and the tissues that receive it. This layer facilitates the assimilation process and is called anna. Prana penetrates the entire physical shell to its smallest subdivisions, existing as an intangible substance.
vital body human being consists of three types of simple (non-material and bearing qualities) substance: pulsating, radiating and besieging. Their functions are pulsation, radiation and materialization. Pulsation creates centripetal and centrifugal pulsations (pranas), and makes possible pulsating equilibrium (samana). This balance maintains the shape of the physical body in accordance with the image of the mental plane and the higher planes. In the science of yoga, this double pulsation is called prana-apana. Eastern psychology calls it vata. The fact that the universe is pulsating is one of the principles of the science of the ancients. This property of pulsation in the form of a dual process of prana and apana is also inherited by the living beings of our Earth.
Radiation exhibits heat-light and electromagnetic principles on a pulsating basis. This radiation causes the saturation of the mental body with life, as well as the revival of the other four pulsations (pranas) * and their removal from the pulsating equilibrium. This forms a whirlpool of combustion in a person. It's called pitta. After these two stages, the third stage takes place - materialization. This is the phenomenon of a biochemical chain reaction that follows in the physical projection of a pattern body that already existed on the mental plane. (The physical body comes out of the mental and goes into it, which will be explained elsewhere). This process of materialization forms the third whirlpool, which is the reservoir for the formation of tangible matter. It is called shleshma (stickiness or mucus). These three vital non-material reservoirs correspond at the anthropomorphic level to the Puranic symbols of Vishnu, Rudra and Brahma. The terms of the Puranas designate the same reservoirs in space on the planetary, solar and cosmic planes.
* The five pulsations (pranas) are the inducing, retracting, contracting, expanding and balancing forces. In Sanskrit they are called respectively prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana.
Centrifugal and centripetal pulsations are maintained in balance. They are governed by combustion on the one hand and materialization on the other, and at the same time they are caused by the process of pulsation. This whole process forms an equilateral triangle of forces acting in a cyclic order. These forces first manifest on the mental plane. As they materialize, that is, descend into the astral, etheric and physical planes, expansion and cohesion appear. This is the relationship between the three creative reservoirs and the five functional manifestations that act in a person from the level of the state of the subject to the state of the object. Three creative expressions healthy person exist in perfect relationship and represent the triangle of tantric symbolism. The quaternary manifestation of the combustion reservoir is a perfect square, in the center of which is the point of intersection of the forces moving along the diagonals of the square. The five pulsations are represented by the four corners of the square and its center. These five points are represented by the emblem of the five-pointed star, which the sons of the Earth (the Pandavas in the Mahabharata) inherited from the Pitris (reproductive intelligences). The above symbolic representation of the origin of man belongs to the Vedic tradition and forms the basis of the functional anatomy of the ancient science of medicine, the details of which can be better understood by a careful study of the arrangement of the altars in the ritual hall.
From the Editor
More than a hundred years ago, St. Theophan the Recluse rightly pointed out that the state of contemporary science does not allow him to say: "science requires", but that one can only say that "so-and-so looks at it this way." In his notes on the failure of science, dated 1869, he writes: “If the sciences really ascended to their beginnings, then their judgment would be valuable; then it would be the same as the voice of God, for, since every science embraces what - or a part of being, and part of being is a creation of God and in its laws reveals the determination of the will of God, then science, having ascended to its beginnings and to the determination of the laws that operate in a certain circle of being, would indicate to us precise definitions the will of God, to obey which is an urgent law for every rational creature. Then each science would be, as it were, one of the books of Holy Scripture, containing Divine Revelation, and all sciences in their entirety would be the Bible, the Revelation of God in the nature of things; then we would have two Bibles, one written, and the other not written, but contained in the being of things. In theory, it is really so that science could require obedience and humility, but in reality, as it is now, it is not worth it. Whether it will ever be worth it is unknown, but now it is wrong to refer to it."
Today, after J. G. Bennett wrote The Dramatic Universe and Spiritual Psychology, we can safely say that now, at last, such a science exists. Yes, unfortunately, so far it is not in the public domain, or at least the property of the advanced part of the so-called Western science, because Bennett - a brilliant thinker and mystic - was far ahead of his time. We already wrote about this in the introduction to his book "The Witness", but now, after getting acquainted with her fourth work, you yourself will be able to evaluate what was said.
If the four volumes of the "Dramatic Universe" are indeed a comprehensive science that has come to the realization of its True Beginnings and has found them, then "Spiritual Psychology" is a part of this science dedicated to Man and his total nature. Consciously written in the language accepted by the scientific thought of the 20th century, it clearly and correctly describes the complex structure of the material and spiritual nature of man and the fundamental concepts of body, soul and spirit so hopelessly entangled in religious and mystical literature. Together with The Dramatic Universe, it not only shows how, in principle, the most important task of coordinating science and religion can be solved, but also makes this synthesis practically possible for an individual. This is why, with good reason, Bennett writes that his spiritual psychology is the psychology of human perfection or spiritual transformation, involving providential solutions to personal, social, and cosmic problems. This fundamentally distinguishes it from "scientific" psychology, which ignores the spiritual side of human nature and, as a result, is only a worldly psychology, or psychology of adaptation.
Translation editor
A.L. Dolgopolsky
Moscow January 11, 2000
Chapter 1
Spiritual psychology
If you are the reader for whom I wrote this book, then you are looking for the answer to the question: "What is the meaning and purpose of my life, and how can I achieve it?". I will not naively claim that my book will provide an answer that will be acceptable to each of you. I can only tell what I myself think is true. So, from my point of view, our role is to maintain an energetic balance in solar system, as well as in contributing to its spiritual evolution. As far as one can tell, we exist to serve Nature, not to use Her. By consciously serving the purpose of our existence, we become "true" beings. And, on the contrary, refusing to fulfill our duty, we remain some kind of "ghosts" living in a world of dreams. If you agree with this point of view, then our first goal should be to prepare for the life that is intended for us by Great Nature.
In the past, man was lured or forced to take this path by the hope of heavenly life and the fear of eternal punishment, yet the reasons for both remained hidden. So, when promises and threats lost their power, people stopped seeing the need for diligence or sacrifice, of course, if it is not about their own well-being or the well-being of their closest and beloved people. For many centuries, practically all of humanity was quite "contented with the way of life to which God saw fit to call us." Now everything is different. Back in the eighteenth century, man changed the phrase "God is with us, and there is nothing to worry about the world" to "all Mankind is with us, and there is nothing to worry about heaven." Seventy years ago, Swinburne wrote his Hymn to Man, the refrain of which was the words: "Glory in the Highest to Man, Lord of all." We have lost faith in God and will soon lose faith in man.
At the same time, a new factor of calm appeared: large social and other organizations. In its extreme form, this circumstance manifests itself in the socialist states. However, even among the rest of the world, few doubt that governments, churches, corporations, and well-organized social societies can guarantee stability, at least "for the time being." Science, economics, computers and the means of government have long taken over the role of Jupiter with its lightning and thunder. It is these strange gods that most people tend to look upon as their only support, and any attack on them immediately sends the public into awe. For thousands of years, humanity has been looking for a solution to its own problems in the creation of various kinds of organizations. A person is even considered to be a kind of elementary unit, whose existence depends entirely on the structure of society. Today, this point of view is zealously defended by Behaviorists, who consider a person to be nothing more than a product of the culture in which he is brought up. In their opinion, at the time of his birth, a person is a kind of formless, plastic creature, which is then shaped by the surrounding society. It should be noted that although this view is relatively recent, it is rooted in an ancient belief in the goodness of social order. Until the seventeenth century, the Church and the State, and, to a lesser extent, the guilds of merchants and craftsmen, were considered to be the only important organizations. Moreover, this applied not only to the Christian world, but also to the vast territories of Asia and Africa, where Islam was strengthened. In addition, in particular, such views were characteristic of China, where the search for an ideal form of government was the task of both philosophers and rulers.
It is noteworthy that the sacredness of the individual and human rights were taken for granted, however, only within the established social order. The Old and New Testaments, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita and Confucius, in their Analects, speak of the Divine origin of Organizations and require respect for them. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, many different man-made organizations have emerged. One variety was the joint-stock companies, the spread and growth of which led to the emergence of today's financial empires. The other group is made up of international organizations, starting with the International Postal Union, formed in 1856, up to the United Nations and its derivatives.
Very few people question the need for organizations for the proper functioning of human society, yet everyone more people doubts that they can contribute to well-being. In addition, the growing distrust of organizations is complemented by fear of their power. Moreover, if earlier people were mainly afraid of their militaristic, political and economic levers of pressure, today the main fears are caused by the direct impact of organizations on inner world person. Examples include Skinner's work, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (What stands behind freedom and dignity), and Power and Innocence (Power and innocence). Skinner and many other psychologists and sociologists, no matter how conflicting their views, unanimously point to the emergence of a new frightening factor: the use of force to deprive a person of inner freedom. Perhaps the position of Behaviorism has been significantly shaken last years, but he still rings all the bells about the danger that many today tend to consider more serious than the obvious threat of war, pollution environment, the depletion of natural resources, or even the possibility of general famine.
The point of view of behaviorism is usually opposed to the human development potential, which, supposedly, should provide an unlimited growth of opportunities, both for an individual human person and for all of humanity as a whole. Such hopes, in particular, are associated with the search for new forms of psychological and religious experience. Millions of people are experimenting with all sorts of Pentecostal religions and Eastern spiritual trends. Millions also use narcotic and other hallucinogenic substances. None of these experiments yielded convincing results. Various ideas, methods, teachers and writers reached the peak of their popularity, sometimes held on for several years and went into oblivion. Interesting feature of all these movements is that they tend to achieve a certain stability when a central core of committed followers is formed and a growing stream of people seeking spiritual satisfaction is established. Their number is constantly increasing, creating the illusion of growth, but sooner or later, these people leave the movement.
Today society is full of all sorts of contradictions and conflicts. Nevertheless, among the diversity of views, three main directions can be distinguished. Some people are afraid and in every possible way resist changes, expecting from progress only an increase in what has already been achieved and the greatest possible stability in this sense. Others are looking forward to changes, but see them only in external achievements. Their hopes are connected with the new world created by the joint efforts of science and technology, as well as thanks to the capabilities of various organizations. Such views are held by many, from behaviorists to science fiction enthusiasts. Most of them would love to sing the Hymn to Man with Swinburne. Adherents of the third point of view base their reasoning on the potential of man. At the same time, there are a lot of disagreements and conflicting interpretations among the members of this group, and all we can say is that their basis is the search for solutions to emerging problems in the person himself, and not in the organizations he created. There are two main currents within this group. One of them can be called transformism. The term was first proposed by Ouspensky in 1938 to describe his own teaching. This book is almost entirely devoted to transformism, and here I will give only its main thesis: man, as we know him, is an imperfect being with unlimited potential for development and transformation. The fate of a person is completely determined by his ability to self-improvement. As for the second current, it is characterized by a more negative idea of a person. He is nothing that takes shape through the ordinary course of life. At present, this current is represented by Existentialism. According to him, there are only "conditions of human life", which are made up of what happens to us, and what we come into this world with does not matter. In this regard, for an existentialist, the word "essence" does not matter. There is no human nature, no human instincts: man is what he has created from himself. Sartre, the apostle of existentialism, wrote: "A man, first of all, exists, finds himself, wanders around the world and only then becomes himself ... at first, he is nobody. And he will be nothing for a long time until he becomes what he makes of himself ". Such a position quite often leads to pessimism, which happened in the case of Sartre and many people who shared his views. This pessimism is very characteristic of the present time, although relatively recently it was not shared by people who enthusiastically looked at the achievements of a person, ignoring the emptiness of his inner world.
Until the sixties of our century, optimism about the future prevailed in society. human race. The adherents of each of the three main points of view on the development of mankind were fully convinced that their way of life would be the only one that would succeed and finally prevail. However, over the past few years there have been very dramatic changes. Only professional optimists today can claim that they clearly see the further course of events. Neither the political, nor the economic, nor even the financial structure of the modern world inspires peace. Previously, there was always some kind of enemy at hand, on whom everything could be blamed. Today, we see general impotence and concern about the future. No one is completely sure of the end of wars and revolutions. Contrary to expectations, the social reform was not followed by social prosperity. Social engineering has grown out of the blue, like a soap bubble, and its collapse has become one of the most picturesque events of the last decade. Behavioral science, the study of human communities, programmed learning, computerized welfare, social mediation - all these promising lines of development have turned out to be essentially dead ends. The younger generation is rushing from drugs to political protest, from politics to popular music, and from it to spiritual search. Nothing works, and no one knows why. It is strange that this is happening in an age that prides itself on its pragmatic realism, and when advances in science and technology seem to confirm the ability of a person to achieve whatever he wants.
Of course, this problem is much deeper and more serious than is commonly believed. Over the past thousand years, the external image of human existence has changed beyond recognition, while its inner nature has remained just as mysterious and incomprehensible. While we in the West were trying to gain power over the material world, the inhabitants of the East were diligently penetrating into the depths of the human being. As a result, they know much more about man and his nature than we do, and in this sense we may well be called a "backward part of the world." We try to catch up by borrowing the psychological methods of the East, just as they borrow technological developments from us. In doing so, we make the gravest mistake of trying to use techniques, or "know-how" of which we have no idea. We even embark on a kind of human engineering without understanding man at all.
Somehow, we always overlook much of the human spectrum. Man is often compared to an iceberg, only one-eighth of which is visible above the water. Even those who believe in the perfection of man, as a rule, take a naive superficial position in this sense. It should be noted in this connection that the "invisible man" is not only a source of enormous potential, but also constantly and completely unpredictably affects the "visible man". Thus, if we use the word "spiritual" to mean that part of human nature that is inaccessible to ordinary observation and analysis, then by "Spiritual Psychology" we must understand the study of man as a whole, including potential man and actual man. From this point of view, it can be said that the engineering of mankind in the West failed because it ignored the spiritual side of man.
However, all this does not explain the failure of numerous "spiritual" movements of our time. In this book, I have tried to answer this question, as well as to propose a path that meets the needs of our time. The book is based on the results of more than fifty years of research and experimentation, which I began to carry out since I first felt that I could exist outside of my own body. This happened when I almost died on the Western Front on March 21, 1918. At that moment, I understood once and for all that there is something in a person other than the mind and body, something not subject to the limitations of space and time. Since then, I have followed this trail through many countries, and in my search I have been helped by a lot of teachers and wise people. I must say, I was a very lucky person, in terms of spiritual environment. In addition, I have learned from my own experience that the spiritual world is not the privilege of any one religion or teaching. Even among such gloomy sectarians as Druzes, Yezidis and Al-i-Hakk, I met highly spiritual people. The same applies to many recent movements such as Subud. Finally, the most significant influence on my life was George Gurdjieff, and the lion's share of spiritual psychology, which will be discussed in this book, was based on his teachings.
From my point of view, it is important from the very beginning to distinguish between psychic experiences and spiritual development. Our state of consciousness usually fluctuates between sleep and wakefulness. Only very rarely do we experience moments, or even periods, of a special, expanded state of consciousness, when we perceive ourselves and the whole world in a completely unusual perspective. These rare conditions tend to leave a lasting impression on a person and give hope to break through the tight cocoon of our daily lives. Characteristically, such conditions are usually unpredictable and are accompanied by severe stress and illness. In addition, they can be caused by drugs and other artificial means, as well as the use of certain practices such as fasting, meditation, and long-term sleep deprivation. Again, it should be noted that many people can participate in the experience of such a state at the same time, of course, if their attention is focused on the "other world", as, for example, at revival meetings. All these changes in consciousness can be attributed to various reactions of the nervous system and changes chemical composition blood. By themselves, they have no spiritual significance. However, this does not mean that such states of consciousness cannot arise due to exclusively spiritual circumstances. They can be compared with the symptoms that can be caused by a wide variety of diseases. At the same time, the truly spiritual development of a person occurs outside of his consciousness. It is "super-mental," in the words of the great Indian national liberationist and yogi, Sri Orobindo Ghosh. Cosmic consciousness has occupied the minds of Western thinkers ever since Bouquet published his immortal, albeit naive, work. "Understanding God" is another enticing phrase that should not be thrown to the wind. Of course, there are conditions that testify to spiritual progress, however, they are by no means the goal of our efforts. We are making a serious mistake by equating the concepts of "state" and "stage", in Sufi terminology - hal and torment. Thus, we can enter into the highest states of consciousness and yet remain the same as we were before. The fact that various states of consciousness were mistaken for the transformation of being had serious consequences. For example, it is widely believed that, since higher states of consciousness are precisely the goal of our search, the significance of a movement should be judged precisely by the possibility of awakening these states in its followers. Another consequence has been the suggestion that the goal of achieving higher states of consciousness justifies any means, including the use of psychedelic drugs. All these ideas testify to our complete ignorance in the realm of spiritual life. Spirituality is primarily associated with the concepts of will and being. It is by no means limited to opening the "Doors of Perception" as Aldous Huxley and many others have suggested. Huxley's life was very tragic. We first met him in 1933 when he regularly attended Ouspensky's talks in London. The last time I saw Huxley was shortly before his death, when he lost his wife, his eyesight, his home, his library, and, worst of all, his hope of understanding the meaning of life. Aldous has come a long way in understanding the problem of man. By publishing his book Brave New World (New World), he first stated that "experience", in itself, can lead to a dead end. In Island, he showed that life has more to offer than just fleeting visions of the world of True Philosophy. However, Huxley failed to make the sacrifice he had to make in order to become a citizen of this world. This is the main difficulty of intellectually gifted people. It is very difficult for them to take the concept of "supermental" literally. They will appeal to the most complex doctrines, such as Vedantic monism, as in the case of Huxley, but they will not give up the belief that the truth is more accessible to an intellectually highly gifted person than to a person of a simple mind. It is extremely difficult for an intellectual to comprehend the deep meaning of Christ's statement: "... I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden this from the wise and prudent, and revealed it to babies." The "baby" is able to discern "being", while the intelligent is attracted to knowledge!
The purpose of the real search of man is a stable, substantial being. We are just ghostly, disembodied spirits that can become real beings. Throughout the history of mankind, only a very few people have had sufficient firmness in striving to achieve a goal, as well as sufficient sensitivity to solve this problem. Such people can rightly be called spiritual giants. However, people whose spiritual potential is not so high can also become real beings. To do this, they must feel a strong need, as well as independently or with outside help, find a way to achieve their goal.
So far, all our reasoning has practically not deviated from the orthodox channel. All religions and all spiritual movements claim that a person can be transformed, and that his transformation depends on his own belief and preferences. This usually ends the conversation. The arguments cited earlier in favor of the necessity and possibility of transformation are completely unacceptable today. The Hindu and Buddhist doctrines of liberation from the horror of existence sound very unconvincing to those people who cling to existence because they cannot imagine anything beyond it. At the same time, the Christian-Muslim doctrine of resurrection followed by eternal bliss or eternal suffering also lost its credibility. So, while we laugh at Soviet propaganda that assures peasants that astronauts did not find God by ascending to heaven, our thinking is almost entirely determined by the concepts of time and space. We believe that nirvana, heaven, and in general any kind of real existence must be "somewhere". At the same time, false hopes should not be placed on pseudoscience, which, referring to the interconversion of matter and energy, considers "spiritual energy" as the only substratum of existence. However, we can still rely on modern science. Today, it allows us to abandon the old ideas about space and time as a receptacle, exclusively "within" which everything that exists must exist.
The idea that we have to go beyond space and time in order to understand anything, including the physical world, came to me over fifty years ago. Shortly thereafter I met Gurdjieff for the first time in Constantinople. By this time, I was already ready to understand that a drowsy existence in space and time is just a reflection of what our being can transform into. Thus, it was not difficult for me to move from mathematical physics to Gurdjieff's cosmology. During our first conversation with him, in the palace of Prince Sabaheddin at Kuru Heshme on the banks of the Bosphorus, I shared with him my conclusion that eternity is no less real than space and time. His phrase completely changed the course of my life: "What's the use of knowing what you can't be? Surely there are higher dimensions, but it doesn't matter to us until we can live in them." Naturally, I asked him what needed to be done for this. His answer revealed to me the idea of transformation of being. I clearly understood that although I can expand my knowledge of the world indefinitely, I will remain the same person if I do not change myself. I knew myself well enough, and the idea of the uselessness of "knowledge without being" did not seem strange to me.
This was the beginning of my long search for reality. I traveled from country to country, studied with different teachers. The search led me to various movements, groups and communities, each of which taught me something. And yet, through all my wanderings, I was guided by Gurdjieff's "system" or teaching. It was he who gave me the main part of what I consider important today for understanding the "meaning of our life."
Gurdjieff himself began his search at the age of eleven and traveled extensively in Africa, Europe and Asia. He discovered schools of wisdom in Turkestan and Tibet, and in some cases he had to spend quite a long time in such schools in order to assimilate the teachings. I have tried to study Gurdjieff's search from the very beginning and I am sure that he brought to the West everything necessary for the creation of a new world.
For twenty years I studied with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and then for another twenty years I experimented with large and small groups at Coombe Springs, near London. One of these experiments formed the basis of this book. Coombe Springs was my home from 1944 to 1966. However, in 1948 and 1949 I spent all my free time with Gurdjieff in Paris and New York. At the same time, he appointed me "representative in England" and entrusted me with many different missions. Nevertheless, although I owe the main part of my own spiritual psychology to Gurdjieff, in my opinion, each person should develop his own idea of "Man, the World and God." Such a representation, like a mosaic, is made up of fragments that come from different sources, are combined in our search and are held together by our own spiritual experience. Even if we fail to create our own unique picture of the world, the picture that we eventually accept must become our own, passed through our personal experience and verified by our life.
Living a spiritual life is much more difficult than a material life, because it takes place in a realm nine-tenths of which is outside our ordinary experience. That is why spiritual people need any available help so much. At the same time, in our time, it is extremely difficult to find a spiritual leader who would understand the needs modern man and his difficult situation.
Thus, in describing his life, St. Teresa, the Carmelite reformer and great mystic, repeatedly says that "these leaders, who know nothing about the spiritual life, waste their soul and body in resisting progress." In addition, she argues that "those who walk the path of prayer need guidance more than others, and the higher their spirituality, the more acute this need."
These words of one of the most spiritual saints have often led me to wonder where spiritual guidance should be sought today. Certainly there have been great mentors, such as St. John of the Cross, who have left behind inspired precepts for those living the spiritual life. However, their books are intended for monks and hermits, whose path is very different from that of the ordinary inhabitants of the world. At the same time, there are always quite a few people whose lives are largely determined by spiritual influences. It is they, as St. Teresa said, who, more than anyone else, need spiritual guidance. Today, a large amount of various kinds of ritual literature is published, but ritualism does not necessarily imply spirituality. In addition, many books have been written on the psychology of religious experience; and yet very few of them speak of the problems facing people who, by their very nature, seek to find the Reality behind the outer forms. Such people, even in their ordinary lives, are not satisfied with mere successful actions: they need to know for sure that their activities are determined by values, the meaning of which does not change depending on success or failure.
These are the people I call "spiritual." They may belong to one religion or another or try to find what they are looking for without its help. In general, one should not put an equal sign between spirituality and religiosity. So, a person who seeks in art that quality that is not in the world around him is a spiritual person, even if he denies religion. At the same time, a religious person who tries his best to do what he has been taught may differ significantly in better side from others, but at the same time not to be a spiritual person, in the full sense of the word.
Before we go any further, it would be useful to say a few words about the concept of "Spirituality". Ultimately, it is not possible to determine what it is, because, by its very nature, spirituality cannot be reduced to knowledge or any verbal formulation. It would be best to say that spirit is the essential quality of everything that exists. In a certain sense, spirituality can be called the "ideal" behind actualization. However, the term "essential" is more appropriate in terms of the opposite of "existential", that is, a knowable and measurable element of our experience. The same can be said in other words, making a distinction between spirit and matter. We make many mistakes when talking about matter, because we are accustomed to considering it the building material from which "everything in this world is built. However, we should not deceive ourselves by believing that we "know" matter, although we know a lot" matter". A hundred years ago, people understood matter in a completely different way than we understand it today. In the nineteenth century, matter meant combinations of various chemical elements, and scientists believed that they knew almost everything about this. Today, most people understand matter energy, although for scientists, especially physicists, the question of matter is a great mystery.The very meaning of the words "matter" and "energy" has changed greatly over the past thirty to forty years.
Thus, we can console ourselves with the fact that the concept of "matter" is not much easier to define than "spirit". In the recent past, physicists came to the conclusion that materiality is relative, and it is likely that many properties that were previously considered "spiritual", such as sensation, thought, and even consciousness, are just various forms or the degree of aggregation of matter.
One might get the impression that I have attributed almost all our experience to the material world, leaving absolutely no room for the spirit. This is far from true. The non-material world is in no way inferior in the richness of its content to the material world. It represents the realm of quality and value. Values have their own distinctive features. Thus, beauty differs from kindness, elegance from economy, and truth from correctness. Similarly, each value is different from the others. Thus, there is an infinite number of combinations of primary and derived values, which, as a whole, form what I call the "Sphere of Values".
The content of the Sphere of Values is "spirit", and thus it is the totality of all forms of value, that is, of all possible qualities.
In my opinion, spirituality is relative to the same extent as materiality is relative. The singing of birds in spring, the fleeting beauty of an autumn sunset, a merciful act, a painting in which we recognize a genuine work of art, any daily work done in good faith, "the flutter of the soul at the very gates of Paradise" - all this carries certain spiritual qualities. Of course, all these qualities differ from each other, including the degree of spirituality.
It may be objected, however, that all the phenomena I have enumerated are mere properties of matter. From this point of view, both the picture of the great artist and the ugly scrawl are just different combinations of paint and canvas. Differences are revealed only in our attitude towards them, and thoughts and feelings, as has already been said, seem to be simply special states of matter. So everything comes down to materialism in the end.
Such an impression is formed if we think about these things exclusively from the standpoint of "knowledge". However, the world did not converge on knowledge. We cannot "know" which of the pictures is a genuine work of art: we can "judge" its quality by something we have in us that is different from knowledge. We know about matter, but we can only judge about spiritual qualities.
If this isn't quite obvious yet, let's at least agree that we discern qualities by seeing them. Beyond that, I ask you to accept at least the idea of an independent reality of qualities. They are real, even if they are not tied to specific material forms. For example, "good" as a quality is real and would be real even if there were not a single good man. Of course, you can consider this a complete absurdity, I only ask you to agree that the reality of spiritual qualities is different from the reality of matter. In addition, I would like to draw your attention to the relativity of spiritual qualities, in the sense that one can distinguish between "higher" and "lower" spiritual qualities.
It only remains for us to point out one more circumstance before we can continue our reasoning. All spiritual qualities form a world or separate worlds, which we will call simply "spirit."
You may want to ask me what St. Teresa and "spiritual life" has to do with it. You would easily understand this if you studied her biography and other books. By spiritual life, she means striving for the perfection of that quality which transforms duty into "inner work." However, this search is not mandatory. We may well carry out our duties without the extra effort that is required if we are to do more than just follow instructions and conform to the usual requirements. I mean something else. Suppose you are talking to a friend about spirituality and he replies, "I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm trying to be a good father and a good citizen. I go to church because I think it's right, and I go to the extent as it is reasonable for modern man. Besides, I follow the commandments. If I tried to do anything else, I would have to abandon my obvious duties, on the fulfillment of which, today, I spend all my time and energy. " In this case, you would not be able to tell your friend that he is wrong and that there are more important goals. It would be unfair, and perhaps even wrong for him. At the same time, for you personally, things may be different. You can very keenly feel your inner problems, which he does not even suspect. These problems, if, of course, we are talking about real problems, belong to the spiritual realm. They were the ones that worried St. Teresa until she finally found a way to solve them.
The fact is that people who are trying to find a solution to these "quality for the sake of quality" problems are in dire need of guidance. It is not enough for them to know "what" they should do. They are trying to find out the answer to the question "how" they should do it. In this regard, conventional psychology is not suitable for them. However, I will return to this topic later. In other words, I want to say that by "spiritual psychology" I mean the study of man from the point of view of the "reality" of the spirit and spiritual life. When studying people who are concerned about spiritual matters, one might think that there is something wrong with them and that they need "treatment". The study of such people from the position of religion can be called "pastoral psychology." Later, you will understand why I consider pastoral and spiritual psychology to be two different approaches to the problems of humanity. Eric Fromm, whom I met in Mexico City fifteen years ago, drew my attention to the difference between the disease of the soul and the disease of the world. One of them is connected with the hope for the future of the individual, and the other with the hope of correcting the shortcomings of the world. There is a psychology of adaptation and a psychology of perfection. Genuine spiritual psychology involves the providential solution of personal, social, and cosmic problems.
The need for spiritual psychology arose at a time when many researchers of the human psyche moved from the study of man to the study of animal behavior as the best way get to know the person. Thus, ethology, one of the youngest scientific disciplines, has completely changed our understanding of animal life in a decade. We can no longer say that the concepts of "cruelty", "animal" and "animal instincts" distinguish animals from humans. The amazing studies of people like Farley Mowat and Murick have shown that the life of a pack of wolves is, in a certain sense, much more orderly and "human" than the life of human communities. Tinbergen and Wolfgang Kohler showed how primate thinking differs from what was previously thought. Many ethologists, in particular Konrad Lorenz, have emphasized the animal origin of human aggressiveness and other characteristics of man and his communities. At the same time, rightly focusing on the animal components of human nature, ethologists ignored its spiritual aspect, which distinguishes us from animals. This, however, does not mean that we should repeat the words of Kant: "Man is the end point. We can ask why animals exist, but the question of the reason for the existence of man does not make sense" (Gurdjieff, in his lectures on Ethics, developed the completely opposite point vision, claiming that there is only one important question: "Why do I exist?".) If this question is really true, then the answer to it, of course, should be sought outside the person himself, namely, in the spiritual sphere. It is "outside" because it is unattainable for our sensations, as well as the usual methods of research and analysis. The paradox of man is that, having a spiritual nature, he does not know and cannot know it. Spiritual psychology is a description of a person that fully reflects his spiritual nature, and, at the same time, does not diminish the importance of his animal nature. It studies man as a whole, partly knowable and partly unknowable through the usual processes of observation and analysis.
Perhaps you would like to ask me if I consider myself competent enough to write "spiritual psychology". God forbid! The fact is that it is unlikely that the reason for refusing to work on this book could be a lack of experience. On the contrary, I saw so much that I began to take my ignorance in this area for granted. I have dedicated almost my entire life to finding answers to various spiritual questions and have been interested in them for at least sixty years. It has been almost half a century since I started working on spiritual issues with groups of researchers, and I have not stopped this work to this day. During this time, I have met thousands of people who were actually doing a spiritual quest or thought they were doing it. Many of them told me about their problems. All this convinced me of one thing: the mystery of man remains a mystery. You can help another person by using your own experience or simply by doing good, but the secret remains a secret. Over the years, I have gradually come to a series of conclusions which, for the most part, are the results of studying Gurdjieff's system. I came to the conclusion that there is a very specific structure that unites the spiritual and material nature of man, without violating the relativity of matter and spirit. Matter can be in a coarser or finer state of aggregation. At the same time, its most gross forms include visible matter, and subtle ones - sensations, thoughts and consciousness. In addition, the relativity of spirit also implies a hierarchy of values. If the spiritual world were not divided into "levels", then there would be nothing to strive for; the success and failure of the spiritual life would be meaningless. As far as I can tell, this concept of double relativity has not been put forward before in this area, and it has greatly helped me in solving my own problems and helping others. In addition, I realized that if psychology does not consider "will" to be a reality that is completely different from the reality of matter and spirit, which cannot be spoken of in the same language, then such a psychology can lead very far from the real state of affairs. It was because I found spiritual support for myself in these ideas that I decided to try to write a "spiritual psychology".
Before moving on to the next topic, I would like to draw a clear line between psychology and theology. Theology is the study of the supernatural. All psychology, spiritual or non-spiritual, deals with natural phenomena. Spirit and matter are equally natural, that is, they are not God, although we can consider them creations of God. By supernatural action, I mean the direct intervention of God in Creation, and not a single created being is able to understand its essence. It differs from both "spiritual" and "material" action. A supernatural action can be performed in nature and due to the conditions of nature, but differs from natural processes in its mystery and inexplicability from the standpoint of the laws of nature and the qualities of the spirit. In this regard, if, in discussing spiritual psychology, we come across a supernatural action, I will try to clearly show that it does not fit into the framework of any psychology. The fact is that if a supernatural action comes directly from God, then only God knows what it is, and we can know about it only if God reveals it to us. In other words, everything related to the supernatural can only be known as a result of Revelation. Thus, since I make no claim to any Revelation, this book will deal exclusively with natural matters, except when I find it possible to refer to sources based on revelation.
If the structure of my spiritual psychology is borrowed almost entirely from Gurdjieff, then I have drawn a significant part of its content from other sources. Since 1924 I have attached great importance to the Buddhist psychology described in Pali Pitakas. I studied this work with Rhys Davies, who, along with her husband, opened up these ancient texts to the English-speaking world. The main text is the Samana Fala Suttana, a stunning account of the fruits of Shramana's life. When I first studied it in its original form, I was convinced that this text was an objective description of spiritual development through discipline and meditation. The four Janas, or higher states of consciousness, have become an integral part of my own understanding of the spiritual path. I also studied Sanskrit in order to get into the spirit of the Vedas and Upanishads, including the Bhagavad Gita. Many years later, I had the opportunity to communicate with the greatest yogi, Shivapuri Baba, who was one hundred and thirty-five years old when I first saw him. His three disciplines of body, mind and spirit are the essence of the practical psychology of the Upanishads, and I have used them to fill in some of the missing links in Gurdjieff's system.
However, I have learned much more from Islam than from Vedanta or Buddhism. I lived for many years in Muslim countries and met many Sufis or dervishes. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Sufism was the main source of Gurdjieff's teachings, and that he is very active today and can give the world much of what he needs. this moment necessary. I owe much of my knowledge of Sufism to an unorthodox Sufi, Hassan Susud, a descendant of the great Konevi, who was a companion of Jellaluddin Rumi. Hasan Susud first told me about the Khwajagan, an amazing Sufi school that existed in Central Asia from the eleventh to the sixteenth century AD. Its heir today is the most famous of all Sufi orders, the Naqshbandiyya, founded in the fourteenth century by Baha'eddin of Bukhara. Hassan himself adhered to the doctrine of Absolute Liberation, which made him more closely related to Buddhism than to the orthodox mystical Sufism of such teachers as Ibn al-Arabi and Jellaluddin Rumi. From Hassan I learned practical exercises, including breath control and fasting, which were superior to anything I had received in this regard from Gurdjieff.
In addition, I had the opportunity to communicate with Said Idries Shah, whose influence on the Western world as a writer and practical psychologist can already be clearly traced today. Shah is so famous for his own books that I can only emphasize the significance of his contribution to understanding the danger to the future of mankind, which is fraught with "human engineering".
From 1957 to 1961 I was involved in Subud. The name of this spiritual direction is taken from Sanskrit: Subud is an abbreviation for Susila Budhi Dharma, which means "good spiritual discipline." However, Subud, at its core, is a derivative of Sufism. Its founder, Bapak Mohammed Subuh, came to England in 1957, at the invitation of a small group of Gurdjieff's students. They became very interested in hearing about Bapak's teaching, which was very similar to Gurdjieff's system.
For all practical purposes, Subud offers one technique, latihan. It is a spiritual exercise in that it comes from and is directed by a force or influence that cannot be expressed in the language of matter. It is impossible to "know" as we know, at least theoretically, energy transformations.
The latihan has two parts: opening or contact and regular practice. Contact is always and in any case carried out by means of a simple act of "asking and accepting". Anyone who wishes to receive contact may receive it after a three-month trial period, unless there are certain contraindications such as mental impairment. The contact is passed on by the person who has already received it, and thus a transfer of influence takes place. The practice of the latihan does not require any guiding thoughts, desires or efforts. It is an act of will carried out by intention alone. The intention, in turn, is to obey the "Dharma", that is, objective truth.
In 1962, I came to the conclusion that the latihan was too limited in its effect to claim a complete lifestyle. I received confirmation of this conclusion of mine by observing those who practiced it with enthusiasm and conviction. As time went on, their field of vision narrowed considerably, along with an increase in affection. Thus, Subud turned into another cult or, at the most, into a Muslim sect. However, I was not interested in dogmatics, but in the method itself. How the latihan works successfully, albeit in a very specific way, by opening a channel that links the outer and inner parts of the self. This can take a maximum of one or two years. In fact, I think that six to ten months would be enough, after which the method ceases to give results and, in the end, begins to harm. I would recommend the latihan, especially to those who are overburdened with intellectual activity and closed off emotionally.
Another trend that I followed with great interest was Transcendental Meditation, brought to the West by the yogi Maharishi Mahesh. I first met him in 1959, but I was so engrossed in Subud then that I did not dare to practice this meditation. Many of my own students have begun to practice it, and I have seen clear benefits, especially for nervous, hyperactive, and impatient people. They became calm and were much better at their daily activities than before. In addition, the health benefits were also evident.
Eventually, I decided to take the initiation myself and practice Maharishi meditation as part of my own discipline. This meditation consists in the use of a mantra, which should be silently repeated in the chest, similar to how Russian Orthodox monks say a prayer of the heart. The condition of initiation is a promise not to divulge the mantra. It should be noted that the method of Transcendental Meditation is much more gentle and controlled than Subud. It is well known throughout the world, and its value as a natural and effective way elimination of psychological tensions, as well as the awakening of a link with the reality of the spiritual world, is recognized even by those whose religion should have caused skepticism regarding this method. In addition, one of the attractive features of Transcendental Meditation is that it can be practiced alone or in groups and does not require much preparation. For all these reasons, the method quickly spread.
At the same time, transcendental meditation also seems to be a very limited line of work, as it does not touch all parts of human nature. In particular, I don't see any signs of strengthening will and growing understanding among those who practice it. However, this type of meditation is of considerable value in today's world. We're too organized...
Imagine that you are an eternal Spiritual Being who has decided to experience the Game in human form on the planet of Free Choice. Your entire life was planned by YOU even before you were conceived. You yourself have chosen who, where and when to be born. You decide which lessons you want to learn. You have entered into “contracts” with all other souls in advance, which should play all the important roles in this incarnation of yours. But when you came to Earth, you forgot all this - these are the rules of the Game... And now imagine a system of psychotherapy built on these principles. This is the spiritual psychology of Steve Rother - a person who communicates with a group of spiritual beings "on the other side of the Veil." Our evolution is accelerating, he argues, and it is time to learn about our Life Lessons while we are still living in this world. The time has come to become conscious Creators of reality... This book is not only for psychologists and not only for "spiritual" people. It will help EVERYONE find their place in the universe.
Reader Comments
Elena/ 11/12/2018 Timothy @ Anyone who calls to go to serve in the army should not give any advice at all.
ergey/ 2.09.2018 Timosha, keep your fears to yourself, okay?
Sergey/ 07/12/2018 A good slap on our head!
Om Ra/ 03/23/2017 Comrade Timofey left such a review there ... Everything is boiling with him)
Isn't that a sign that the book is worth reading?
I'll check it out and write a review of the book.
Thank you🙏
Alice/ 01/28/2017 Thank you for the opportunity to receive the book! Thank you!
Valeria/ 07/30/2014 Listen only to yourself, the book is worthwhile
Eremey/ 04/27/2014 Thank you, Timofey, for the correct reasoning, it's time to save the planet from stupid authors. Please don't read this, you're just wasting your time.
Olga/ 13.10.2012 I thank the creators of the site! Well done! They develop themselves and help others!
Marina/ 06/29/2008 I am just beginning to comprehend the truth of being here, on the planet of Free Choice, but I will remember this book not only as the first one I read, but for the reason that it helped me look inside myself and see there what I really liked it. And when the time comes to answer just two, but very significant questions, I will say "YES"!
