Psychology And Spirituality: Relationship, Difference And Benefits

The scientistic stance It relies on scientific knowledge and theories and chance as an explanation of these issues. For his followers, the properties of matter and the laws of nature are sufficient to explain the mechanics of the cosmos (although there are obvious facts that these cannot explain). On the other hand, the metaphysical tradition is expressed through the spirituality, understood as the set of beliefs and practices based on the absolute conviction that there is a non-material dimension of life, helping the person to find answers to what cannot be explained through science and reason. It involves the knowledge and acceptance of one’s immaterial essence.

Spirituality is often linked to disciplines such as religion, philosophy or neurology (neurologist V. Ramachandran has shown that mentally healthy people have increased activity in the temporal lobe when exposed to spiritual words or topics) and is currently also object of attention of psychology, more directly in transpersonal and humanistic psychology (among whose references are A. Maslow, G. Allport and C. Rogers) that include spirituality as part of an integrated and multidimensional conception of the human being (as a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual reality).

Within the field of psychology, psychologists Koenig, McCullough and Larson point out spirituality as the personal search to understand the answers to the ultimate questions about life, its meaning and the relationship with the sacred or the transcendent, which may or may not lead to the development of religious rituals and the formation of a community.

The relationship between psychology and spirituality is justified by the fact that the experience of existential questions occurs through mental phenomena such as meditation, states of consciousness, introspection, mystical experiences, self-transcendence, self-realization, etc., which are the subject of study of psychology. However, the essence of this relationship rests on two basic questions:

• Why do human beings need to have answers to existential questions to configure their spirituality?
• What can psychology contribute to a person’s spirituality?

Human beings have a tendency to live in a balanced, calm and placid state of mind that allows them to live in harmony with themselves and their environment, but in many people this state is altered by the restlessness caused by not having a satisfactory answer for their needs. they. This concern of psychological origin arises from two demands of human nature that have to do with survival and its relationship with the external environment:

The need for meaning

The need for things to have a meaning, a meaning (including one’s own life), which drives one to discover and give an explanation to everything what surrounds him (why, how and why things happen), and to do so he needs to acquire more and more knowledge.

Regarding this need, it is worth highlighting that human beings have by nature curiosity and a desire for knowledge (it is related to the principle of sufficient reason described by philosophy, which maintains that everything that exists has a reason that explains its existence and drives man. to wonder about the reasons that support what surrounds him), and in this desire to know he uses his mental faculties to achieve it (intelligence, memory, creativity, intuition, etc.). In this aspect, Martin Seligman considers wisdom and love of knowledge (curiosity and interest in the world, interest in learning, critical thinking and open-mindedness) as one of the virtues required to achieve well-being.

To obtain an explanation and a meaning to the world where we live, we resort mainly to the mental program that governs the cause-effect relationship, which is based on the premise that all observed phenomena have a cause (a reason for existing), and to know this cause information is needed. If we had all the necessary information about these questions, perhaps we could find a valid answer to them through reasoning, observation and experimentation. But the problem is that We currently lack complete and accurate information and this lack prevents us from knowing the absolute truth about them and drives us to create numerous theories and hypotheses to supplement it.

The need for security

The need to feel safe in your world, which implies gaining control of yourself and the external environment with which you relate. The human being needs to be related to the environment in which he lives, but he has realized that he does not have control of himself or his environment. He cannot avoid illness or aging, he cannot avoid suffering negative emotions and suffering in the face of unpleasant events, nor can he avoid the physical phenomena that cause catastrophes. This situation shows his weakness and helplessness and the inability to direct his destiny, generating fear and concern and the need to have “something” in which to seek support and security. On the other hand, he is amazed at the perfect organization of the universe, which works with its own laws, and at the wonderful complexity of life, which leads him to think that there must be a superior and omnipotent “something” (an organizing and controller: a God, the cosmos, nature, a cosmic energy, a supernatural force, etc.).

The relationship between psychology and God

In the field of psychology this situation has a great similarity with the attachment figure. The psychologist John Bowlby points out that childhood attachment is part of an archaic inheritance whose function is the survival of the species, it has its evolutionary origin in the need for protection against predators or loneliness and therefore prompts them to seek physical protection, demanding that the caregiver ward off dangers to their integrity. Bowlby defines attachment as “a way of conceptualizing the propensity of human beings to form strong emotional bonds with others and of extending the various ways of expressing emotions of anguish, depression, anger when they are abandoned or experience separation or loss.” Here you will find more information about attachment theory.

The need that many people have to turn to an entity or figure that provides security, encouragement and confidence in dangerous or threatening situations (and also to offer thanks if things go well as a gesture of gratitude) may be a reflection of this figure of attachment that survives into adulthood, since it is then when, in addition to physical danger, experiences appear that are also experienced as a danger or threat (illnesses, separations, layoffs, etc. that generate fear, grief, anger, anguish, loneliness , hopelessness), and a support to face them It is turning to a higher being who is sensitive and receptive to your emotions and offers comfort to your distress (for example, the figure of a paternalistic God), especially when the person who suffers lives alone and has no one to talk to. and share their desolation.

It is thus observed that the child’s attachment figure gradually transforms into a more psychological and spiritual dimension. This situation was already noticed in his day by Sigmund Freud, who described the human being as: “small and defenseless, even as an adult, powerless before the forces of nature and death, and who remembers the times when his father protected him and provided everything; then and through a “regression”, he imagines that an all-powerful being exists and takes refuge in the illusion of a god full of goodness, going from regression to the “sublimation” of the parental figures.

What can psychology contribute to a person’s spirituality?

Answers

It has been demonstrated that science, philosophy or religion do not offer clear and indisputable answers to existential questions that are valid for all humanity. This has the consequence that many people do not find consistent references in them to which they can draw and therefore find themselves immersed in restlessness and unease. For these people, psychology can be a reference to cling to to find the answers they need to these questions and create a spirituality that helps them achieve well-being.

Welfare

Psychologists C. Peterson and M. Seligman consider spirituality as one of the human virtues that lead to the well-being of the person, it is a tool that provides the necessary strength to face the negative events that life presents, and they define it as the ability of having coherent beliefs in relation to the highest purpose, the meaning of the universe and the place we occupy in it, and refers to beliefs that are based on the conviction that there is a transcendental dimension of life.

Sense of life

There is no doubt that psychology cannot answer the origin of the universe, of life, or whether there is life after death, but it can help answer other related questions that are also part of the spiritual dimension of the person ( For example: Who am I, where do I come from and where am I going? ) and are closely linked to the search for meaning in life. Furthermore, they occur in all people at some point in their lives, so it can be said that they are part of the essence of the human being. This is what Viktor Frankl points out: “The spiritual dimension is constitutive of man and goes beyond the psychophysical. The lack of this, even if it is not channeled religiously, is a symptom of meaninglessness.”

Belief Analysis

An appreciation to keep in mind is that restlessness and fear are born from ignorance and this is combated with the discovery of the truth. But the total and absolute truth about existential questions cannot be achieved with current knowledge and the most we can aspire to is to obtain partial truths that are coherent and in harmony with each other and that, as a whole, constitute a quasi-truth. Psychology can help put together the set of partial truths that a person needs to feel safe and confident (a particular and subjective truth) thanks to the fact that it has at its disposal cognitive resources (analysis, deduction, imagination, logical and abstract thinking, inference), feelings (fullness, satisfaction) and values ​​(freedom, prudence, equanimity, sincerity, honesty) through which you can evaluate and choose the beliefs that you consider appropriate to build your own model of spirituality, which does not necessarily have to coincide with that of other people or social groups.

One way to build this model is to propose it through a pragmatic approach, understanding pragmatic as what works well for us and produces the desired results. Under this approach, an attempt would be made to create a “pragmatic spirituality in the form of a psychological construct that has cognitive and emotional roots, based on beliefs supported by a truth that contains a degree of certainty and credibility acceptable and sufficient to bring the person closer to a “something” beyond everyday material reality, which confers meaning and added value to your life and strength to face the challenges it presents you. This form of spirituality would require accepting human limitations and renouncing the knowledge of absolute truth, assuming that we will have to live with the irresolvable doubts that appear. Pragmatic spirituality would be summarized in the following expression:

• If the model of spirituality that I have built strengthens me, helps me and comforts me why not accept it and follow it despite the doubts that arise?

To configure this spirituality and given that the path forward involves the search for truths about existential questions, three principles must be taken into account:

1. Although science cannot ensure the truth of all things, it can refute facts that some institutions may present as truths.
2. If something is unknown, it does not necessarily mean that it does not exist, since it can be “knowable”, that is, it is capable of being known in the future.
3. Use intuition (gut feeling or sixth sense) to instinctively distinguish what information is credible, and if it is not, discard it. In the following article we talk about How to develop intuition.

Following these principles, a set of beliefs can be created that will fill spirituality with content. One way to carry out this process is to sift through the currently known beliefs of science and select those that are considered proven and consistent, which will constitute the “rational” structure of spirituality. This structure forged by scientific knowledge since its knowledge is limited to the physical world, it must be completed with the immaterial component of spirituality, coming mainly from the knowledge that philosophy and religion can provide and that are coherent with the rational structure, inserting in it a transcendence towards a “something” of a higher order beyond everyday materiality, accepting the intuition that this “something” can exist (which is knowable), although its true nature cannot be stated at this time.

In addition to these principles and as support to successfully build this spirituality, the psychologist Danah Zohar and the psychiatrist Ian Marshall have proposed a spiritual intelligence, which they define as “the intelligence with which we face and solve problems of meanings and values, the intelligence with which we can put our actions and experiences in a broader and richer context of meanings and values, the intelligence with which we can determine that one course of action or a life path is more valuable than another. It means experiencing that we are more than our thoughts and emotions and that, when we access that dimension, everything is perceived in a radically new way. Spiritual intelligence enhances capacities such as serenity, detached observation of what is happening, equanimity, inner freedom, compassion, etc.

Characteristics of spiritual intelligence

For these authors, spiritual intelligence is distinguished by the following characteristics:

• Possess a high level of self-awareness.
• Ability to be flexible in one’s own ideas and opinions.
• Ability to face and transcend pain and suffering and learn from it.
• The ability to view a problem from a distance, placing it in a broader context.
• Tendency to see relationships and connections between things (holism).
• Reluctance to cause unnecessary harm and have deep empathy.
• Marked tendency to understand things and get to the bottom of them, the reason for them, their meaning, and to seek fundamental answers.
• Ease of resisting the criteria of the majority and maintaining and acting in accordance with personal principles and convictions.
• Have a sense of vocation: feel called to serve, to give something in return to others and the world.

On the other hand, the way of manifesting this spirituality (symbols, rituals, customs) will also depend on each person, without prejudice to whether or not to do so within a specific community or creed, since spirituality is not only rooted in religion, but that this can be lived from other areas and other dimensions by anyone who has the need to transcend and to seek answers: the practice of solitude, silence, yoga, aesthetic contemplation, meditation, mindfulness, living in harmony with nature, etc.

Finally, it is interesting for its relationship with this approach, what a Greek philosophical school preached that points out the appropriate path to follow in the search for spirituality:

“A complete and accurate knowledge of the great questions that concern man is impossible or extremely difficult to acquire in this life, but failure to examine by all possible means what is said about them, or desisting from doing so, before having tired of considering them from all points of view, it is characteristic of the very cowardly man, because what must be achieved with respect to these questions is one of these things:

• Learn or discover for yourself what is in them.
• If this is impossible, take at least the best and most difficult to refute human tradition and, embarking on it like a raft, risk making the voyage of life, if it cannot be done with greater safety and less danger by ship. firmer, such as, for example, a revelation of divinity.”

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Psychology and spirituality: relationship, difference and benefits we recommend that you enter our Personal Growth and Self-Help category.