Spiritual Psychology/Foreword from Zemfira Minaeva

Prior to designing this course – Introduction to Spiritual Psychology - I have decided to explore the most popular psychological concepts and theories. Recall that the American Psychological Association defines “psychology” as the study of the mind and behavior: “This discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience - from the functions of the brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged. In every conceivable setting from scientific research centers to mental healthcare services, “the understanding of behavior” is the enterprise of psychologists.”

While intuitively clicking on the vast “ocean” of Internet links, I stumbled across information that made my heart thrilled. Boris Zubkov, a Russian psychologist, member of the British Psychological Society, and head of Mindware Lab., wrote in his blog:

The authoritative news publication The Onion reports that at a recent press conference of the American Psychological Association (APA), the practitioners of the discipline declared their attempts to understand how the human mind works to be unsuccessful.

As The Onion stated, psychologists worldwide announced that their entire professional lives had been utterly worthless, as the human brain could never comprehend its own workings, let alone understand its own understanding. “All that we thought we understood was merely a mirage crafted by the very unfathomable minds we once so stubbornly insisted we could know,” said the Association’s President, before declaring the APA, with its 134,000 members and 54 academic divisions, forever disbanded. From now on many of the psychology community will redirect their efforts toward other sciences such as physics, chemistry, and geology. “If I can no longer study myself, then so be it: I will pursue that which is concrete and measurable,” said Harvard University experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, holding up a quartz crystal before his eyes. “Look at it: Irrefutable. Solid. So unlike the elusive mind.”

I believed it. I didn’t know what the English word onion means. Besides, by that time my mind was overloaded with too much information. I thought, “The inevitable has occurred…” But Zubkov explained a little further in his blog that The Onion is a news satire organization. That was in fact a joke. Yet, as they say in Russia, there is a grain of truth in every joke. Based on my nearly 20 years of research experience in spirituality, I dare suggest - in this joke, the share of truth reaches 99.99%. For 0.01% is the efficiency of trial and error method that is prevailing among the methodological approaches used by modern psychologists. Not only by psychologists, though, but by almost all researchers.

Trial and error method makes it possible to generate true knowledge in natural sciences as a significant portion of scientific hypotheses can be tested in practice. As for social sciences, this method reduces the likelihood of conducting objective empirical studies here to almost zero. Using various research methods, whether they be experiments, observations, surveys, or trainings, the psychologists can’t observe what is occurring in the spiritual world at that moment. But in most cases they are dealing with unhealthy spiritual states which are not normal. It’s like reasoning about an eye’s structure and work based on the “myopic” eye (with refractive errors) or describing a heart’s functioning from the heart with myocardial infarction. Hence the result - the science, in fact, knows next to nothing about what drives human behavior.

That is why I believed this joke – “many a true word is spoken in jest.” To be fair one should note that it is not science’s fault. Such was the historical evolution. Besides, psychology as a science really has the most difficult, yet intriguing, subject of study in the entire universe - man and his behavior.

Formation of true knowledge in social sciences, psychology being one, is impossible without the unification of science and religion. The very etymology of the word psychology suggests the need for such an approach. This word, which has Greek roots, means the study of soul. The Latin word psychologia was first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist Marko Marulic in his book Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae (Psychology, On the Nature of the Human Soul) in the late 15th century or early 16th century. The earliest known mention of the word psychology in English was made by Steven Blankaart in 1694 in The Physical Dictionary which refers to “Anatomy which treats of the Body, and Psychology, which treats of the Soul.”

Such an integrated approach to a human being, composed of his spirit, soul, and body, has been applied by the modern researcher Evgeny Molchanov. This allowed him to discover the key to explaining human behavior – the major focus of psychology. Molchanov’s concept of man’s nature, the meaning of his life and the motives behind his behavior constitutes a certain basis. We hope that in cooperation with the Wikiversity experts, we will be able to substantially develop this knowledge. To reach this, we have to thoroughly analyze the existing theories and practices, both scientific and religious, and by separating the wheat from the chaff, create a rigorous scientific tool that would enable a person to control his behavior.

Good luck! May God help us!