That is what interests me – the development of spiritual life through a psychological lens. What is healthy and what is unhealthy for the virgin spirit? This is the onset pioneering of the idea of psychological spirituality.
Eliminating that which is induced by substance or manipulation of emotions, and pursuing the research of the purity and importance of a belief system which solidifies all experiential life of the psyche, except that which is existential and spiritual, I hope to give hint to the beginning of something I want to call existential spirituality. Does the psyche belong to that which we call the spiritual or that which we define as existential?
Spiritual experiences can be, although not limited to, substance induced, and existential experiences are nothing more than one’s awareness of existence. Nonetheless, disregarding space and time, spiritual experiences amount to nothing more than existential experiences, sometimes and most times, with the Divine. How many spiritual experiences throughout religions or personal testimonies are actually psychological responses due to the psyche, but which we have not yet discovered? If eliminating that which is substance induced, that which is emotionally induced (guilt, excitement, etc.), and that which is due to sleep or death processes, what is left must be pure spiritual experience. What is this essence? A study of existential spirituality may be of help. Resources, however, I lack.
Once emotional, does the essence of pure spirituality cease to be existential? Once hindered or accelerated by a factor which proposes change to the brain, does the purpose of spirituality become less pure?
