PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUAL LIFE. THE WAY FROM PSYCHOLOGICAL TO SPIRITUAL STATES

The increased interest in the religious fact and, consequently, in spirituality, has gradually led to a milder reserve regarding their introduction in the study of man's "psychical" health from the perspective of psychology. Man is neither just a body nor just a soul, but a soul and a body at the same time, having bodily, psychic (related to the soul) and spiritual needs, which gives him a threefold dimension: somatic, psychic (of the soul) and spiritual. Therefore, man lives psychological states, yet his spiritual dimension makes him also live spiritual states. The passage from psychological to spiritual states means the passage from one way of living to the other, each with its specific psychotherapy. The specialized literature refers to the Orthodox psychotherapy, namely the psychotherapy according to the Orthodox Christian teaching, and also to a patristic therapeutic treatment, by which man does not remain on the level of the psychological states, analyzed by different trends of the contemporary psychology, but acquires spiritual states, namely the states of purification, illumination and deification, which cannot be replaced by any other social, philosophical and moral system.