S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 1 2 5 Andrej Rajský 1 Introduction The main objective of this study is to describe spiritual experience as a possibility of a living dialogue of man with being in se and per se. We assume that a dialogue is possible only where two initiative actors enter interaction, otherwise it is not a dialogue. The sacred experience – if understood as dialogical experience – implies the circular dynamics of address and response, while man as the experiencing subject necessarily finds themselves in the position of the addressee, since the transcendent being “leans” into the realm of the experiential first, otherwise it would not be transcendent. In the sacred experience, man mentally processes the address of the sublime and always reacts in some way (even a refusal to the address is a reaction). Therefore, the paper is analytically focused also on the original theories of depth psychology, which interpret the psycho-spiritual experiencing of man’s encounter with the mystical and the religious in their way [1]. In fulfilling the research goal, the following questions are sought be answered: In what sense are psychology and ontology separated by a “window” in connection with the study of the Sacred? How does the empirical science of psychology, in the conception of Carl Gustav Jung, conceive the experience of man with the Sacred? Is it possible to phenomenologically bridge the ontic world (the world of facts) and the ontological world (the world of essence) analyzing the spiritual experience of man? These questions will be answered in the study stepwise, following the trajectory of the phenomenological method, with the help of which the author seeks to describe the natural attitude of man in a principally “always new” dialogue with the Sacred. The phenomenological method is applied here in a line opened by Rudolf Otto, but at the same time, it does not avoid its corrections, in the interpretation of the psychologist and theologian Victor White. We consider it necessary to clarify that our ambition is not to reflect the development of discourses within the phenomenology of religion and comparative religion studies, but we want to focus our research on applying Otto’s theory to the psychological model of symbols of Carl Gustav Jung [2]. The structure of the reflection is as follows: 1) The author points out unsustainability of the reductive positivist status of scientific knowledge in order to expand the space for speculative possibilities of rationality to conceive spiritual experience; 2) Phenomenology of the experience of the NumiAbout the author Doc. PhDr. Andrej Rajský, PhD., specializes in philosophical-ethical and anthropological areas of research and education. He is a founding member of the The Central European Philosophy of Education Society (CEUPES), as well as a member of editorial boards of several Slovak, Czech, Polish and Italian scientific journals on philosophy of education. Professor Rajský serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the journal Scientia et Eruditio and a scientific guarantor of annual doctoral conferences on educational science Juvenilia Paedagogica held at Trnava University. He authored and co-authored multiple scholarly books, research studies and articles. His email is andrej.rajsky@truni.sk. nous in the intentions of Rudolf Otto and other philosophers of religion will be presented; 3) The original depth-psychological interpretations of religion, especially Jung’s interpretation, will be analyzed with this phenomenological approach; 4) The spiritual experience will be conceptually introduced into a dynamic tension between two approaches: immanently psychological and transcendentally speculative; 5) Finally, the ontological status of the Sacred is conceived as being that becomes the experience of a “gift” by which man is addressed and appealed. The question in the title of the paper is answered in the affirmative, since endowment in the realm of experience “in front of the window” presupposes being that “gives the gift from behind the window inwards” [3].
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=