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 7 Andrej Rajský which is to be an everyday and ultimately the final concern of life. Only a conscious and intentional development of the soul (psychagogy) understood in this manner can ensure meaningfulness for existence (Jaeger 1967, 334). The individual partial “educations” and “therapies” hold the function of this last holistic aspect of every researcher, educator, and therapist. For scientists and researchers, as well as therapists and educators, this implies the need for interdisciplinarity and the imperative of the basic attitude of intellectual and practical humilitas, “modesty”, i.e. , awareness of the limits of their scientific segment and their professional qualification, especially if they want to adhere to empirical (and therefore, limited) foundations. The need for mutual respect and distinction of competencies between psychology as an empirical science and philosophy, or theology as transempirical sciences is already noted by Carl Gustav Jung, who notes, “Not only do two apparently incompatible spheres come into contact, but they also mutually animate and fertilize each other. This requires a great deal of good will on either side.” (Jung in White 1953, XXII). The shared interest of (empirical) psychology, philosophy, theology, and religious systems is cura animarum, which in its whole goes beyond partial approaches of empirical sciences, but at the same time, reflections of speculative and spiritual approaches are bound by the experience of empirical sciences. If a specific and complete man including their problems and psychological traumas is to be the center of attention, mutual respect of the two approaches (empirical and metaphysical one) should be smoothly projected to their mutual dialogue, in which, on one hand, the empirical science needs to abandon the limited dogmatic positivism, and on the other, philosophy and theology need to sincerely listen to outcomes of empirical research. The need of intellectual humility and dialogue is pointed out by Jung as follows: “Like every empirical science, psychology also requires auxiliary concepts, hypotheses and models. But the theologian as well as the philosopher, is apt to make the mistake of taking them for metaphysical a priori assertions… Similarly, my concept of the archetype or of psychic energy is only an auxiliary idea [Note: model], which can be exchanged at any time by a better formula. Seen from a philosophical standpoint, my empirical concepts would be logical monsters, and as a philosopher I should cut a sorry figure… I have never maintained that the archetype in itself is an image [Note: of objective metaphysical reality] but have expressly pointed out that I regard it as modus without definite content.” (Jung in White 1953, XX–XXI). The distinction could give the impression that psychology as an empirical science and philosophy, or theology, as speculative abstract sciences may lead a dialogue, however, it resembles rather a courtesy sitting of two strangers (“the blind with the deaf”), a “harmless” meeting of two incompatible spheres that have split the tasks in the field of broad human soul. Adhering to the metaphor of the window, we would have to say that it is closed for good, even with the curtains drawn. However, practice and a specific man force us to defy this superficial idea and seek authentic bridging of the empirical and the metaphysical, especially if the experience with the religious, the Sacred, the transcendent decisively intervenes in the core of the psyche. Spiritual experience of man is the topos that requires a living bridging of “both worlds”, the world “in front of the window” (our consciousness) and the world “behind the window” (the sacred being). This bridging will be outlined by the method of philosophical phenomenology of religion and mysticism, based mainly on the conception of Rudolf Otto.
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