A Spiritual Psychology

Mans noblest quality is the will to discover an imperishable Reality beyond the changes and chances of this mortal world. This quality is what I mean by spiritual. Mans spirit is his will. This is what Thomas Aquinas taught and it is the secret of understanding our human nature. The soul is an artifact, the result of our life experience. It may be transient and it may be immortal, depending upon whether or not our will, that is, our spirit, has taken possession of it. Those who deny the will in man deny the spirit. Those who affirm the will, affirm the spirit whether they realize it or not. Since will is commitment to action, it follows that a spiritual psychology must be a practical psychology. One can go further and say that it must be a do-it-yourself psychology, by which I mean that we must find and live by our will and not look at anyone else to do the work for us. This is where a spiritual psychology differs from most clinical psychology. The present book was therefore written with a practical aim in view to help people to learn how to work on themselves in their search for the imperishable reality. At the present time, we have a school at Sherborne House, near Cheltenham, England, that is applying the techniques developed at Coombe Springs. It is a method that owes the most to Gurdjieff but has been extended from other sources and tested over many years. It has proved successful not only under guidance at Sherborne, but also for people who have to work as well as they can on their own. (from the Preface)