Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

La psicología actual se encuentra en un estado de confusión. No ha logrado comprender nuestra verdadera identidad humana ni dar una respuesta satisfactoria a la pregunta perenne: «¿Quién SOY?». El alcance del tratamiento de la salud mental actual se ha reducido a consideraciones puramente seculares, ignorando la plenitud de lo que significa ser humano y descuidando por completo la dimensión sagrada de la vida. Debido al rechazo de la psicología convencional hacia sus raíces metafísicas, nuestra relación con otros seres sintientes y con el mundo natural se ha fracturado, lo que ha traído consecuencias devastadoras a nuestras vidas. Con el fin de desarrollar modalidades de tratamiento terapéutico más holísticas, necesitamos restaurar la noción tradicional de una «ciencia del alma», tal como se ha conocido desde los primeros tiempos en las diversas culturas espirituales de la humanidad.

The discussion of boundaries in mental health treatment today is escalating. There is a concern to establish personal limits to protect both physical and psychological well-being in the face of rising levels of burnout, stress, and digital fatigue. We want to foster healthy relationships, and ensure that there is trust and safety in our therapeutic encounters. Boundaries exist for both the provider and the individual who engage in services. The ability to say “no” to others and the world—so that we may prioritize our self-care without succumbing to feelings of guilt—is considered an exercise in maintaining good boundaries. But how do we distinguish between self and others in a way that does not further entrench an inordinate focus on ourselves, which is a key factor in the alienation felt by so many at the present time? Yet little thought goes into why we have become so obsessed with boundaries, which is inseparable from the fact that we have lost contact with the sacred, which is precisely what has given rise to our current spiritual crisis. Without a grounding in traditional metaphysics, and the higher levels of reality of which it speaks, we will fail to understand the real nature of boundaries and, more importantly, of that which is boundless. It goes without saying that we need both in order to ensure authentic forms of psychotherapy that are truly beneficial.

Wolfgang Smith (1930–2024) was an original scholar in the fields of mathematics and physics, yet he also wrote commandingly on theology, metaphysics, and religion. His insights into the reductionist limitations of “scientism” reveal it to be an ideological perspective that lacks a fully integrated ontology. This is because it adopted the ruinous Cartesian doctrine of bifurcation, which has persisted into the post-Enlightenment world and whose effects are nowhere more clear and more devastating than in the field of psychology. Through Smith’s ground-breaking research and penetrating reflections, we can gain a clearer picture of modern psychology’s thorough capitulation to the forces of secular humanism. This essay examines how this eminent thinker can help us to restore a far-reaching “science of the soul,” rooted in a metaphysical vision that is foundational to the diverse spiritual traditions of the world.

As conditions in contemporary life become increasingly perplexing and difficult, with greater numbers of people living on the margins of existence, it has become apparent that something has gone terribly awry. Never have there been so many crises in every domain of existence—social, political, economic, cultural and ecological, just to name a few. Everywhere we turn, we see signs of personal and collective disequilibrium. It may be nearly impossible to escape this dystopic reality, as there are few places on earth that remain untouched by its malaise. As the outer world becomes engulfed in strife and chaos, there appears to be nowhere to turn but inwards. Are we still able to maintain personal well-being in a world that has utterly lost its bearings and the ability to sustain our spiritual health? It is time to consider whether the plight of humanity today might have its roots in a crisis that is fundamentally spiritual. If so, we would do well to return—with some urgency—to the sapiential traditions of the world and their sacred psychologies, in which may be found an enduring remedy for our profoundly divisive and disordered times.

The widespread estrangement felt by human beings in the present day has led to what has been called an “epidemic of loneliness.” Although a plethora of studies have explored this theme in an attempt to address the problem, effective solutions have proved elusive. Some will no doubt claim that alienation has always been with us, yet what we are witnessing right now is on a scale that is arguably unprecedented. The vacuum created by the loss of connection to a transcendent reality has directly contributed to the dissolution of society, family, and personal relationships. If we broaden the scope of this phenomenon to include metaphysical and cosmological factors, we can better understand the mental health consequences of loneliness as stemming from the spiritual crisis of the modern world, and the corresponding loss of meaning in people’s lives. In order to heal the trauma of secularism, which has led to the burgeoning loneliness and alienation we see today, we need to go to the root of this affliction by offering a radical response that is grounded in the sacred and its manifestations in humanity’s spiritual traditions. In exploring this phenomenon, a metaphysical framework has been adopted to help illuminate this serious affliction.

Anxiety and depression are ubiquitous in the present day. It is as though everyone is afflicted by these maladies, either directly or indirectly. They are, in many ways, two faces of a single affliction. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 4.0% (301 million people) have an anxiety disorder, and a further 3.8% (280 million people) of the population suffer from depression. This global mental health epidemic provides an opportunity to deepen our grasp of the human psyche, and the impact on it of the modern world’s spiritual crisis. This article aims to get a better handle on this far-reaching phenomenon with reference to humanity’s wisdom traditions and its sacred psychologies. In doing so, it is hoped that we may be able to enhance our clinical understanding of these devastating ailments, and to develop treatments that support an abiding well-being.

The epidemic of homelessness has grown exponentially, to the point where it can be found in any major city around the world. The heartbreaking images of people living in these subhuman conditions are beyond belief. Explanations for the rise in homelessness remain murky, inconsistent, and not well articulated. While much funding and resources are directed toward resolving this problem, it continues unabated. Modern psychology and its mental health treatments are also at a loss to account for this affliction. Shifting the terminology from “homeless” to “unhoused,” in order to reduce the stigma, does little to mitigate the crisis. Homelessness is a complex and enigmatic phenomenon, which explains why its real genesis remains undetected: namely, the acute spiritual crisis that plagues the modern world. In restoring mental health treatment to its ontological foundations in sacred psychology, we will have the most promising means available to understand this deeply troubling scourge that is not only social but, ultimately, metaphysical in nature.

Carl Jung (1875–1961) was a pivotal figure in modern Western psychology. He understood the malaise of the modern world from its loss of religion, and the resulting mental health crisis it brought in its wake. He countered the dominant scientific reductionism pervasive in his time, and pursued a more holistic form of treatment when this was not popular. He treated his patients as real people rather than merely objects of diagnostic interest, and promoted a more expansive understanding of mental illness. At the same time, Jung remains a controversial figure within and beyond the discipline. His purported alliance with religions, and his efforts to introduce a spiritual dimension into modern psychology, have arguably led to deleterious consequences. By attempting to construct a psychological system that spiritualizes the human soul without any reference to the transpersonal dimension of the psyche, Jung replaced sacred tradition with a secular psychology that offered a new—yet fundamentally misguided—path of salvation for seekers in a post-Christian world.

René Guénon (1886–1951) was among the very few thinkers to first recognize the spiritual crisis of the modern world. He was also unique in articulating the universal principles that are needed to restore traditional metaphysics to its rightful place in our intellectual culture. A staunch critic of the profane tendencies emerging in modern psychology, he saw the religious traditions of humanity as the only way to rehabilitate psychology by reclaiming the sacred significance of the human psyche. Guénon’s remarkable insights are proving increasingly more prophetic with the passage of time, due to the accelerating dissolution being ushered in by modernity. He rightly discerned the many dangers posed by psychology today, given its tendency towards subverting all things spiritual. Guénon thus furnishes us with the keys to allowing this discipline to resume its proper role in helping us understand human beings in their cosmic totality.

This collection brings together some of the most outstanding and representative writings of Martin Lings (1909–2005), drawn from his broad span of works. He was former Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts at the British Museum, as well as being a distinguished translator, scholar, and poet. Lings was the author of several award-winning books on subjects ranging from Sufism to Shakespeare, including "A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-ʿAlawi, His Spiritual Heritage and Legacy" (1961), the best-selling "Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources" (1983, translated into over a dozen languages), and "Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art" (1966). He also wrote works addressing the spiritual crisis of our times, such as "The Eleventh Hour" (1987), "Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions" (2001), and "A Return to the Spirit" (2005) This anthology conveys wisdom of a timeless nature—neither of the East nor of the West—which the world today desperately needs.

The immense confusion surrounding sexuality is a powerful indication of the spiritual crisis of the modern world. What are the causes and underlying factors of this state of confusion? The effects of the sexual revolution of the 1960s—a movement rooted in much earlier ideologies—have not diminished but, rather, expanded. The gradual emergence of the Enlightenment project has led to the desacralization of human existence, reducing higher realities to the plane of the material. Modern psychology has played a decisive role in this problem by limiting its account of sexuality to the purely horizontal level of the psycho-physical, when a true comprehension requires the vertical dimension of the Spirit. Modern mental health treatments initially identified the lack of sexual fulfillment as the etiology of psychopathology itself and, while many novel treatment modalities have since been created, to a great extent they only add to the confusion. By contrast, sacred psychology and its metaphysical foundations provide a framework that integrates the horizontal and vertical dimensions of sexuality.

Authentic cross-cultural approaches to mental health treatment are urgently needed to restore it to its rightful place as an effective healing modality. Modern Western psychology asserts a monopoly by silencing traditional "sciences of the soul" and imposing itself on a diverse humanity, with its "one size fits all" approach. This is a hegemony that must be opposed, but the call to "decolonize" therapy is ineffective without a thorough diagnosis of what has gone wrong with psychology today. It is now apparent that we need to return to an authentic metaphysical outlook that is accepted across the wisdom traditions of the world. The reclaiming of epistemological pluralism that is grounded in the sacred provides a remedy for the modern impoverishment of psychology so that, in recognizing the fullness of what it means to be human, it can secure our true well-being.