Spiritual Development Analyser
Alexander Zelitchenko, WIHP
[email protected]
1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND THE NEED FOR CHANGE OF PHILOSOPHICAL
PARADIGMA
The phenomenology of spiritual (in Russian there is more appropriate word
dukhovnyy, which is not translated without some lack of meaning into
English) development manifests itself in a number of phenomena:
a) Growth of sensitivity to works of art, intensity and quality of
aesthetic feeling;
b) Development of ability determining what is wrong and what is right
without appealing to the common opinions (moral) in respect of both own act
and the acts of strangers (there is another concept in Russian – sovest,
which again is translated into English as a conscience only with
significant lack of meaning: sovest may order the behaviour, which is not
approved by moral, but which nevertheless is good (right) in different
meaning of these words);
c) Development ability to love; and
d) Development of wisdom – knowledge of the world and ability to orient in
the world.
These phenomena cannot be explained satisfactorily without the crucial
change of our views on the world. Moreover, exploring these phenomena the
psychology meets a great challenge whose significance is much more
important than only intradisciplinary one. We see the sources of human
creativity, which cannot be explained satisfactorily as only a product of
the human's culture. Mozart's music is not derivative from what Mozart
heard from other composers.
The spiritual development opens this source first occasionally and
involuntarily and later permanently and deliberately. Inspiration is one of
the best recognized states of this nature. But there is the common feature
of all such states – their informational richness, the extraordinary
complexity of the world which is opened to mind. Man sees both the world
and himself in the world as systems of unusual complexity, see these "in
all colours" and clearly know what he has to do. Religions call such states
enlightening, grace etc.
A man develops spiritually all his lifespan, but with various speeds and by
various trajectories. And before he reaches the brightest states of maximal
complexity he comes through many intermediate and more usual states like
thinking, enjoining art, perception of beauty, empathy, different forms of
love, moral choices etc. He develops spiritually, when he reads and when he
thinks, when he communicates with friends and when he stays alone – always.
Star of Soul and its rays
But in his different businesses a man develops the different sides of his
individuality: now – kindness, tomorrow – intelligence, after tomorrow –
aesthetical abilities etc. And as result one sides of his individuality
become more developed than others: there are "people of intelligence",
"people of heart", "people of conscience" etc. Each of us is a star, which
radiate by its own rays. And each of us has own brightness that may be
determined as a sum of brightness of his rays. The geniuses – the geniuses
in science, the geniuses in art, the geniuses in religion etc. are the
brightest stars among us.
Sphere of spiritual development
Uneven character of spiritual development allows hypothesizing that we
develop inside of some sphere (or more accurate – hypersphere).
If we conditionally propose that we have only 2 dimensions of spiritual
development (e.g. Wisdom and Love), in some metric the relation between
this two dimensions may be determined by the formula of circle – x2 + y2 =
1. In more general case the formula will be. The third coordinate
determines the integral level of development – our brightness and its
colour varying, for example from the black "animal" states to infrared
"states of saints".
Narrowing of the red polar zone of this sphere is explained by eliminating
the spiritual qualities, which we value so much, like e.g. wisdom, and
transforming them into new mental (or even better to say super-mental)
qualities unknown to majority of modern cultural people, like the
development of intelligence transforms it into wisdom. In other words when
the person becomes more and more bright he is changed not only
quantitatively but also qualitatively.
Different languages describing the same reality
Everybody who worked with the factor analysis understands the conditional
nature of the personal traits – coordinates of the "space of personality".
Indeed, the same variety of empiric data (traits) may be described in the
different languages, different concepts depending on how we turn axes of
factor space. This may be called "isomorphism of spaces of personal
traits": the system of coordinates may be turned arbitrary without lost of
explanatory potential of model. The classical example here is Eysenck's
neuroticism- extraversion (with modifications of Cattell and Big Five) and
Galen's four temperaments.
Thus, choice of the system of concepts (the dimensions of model) is
determined not but the nature of the space but by the culture, where one
concepts do exist or are popular while others either do not exist at all or
not so popular. This reason forced me, when I developed the international
version of the Spiritual Development Analyser (SDA), which was initially in
2013 designed for people of Russian culture, to change partially the system
of coordinates describing the space of spiritual development. The Table
below shows these changes.
Table. Scales and Subscales of Two Versions of SDA
"Version 2013 (Russian) "Version 2015 (International) "
"russkiysvet.narod.ru/rostomer.htm "higher-psychology.org\SDA2015.html"
"Scales " Subscales "Scales "Subscales "
"1. AESTHETIC " "1. AESTHETIC " "
"DEVELOPMENT " "DEVELOPMENT " "
"2. MORAL "2.1 Attitude to "2. MORAL "2.1. Attitude to "
"DEVELOPMENT "Conscience "DEVELOPMENT "Conscience "
" "(Sovest) " "(Sovest) "
" "2.2. " "2.2. "
" "Predisposition " "Egoism–Social "
" "toward Lie " "Moral–Conscience "
" " " "(Non-linear "
" " " "Scale) "
"3. CLEARNESS OF "3.1. Aggression "3. ABILITY TO "3.1. Aggression "
"PSYCHE " "LOVE " "
" "3.2. Greediness " "3.2. Greediness "
" "3.3. Anxiety " "3.3. Anxiety "
"4. VOLUME OF "4.1 General " "3.4. Sociability "
"KNOWLEDGE "Knowledge of " " "
" "Life " " "
" "4.2. " "3.5. Kindness "
" "Professional " " "
" "Expertise " " "
"5. WISDOM "5.1 Resistance " "3.6. "
" "to Common " "Boorishness-Ruden"
" "Misbelieves " "ess "
" "5.2 Recognition"4. WISDOM "4.1. Professional"
" "of Wisdom " "Expertise "
"6. SIZE OF SELF "6.1. Own Self " "4.2. General "
"(Objects of "Only " "Knowledge of Life"
"Identification) " " " "
" "6.2. Small " "4.3. Knowledge of"
" "Groups (Family, " "own Self "
" "Friends etc) " " "
" "6.3 Big Groups " "4.4.Social "
" "(Nations, " "Intelligence, "
" "Confessions etc)" "Knowledge of "
" " " "World of People "
" "6.4 World as a " "4.5. Political "
" "Whole " "Knowledge "
" " " "4.6. "
" " " "Philosophical "
" " " "Knowledge "
" " " "4.7. Recognition "
" " " "of Wisdom "
" " " "4.8. Resistance "
" " " "to Common "
" " " "Misbelieves "
2. SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT ANALYSER: METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, MODES AND
AIMS OF ADMINISTERING, VALIDITY
General description
SDA is a computerized method of self-assessment, which combines several
methodological approaches; some of them look like original.
SDA consists of 4 parts.
The Part 1 is the biographical questionnaire aiming to explicit
respondent's life experience, professional experience and experience of
inner work of both self-cognition and philosophical cognition of the world.
The Part 2 is the questionnaire with 82 items and 13 subscales constituting
3 scales: moral development, ability to love, wisdom. One of this 13 scales
"ego-socio-conscience" is nonlinear: it combines 2 orthogonal scale "ego-
socio" and "socio-conscience". The other subscale of the scale "Moral
development" measures the level of development of the idea of both
conscience (sovest) as something that is opposite to moral and the ways how
conscience works.
Six questionnaire's subscales of the scale "Ability to love" includes: a)
anxiety, b) aggression, c) greed, and d) egoism as the antagonists
(hinders) of love as well as e) sociality and f) kindness as the
manifestations of the ability to love.
Five other the questionnaire's subscales constitute together with two
subscales of Part 1 and the subscale "Recognition of Wisdom" from the Part
4 the scale "Wisdom". These subscales: a) knowledge of own Self, b) social
intelligence, c) political wisdom, d) knowledge of the world as a whole,
and e) resistance to common misbelieves. The last one may be called also
"intellectual independence".
The Part 3 includes two ranking items: the colour test of Luscher and
ranking of aesthetic attractiveness (artistic force) of classical books – 4
biblical books and four feature literature pieces. The colour test is used
first for express-diagnosis of severity if inner problems, which hinder
development. Ranking books is a kind of tasks for test of achievement. It
measures the level of aesthetic development.
The Part 4 consists of 2 items, which work as tasks in test of achievement
or ones in test of aural skill. The first item asks a respondent to
evaluate the wisdom of aphorisms. Second one – to evaluate the aesthetic
power of musical pieces.
Integral scores for 4 scales are calculated as weighted sums.
Aims of administering
The main aim of SDA is to assist respondents in their inner work of self-
cognition. SDA is an instrument of self-testing, and its results first of
all are useful for respondent himself. SDA is not intended to screening
other people say to select best ones. But, SDA may be used in counselling
as an additional instrument activating client and stimulating his
participating in the counselling process. Discussion of profiles of
spiritual development may also help in establishing relationships with the
client.
Psychometrical
Two ways of validating were used. The first was cross-validating different
subscales, which measure the same trait but with different methodologies.
For example, the inner problems were evaluated by questionnaire and by
colour test, wisdom by questionnaire and by performance of dealing with
test task etc. Although this process is unfinished yet (complete
psychometric design demands often decades and many thousands of
respondents), preliminary results looks satisfactorily.
External validity is determined by the comparison test results with expert
evaluation of the same traits. In particular experts read the written
production of respondents and evaluate their spiritual state basing on this
production. Again preliminary results here may be considered as
satisfactorily in particularly (a touch of humour) because the scores of
the author of scale are far from the maximums.
