نشریه اسلام و مطالعات معنویت
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار و تابستان 1402)

Happiness is one of the concepts that has long been widely reflected in various Eastern and Western traditions, including in novel spiritualist currents, especially Seligman's positivist psychology. This concept, which has been mentioned and emphasized many times in the Qur'an and hadiths, is also emphasized in Ibn Arabi's mysticism in the form of words such as Sorour, Farah, Vajd, Behjat, Bast, Lezat, Showq and Rezayat (All of them mean happiness, pleasure or satisfaction), and it means the joy and heart pleasure that result from and knowledge and closeness to the right. In his works, Ibn Arabi considers one of the characteristics of true scholars as having constant happiness and continuous joy. Seligman considers happiness to be a factor in mental health and one of the desirable results of positivist psychology, and he believes that experiences containing positive emotions reduce negative emotions such as depression, despair, and pessimism and increase psychological abilities and virtues. The research method has been extracting the features of the concept of sorour (happiness) from the works of Ibn Arabi and the concept of "happiness" from the works of Seligman and then comparing them with each other. Similarities can be seen between these two views, such as: introversion, correcting the attitude towards life and paying attention to the empowerment of moral virtues and relaxing attitudes. However, there are also differences between them, including the fact that Ibn Arabi considers lasting happiness arising from the inner, spiritual and divine matter to be the result of acquiring moral virtues and resemblance to divine attributes, spiritual behavior and knowledge and closeness to the right while the concept of happiness in Seligman's thought is psychological and has a behavioristic function.

The method of ideological confrontation of propagation, as opposed to its formal or instrumental method, has dealt with the method of changing the intellectual systems of the audience as a kind of strategy. One of the key concepts in changing intellectual systems is the concept of identity that the stabilization or change of the priority system and its sensitivities leads to the change of religion and belief. With the aim of evaluation of the novel spiritualities in Islam from the viewpoint of method of ideological confrontation of propagation, this article has presented a new understanding of why and how to change or stabilize the religion for the researchers. The preachers of emerging spiritualities, using the context and fields of their audience, pay attention to the concept of identity as the main driving force and according to their target society or scenario, emphasize one of the dimensions of human identity or place it as the first priority. However, the method of ideological confrontation of propagation in Islam is to balance all dimensions of human identity, including individual, civilizational, religious, national, historical, family, and gender identity, and it has never sought to eliminate or manipulate human identity in order to achieve its goals.

One of the most important anthropological bases of separating spirituality from religion is humanism, which puts man in the place of God and does not accept any external authority such as revelation and divine religions. This basis, which also results in spiritual humanism, has its roots in the concept of monism, in which spirituality is defined as something completely worldly and universal, with the lack of distinction between material and spiritual affairs and with the monotheism of the Supreme God and the inner God, there is no difference between the visible and the unseen world, the holy and the unholy, and things such as self-divinity, changing the value system, and negating the unseen world are among its possible consequences. This study, using an analytical-critical method and relying on library data, is trying to criticize this basis with an emphasis on the works of Allameh Tabatabaei. The spiritual journey and the achievement of original and genuine spirituality and dignity in the works of Allameh Tabatabaei, who is an interpreter of the Qur'an and Islamic teachings, is only achieved in the shadow of recognition and acknowledgment of the poverty and dependence of human existence on its creator and continuous communication with him in the form of servitude and having piety. Therefore, man's independence from God and his turning away from divine revelation and heavenly religions will have no result other than the absence of his original identity and being trapped in the valley of alienation. Of course, true spirituality and spiritual life will also be formed with such an idea.

The present study has been conducted with the aim of compiling a spirituality-oriented educational package and evaluating its effectiveness on the existential and social well-being of young people. This research was applied in terms of purpose and exploratory in terms of method. The statistical population of the research included young people with age range of 25-40 years in Tehran in 2023. In the "qualitative stage", 15 experts and specialists in the field of psychology of religion and spirituality were examined in a targeted manner using semi-structured interviews in order to identify the components of spirituality. In the "quantitative stage", 30 people were selected as a research sample and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Research tools for data collection included Paloutzian and Ellison's existential well-being scale (1982) and Keyes' social well-being scale (1998). For experiment and data analysis, the method of content validity ratio (CVR), mean statistics, standard deviation and covariance analysis were used. The qualitative findings of the research showed that spiritual therapy includes three basic components under the headings of empowerment, excellence, and connectionism. In addition, the quantitative findings indicate that the spirituality-oriented educational program has significantly increased the existential and social well-being of the youth in the experimental group compared to the control group.

The theory of rationality and spirituality seeks to reduce human suffering. In this theory, Malekian pays special attention to the characteristics of the spiritual man, and as a result of the theory's attention to the category of modernization, he has expressed special characteristics for the spiritual man. In the course of his spiritualism, he is completely loyal to the problem of relieving pain and suffering. The present study aims to examine the internal and structural contradictions of the spiritual man's suffering avoidance and emotionalism, as one of the anthropological foundations of the "rationality and spirituality" theory, through a critical examination. In this article, with the qualitative method of content analysis, the topic is discussed and its dimensions and tools are described based on Malekian’s viewpoint, and then the internal challenge of the basis of suffering avoidance is considered with a critical view. The most important internal criticisms and challenges of emotionalism and suffering avoidance that were examined in this research are: 1. Ambiguity in the nature of suffering; 2. The ambiguity and inability of the theory of rationality and spirituality in relieving suffering; 3. Not having a practical plan and a guarantee to get rid of suffering; 4. The lack of application of the theory of intellectual spirituality for the society; 5. Adding self-deceiving spiritual suffering; 6. Contradiction of individualism and emotionalist spirituality; 7. Reducing morality and spirituality to psychology; 8. Considering the purpose of life and spirituality as short and limited 9. Contradiction in the principles of ethics. 10. The disagreement between the epistemological basis with the anthropological goal.

Cancer is one of the hard-to-treat diseases that can affect the well-being and quality of life of children with cancer and their families from various aspects, including the spiritual dimension of their existence, and involve them with spiritual challenges and conflicts. Therefore, in this study, the lived experience of 20 children suffering from cancer has been examined and their spiritual needs have been identified and explained using the descriptive-exploratory research method. The findings suggest that children with cancer have special spiritual needs that can be divided into 4 main categories of self-relation, which include the needs of freshness and vitality, self-esteem, the meaning of life and resilience. Relationship with others, which includes the needs of "safe relationship with parents, therapy staff and friendship group", relationship with the universe, which includes the needs of "feeling safe, connection with nature, games and toys, virtual space and metaverse" and relationship with God, which includes the needs of "God-awareness, spiritual life, death-awareness and spiritual conflicts".

"Ackankar" is a spiritual movement that was founded in the postmodern era and while it has not celebrated its 60th anniversary yet, one of the claims of " Twitchell", the American founder of this movement and his followers, is that Rumi, Shams, Hafez and Ferdowsi are among the previous leaders of this Pseudo-religion, and not only all of them were part of the ancient Ackankar system, but they also got all their power from this system. Twitchell mentions the names of these elders in his books and claims that the followers of Ackankar (ECKists) did not have any written instructions until the 13th century AD, Mawlānā Jalaluddin, a Persian mystic poet, in his immortal work, compiled their worldview as "ECK" for the first time. What he means is the book of Masnavi al-Manavi, which is a collection of pure mystical beliefs. This study aims to compare Rumi's view on the goal of Soluk (conduct) with the desired goal of the Ackankar movement, which is the result of the experiences of the founder and also the followers of this movement, with the criterion of including three topics from the written works of each of these two thoughts, and then discuss some of its similarities and differences. This research is subject-oriented and descriptive, and through a comparative approach, it deals with the function of religion in the ontology and metaphysical goal thinking of man from the approach of the experimental effect of religion on the soul of "the perfect mystic from the perspective of Rumi" and "the most sublime ECKist from the perspective of Twitchell". The finding of the study suggests that, contrary to his claim regarding accepting Masnavi as his epistemological worldview, neither in the general stages of his conduct, nor in its end, he adhered to the worldview of Rumi.