How to characterize a person's spiritual needs?

Needs - a lack or need for something necessary for the normal life of a person, a social group and society as a whole. They are an internal impetus to activity.

Man, being a representative of the animal world, has physiological needs, the satisfaction of which is necessary to maintain safety, metabolism, etc.

Determination of spiritual needs

Spiritual needs of man - is the desire to know the surrounding world and its place in it, self-realization, self-improvement, self-knowledge.

This kind of needs, conditioned by the inner world of man, his desire for self-absorption, concentration on what does not apply to social and physiological needs. His satisfaction is facilitated by the study of culture, art, religion, whose purpose is to understand the higher meaning of existence.

The pyramid of needs

In general, people's needs are often presented in the form of a pyramid. Physiological lies in its foundation, and on top - the spiritual needs of man. These include: self-expression (in sports, religion, science, art, etc.), communication (rights, duties, etc.), self-affirmation (recognition, respect, authority, etc.).

In this article in detail we will consider this type of human needs.

Different classification of needs

The presence of many different requests is explained by the complexity of human nature, the variety of social and natural conditions in which people exist.

It is difficult to identify stable groups for which needs are classified, but this does not stop the researchers. Different authors offer their reasons and motives for classification. For example, K. Obukhovsky, a Polish psychologist, noted that at present there are 120 of them.

Basic needs

Let us dwell on the classification of basic needs, rather generalized and widespread. Basic needs are those needs that are inherent in all people. These include: material, biological, spiritual and social. The important thing is that they line up in a hierarchical order. In order for spiritual and intellectual needs to appear, it is necessary that physiological systems function in our body, that is, material and biological ones are satisfied. But not all authors absolutize this dependence.

Definitely, the sequence of satisfaction of needs exists, but one can not think that it is absolutely the same for all individuals. There are cases when the need for spiritual development and creativity turned out to be dominant not after other needs (biological, recognition, security, etc.) were satisfied, but when even the basic requirements for housing, food and security were not yet satisfied.

Any of the above needs has a focus on a particular subject, encourages us to take possession of it.

Biological needs require the possession of vital resources, material - the material means necessary to meet all needs, social - forms of communication and communication with other people. Spiritual needs of a person require mastery of spirituality.

What is spirituality? Consciousness and spirituality are one-order concepts. However, spirituality is not any consciousness. For example, a worker who produces some operations on a factory conveyor, makes them consciously, with knowledge of the matter. At the same time, these actions are soulless, technological. The alcoholic consciously chooses alcoholic beverages and snacks. Nevertheless, when drinking alcohol, he does not see a reasonable boundary, his enslavement with passion does not allow him to rise higher, he falls into the state of the animal. The main reason for this decline is lack of spirituality.

Spiritual Abilities and Needs

The spiritual abilities that a person has, lead to the emergence of spiritual needs. In the child, in the first years of life, one can observe their glimpses - anger, fear, pleasure. In young and adulthood, if conditions are favorable, spiritual development is thinned, expanded, improved, and in the period of old age - stops at the reached altitude and after a while, as the body weakens, more and more weakens. Spiritual needs of man create his spiritual life, corresponding to the state, development, the influence of the external environment and the material organism. Before others, the simplest, the roughest, the first responding to the desire to satisfy the most powerful material needs, and later appear more complex and subtle.

Human values

Over a long period of history, humanity has determined which spiritual needs are the leading ones. They are differently called universal or higher values, since they are important for most people. These include, for example, categories of happiness, love, friendship, that is, physical and spiritual intimacy with a loved one, a happy family life, a love for children, the presence of devoted friends. This series can be supplemented and attributed here to mental and physical health, the possibility of creative self-expression, the enjoyment of the beauty of art and nature, interesting work and active active life in general. Freedom of will, that is, independence in actions and deeds, as well as self-confidence, that is independence from internal contradictions, also apply to spiritual needs.

Transcendence

Nikolai Mikhailovich Berezhnoy for the explanation of spirituality in his work "The Man and His Needs" introduces the concept of transcendence. The voluminous and multifaceted meaning of this concept is widely revealed in the philosophical writings of Immanuel Kant. But we are now interested in transcendence only in relation to spirituality. In this sense, it represents a way out of the limits of the natural everyday existence of a person, beyond the boundaries of his attained worldview. To transcend means to overcome the limits of one's empirical being, oneself, to want to become higher, to strive for greater freedom.

Spirituality is a transcendence of consciousness beyond the boundaries of everyday existence to a religious feeling, a philosophical comprehensive comprehension of the world, an aesthetic world-experience. That is, this desire to overcome one's own consciousness, achieve higher goals, follow social and personal ideals, higher values, and self-knowledge. This is expressed in the desire to contemplate nature, to the beautiful, in the interest in classical works of art and literature. Culture is the substance of spirituality, which contains all the spiritual development of mankind, its quintessence.

Firmness of spirit

The term "hardness of the spirit" is applied to a person who consistently realizes in his life a once chosen ideal that has made the achievement of this goal into the meaning of his entire existence. A person who is firm in spirit does not retreat before difficulties, does not panic over difficult life situations, does not change his convictions for money or for opportunistic reasons. He behaves according to the criteria of justice, honor and truth. Education of spirituality, hardness of spirit is the most noble task for young people, as this is the most correct path to understanding and finding the meaning of life, overcoming failures and life adversities.

Spirituality is the most valuable wealth of a person, which can not be borrowed or bought, it can only be created with our own efforts. Only a spiritually rich man is capable of a firm love, an unselfish friendship. The characterization of spirituality is not only a sphere of consciousness, since it can be realized in an individual only when he has the willed qualities, the ability to direct life forces in a specific direction. Therefore, a spiritless person is, first of all, spineless, weak-willed. Although it should be clarified that the volitional qualities in themselves are not akin to spirituality.

Spirituality is not just consciousness

Summarizing the above, we note that spirituality is not just consciousness, it is the function of the active essence of the individual. Man, accumulating knowledge of the external world and himself, enriches his consciousness with internal energy, and energy tends to expression in the spirit, so self-knowledge takes place.

This is the desire to acquire and enrich spirituality, to master the inner spiritual world of a person, and call spiritual needs. The arsenal of spirituality is very diverse. It is literature in human life, art, knowledge about people, society and the world. And also music, philosophy, art creativity. Here we also add the role of religion in human life.

Accession to spiritual culture, the so-called spiritual consumption is a process of satisfying spiritual needs.

Types of spiritual needs

The most important spiritual need is the desire for knowledge, including external and self-knowledge. This was noted by philosophers of different eras. Aristotle wrote that we all naturally seek knowledge. Michel de Montel, a French thinker who lived in the sixteenth century, argued that the pursuit of knowledge is the most natural of all. Aesthetic need is also a very important spiritual need. Its components: the desire to see harmony in people and nature, to master the world according to the laws of beauty. Literature in human life, painting, music, poetry, aspiration to improve human relations also belong here. Another spiritual need is communication. This includes friendship, love, fellowship, attention to each other, psychological and moral support, empathy, empathy, joint creativity and the exchange of ideas.

Conclusion

Needs are the driving force and basis of human behavior, its purpose and motivation. Values are objects of the external world serving the satisfaction of human needs. Spiritual consumption is the process by which spiritual needs are satisfied, the development of the personality. The most important of these are the need for cognition, communication, and also aesthetic.

Spiritual values, unlike material ones, do not disappear in the process of consumption, but remain a part of the spiritual world, enrich it. Comprehension, perception of them subjectively, this is due to the unique individual experience of a particular person. Spiritual consumption is therefore often a creative process, the result of which is a change in the personal qualities of a person, the development of the personality.

The formation of spiritual values, their choice for consumption is determined largely by the level of the individual's culture, by his education. This is a rather lengthy process. The higher the general cultural and educational level, the higher the spiritual needs of man, the requirements for the quality of spiritual values.