the Psychology of Spirituality: Mystical Experience, Intuition, Healing, Sacred Identity, and Search for Meaning

What happens in the human mind when something becomes sacred? Spirituality can provide meaning, identity, hope, belonging, healing, and moral direction. It can also produce confusion, dependency, spiritual bypassing, coercion, and harm. How can we examine spiritual life without dismissing it as illusion-or accepting every spiritual claim without question? The Psychology of Spirituality offers a comprehensive, evidence-informed exploration of how human beings seek, experience, interpret, and organize relationships with the sacred. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, religious studies, history, and clinical research, Keith Lawrence Miller examines spirituality with both openness and discernment. Psychological explanations are not used to explain spiritual experiences away, and spiritual interpretations are not allowed to replace necessary questions about safety, health, functioning, evidence, and personal agency. Inside, readers will explore: - Why human beings seek meaning, transcendence, and the sacred- How attachment, childhood, family, and culture shape spiritual identity- The psychology of awe, ritual, prayer, meditation, symbols, and community- Mystical experiences, intuition, dreams, visions, voices, trance, and altered states- Near-death, out-of-body, ancestral, and psychedelic experiences- Spiritual coping, grief, resilience, healing, and post-traumatic growth- The difference between spiritual crisis and psychological disorder- Charismatic authority, spiritual bypassing, coercive control, and religious trauma- Ethical spiritual leadership, safeguarding, and recovery from harmful communities- AI-generated prayer, digital spirituality, synthetic authority, and the future of faith >Written for thoughtful general readers as well as psychologists, coaches, counselors, chaplains, clergy, healthcare professionals, spiritual-care practitioners, educators, and students, The Psychology of Spirituality presents neither a defense nor a rejection of spiritual belief. Instead, it asks a more mature question: What happens psychologically and ethically when human beings experience something as sacred-and what kind of life follows?