THE BOOK OF BEING AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: COINCIDENCE AND DIVERGENCE

Abstract

The article regards the coincidence and the divergence between the ancient Biblical myth about the primal sin and some experimental results, obtained by modern science. Thus, the author shows that most people are really subjected to the regularities, which are regarded by religion as the God’s punishment for eating the forbidden fruits from the Tree of Knowledge. Mostly, we speak about a higher subjection to the bad than to the good, about a quick adaptation to good, about a transformation of the short-term good into the long-term bad and about attitude to labor as a hard burden. In other words, the greater proneness of a man to the evil than to the good, which is underlined in the Christian sources, has a number of contemporary scientific proofs. Thus, there is created an impression, that a mass person is prone to all the negative regularities, which can be interpreted as the consequence of the divine punishment.  In contrast to the above said, creative activity, which is freely chosen by a gifted individual, is governed by the opposite regularities. Namely, it is connected to getting the exclusive positive experience (including the flow) due to high tension, the absence of adaptation to good and, at the same time, a higher stability towards widely spread stresses and negative information in general. It is also characterized by a development of inner potential and successive self-realization. In particular, this is most vividly expressed in creative activity of a scientist, who continues to «eat the forbidden fruits» from the Tree of Knowledge, thus breaking the divine prohibitions and regularities common to most people. In the epoch, when the science cannot discover the external sources of meaning (including the divine plan), every thinking person gets his own responsibility at creating one’s own meaningful life construction