By: Mukul Sharma

Kenneth I Pargament, distinguished scholar at the Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center and author of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred, thinks psychology has begun to come of age because it's now encompassing and exploring a number of exciting new topics.

Among these, he lists meditation, forgiveness, acceptance, gratitude, hope and love, each of which has deep roots in Eastern as well as Western traditions and philosophies.

Recently, when asked if gratitude and forgiveness within a religious or spiritual context are different from these within asecular context, Pargament said, "Research has shown that mantrabased meditation to a spiritual phrase is more effective in reducing physical pain than meditation to a secular phrase.

Similarly, other studies have shown that spiritual forms of support, meaningmaking and coping predict health and well-being beyond the effects of secular support, meaning-making and coping."

But he also maintained that the old saying that there were no atheists in foxholes was not really true because before, during and after combat, atheists could be found who consistently held on to their orientation.

Yet, what makes spirituality special unlike any other dimension of life is that it keeps aunique focus on the domain of the secularly sacred such as transcendence, truth and a sense of deeper connectedness.

It's good that some things happen even if they're late because any behavioural science —psychology in particular — that overlooks these parts of life remains incomplete.