A few months ago one of the publishers with whom I work told me that spirituality was "really hot now". I puzzled over that. Really hot? Spirituality? What he meant was that psychology of the spirit – spiritual interventions in psychotherapy – was really hot now.

Indeed, books abound on the subject. One popular writer, Ken Wilbur, In 2000 wrote 'Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy' and another writer, Kenneth Pargament followed in 2007 with 'Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred'.

Meanwhile the American Psychological Association has published 'Addressing Issues of Spirituality and Religion in Psychotherapy', by Edward Shafranske and Jon Carlson, 'Handbook of Psychotherapy and Religious Diversity', by Scott Richards and Allen Bergin, and the 'Casebook for a Spiritual Strategy in Counseling and Psychotherapy', also by Richards and Bergin.

Professors from my doctoral programme got together and published one titled 'Integrative Psychotherapy: Toward a Comprehensive Christian Approach' (by Mark McMinn and Clark Campbell).

So, it seems that a lot of people do want to write on the subject, and I will be joining them, for I'm working on a chapter on spirituality in gestalt therapy for an advanced text on the subject of gestalt therapy that will come out next year, published by Routledge.

Because of these things, and just because it relates to my own growth, I've been considering the relationship between spirituality and psychology, between mind and brain, and how spirit, mind, and brain (or physical body) all relate to one another.

Roughly 2000 years ago a man wrote to his friends on the difference between a psychological perspective and a spiritual perspective in life.

He contrasted the psychikos and the pneumatikos (the unspiritual person and the spiritual person).

He said: "We are talking about things not taught by human wisdom but taught by spirit, interpreting spiritual things by means of spiritual words. But an unspiritual man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, for they are moronic to him and he has no power to know, for they are spiritually investigated." (1 Corinthians 2: 13, 14)

This same man wrote to another set of his friends and he said: "Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind, so that you might be able to discern what is the will of God…" (Romans 12: 2).

This seems to be a contradiction; if God is discovered by means of the spirit, then how come one has to become renewed in one's mind? Is not "mind" a facet of a person viewed psychologically? In fact, it is.

According to the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, by Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, mind (nous) is "the faculty of physical and intellectual perception" – one's ability to think and it is an intra-organismic capacity.

An inductive study of the word "pneuma" (Septuagint translation of the word "ruach" in Hebrew), as it is used in the Old Testament indicates that spirit is the medium of a trans-organismic relationship beyond oneself that taps the larger realities, the ultimate mysteries of life that resolve in the person of God. Now, here are some other observations, and you will need to put your "thinking caps" on. Mind is an emergent property. That is, it comes forth or emerges from the functioning of brain-in-contact, that is, from the action of the physiology of the brain at work as a person interacts in the world.

Neuropsychological researcher, Warren Brown, and Christian Philosopher, Nancey Murphy, have collaborated on several studies indicating how this works, and they both teach at Fuller Theological Seminary in Southern California.

So, there is organismic relationship involved, because we are all somehow connected and related to what is other than ourselves in our physical and social environments, but at that level alone (the level of psyche) it is simply pscyhikos-psychological.

At that level alone it is not pneumatikos-spiritual. Yet, for the spiritual person, pneuma trains nous to bring about a holistic and informed perspective in the person who is pneumatikos, and that is because the important things of life, what Paul Tillich would have called the ultimate issues, even what others identify as mystery, or what still others identify as epiphanal beauty, are spiritual in nature.

In the quote from Romans 12, the writer's admonition was not to be conformed, or molded by "this age". An age is akin to a zeitgeist, a dominant paradigm, or a worldview.

It is the sum of all things having effect on a person at a particular point in time and space. Gestalt therapists call this "the field".

Thus, the translation for a gestalt therapy audience would be "do not be molded by the field, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind…"

I find this fascinating, because I have always thought of the field as including God. God is one of the things in the consideration of all things having effect.

God is part of the field, so how can one avoid being molded by the field if one is attempting to let God affect him or her?

For me, the resolution comes from the fact that God is both immanent (that is, present with, and in the field) and transcendent (that is, holy, of a different dimension altogether and apart from the field).

Thus, it makes sense that God intervenes in our lives in the medium of spirit, and that that influence affects the mind. Thus, the pneumatikos is the one who is sensitive to the things that enter the field in such a way, and his or her mind includes spiritual experience, but the psychikos is not, and he or she cannot make sense of spiritual experience.

I am still working out how these things influence the process of psychotherapy, but one thing I have noticed in my practice: some people come almost as if sent, and they invariably start talking about spiritual things. I marvel at such people.