style="font-size:15px;"> The mind and feelings have a dual structure; so, the fundamental property of the brain is the ability to justify anything12, in the sense that no matter what position a person takes (for example, "for" abortion or "against") it will bring arguments and will insist on them. In reality, for every thought and feeling in a person there is an opposite belief and desire (which go as a set), but in consciousness in one period of time a person perceives one thing and identifies himself with it.
The stronger the disharmony of cognitive components (which can be designated as a war of the poles of the same scale), feelings/states (love-hate, joy-sadness, anger-benevolence, attraction-rejection) the more strongly it affects the body (psychosomatics, diseases, injuries). Also, the stronger the internal disharmony, i.e., the more a person insists on the truth of one side (his half-truth), the more he condemns the adherents of the opposite (and in fact feels guilty to his own rejected part).
In general, we can confidently state that if there really is an intention to understand something root (fundamental) about what is happening to a person, then we need to look for a mismatched duality, and the way out (including from suffering) is the harmonization of duality (understanding the importance of both sides, the transition from enmity to cooperation).
We believe that a clear vision of the mechanics of the work of personality dualities and the transition from "the game is played by you" to the position of free choice is possible only through the noetic dimension, through those higher meanings and values that are there. To such a meaning (or a non–transferable, win-win value) we refer awareness – a clear understanding of oneself ("who you are and why"). I.e., to consider a human only as a person (ego), as a set of certain physical, mental, sensory components and variables, it means to humiliate him, put him in a Procrustean bed and deprive him of the most valuable, important, perhaps life itself in its deepest understanding – to transfer him from the sphere of life into existence.
It is the view from the noetic dimension that provides us with understanding and answers to the most difficult and painful events in a person's life (for example, the loss of a child, the collapse of life values, the experience of a terminal illness). If we consider a person only as a body-mind-feelings structure, designated here as a personality or ego, then the answers will be explanatory, superficial.
In readiness and transition to a contemplative position, it is not difficult to see a somato-psychological unity that creates harmony of the physical and psychological, allowing an aging person to calmly relate to the past, present and future. Against the background of a decrease in physical strength, a constant feeling of physical malaise, on the eve of the end of life, such a position reflects "… the main questions about the meaning of human existence, self-knowledge … such a turn of psychological life during late adulthood and old age turns out to be a happy form of psychological aging for a person, providing "consent" with senile changes in physical and mental states, satisfaction with today's life, full acceptance of the environment."13
Spiritual and existential understanding of life, its individual stages leads a person to cope with the fear of death, to "outgrow" the idea that it negates any successes achieved and efforts made. Filling life fragments and its lived parts by the meaning, understanding their value, creates a subjective feeling of correctness, truth of the path in a person. It also opens up certain fragments in the future, building internal connections that were not initially manifested for the personality, which largely support the desire to live and interest in oneself (i.e. considering access to spiritual meanings as an existential task of late adulthood and old age, we can see the manifestation of its solution in the inner harmonious state of personality, acceptance of existential givens). The fulfillment of the existential task of understanding one's life (general principles and an example of understanding life, in a popular science format, are also given in Appendix No. 2) includes understanding the inherent meanings and those fragments of life that a person evaluates negatively as dysfunctional. But when we subjecting them to secondary (tertiary, etc.) semantic processing it will lead us to acceptance of our personality and life in general (i.e., including death). We come to the conclusion that "all this was not in vain", "it was not in vain". Such comprehension (the discovery of the not obvious significance of some moments of life), a kind of pilgrimage to one's own Self, of course, requires a developed reflection and experience of self-contemplation from the individual, and failure to fulfill this task deprives a person of existential fullness and existential joy.
As we noted earlier14, by carrying out the spiritual work described here and further, a person creates the following: as he learns about himself, he outgrows the boundaries of the ego – connects his deep essence with something greater than himself, "with the superhuman beginnings of his nature, changes the scale of self-perception and forms a new attitude to his deeds, choices and life in general. Every grain of self-knowledge gained is experienced by him as a step in the direction of personal growth, congruence of the Self and the world. Such self–identification and the discovery of the value of the Self, the need for oneself in being – a significant condition of human existence – is one of the foundations of experiencing inner well-being."15 As M.M. Bakhtin wrote, "to be aware of oneself actively means to illuminate oneself with the upcoming meaning,"16 which can be found beyond the visible limits of death (the cessation of the functioning of the physical body).
I.S. Pryazhnikov refers to the personal neoplasms of the elderly as a change of value orientations with access to existential questions, the search for meaning in a new life activity, summing up (revealing the meanings) of a life lived. With retirement, a person can come to a special happiness, for some people, it may consist in "the desire to calmly comprehend the whole life lived" (in this case, self-determination will be retrospective, awareness of the meaning of the life lived). The personal neoplasm in this case will be a sense of integrity and harmony, or, if the meanings are not found, a sense of inharmonicity, incompleteness.
During the period of old age itself, one of the leading activities of I.S. Pryazhnikov is the preparation for death, which can be expressed in the preparation of a will, introduction to religious or esoteric knowledge. Personal neoplasm has a dual character: "either it is a strengthening sense of self-worth when an old person finds an important meaning of his life for himself in spite of all circumstances, or it is a feeling of despair when such a meaning is not found and an old person wastes his strength in small things, literally "fading before his eyes"."17
All the moments of awareness of the unattainability of the fullness of self-incarnation that are becoming more frequent during late adulthood and old age are closely related to thoughts about death (the inevitable existential reality of existence). When a person constructively overcomes the "crisis of aging", then with a retrospective immersion in the past, he experiences the "fulfillment" of the meanings of life, finding in it moments of happiness, self-actualization, moments of self-embodiment and fullness of being. If the fear of death overwhelms the personality, then the appeal to the past occurs rather forcibly, in order to find excuses for not embodying meanings, there is a projection of self-condemnation on others, on inherited circumstances and leads to negative experiences, a sense of subjective distress.
Thus, both the "crisis of aging" and what can be designated as the "crisis of death", a person fixes in a sense by himself, – as a line when there are no resources, time and effort to implement something conceived that gives a justified meaning, and life will pass without it. But in order for this to be experienced as a tragedy, it is necessary to reinforce it with ideas about the insolvency of a past life (about "wasted and pointlessly wasted time") and the inability to comprehend a certain critical value of the semantic spectrum of death. However, the first still does not happen so often, because rethinking the life path, referring to past experience, always has a chance to find valuable, important, right in life, at least acceptable meanings, "versions of yourself". In this
Kurpatov A.V. How to start thinking more effectively? The phenomenon of contradiction. [video recording] // YouTube. Access mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsrZCj7cJ0M . Time 12:40.
Ibid., p. 693, author's selection – I.B.
Basov I. A. Existential tasks of late adulthood // EuropeanSocialScienceJournal. 2017. No. 10. – pp. 508-518.
Sapogova E.E. Existential psychology of adulthood. – M.: Smysl, 2013, p. 534, author's selection – I.B.
Quoted by Sapogova E.E. Existential psychology of adulthood. – M.: Smysl, 2013, p. 575.
Psychology of old age: textbook of the psychology of old age: for faculties: psychological, medical and social work / ed.-comp. D.Ya. Raigorodsky – Samara: Publishing House BAKHRAKH-M, 2004, p. 456.
