Exploration of travel and transpersonal development

John Thompson

doi:10.53074/cstp.2020.5

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between travel, transpersonal development and spiritual growth. Due to the personal engagement of the participants and the author in the subject areas being investigated, Moustakas’ (1990) heuristic inquiry was chosen. This is a qualitative methodology ideally suited to reveal tacit knowledge through those “who have directly encountered the phenomenon” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 38). Interview analysis from the author’s original MSc research uncovered themes that were presented through individual depictions, an exemplary depiction and a composite depiction, portraying recurrent collective themes. The composite depiction forms the results section of this paper. The discussion utilises insights and theories from transpersonal psychology as analytical tools to more closely explore the deeper workings of the phenomena being researched. It suggests that for people who are open to experience and capable of processing that experience, travel, through a search for authenticity and transcendence of the known self and outer world can implicitly share similarities with spiritual practices, therapy, and rites of passage. This can lead to self-knowledge, meaningful transformation, and authentic transpersonal development. Furthermore, the liminal aspects of travel can continue on returning home to aid the process of integration, and ‘re-create’ both personal and communal life at home.

Highlights

In 2003, whilst trekking in Nepal I was engaged in conversation by a gentleman who shared details of his research that entailed observing the behaviour of Tibetan and Nepalese pilgrims
This is because I have personally found travel conducive for the development of a spiritual or transpersonal outlook. It has raised my awareness of my personal and social conditioning, connected me to myself and others, and opened me up to new perspectives, through experiences of what various philosophies and religions look and feel like in practice. This is supported through literature across culture, time, and geographical location, from Buddhist hagiography (Conze, 2000), to Hesse’s (1998) Siddhartha, Homer’s (2003) Odyssey, to Bunyan’s (2008) Pilgrim’s Progress, that links travelling with passage rituals, development, and a literal outer and metaphorical inner transformational journey ‘home’
Limen, where most of the travelling occurs, is further subdivided into connections and higher states to highlight how and why transpersonal development commonly occurred for the participants whilst travelling

Summary

Introduction

In 2003, whilst trekking in Nepal I was engaged in conversation by a gentleman who shared details of his research that entailed observing the behaviour of Tibetan and Nepalese pilgrims. It has raised my awareness of my personal and social conditioning, connected me to myself and others, and opened me up to new perspectives, through experiences of what various philosophies and religions look and feel like in practice This is supported through literature across culture, time, and geographical location, from Buddhist hagiography (Conze, 2000), to Hesse’s (1998) Siddhartha, Homer’s (2003) Odyssey, to Bunyan’s (2008) Pilgrim’s Progress, that links travelling with passage rituals, development, and a literal outer and metaphorical inner transformational journey ‘home’. Organized-mass-tourists take group holidays; individual-mass-tourists pre-plan, but travel flexibly and independently; explorers evade mass tourism, but don’t fully engage with host cultures; and lastly, drifters who live alongside their hosts He describes tourism as “quest of meaning at somebody else’s centre” “enhance[d]...perceptions of physiological, emotional, psychological and spiritual health” (Brymer et al, 2010, p. 21; cf. Davis, 2004), and transformation through peak or flow experience (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion