Expansion Of Consciousness Research Articles

The Future of Humanistic Psychology

SYNOPSISI believe that Humanistic Psychology, with its commitment to embrace all that it means to be a human being, has a vital role to play as new insecurities emerge in this time of uncertainty and transition to ‘we know not what’. Rather than being dragged backwards, drawn by the energy of contraction, giving way to caution and fear of exclusion from controlling bodies which will subsequently be seen as blatantly inadequate and limiting, it's important to remember our roots. We must endeavour neither to react nor capitulate to the disheartening backsliding which so often occurs within the underlying evolutionary expansion of consciousness.

Tres propuestas para renovar el programa de la “Filosofía como ciencia rigurosa” de 1911

En 2011 se cumplió el centenario de la publicación del artículo de Husserl “La Filosofía como ciencia rigurosa”; este artículo presenta algunos problemas centrales a que tendría que responder la fenomenología en la actualidad. Los tres campos temáticos son los siguientes: 1) Cuál es la motivación que llevan a la epoché y en qué medida intervienen en ella los actos voluntarios. 2) Hasta qué punto la ampliación de la conciencia es un resultado de un procedimiento reflexivo, o en qué medida participan allí procesos inconscientes. En esta parte se impone revisar las relaciones entre la fenomenología y el psicoanálisis. 3) Cuál es el sentido de los acontecimientos y en qué medida ellos permiten la ampliación o reducción del mundo de la vida. La consideración de la relación entre acontecimiento y acción exige replantear la pregunta por la responsabilidad social de la filosofía.

Re the Shinorvic Trust: equity develops with modern standards and mores

Re the Shinorvic Trust: equity develops with modern standards and mores

Imagination, Sensation and the Education of Attention Among Cuban Spirit Mediums

This article attempts to come to terms with the phenomenology of learning in the popular Cuban spirit mediumship practice of espiritismo. Espiritistas' talents derive from the unique relationships they construct with their muertos (the protective dead), allowing them to receive, discern, and interpret valuable information for others. Learning here does not result from explicit knowledge transmission but from a guided expansion of consciousness, where the neophyte learns to attend to the particulars of the spirit world through his or her imagination and sensation. I associate this process with what Ingold has described as the ‘education of attention’, and use his concept of ‘entanglement’ to propose that learning mediumship be conceptualized as implying the development of a particular kind of person. I have further used Latour's definition of ‘acquiring a body’ as ‘learning to be affected’ to better understand the mutual constitution of the spiritual landscape and the self.

Bergson and Derrida: A Question of Writing Time as Philosophy’s Other

Following the 1988 publication of Bergsonism by Gilles Deleuze, many contemporary critics such as Leonard Lawlor and Paul Douglass have re-contextualized Bergson within poststructuralism. In so doing, Bergsonian theory enables us to readdress questions associated with concepts of temporality and their relation to language. In considering this re-appropriation, Suzanne Guerlac in Thinking in Time: an introduction to Henri Bergson (2006), asks why Bergson has never been considered in relation to Derrida, given that the two philosophers share fundamental concerns about time and writing. Following Derrida’s critique of Husserl in La Voix et le phénomène (1967), it is perhaps the case that many critics categorize Bergson as a phenomenologist. However, I aim to develop the argument that Guerlac instigates and show that Derrida’s critique of Husserl in fact establishes a close proximity with Bergson’s view that Western metaphysics suppresses time as durée. I will show how both Bergson and Derrida operate with the understanding of a particular rupture in the full presence of the present, an expansion of consciousness as a ‘now’ to include a constant deferral to memory. While this overlap establishes an affinity, I conclude by showing that it simultaneously marks a point of diffraction with regard to how both seek to methodologically embody such a concept of time.

The transcendent function, moments of meeting and dyadic consciousness: constructive and destructive co‐creation in the analytic dyad

In reading the work of Beebe (2002), Sander (Amadei & Bianchi 2008), Tronick (2007) and Stern and the Boston Change Process Study Group (1998), resonances to the transcendent function can be registered but these researchers seem to be more focused on the interpersonal domain. In particular Tronick's concept of 'dyadic expansion of consciousness' and 'moments of meeting' from the Boston Change Process Study Group describe external dyadic interactions between mothers and babies and therapists and patients while, in contrast, Jung's early focus was on the intrapsychic process of internal interaction between conscious and unconscious within an individual. From an overall perspective, the interpersonal process of change described by infant researchers, when held in conjunction with Jung's internal process of change, together form a transcendent whole that could also be called a complex adaptive system. Such new theoretical perspectives from other fields confirm and elaborate long held Jungian notions such as the transcendent function which is, in many ways, harmonious with a systems perspective. Throughout this paper, clinical vignettes of interactive moments along with sand play and dreams will be used to illustrate theoretical points regarding the healthy process of the transcendent function along with descriptions of failures of such conjunctive experiences.

The Expansion of Consciousness: Vol. 1. by Ralph Metzner

The Expansion of Consciousness: Vol. 1. by Ralph Metzner

The impact of Buddhist thought on the music of Zhou Long: A consideration of Dhyana

From 1987 to 1994, Zhou Long composed in a manner he declared ‘Buddhist’. A work that exemplifies this period—and its aesthetic preoccupations—is the quintet Dhyana. This article investigates that work in close technical detail, exploring how key concepts inherent in the term ‘dhyana’ are reflected in the music. Most centrally, ‘dhyana’ implies the oneness of concentration of thought and expansion of consciousness—and concentration and expansion prove to be primary opposites in Zhou Long's compositional technique. Buddhism (especially Chan Buddhism) asserts the inseparability of these opposites. So does the great Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, in whom Zhou Long has had an abiding interest. And so does Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy of the arts founded by Eli Siegel, which serves as the methodological framework for this article. Central to Aesthetic Realism is Siegel's statement: ‘In reality opposites are one, art shows this’.

Toking Their Way Sober: Alcoholics and Marijuana as Folk Medicine

In this exploratory study, 18 semistructured life‐history interviews were conducted with heavy drinkers who substituted marijuana for their alcohol use. Folk knowledge on the efficacy of marijuana in self‐treatment for alcoholism, particularly associative depression and anxiety disorders, is examined. The study views the impacts of alcohol and marijuana on the subjects’ ability to sustain viable normative selves in their daily interaction orders. Other instrumental uses of marijuana, consciousness expansion and social facilitation, are also presented as well as how normative dosages of marijuana can be socially constructed and transmitted within rituals of use.

Re-creating Through Recreating

Although many people are uncertain of what to expect of the aging experience, the ideology of conscious aging (consciousness expansion and personal growth) has merit. This article describes a workshop called The Women We Are Becoming: Re-creating Through Recreating in the Later Years that was designed to challenge established norms and narratives about aging by shifting the focus on aging from decline to development. Transformative learning as a philosophy and experiential learning as a method provided women participants with opportunities to become conscious of their own aging through object lessons presented in outdoor settings.

An Eastern Perspective on Change

In Eastern, particularly Buddhist, thinking the process of change and impermanence is an integral part of existence. All suffering in life is the result of ignorance of this basic reality. A deeper awareness and appreciation of this fact leads to enlightenment and real happiness. It is the rapidity of change that is responsible for the illusory processes that create the sense of solidity, continuity, permanence, entity, agency, self or ego. Thus, the mind is able to mix the real with the unreal. In reality, there are merely processes. However, mere intellectual understanding of this is not enough. It requires experiential understanding through the expansion of consciousness and attention to these processes. It also requires experiential training, appropriate attitudes (such as kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity) and development which is often gradual. Thus, learning to appreciate and delight in the existential process of change is at the heart of the Buddhist approach. It is beneficial not only in the long run (i.e., leading to enlightenment and freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth, the ultimate purpose of life) but also in the short term (i.e., by making living and dying enjoyable).

A Preface to Ethics:

ABSTRACTThis essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.

Globalisation and making sense of the world

This article grapples with the problem of understanding present human life and circumstances, and the challenges humans face in their effort to make sense of it. The importance of theory in this quest is emphasised. Two notions are considered in terms of their value towards this endeavour: globalisation and worlding. Globalisation is the current buzz word and some of the issues related to this term have been named. The term world is, however, preferred to globalisation, since world does not refer to the impersonal globe, cosmos or universe. The term world, or worlding, wants to emphasise humanisation and further signifies sense-making. Sense-making, however, is no easy matter. On the one hand, it involves the threatening reality of evil, not in the religious sense but in a profound ethical sense. On the other hand, it involves the process of the expansion of consciousness carried and supported by the ascent into the noosphere which offers an awareness of a kind of thinking other than and different from logical reasoning. While the one warns against the mechanisation of the mind, the other maintains that technique is a point of support for the spiritualisation of humanity. This world compels us to find or make sense of it; world is precisely where there is a place, a true place, for everybody. If this were not the case there would only be a globe: a place of exile where we would exist as strangers.

Consciousness: a User's Guide

Consciousness: a User's Guide

The shaman reborn in cyberspace, or evolving magico-spiritual techniques of consciousness-making

With the expansion of consciousness comes new ways of seeing reality. The hypercontextual pretexts, contexts and subtexts created by the new technologies of virtual, immersive and cyber realities create boundaryless experiences that are analogous to the archaic techniques evolved through shamanic journeys designed to transcend all human boundaries. The magico-spiritual imagination, far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today’s ‘technological unconscious’. The language and ideas of the information society have slipped into and even transformed the myriad worlds of contemporary spirituality. What is emerging is a networked framework for grappling with some of the impulses that are currently tearing us apart: spirit and the machine, modernity and nihilism, technology and the human. ‘We find ourselves trapped on a cyborg sandbank, caught between the old, smouldering campfire stories and the new networks of programming and control’ (Davis 1998: 131). We are ‘beached’ between the archaic sea of our magico-spiritual ancestors, freshly emerged from our proto-modern past, and spawned into the postmodern reality of fragmented selves, networked options, downloadable digitized consumerware and ‘technologies of ecstacy’.

LSDNA: Rhetoric, Consciousness Expansion, and the Emergence of Biotechnology

What happened is this: Once upon a time there was a narrative of vitality. Ok, not a narrative, but an apprehension, a fear, a vision. It didn't have a beginning, middle, or end. It was. Its contours were no more determinable than those of consciousness. Indeed, our consciousness, as humans, was our sole alleged difference from it. From something called "life." We were more than life, but were also, tragically, confined to it. You know the story all too well. Some of its major authors were Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Bichat. Even Shelley.

Emotional Connections and Dyadic Consciousness in Infant-Mother and Patient-Therapist Interactions: Commentary on Paper by Frank M. Lachmann

The emotional connection between patients and therapists and between developmental infants and researchers is argued to be a uniting basis for discussion of differences between therapists and researchers. Infant-mother research is seen as providing an understanding of the specificity of relationships and of the dyadic expansion of consciousness (DEC). DEC is hypothesized to be a mechanism of developmental change as well as a change process of therapy.

Meme Pools, World 3, and Averroës's Vision of Immortality

Dawkins's concept of the meme pool, essentially equivalent to Popper's World 3, is considered as an expression in modern terms for what Averroës knew as the active intellect, an immortal entity feeding into, or even creating, the passive intellect of consciousness. A means is thus provided for reconciling a materialist Darwinian view of the universe with a conception of nonpersonal immortality. The meme pool/active intellect correspondence provides a strong basis for regarding science as a communal enterprise producing enrichment of the meme pool and expansion of consciousness. It also emphasizes the virtues of memetic conservation in relation to vanishing cultures.

The generation of order and form within transpersonal fields: Insights from the psychotherapeutic situation

This article investigates the generation of form and order within transpersonal fields and their relationship to the expansion of consciousness. The author cites findings from disciplines as diverse as dynamical systems theory, developmental biology, physics, electromagnetism, and Jungian analysis to support the theory that all human interaction is influenced by transpersonal, archetypal fields transcending individual consciousness. He emphasizes the need for an interdisciplinary approach to apply what is collectively known about natural laws and systems to the issues of form and order within the individual psyche, an investigation that might be termed “the confluence of matter and psyche.” This direction represents a departure from current trends in both consciousness research and psychotherapy which strongly emphasizes the subjective and cognitive processes in the development of consciousness and personality. The author presents a case study involving an individual applying for admission to a graduate program to illustrate the workings of a field‐produced series of phenomena. This case highlights the importance of pattern recognition within transpersonal fields, and the attendant need to understand their core meaning. As a Jungian Analyst, he associates the influencing transpersonal fields with specific archetypal constellations. For the purpose of this paper, the author emphasizes the existence and interaction between fields. Lastly, he considers how transpersonal fields might operate at a societal and global level and the implications for world peace. This material represents a next step in the ongoing exploration of the genesis of order and form in the psyche and in other areas of the natural world.

Reminiscence therapy: A nursing intervention in the home care setting

This article presents a review of both theoretical and empirical literature regarding the use of remi niscence therapy as a health-promoting strategy. A conceptual framework is then developed that describes the phenomenon that recollection is an expansion of consciousness. The article con cludes with a discussion of how individual reminiscence therapy can be used in the home care setting to promote health in the elderly. Key words: remiraiscence, self-awareness, expansion of consciousness, health promotion, life review