Transpersonal Psychology Research Articles

Toward a well-integrated psychology of religion and spirituality: A tribute to Kenneth I. Pargament.

Toward a well-integrated psychology of religion and spirituality: A tribute to Kenneth I. Pargament.

A Transpersonal Conversation

Abstract This article develops and deploys a participatory hermeneutic for Pentecostal theology through a dialogue with transpersonal psychology. It takes as representative the work of Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman for its interdisciplinary approach. After brief contextualization within Pentecostal hermeneutics and the larger cultural history of spirituality, it highlights the salient features of a participatory approach. Then it moves to a short overview of Bruno Barnhart’s constructive participatory interpretation of history. Afterward, the prophetic word of knowledge, exemplified in John 4, is rescripted through the foregrounded participatory hermeneutic to demonstrate its cachet. The study ends with critical reflection on the examined content and the hermeneutical endeavor within Pentecostal theology.

What is transpersonal psychology? A concise definition based on 20 years of research.

Research on definitions of the field of psychology and themes in the literature of the field over a period of 20 years inform this description: Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person embedded within a diverse, interconnected, and evolving world that pays particular attention to states of consciousness and developmental models reflecting expansion beyond conventional notions of self. Each element of this definition is examined, as well as the four phases of definitional development within the field from its founding in 1968 up to the present.

Transformative, noetic, and transpersonal experiences during personal development workshops.

The global personal development market was valued at $38.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow an additional 5% from 2020 to 2027. Many of these workshops promise to be transformational. This secondary analysis study examined transformative, transpersonal, and noetic aspects of personal development workshops. We found that 74% of post-survey records endorsed that participants experienced a moment of clarity or profound insight during their workshop. In addition, 66% endorsed that participants had experienced at least one noetic experience, and 84% endorsed at least one transpersonal experience. These analyses provide preliminary evidence for the transformational potential of personal development workshops and the common occurrence of transpersonal and noetic experiences across various workshop types.

Jenny Wade: Building the next generation of scholars in transpersonal psychology.

Jenny Wade: Building the next generation of scholars in transpersonal psychology.

A Dialogue with Guo Haiping: The Concept of Universe in the Nanjing Outsider Art

Creative Arts Educ Ther (2021) 7(2):128–137 DOI: 10.15212/CAET/2021/7/11 A Dialogue with Guo Haiping: The Concept of Universe in the Nanjing Outsider Art Abstract Native artists in Nanjing Outsider Art Studio are individuals who have been medically diagnosed with different types of mental illness who have been socially isolated for a long time and without a high school diploma. Half of them spent only a few years in special schools for various mental and intellectual disabilities. Why are the native artists with less education who experience mental illness so interested in the study of the universe? In an in-depth interview with Guo Haiping and Aimee T. Liu, Guo shared his explanations of this phenomenon in the sphere of transpersonal psychology. Keywords: China outsider art, Universe, Haiping Guo, transpersonal psychology 摘要 南京原生艺术工作室的艺术家都是被医学诊断为患有不同类型精神疾病的人，他们长期脱离社会，而且都没有读完高中，甚至有一半只是在为精神和智力障碍者服务的特殊学校上过几年学。对于这些文化水平普遍不高，而且还患有不同类型精神疾病的人而言，他们为什么会对宇宙产生如此的兴趣呢？在中，郭老师在超个人心理学中发现了对于这一现象的更多阐释。 关键词： 中国原生艺术，宇宙，郭海平，超个人心理学

Supplemental Material for Transcendent Indebtedness to God: A New Construct in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Supplemental Material for Transcendent Indebtedness to God: A New Construct in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

“FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHIES OF JOSEF KNECHT THROUGH THE PRIZM OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY (BASED ON HERMAN HESSE'S NOVEL“THE GLASS BEAD GAME”)

The article focuses on three biographies of Josef Knecht from the novel by Hermann Hesse “The Glass Bead Game” with regard to the postulates of transpersonal psychology. A thorough study provides insight into the peculiarities of a unique literary technique – the transfer of the “self” into different historical periods by means of imagination, as a kind of “way to self”, devotion to truth through pagan voluntary sacrifice (“Rainmaker”), the ascetic self-denial of a Christian schemamonk (“The Father Confessor”), the life of an Indian ascetic (“Siddhartha”), understanding that all being is illusionary. The research highlights the similarity of plot events, names, integration of esoteric and exoteric perspectives. The study reviews a holotropic state of consciousness, which can develop into psychoid experience, accounting for the impossible to become possible. Based on the judgments of the direct relationship between the concepts of the macrocosm and the microcosm, the perception of reality as a result of human intellectual activity, it is specified that the efforts of the “possible human”, “virtual human” to liberate themselves from the dualistic perception of reality is accomplishable by acquiring the unity of consciousness. The authors point out that the review of the motive of “awakening” indicates Hesse’s intention to embody absolute transcendent reality in his characters, which could manage the crisis of splitting consciousness.

Divine Madness On the Aetiology of Romantic Obsession

The paper opens with a brief overview of 'limerence' or obsessive love disorder (OLD) from the perspectives of psychology, neurology, anthropology, and sociology, but concludes that certain unique characteristics of the condition suggest that it is better understood as a form of 'divine madness', resulting from the failure of the Platonic ascent of love to follow its natural trajectory. The paper focuses on Plotinus's model of the erotic ascent from the one to the ONE, drawing parallels with the Indian bhakti tradition and other models derived from transpersonal psychology. The final section explores the distinction between pagan and Christian Platonism and the entailments of the latter for secular perspectives on love.

Rethinking Consciousness: Extraordinary Challenges for Contemporary Science edited by John H. Buchanan and Christopher M. Aanstoos

This slender volume is the twentieth member of a series entitled “Toward Ecological Civilization,” organized under the leadership of distinguished process philosopher and process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. It grew directly from the 10th Whitehead International Conference, held in Claremont, California, in June 2015, and more particularly from a single conference track (out of the more than 80 making up the program) devoted specifically to various kinds of “extraordinary experiences” (especially, parapsychological and transpersonal experiences) that directly challenge the materialist/physicalist worldview which arose in the 17th century and still dominates the contemporary scientific, educational, and cultural mainstream. The central premises of the series as a whole, the 2015 conference, and the present volume are that postmodern civilization faces life-threatening crises rooted in that impoverished physicalist worldview, that we desperately need a more commodious, life-affirming, and ecologically sound alternative to it, and that Whitehead’s metaphysical vision can help take us in the needed direction. Like Stanley Krippner in the book’s brief Foreword, I am strongly sympathetic to these views.

Transpersonal psychology as critical/radical psychology

Editor’s note: this article is a summary of the Keynote at the Section Annual Conference Transpersonal Activism on 12 September 2021.Despite its designation as the ‘Fourth Force,’ Transpersonal Psychology often occupies a peripheral and precarious place within mainstream Psychological approaches. Its historic focus on mystical/spiritual and non-ordinary states of consciousness, coupled with its continued emphasis on subjective and experiential inquiry, have often led to it being excluded in favour of more materialist, positivistic paradigms that currently dominate the discipline. Rather than attempt to simply adapt and assimilate into more mainstream, conventional forms of Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology has a unique opportunity to actively embrace its otherness and outsider status; to pursue authentic interdisciplinary encounters and pioneer more inclusive and radical approaches to research methods. In contemporary Humanistic and Engaged expressions of Eastern Wisdom Traditions (specifically Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism) one may observe the increasing emphasis on ecological awareness, recovery of the Divine Feminine and more spiritually informed approaches to social justice. To avoid accusations of remoteness, solipsism and spiritual bypassing, Transpersonal Psychologists also need to better attend and creatively respond to prevailing political and socioeconomic conditions. In this keynote I will demonstrate how Transpersonal Psychology has at its heart, always constituted a critical/radical approach to Psychology and still retains the capacity to reinvigorate, re-enchant, transform and transcend.

Embracing metaphysics in transpersonal psychology: A response to Steve Taylor

Steve Taylor’s Review of the new edition of my book Shadow, Self, Spirit (2021) focuses on a critique of what he sees as my ‘sceptical’ stance on metaphysics and my rejection of his own ‘soft perennialism’. I respond to Taylor’s criticisms by noting: (1) that my own perspective rejects materialism and acknowledges the need for metaphysical concepts in transpersonal psychology; and (2) that, in researching transpersonal phenomena, researchers should aim to bracket metaphysical assumptions and should prefer non-metaphysical explanations where these are sufficient. I expand upon and clarify my criticisms of soft perennialism and argue that Jorge Ferrer’s participatory theory offers a more productive approach to understanding metaphysics, the varieties of spiritual experience, and religious pluralism.

Niektoré aspekty psychologickej spirituality

Spirituality is the search for the sacredness. Carl Gustav Jüng responded to the restoration of an interest in psychological spirituality. His starting point was intrapsychic and based on processes taking place inside a human soul. What might be termed psychological spirituality in the early centuries of Christianity later went underground and was replaced by an externalist stream. The search for transcendence through personal experience and within and through oneself is characteristic of the postmodern era. In this sense, along with the needs of clients, the approach of psychology and its philosophical starting points has also changed. In addition to positivist behaviourism and biologizing freudism, humanistic psychology originated first, followed by transpersonal psychology. Its aim is to achieve internal contact with what goes beyond man: the truth, good, beauty, perfection, order, eternity, unity and the like. It offers man to unblock his deeper spiritual potential. The dialogue between psychology and theology lives from the tension between the desire to know and understand and the area of mystery to which only faith has access. Where the Christian faith lives, there must also be the courage to differentiate.

Trialectical Principles of the New Paradigm of Economic Vision: Unomics, Transpersonal Psychology and Spiritual and Moral Globalism

New methodological developments in the field of economic vision in the last decade are based on understanding and deploying the basic principles of post-classical science, which seeks knowledge of whole people and the economy, reality in general, where the mechanical-materialist approach with its basic method of materialist dialectics proved impossible. Therefore, the study of the spiritual world of man, his spirit and consciousness is extremely relevant today. The format of human dimension, integrity and universality takes the researcher beyond a purely economic approach and introduces him to the economic coordinate system of thinking, where the economy is understood as the whole holistic sphere of human life. The economy in this area is only a service subsystem associated with commodity-money, sales relations. Economics has emerged as a new integrated science of humanity and its deployment in the economy. Recognition of the hypothesis of a single three-dimensional – spiritual, bio-social nature of man as an axiom of the new social science opens the possibility of understanding that the hypothesis of humanity, which was substantiated by Ukrainian economists, will soon become an axiom of the new postclassical human science. This will help to understand the essence of anti-crisis transformations, will be able to set the main vector of soteriological necessary practical socio-economic, economic reforms for the benefit of man. Keywords trialectics, new paradigm of economic vision, spiritual-bio-social nature of man, human dimension, uni, humanity, unomics.

Swinging between two poles. Henri Nouwen’s unique metaphor for spiritual transformation

The article seeks to examine Henri Nouwen’s contribution to the study of spiritual transformation by uncovering his methodology, elucidating his sources, and exploring his central metaphor. When Nouwen considers the path to spiritual wholeness, he begins with an analysis of the typical Western lifestyle. Thereafter, he searches for an “antidote” to the sense of alienation he discovers. This “antidote” is expressed as a process of transformation into love. This article considers the nature of transformation in the classic mystical tradition and touches on the contributions of perennial philosophy and transpersonal psychology which may have influenced Nouwen. The question as to whether transformation is a linear, staged, or cyclical process is considered and Waaijman’s proposal that it should be described as a “way” is explored. Finally, the article contributes to the study of spiritual transformation by considering Nouwen’s description of transformation as a series of spiritual swings between poles.

Perennialism and participation: Why transpersonal psychology needs more than a mystery (A response to Mike Daniels)

Perennialism and participation: Why transpersonal psychology needs more than a mystery (A response to Mike Daniels)

Mullā Ṣadrā’s Arrivers in the Heart (al-Wāridāt al-Qalbiyya)

Abstract It is increasingly difficult after Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) to differentiate the aims of the Sufis from those of the philosophers. Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640) offers a fine example of a thinker who synthesized the Sufi and philosophical methodologies in his voluminous writings. In Arrivers in the Heart he combines the precision of philosophical reasoning with the recognition (maʿrifa) of God and self that was central to the concerns of the Sufi teachers. In forty “effusions” (fayḍ) of mostly rhymed prose, he provides epitomes of many of the themes that he addresses in his long books. These include the concept and reality of existence, the Divine Essence and Attributes, God’s omniscience, theodicy, eschatology, the worlds of the cosmos, spiritual psychology, divine and human love, disciplining the soul, and the nature of human perfection.

Ossetian Ritual Feasts and Transpersonal Experience: Re-Description of a Religion as a Religious Practice

Abstract The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.

Social Status Retention in the Beyond: the Phobia of Man

Religions include the participation of a community of people who have a common spiritual belief system. It is possible to connect one's own spiritual views with those of others via different religious activities. As a result of social interaction, personal ideas may be shaped and deepened. Both religious ideas and human transpersonal experiences may convey the core of human existence. Religious ideas about life after death may affect how individuals conduct their lives in the here and now. This paper argues that human beings have the inborn drive for statuses. All religions of the world placed serious priority on them, so much: in the ranking of adherents and in the hereafter. Other social institutions see the necessity in statuses placements to enhance productivity, efficiency, proficiency, and profitability. Man in his imagination and realization of this, concludes that the right place to acquire the status is here on earth as the springboard to that of the beyond. He gets it first and this will be maintained in the beyond. By the beyond here we mean abodes after the earthly life. Christianity calls them paradise and hell, likewise Islam and Buddhism describe it as Nirvana. African Traditional Religion mentioned it as the home of the ancestors and the dead. Hinduism has its own as the several reincarnations where the individual soul strives to unite with the supreme Reality also called Brahman. This paper investigates Social Status in the Beyond.

An outline of extension from Neutrosophic Psychology to Pneumatic Transpersonal Psychology: Towards Relational Psychotherapy and Relational Pedagogy

Continuing our previous paper, we gave an outline of a new integral model of human consciousness scheme beyond Freudian mental model. We start from a recent book by one of us: Neutropsychic personality. Then we discuss possibility to reintroduce spirit into human consciousness. To emphasize what we have outlined in a preceding paper, we consider the following: that human consciousness model should take into consideration “spirit” role, i.e. the mind-body-spirit as integral aspect, which view is neglected in the Freudian mental model. In this paper, we consider a further step: introducing “soul” as a different element of human consciousness. We also discuss a few possible applications of such an integral model of human consciousness, including relational psychotherapy and relational pedagogy. While we are fully aware that much remain to be done and we admit that this is only a sketch, we hope that this paper will start a fresh approach of research towards more realistic nonlinear human consciousness model. === Melanjutkan makalah kami sebelumnya, kami memberikan garis besar model integral baru skema kesadaran manusia di luar model mental Freudian. Kita mulai dari sebuah buku baru-baru ini oleh salah satu dari kita: kepribadian Neutropsik. Kemudian kita membahas kemungkinan untuk memperkenalkan kembali roh ke dalam kesadaran manusia. Untuk menekankan apa yang telah kami uraikan dalam makalah sebelumnya, kami mempertimbangkan yang berikut: bahwa model kesadaran manusia harus mempertimbangkan peran "roh", yaitu jiwa-raga-jiwa sebagai aspek integral, yang pandangannya diabaikan dalam model mental Freudian. Dalam tulisan ini, kami mempertimbangkan langkah selanjutnya: memperkenalkan "jiwa" sebagai elemen berbeda dari kesadaran manusia. Kami juga membahas beberapa aplikasi yang mungkin dari model integral dari kesadaran manusia, termasuk psikoterapi relasional dan pedagogi relasional. Sementara kami sepenuhnya menyadari bahwa masih banyak yang harus dilakukan dan kami mengakui bahwa ini hanya sketsa, kami berharap makalah ini akan memulai pendekatan penelitian baru menuju model kesadaran manusia nonlinier yang lebih realistis.