Ancient yoga and meditative practices in Hinduism were technologies designed to induce transpersonal experiences. A practitioner was expected to meditate and perform exercises daily for years in order to be able to enter these states at will. However, as pointed out by Feuerstein (1989)Through intense...
Psychedelic plants and medicines have been part of the human experience for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years (Walsh & Grob, 2015). As noted in the section on Indigenous cultures above, these substances were used for healing purposes. Walsh and Grob also state...
Tibetan spirituality developed techniques for inducing altered states and using them to improve health, encourage long-life, and evolve spiritually; the top three purposes according to Jacoby (2015). These techniques included mantras, ritual, dance, yantras, and mudras (Bernbaum, 1974) as well as sexual practices (Allione, 2000).Tibetan...
According to Barratt (2013, p. 13), “Every known Indigenous culture has shamanic practitioners.” His definition of shamanism is “a set of methodologies involving the use of altered states of consciousness for healing and spiritual and emotional growth.” Shamans have been found around the globe: North...
Transpersonal experiences are pathologized in the West because, as Grof (2015) points out, their existence questions the basic philosophical assumptions of Western science such as materialism and reductionism. Roberts & Winkelman (2015) talk about the Western single-state assumptions being challenged by the multistate view of...
The majority of the world’s cultures are polyphasic (Fadiman, 2015) and recognize that different states of consciousness contribute to the consensus reality. Lawlis (2015) statesOne of the most ancient of healing methods is entering a different level of consciousness in order to find a new...
Transpersonal experiences, also referred to as peak experiences, exceptional human experiences (EHEs), religious experiences, nonordinary and transcendent experiences, and anomalous experiences in parapsychology, have been seen by most cultures as powerful healing events or processes. Walsh & Vaughn (1993) defined transpersonal experiences as… experiences in...
Some transpersonal scholars and theoreticians have viewed transpersonal experiences as inherently healing in and of themselves, regardless of modality or cultural context. Other definitions of transpersonal or exceptional human experiences (EHEs) do not include a transformative element, stating that healing may or may not be...
It takes awareness and discipline to divorce oneself from the prevalence of the mainstream’s acceptance of the ascending line of personal and spiritual growth as paramount, and the descending line as suspect. With the growth of postmodern and participatory thought and the contributions of transpersonal...
In the early days of transpersonal psychology the works of Ken Wilbur, in particular The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) and No Boundary (1979), were considered basic texts, and the concepts they offered were novel and inspiring. Wilber is a genius at synthetization, and these books...