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...
I’ve written and spoken frequently about the impossibility of finding love when lost in “the projection of the Dream Lover,” -- not a phrase I commonly use but was thusly stated by one of the characters in Antero Alli’s spellbinding, evocative film The Alchemy of...
BY JAMIE DUCHARME MARCH 14, 2023 1:24 PM EDTWhen Joe, 37, and his wife tried MDMA together for the first time two years ago, he expected to “let loose a little bit and have fun.” Instead, they talked about the trash: why Joe didn’t take it out...
Listed out like this, the very idea of a descending and inferior line development appears absurd to the postmodern sensibility. This schemata was assured to crack, and crack it did with the introduction of Jorge Ferrer’s (2002) seminal work, Revisioning transpersonal theory: a participatory vision...
It is helpful is to compare these two lines of development for a fuller understanding. Daniels (2021, p. 29) provides an excellent graph that summarizes what Wilber calls the ascending and descending currents (a new term which replaced his previous use of the word line)....
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