SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology

Cutting edge volume devoted to optimal adult development. Post conventional stages of personality development involve growth well beyond the average, and have become a rapidly growing subject of research not only in developmental psychology circles, but also in areas such as executive leadership development. The present work is the first to bring together many of the major researchers in the field, showcasing diverse perspectives ranging from the spiritual to the corporate. The contributors present research on essential questions about the existence and prevalence of high levels of personal growth, whether such achievement is correlated with other kind of psychological growth, whether high levels of growth actually indicate happiness, what kinds of people exhibit these higher levels of development, how they may have developed this expanded perspective, and the characteristics of their viewpoints, abilities, and preoccupations. For anyone interested in Ken Wilber's integral psychology as well as those in executive coaching, this volume is an invaluable resource and will be a standard reference for years to come. Angela H. Pfaffenberger has a PhD in psychology and is an independent researcher in personality theory. She maintains a private practice as a psychotherapist and acupuncturist in Salem, Oregon. Paul W. Marko has a PhD in psychology from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He is a developmental psychologist who works with both organizations and individuals. Allan Combs is Professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His many books include Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness.

Explores whether consciousness-based practices like meditation and prayer can contribute to social change. Can awakened consciousness contribute to social change and, if so, how? David Nicol introduces the concept of "subtle activism" to describe the use of consciousness-based practices like meditation and prayer to support collective transformation, such as global meditation directed toward peaceful resolution of a conflict. Subtle activism represents a bridge between the consciousness movement and the movements for peace, environmental sustainability, and social justice. It is not a substitute for physical action but rather a potentially crucial component of a more integrated approach to social change. Although ancient lore is rife with tales of shamans and adepts intervening on spiritual levels for the benefit of humanity, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of this topic. Nicol grounds his consideration in the available scientific research and in dialogue with a broad range of thinkers in the fields of consciousness studies, transpersonal theory, and New Paradigm thought.

Considers the contributions and contemporary significance of Alan Watts. Alan Watts-Here and Now explores the intellectual legacy and continuing relevance of a prolific writer and speaker who was a major influence on American culture during the latter half of the twentieth century. A thinker attuned to the spiritual malaise affecting the Western mind, Watts (1915—1973) provided intellectual and spiritual alternatives that helped shape the Beat culture of the 1950s and the counterculture of the 1960s. Well known for introducing Buddhist and Daoist spirituality to a wide Western audience, he also wrote on psychology, mysticism, and psychedelic experience. Many idolized Watts as a guru-mystic, yet he was also dismissed as intellectually shallow and as a mere popularizer of Asian religions (the "Norman Vincent Peale of Zen"). Both critical and appreciative, this edited volume locates Watts at the forefront of major paradigmatic shifts in Western intellectual life. Contributors explore how Watts's work resonates in present-day scholarship on psychospiritual transformation, Buddhism and psychotherapy, Daoism in the West, phenomenology and hermeneutics, humanistic and transpersonal psychology, mysticism, and ecofeminism, among other areas.

In this, his culminating work, the leading international figure in consciousness research masterfully synthesizes his vast findings, drawing not only upon psychedelic therapy and Holotropic Breathwork, but also from literature, cross-cultural studies, ancient mystical sources and psychological data, resulting in a profound consolidation and articulation of what is now known about nonordinary states of consciousness. The Cosmic Game discusses the broadest philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual insights gleaned in Grof's research concerning human nature and reality, addressing the most fundamental questions human beings have asked about the nature of existence since time immemorial. Insights from research into nonordinary states of consciousness portray existence as an astonishing play of the cosmic creative principle that transcends time, space, linear causality, and polarities of every kind and suggest an identity of the individual psyche in its furthest reaches with the universal creative principle and the totality of existence. This identity of the human being with the Divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the core of all great spiritual traditions.

An in-depth, ethnographic study of the transnational expansion of Santo Daime, a mystical religious tradition organized around sacramental ingestion of the mind-altering ayahuasca beverage. After more than 450 years of European intrusions into South America's rainforest, small groups of people across Europe now gather discreetly to participate in Amazonian ceremonies their local governments consider a criminal act. As devotees of a new Brazil-based religion called Santo Daime, they claim that they contact God by way of ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive beverage first developed by native communities in pre-Columbian Amazonia. This bitter, brown liquid is a synergy of plants containing DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine), a mind-altering chemical classified as an illicit "hallucinogen" in most countries. By contrast, Santo Daime members (daimistas) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism, indigenous shamanism, Afro-Brazilian spiritualism, and Western esotericism. The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, now known as Mestre (Master) Irineu. Presenting results from more than a year of fieldwork with Santo Daime groups in Europe, Marc G. Blainey offers qualitative and quantitative answers to the question of why many Westerners are joining unconventional religions in the post-secular age. Delving into daimista interviewees' justifications for converting to a transnational spirituality, Blainey contributes new understandings of contemporary Westerners' search for existential well-being on an increasingly interconnected planet. As a thorough exploration of daimistas' beliefs about the therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca, this book takes readers on an ethnographic journey into the deepest recesses of the human psyche.

Discusses how William James's work suggests a world without will, self, or time and how research supports this perspective. A Seminary Co-op Notable Book of 2016 William James is often considered a scientist compromised by his advocacy of mysticism and parapsychology. Jonathan Bricklin argues James can also be viewed as a mystic compromised by his commitment to common sense. James wanted to believe in will, self, and time, but his deepest insights suggested otherwise. "Is consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of reality?" James asked shortly before his death in 1910. A century after his death, research from neuroscience, physics, psychology, and parapsychology is making the case, both theoretically and experimentally, that answers James's question in the affirmative. By separating what James passionately wanted to believe, based on common sense, from what his insights and researches led him to believe, Bricklin shows how James himself laid the groundwork for this more challenging view of existence. The non-reality of will, self, and time is consistent with James's psychology of volition, his epistemology of self, and his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist. Jonathan Bricklin is a Program Director at the New York Open Center and the editor of Sciousness.

In Recentering the Self, Michael Washburn presents a new account of the ego, ego development, and the role of the ego in spiritual life. He starts by tracing the premodern antecedents of the notion of the ego in Greek philosophy and Christian theology and then explains the seventeenth-century emergence of the notion in Descartes's radically new account of the soul's relation to the body. Reviewing subsequent criticisms of the notion, the author formulates a revised conception of the ego that highlights the ego's inherently two-sided nature, as a subject and agency that, although rooted within interior consciousness, lives originally and primarily in the material, social world. Washburn uses this revised conception of the ego to explain how the two sides of the ego develop in concert over major stages of the human lifespan and why the ego, despite widespread belief to the contrary, plays primarily a positive role in spiritual life. Recentering the Self makes important contributions to the history of philosophy, consciousness studies, phenomenology, developmental psychology, and spiritual or transpersonal psychology.

In the second edition of this classic text, Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof describe their groundbreaking form of self-exploration and psychotherapy: holotropic breathwork. Holotropic means "moving toward wholeness," from the Greek holos (whole) and trepein (moving in the direction of). The breathwork utilizes the remarkable healing and transformative potential of nonordinary states of consciousness. These states engender a rich array of experiences with unique healing potential—reliving childhood memories, infancy, birth and prenatal life, and elements from the historical and archetypal realms of the collective unconscious. Induced by very simple means—a combination of accelerated breathing, evocative music, and bodywork in a safe and supportive setting—holotropic breathwork integrates the insights from modern consciousness research, depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, anthropology, Eastern spiritual practices, and mystical traditions. The Grofs' work with holotropic states of consciousness has introduced revolutionary changes to psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. Written in a clear, easily understandable style, this indispensable book summarizes their remarkable insights. The second edition includes an expanded section on the history of holotropic breathwork, as well as information on Grof® Legacy Training.

Brings the transformative approaches of transpersonal psychology to research in the human sciences and humanities. Research approaches in the field of transpersonal psychology can be transformative for researchers, participants, and the audience of a project. This book offers these transformative approaches to those conducting research across the human sciences and the humanities. Rosemarie Anderson and William Braud first described such methods in Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences (1998). Since that time, in hundreds of empirical studies, these methods have been tested and integrated with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research designs. Anderson and Braud, writing with a contribution from Jennifer Clements, invite scholars to bring multiple ways of knowing and personal resources to their scholarship. While emphasizing established research conventions for rigor, Anderson and Braud encourage researchers to plumb the depths of intuition, imagination, play, mindfulness, compassion, creativity, and embodied writing as research skills. Experiential exercises to help readers develop these skills are provided.

Beyond the Brain seriously challenges the existing neurophysiological models of the brain. After three decades of extensive research on those non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs and by other means, Grof concludes that our present scientific world view is as inadequate as many of its historical predecessors. In this pioneering work, he proposes a new model of the human psyche that takes account of his findings. Grof includes in his model the recollective level, or the reliving of emotionally relevant memories, a level at which the Freudian framework can be useful. Beyond that is perinatal level in which the human unconscious may be activated to a reliving of biological birth and confrontation with death. How birth experience influences an individual's later development is a central focus of the book. The most serious challenge to contemporary psycho-analytic theory comes from a delineation of the transpersonal level, or the expansion of consciousness beyond the boundaries of time and space. Grof makes a bold argument that understanding of the perinatal and transpersonal levels changes much of how we view both mental illness and mental health. His reinterpretation of some of the most agonizing aspects of human behavior proves thought provoking for both laypersons and professional therapists. Stanislav Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years of experience in research of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He has been Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University; and Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork, and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). In 2007, he was granted the prestigious Vision 97 award from the Vaclav and Dagmar Havel Foundation in Prague. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration; Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science; The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness; Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution; and Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research; all published by SUNY Press.

Argues that philosophical reflection today must include the findings of depth psychology and the critical study of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Argues that philosophical reflection today must include the findings of depth psychology and the critical study of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Combining philosophical reflections with deep self-exploration to delve into the ancient mystery of death and rebirth, this book emphasizes collective rather than individual transformation. Drawing upon twenty years of experience working with nonordinary states, Bache argues that when the deep psyche is hyper-stimulated using Stanislav Grof's powerful therapeutic methods, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious of humanity itself. Dark Night, Early Dawn is the most important book I have read in recent years. Whenever I present a brief summary of its major ideas, either to students in my graduate classes or to general audiences, it unfailingly arouses intense interest. I believe Bache's work evokes this response because he has articulated, with superb clarity, rigor, and depth of insight, a radically expanded perspective on the deeper nature of individual human experience, a perspective that many have been gradually intuiting but had not yet been able clearly to formulate.

A career-spanning assessment of Glissant's work as a philosophical project. With a career spanning more than fifty years as a writer, scholar, and public intellectual, Édouard Glissant produced an astonishingly wide range of work, including poems, novels, essays, pamphlets, and theater. In Think Like an Archipelago, Michael Wiedorn offers a fresh interpretation of Glissant's work as a cohesive and explicitly philosophical project, paying particular attention to the last two decades of his career, which have received much less attention in the English-speaking world despite their remarkable productivity. Focusing his study on the idea of paradox, Wiedorn argues that it is fundamental to Caribbean culture and thought, and at the heart of Glissant's philosophy. The question of difference has long played a central role in the literary and philosophical traditions of the West, however to think differently, Glissant suggests focusing elsewhere: on the post-plantation societies of the Caribbean, and the Americas more broadly. For Glissant, paradoxical lessons drawn from the natural and cultural realities of the Caribbean can point to new ways of thinking and being in the world: in other words, to the creation of what Glissant calls a "new category of literature," and in turn to the attainment of his utopian political vision. Thinking through such paradoxes, Wiedorn demonstrates, can offer new perspectives on the old questions of totality, alterity, teleology, and the potential of philosophy itself. Michael Wiedorn is Assistant Professor of French at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

A bold new view of the human psyche, integrating Eastern and Western approaches. Integral Psychology connects Eastern and Western approaches to psychology and healing. Psychology in the East has focused on our inner being and spiritual foundation of the psyche. Psychology in the West has focused on our outer being and the wounding of the body-heart-mind and self. Each requires the other to complete it, and in bringing them together an integral view of psychology comes into view. The classical Indian yogas are used as a way to see psychotherapy: psychotherapy as behavior change or karma yoga; psychotherapy as mindfulness practice or jnana yoga; psychotherapy as opening the heart or bhakti yoga. Finally, an integral approach is suggested that synthesizes traditional Western and Eastern practices for healing, growth, and transformation.

A participatory alternative to the perennialism and experientialism dominant in transpersonal psychology. In his striking debut, Jorge N. Ferrer deconstructs and reconstructs the entire transpersonal project, articulating a more sophisticated, pluralistic, and spiritually grounded transpersonal theory. He brings recent ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of science to bear upon core issues in the psychology and philosophy of religion. The book's first half (Deconstruction) describes the nature and origins of the prevailing vision that has guided transpersonal scholarship so far, and identifies some of its main conceptual and practical limitations: subtle Cartesianism, spiritual narcissism, intrasubjective empiricism, and reductionistic universalism. In the second half of the book (Reconstruction), Ferrer suggests a way of reconceiving transpersonal ideas without these limitations-a participatory vision of human spirituality, one which not only places transpersonal studies in greater alignment with the values of the spiritual quest, but also discloses a rich variety of spiritual liberations, spiritual worlds, and even ultimate realities.

Explores the thought of Henri Bergson, highlighting his compelling theories on the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. Living Consciousness examines the brilliant, but now largely ignored, insights of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859—1941). Presenting a detailed and accessible analysis of Bergson's thought, G. William Barnard highlights how Bergson's understanding of the nature of consciousness and, in particular, its relationship to the physical world remain strikingly relevant to numerous contemporary fields. These range from quantum physics and process thought to philosophy of mind, depth psychology, transpersonal theory, and religious studies. Bergson's notion of consciousness as a ceaselessly dynamic, inherently temporal substance of reality itself provides a vision that can function as a persuasive alternative to mechanistic and reductionistic understandings of consciousness and reality. Throughout the work, Barnard offers "ruminations" or neo-Bergsonian responses to a series of vitally important questions such as: What does it mean to live consciously, authentically, and attuned to our inner depths? Is there a philosophically sophisticated way to claim that the survival of consciousness after physical death is not only possible but likely? G. William Barnard is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism, also published by SUNY Press, and coeditor (with Jeffrey J. Kripal) of Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism.

Summarizes Grof's experiences and observations from more than forty years of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. Summarizes Grof's experiences and observations from more than forty years of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint newcomers with his work. Serving as a summation of his career and previous works, this entirely new book is the source to introduce Grof's enormous contributions to the fields of psychiatry and psychology, especially his central concept of holotropic experience, where holotropic signifies "moving toward wholeness." Grof maintains that the current basic assumptions and concepts of psychology and psychiatry require a radical revision based on the intensive and systematic research of holotropic experience. He suggests that a radical inner transformation of humanity and a rise to a higher level of consciousness might be humankind's only real hope for the future.

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915—1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts's scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts's thinking about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts's reputation as a "popularizer" or "philosophical entertainer," revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial "Zen Buddhist" label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors' authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts's life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts-Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press.