Brief History Transpersonal Psychology

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies i
Table of Contents
Editors Introduction
Glenn Hartelius and Harris Friedman iii
What Does it Mean to Live a Fully Embodied Spiritual Life?
Jorge N. Ferrer 1
Some Rudimentary Problems Pertaining to the Construction of an Ontology and
Epistemology of Shamanic Journeying Imagery
Adam J. Rock and Stanley Krippner 12
A Peircean Panentheist Scientic Mysticism
Sren Brier 20
Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology
Stanislav Grof 46
Te Past and Future of the International Transpersonal Association
Stanislav Grof, Harris Friedman, David Luko, and Glenn Hartelius 55

SPECIAL TOPIC:
Approaches to Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Introduction to Special Topic Section
Harris Friedman and Glenn Hartelius 63
Te Role of Spirituality in Mental Health Interventions: A Developmental Perspective
Liora Birnbaum, Aiton Birnbaum, and Ofra Mayseless 65
Te Buddhist Notion of Emptiness and its Potential Contribution
to Psychology and Psychotherapy
Jos M. Tirado 74
Dantes Terza Rima in Te Divine Comedy: Te Road of Terapy
Dennis Patrick Slattery 80
Integral Approach to Mental Suering
Laura Boggio Gilot 91
Te Terapeutic Potentials of a Museum Visit
Andre Salom 98
T

he International Journal of
ranspersonal Studies
Volume 27, 2008
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies ii
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Volume 27, 2008
Editors
Harris Friedman
Glenn Hartelius
Coordinating Editor
Les Lancaster
Managing Editors
Kim Bella
James D. Pappas
Honorary Editor
Stanley Krippner
Editors Emeriti
Don Diespecker
Philippe Gross
Douglas A. MacDonald
Sam Shapiro
Publisher
Floraglades Foundation, Incorporated
1270 Tom Coker Road, LaBelle, FL 33935
2008 by Floraglades Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ISSN (Print) 1321-0122
ISSN (Electronic) 1942-3241
Board of Editors
Manuel Almendro (Spain)
Rosemarie Anderson (USA)
Liora Birnbaum (Israel)
Laura Boggio Gilot (Italy)
Board of Editors (continued)
Jacek Brewczynski (USA)
Sren Brier (Denmark)
Elias Capriles (Venezuela)
Michael Daniels (UK)
John Davis (USA)
Wlodzislaw Duch (Poland)
James Fadiman (USA)
Jorge N. Ferrer (Spain/USA)
David Fontana (UK)
Joachim Galuska (Germany)
David Y. F. Ho (Hong Kong, China)
Daniel Holland (USA)
Chad Johnson (USA)
Bruno G. Just (Australia)
Sean Kelly (USA)
Jerey Kuentzel (USA)
S. K. Kiran Kumar (India)
Charles Laughlin (Canada/USA)
Olga Louchakova (USA)
Vladimir Maykov (Russia)
Axel A. Randrup (Denmark)
Vitor Rodriguez (Portugal)
Brent Dean Robbins (USA)
Mario Simes (Portugal)
Charles Tart (USA)
Rosanna Vitale (Canada)
John Welwood (USA)
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies iii
W
e are pleased to publish this 2008 issue of the
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.
Te issue begins with topics that range from
embodied spirituality, to the nature of shamanic journey
imagery, to a philosophy that oers a unied view of mind,
matter, and consciousness. Te next two articles oer,
respectively, a brief history of transpersonal psychology
and of the recently revived International Transpersonal
Association. Finally, our special topic section oers
a stimulating variety of approaches to transpersonal
psychotherapy.
Te rst paper, by Jorge N. Ferrer, is titled,
What Does it Mean to Live a Fully Embodied Spiritual
Life? Tis insightful and refreshing piece notes that
many religions have disparaged the physical body and
separated spirituality from important aspects of embodied
life, such as sensuality and sexuality. In contrast, Ferrer
oers a vision of spirituality that embraces the wholeness
of bodily existence and views the body as essential for
spiritual transformation; his vision of spirituality is
profoundly participatory, connecting across rather than
rising above the world, including the person embodied
within the world. To ground his participatory vision,
Ferrer oers ten features of embodied spirituality,
including an awakening of the body, a resacralization of
the body, of nature, and of matter, and an attendant urge
to create, to bring spiritual vision to the world, and to
work for social, political, and ecological transformation.
Tis is followed by a paper co-authored by Adam
Rock and Stan Krippner that furthers their earlier study,
Does the Concept of Altered States of Consciousness
Rest on a Mistake? published in the 2007 volume of
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. Tis
2007 paper suggested that the concept of altered
states of consciousness represents an objectication of
consciousness that conates consciousness itself with its
contents. As a further explication for this insight, Rock
and Krippner proposed that the term more accurately
refers to an altered pattern of phenomenal properties,
thus situating the change within the phenomenal
eld that consciousness contemplates, rather than
within consciousness itself. Teir article in the current
volume, Some Rudimentary Problems Pertaining to
the Construction of an Ontology and Epistemology of
Shamanic Journeying Imagery, takes a further step. It
assumes, in line with the prior paper, that a shamanic
state of consciousness should properly be referred to as
a shamanic pattern of phenomenal properties, and then
goes on to inquire into the ontological and epistemo-
logical status of things that appear as part of that
phenomenal pattern.
Te next paper, A Peircian Panentheist Scientic
Mysticism by Sren Brier, is a substantive exploration
of the interface between science and spirituality as seen
through the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce, an
eminent and forward-thinking mathematician, scientist,
and philosopher of the late 19
th
- early 20
th
centuries,
formulated a post-Cartesian evolutionary philosophy
in which psyche and physical matter are not separate.
Brier sees Peirce as a panentheist, a mystic whose path
to enlightenment is science as a social activity (this
volume, p. 20). For readers who are not acquainted with
Peirces philosophy, this article provides a substantial yet
wholly accessible introduction to his remarkable and
complex body of thought. For those who already know
Peirce, Brier excavates his work for explicit and enriching
connections with the transpersonal eld.
Together, the next two works comprise a
historical mini-section on transpersonal psychology. Te
rst of these, Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology,

Editors Introduction
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27, 2008, pp. iii-iv
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies iv
by Stanislav Grof, oers personal glimpses into the early
history of the eld, as well as a broader analysis of the
cultural backdrop against which it emerged. Tese
accounts are particularly valuable in that they are informed
by the personal experience of one of the founders and
primary theoreticians of transpersonal psychology. In
this introduction, Grof traces some of the major streams
of thought within transpersonal psychology and points
to promising directions for the future. In the paper
that follows, Te Past and Future of the International
Transpersonal Association, by Grof, Harris Friedman,
David Luko, and Glenn Hartelius, the history of this
international institution serves as background for the
announcement that it has recently been revived and
is currently in the process of being reconstituted and
revitalized. In addition, we are pleased to note that the
International Transpersonal Association will forge a close
relationship with the International Journal of Transpersonal
Studies, with details yet to be worked out.
Last, our special topic section, Transpersonal
Psychotherapy, is introduced separately prior to the
ve papers that constitute it. Tese pieces represent
diversity not only in their approaches, but also in their
gender, geographical, and cultural distribution. Four
women and three men from the Middle East, Europe,
the North Atlantic, North America, and South America
oer a stimulating variety of perspectives related to the
topics theme. As an international journal in name, we
are particularly pleased to oer such a degree of diversity
within this special section.
Glenn Hartelius, Editor
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Harris Friedman, Editor
University of Florida
Hartelius & Friedman
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 1 An Embodied Spiritual Life
What Does It Mean
to Live a Fully Embodied Spiritual Life?
Jorge N. Ferrer
1
California Institute of Integral Studies
San Francisco, CA, USA
Tis essay discusses the meaning of embodied spiritualitybased on the integration of all
human attributes, including the body and sexualityand contrasts it with the disembodied
spiritualitybased on dissociation and/or sublimationprevailing in human religious
history. It then describes what it means to approach the body as a living partner with which
to co-create ones spiritual life, and outlines ten features of a fully embodied spirituality.
Te article concludes with some reections about the past, present, and potential future of
embodied spirituality.
For in him the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily. (Colossians 2:9)
E
mbodied spirituality has become a buzzword in
contemporary spiritual circles, yet the concept
has not been dealt with in a thorough manner.
What do we really mean when we say that spirituality
is embodied? Is there a distinct understanding of the
body underlying this expression? What distinguishes
embodied from disembodied spirituality in practice?
What are the implications for spiritual practice and
spiritual goalsand for our very approach to spiritual
liberationof taking embodiment seriously?
Before attempting to answer these questions, two
caveats are in order. First, though the following reections
seek to capture essential features of an emerging spiritual
ethos in the modern West, by no means do I claim that
they represent the thinking of every spiritual author and
teacher who today uses the term embodied spirituality.
It should be obvious that some authors may focus on or
accept only some of these features, and that the following
account inevitably reects my own standpoint, with its
unique perspective and consequent limitations. Second,
this essay engages in the task of a creative interreligious
hermeneutics that not only freelyand admittedly
somewhat impetuouslyweaves together spiritual
threads from dierent religious traditions, but at times
revisions them in light of modern spiritual understand-
ings. Tough this procedure is still considered anathema
in mainstream academic circles, I am convinced that
only through a critical fusion of past and present global
spiritual horizons can we begin stitching a trustworthy
tapestry of contemporary embodied spirituality.
What Is Embodied Spirituality?
I
n a way, the expression embodied spirituality can be
rightfully seen as redundant and perhaps even hollow.
After all, is not all human spirituality embodied insofar
as it necessarily transpires in and through embodied
men and women? Proponents of embodied spiritual
practice, however, tell us that important trends of past
and present spiritualities are disembodied. But what
does disembodied mean in this context?
In light of our spiritual history, I suggest that
disembodied does not denote that the body and
its vital/primary energies were ignored in religious
practicethey denitely were notbut rather that
they were not considered legitimate or reliable sources
of spiritual insight in their own right. In other words,
body and instinct have not generally been regarded as
capable of collaborating as equals with heart, mind, and
consciousness in the attainment of spiritual realization
and liberation. What is more, many religious traditions
and schools believed that the body and the primary world
(and aspects of the heart, such as certain passions) were
actually a hindrance to spiritual ourishinga view that
often led to the repression, regulation, or transformation
of these worlds at the service of the higher goals of
a spiritualized consciousness. Tis is why disembodied
spirituality often crystallized in a heart-chakra-up
spiritual life that was based preeminently in the mental
and/or emotional access to transcendent consciousness
and that tended to overlook spiritual sources immanent
in the body, nature, and matter.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27, 2008, pp. 1-11
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 2 Ferrer
Embodied spirituality, in contrast, views all
human dimensionsbody, vital, heart, mind, and
consciousnessas equal partners in bringing self,
community, and world into a fuller alignment with the
Mystery out of which everything arises (Ferrer, 2002,
2008). Far from being an obstacle, this approach sees the
engagement of the body and its vital/primary energies as
crucial for not only a thorough spiritual transformation,
but also the creative exploration of expanded forms of
spiritual freedom. Te consecration of the whole person
leads naturally to the cultivation of a full-chakra spiri-
tuality that seeks to make all human attributes permeable
to the presence of both immanent and transcendent
spiritual energies. Tis does not mean that embodied
spirituality ignores the need to emancipate body and
instinct from possible alienating tendencies; rather, it
means that all human dimensionsnot just somatic and
primary onesare recognized to be not only possibly
alienated, but also equally capable of sharing freely in
the unfolding life of the Mystery here on earth.
Te contrast between sublimation and inte-
gration can help to clarify this distinction. In sublimation,
the energy of one human dimension is used to amplify,
expand, or transform the faculties of another dimension.
Tis is the case, for example, when a celibate monk subli-
mates sexual desire as a catalyst for spiritual breakthrough
or to increase the devotional love of the heart, or when
a tantric practitioner uses vital/sexual energies as fuel to
catapult consciousness into disembodied, transcendent,
or even transhuman states of being. In contrast, the
integration of two human dimensions entails a mutual
transformation, or sacred marriage, of their essential
energies. For example, the integration of consciousness
and the vital world makes the former more embodied,
vitalized, and even eroticized, and grants the latter an
intelligent evolutionary direction beyond its biologi-
cally driven instincts. Roughly speaking, we could say
that sublimation is a mark of disembodied spirituality,
and integration is a goal of embodied spirituality. Tis
is not to say, of course, that sublimation has no place in
embodied spiritual practice. Te spiritual path is intricate
and multifaceted, and the sublimation of certain energies
may be necessaryeven crucialat specic junctures or
for certain individual dispositions. To turn sublimation
into a permanent goal or energetic dynamic, however, is
a fast lane to disembodied spirituality.
In addition to spiritualities that blatantly devalue
body and world, a more subtle type of disembodied orien-
tation sees spiritual life as emerging exclusively from the
interaction of our immediate present experience and tran-
scendent sources of consciousness (cf. Heron, 1998). In
this context, spiritual practice is aimed either at accessing
such overriding realities (ascent paths, such as classic
Neoplatonic mysticism) or at bringing such spiritual
energies down to earth to transgure human nature and/
or the world (descent paths, such as Sri Aurobindos
integral yoga). Te shortcoming of this monopolar
understanding is that it ignores the existence of a
second spiritual poleimmanent spiritual lifethat,
as I elaborate below, is intimately connected to the vital
world and stores the most generative power of Spirit. To
overlook this spiritual source leads practitionerseven
those concerned with bodily transformationto neglect
the signicance of the vital world for a creative spiritu-
ality, as well as to seek to transcend or sublimate their
sexual energies. A fully embodied spirituality, I suggest,
emerges from the creative interplay of both immanent
and transcendent spiritual energies in complete indi-
viduals who embrace the fullness of human experience
while remaining rmly grounded in body and earth.
To be sure, religious attitudes toward the human
body have been profoundly ambivalent, with the body
being regarded as a source of bondage, sinfulness, and
delement on the one hand, and as the locus of spiritual
revelation and divinization on the other. Our religious
history houses tendencies that fall along a continuum of
disembodied to embodied goals and practices. Examples
of disembodied trends include the asceticism of Brah-
manism, Jainism, Buddhism, monastic Christianity,
early Taoism, or early Susm (Bhagat, 1976; Wimbush
& Valantasi, 1995); Hindu views of the body as unreal
(mithya) and the world as illusion (maya) (Nelson,
1998); Advaita Vedantas consideration of the bodiless
liberation (videhamukti) achievable only after death
as higher than a living liberation (jivanmukti)
inexorably tainted by bodily karma (Fort, 1998); early
Buddhist accounts of the body as a repulsive source of
suering, of nirvana as extinction of bodily senses and
desires, and of nal nirvana (parinirvana) as attainable
only after death (Collins, 1998); the Christian view of
the esh as the source of evil and of the resurrected body
as asexual (Bynum, 1995); the isolation (kaivalya) of
pure consciousness from body and world in Samkhya-
Yoga (Larson, 1969); the tantric transmutation of sexual
energy to attain union with the divine in Kashmir
Saivism (Mishra, 1993) or to be attuned to the creative
ow of the Tao in Taoist self-cultivation (Yasuo, 1993);
the Safed Kabbalists obsession with the sinfulness of
masturbation and nocturnal emissions (Biale, 1992) or
the Lurianic repudiation of the body as preventing man
from [achieving] perfection of his soul (cited in Fine,
1992, p. 131); the Islamic consideration of the hereafter
(al-akhira) as being immeasurably more valuable than the
physical world (al-dunya) (Winter, 1995); and the Visis-
tadvaita Vedantas claim that complete liberation entails
the total cessation of embodiment (Skoog, 1996).
Likewise, examples of embodied trends include
the Zoroastrian view of the body as part of human ultimate
nature (A. Williams, 1997); the Biblical account of the
human being as made in the image of God (Genesis;
Jnsson, 1988); the tantric armation of the nondu-
ality of sensual desire and awakening (Faure, 1998); the
early Christian emphasis on incarnation (the Word
became esh; Barnhart, 2008); the goal of attaining
Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jobutsu) of
Shingon Buddhism (Kasulis, 1990); the Jewish religious
enjoyment of all bodily needs and appetites in the Sabbath
(Westheimer & Mark, 1995); the radical embrace of
sensuality in the Su poetry of Rumi or Hafez (Barks,
2002; Pourafzal & Montgomery, 1998); the Taoist vision
of the body as a symbolic container of the secrets of the
entire universe (Saso, 1997); the somatic connection to
immanent spiritual sources in many indigenous spiritu-
alities (e.g., Lawlor, 1991); Soto Zens insistence on the
need to surrender the mind to the body in order to reach
enlightenment (Yasuo, 1987); the Islamic esoteric saying
of the Shiite Imams, Our spirits are our bodies and
our bodies our spirits (arwahuna ajsaduna wa ajsaduna
arwahuna; Galian, 2003); and the long-standing Judeo-
Christian advocacy for social engagement and justice in
the spiritual transformation of the world (e.g., Forest,
1993; Heschel, 1996), among many others.
Many apparently embodied religious orienta-
tions, however, conceal highly ambivalent views toward
sensuality and the physical body. For example, Taoism
did not generally value the physical body in itself, but
only because it was believed to be a dwelling place for the
gods; and Taoist sexual practices often involved rigorous
self-restraint, inhibitory rules, and a depersonalization
of sexual relationships that disdained the cultivation of
mutual love among individuals (Clarke, 2000; Schipper,
1994). Also, whereas the Jewish Sabbath is a day for the
consecration of sexual intercourse between husband
and wife, many traditional teachings (e.g., the Iggeret
ha-Kodesh) prescribed the need to engage in such union
without pleasure or passion, as it was supposedly carried
out in the Orchard before the rst sin (Biale, 1992).
What is more, much of the Vajrayana Buddhist appre-
ciation of the gross physical body as a facilitator of
enlightenment lay in considering it the foundation of a
more real, nonphysical, astral body or rainbow body
(P. Williams, 1997). In a similar fashion, Hindu tantra
regarded body and world as real, but some of its rituals
of identication with the cosmos entailed the purica-
tion and visualized destruction of the impure physical
body to catalyze the emergence of a subtle or divine body
from the very ashes of corporeality (see, for example, the
Jayakhya Samhita of Tantric Vaisnavism; Flood, 2000).
In short, though certain religious schools generated
spiritual goals more inclusive of embodiment, in living
practice a fully embodied spirituality that engages the
participation of all human attributes in co-creative inter-
action with both immanent and transcendent spiritual
sources was, and continues to be, an extremely rare pearl
to nd (Ferrer, 2008; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008a).
An examination of the numerous historical and
contextual variables behind the tendency toward disem-
bodied spirituality goes beyond the scope of this essay,
but I would like to mention at least a possible under-
lying reason (see Ferrer, Albareda, & Romero, 2004).
Te frequent inhibition of the primary dimensions of
the personsomatic, instinctive, sexual, and certain
aspects of the emotionalmay have been necessary
at certain historical junctures to allow the emergence
and maturation of the values of the human heart and
consciousness. More specically, this inhibition may
have been essential to avoid the reabsorption of a still
relatively weak emerging self-consciousness and its
values into the stronger presence that a more instinc-
tively driven energy once had in human collectivities. In
the context of religious praxis, this may be connected to
the widespread consideration of certain human qualities
as being spiritually more correct or wholesome than
others; for instance, equanimity over intense passions,
transcendence over sensuous embodiment, chastity
or strictly regulated sexual practice over open-ended
sensual exploration, and so forth. What may charac-
terize our present moment, however, is the possibility of
reconnecting all these human potentials in an integrated
way. In other words, having developed self-reective
consciousness and the subtle dimensions of the heart,
it may be the moment to reappropriate and integrate
the more primary and instinctive dimensions of human
nature into a fully embodied spiritual life. Let us now
explore the distinctive understanding of the human
body implicit in embodied spirituality.
Te Living Body
E
mbodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as
the home of the complete human being, as a source
of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe
and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual
transformation.
Body as subject: To see the body as subject
means to approach it as a living world, with all its inte-
riority and depth, its needs and desires, its lights and
shadows, its wisdom and obscurities. Bodily joys and
sorrows, tensions and relaxations, longings and repul-
sions are some of the means through which the body
can speak to us. By any measure, the body is not an It
to be objectied and used for the goals or even spiritual
ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a Tou, an
intimate partner with whom the other human dimen-
sions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing
forms of liberating wisdom.
Body as the home of the complete human being:
In this physical reality in which we live, the body is our
home, a locus of freedom that allows us to walk our own
unique path, both literally and symbolically. Once we
fully overcome the dualism between matter and Spirit,
the body can no longer be seen as a prison of the soul
or even as a temple of Spirit. Te mystery of incarna-
tion never alluded to the entrance of Spirit into the
body, but to its becoming esh: In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was God . . . And the Word
became esh [John 1:1, 14]. Would it then perhaps
be more accurate to appreciate our bodies as a trans-
mutation of Spirit into eshy form at least during our
physical existence? Trough the ongoing incarnation of
innumerable beings, life may aim at the ultimate union
of humanity and divinity in the body. Perhaps paradoxi-
cally, a complete incarnation can bring a peaceful and
fullling death because we can then depart from this
material existence with a profoundly felt sense of having
accomplished one of the most essential purposes in
being born into the world.
Body as source of spiritual insight: Te body
is a divine revelation that can oer spiritual under-
standing, discrimination, and wisdom. First, the body
is the uterus for the conception and gestation of genuine
spiritual knowledge. Bodily sensations, for example, are
foundational stepping-stones in the embodied trans-
formation of Spirits creative energies through each
human life. In the absence of severe blockages or disso-
ciations, this creative energy is somatically transformed
into impulses, emotions, feelings, thoughts, insights,
visions, and, ultimately, contemplative revelations. As
the Buddha famously said, Everything that arises in
the mind starts owing with a sensation on the body
(Goenka, 1998, p. 26).
Furthermore, in listening deeply to the body we
realize that physical sensations and impulses can also be
genuine sources of spiritual insight (see Ferrer, Romero,
& Albareda, 2005; Osterhold, Husserl, & Nicol, 2007).
In certain Zen schools, for example, bodily actions
constitute crucial tests of spiritual realization and are
seen as the ultimate verication of sudden illumination,
or satori (Faure, 1993). Te epistemological relevance of
embodiment in spiritual matters was also passionately
asserted by Nikos Kazantzakis (1965):
Within me even the most metaphysical problem
takes on a warm physical body which smells of
sea, soil, and human sweat. Te Word, in order to
touch me, must become warm esh. Only then do I
understandwhen I can smell, see, touch. (p. 43)
Perhaps even more important, the body is the
human dimension that can reveal the ultimate meaning
of incarnated life. Being physical itself, the body stores
within its depths the answer to the mystery of material
existence. Te bodys answer to this conundrum is not
given in the form of any grand metaphysical vision or
Teory of Everything, but gracefully granted through
states of being that render life naturally profound and
meaningful. In other words, the meaning of life is not
something to be discerned and known intellectually by
the mind, but to be felt in the depths of our esh.
Body as microcosm of the universe and the
Mystery: Virtually all spiritual traditions hold that there
is a deep resonance among the human being, the cosmos,
and the Mystery. Tis view is captured in the esoteric
dictum as above so below (Faivre, 1994); the Platonic,
Taoist, Islamic, Kabbalistic, and tantric understanding
of the person as microcosm of the macrocosm (e.g.,
see Chittick, 1994; Faure, 1998; Overzee, 1992; Saso,
1997; Shokek, 2001; Wayman, 1982); and the Biblical
view of the human being made in the image of God
(imago Dei) (Jnsson, 1988). For the Bauls of Bengal,
the understanding of the body as the microcosm of the
universe (bhanda/brahmanda) entails the belief that
the divine dwells physically within the human body
(McDaniel, 1992). Te Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin (1968) put it this way: My matter is not a part
of the Universe that I possess totaliter; it is the totality of
the Universe possessed by me partialiter (p. 12).
All these perceptions portray an image of the
human body as mirroring and containing the innermost
structure of both the entire universe and the ultimate
creative principle. In a number of traditions, this struc-
tural correspondence between the human body and the
Mystery shaped mystical practices in which bodily rituals
and actions were thought to aect the very dynamics of
the Divinea pursuit that was perhaps most explicitly
described in Kabbalistic theurgical mysticism (Lancaster,
2008). Nevertheless, this does not mean that the body
is to be valued only because it represents or can aect
larger or higher realities. Tis view subtly retains the
fundamental dualism between material body and Spirit.
Embodied spirituality recognizes the human body as a
pinnacle of Spirits creative manifestation and, conse-
quently, as overowing with intrinsic spiritual meaning.
Body as essential for an enduring spiritual
transformation: Te body is a lter through which
human beings can purify polluted energetic tendencies,
both biographical and collectively inherited. Given that
the body is denser in nature than the emotional, mental,
and conscious worlds, changes taking place in it are more
lasting and permanent. In other words, an enduring
psychospiritual transformation needs to be grounded in
somatic transguration. Te integrative transformation
of the somatic/energetic worlds of a person eectively
short-circuits the tendency of past energetic habits to
return, thus creating a solid foundation for a thorough
and permanent spiritual transformation.
Features of Embodied Spirituality
I
n light of this expanded understanding of the human
body, I now oer a consideration of ten features of
embodied spirituality:
1. A tendency towards integration: Embodied
spirituality is integrative insofar as it seeks to foster the
harmonious participation of all human attributes in the
spiritual path without tensions or dissociations. Despite
his downplaying the spiritual import of sexuality and the
vital world, Sri Aurobindo (2001) was correct when he said
that a liberation of consciousness in consciousness should
not be confused with an integral transformation that
entails the spiritual alignment of all human dimensions
(pp. 942 and following pages). Tis recognition suggests
the need to expand the traditional Mahayana Buddhist
bodhisattva vowthat is, to renounce complete liberation
until all sentient beings attain deliveryto encompass an
integral bodhisattva vow in which the conscious mind
renounces full liberation until the body and the primary
world can be free as well (Ferrer, 2007). Since for most
individuals the conscious mind is the seat of their sense
of identity, an exclusive liberation of consciousness can
be deceptive insofar as we can believe that we are fully
free when, in fact, essential dimensions of ourselves are
underdeveloped, alienated, or in bondage. Needless to say,
to embrace an integral bodhisattva vow is not a return to
the individualistic spiritual aspirations of early Buddhism
because it entails a commitment to the integral liberation
of all sentient beings, not only of their conscious minds or
conventional sense of identity.
2. Realization through the body: Although their
actual practices and fruits remain obscure in the available
literature, the Hindu sect of the Bauls of Bengal coined
the term kaya sadhana to refer to a realization through
the body (McDaniel, 1992). Embodied spirituality
explores the development of kaya sadhanas appropriate
for our contemporary world. With the notable exception
of certain tantric techniques, traditional forms of medi-
tation are practiced individually and without bodily
interaction with other practitioners. Modern embodied
spirituality rescues the spiritual signicance not only
of the body but also of physical contact. Due to their
sequential emergence in human developmentfrom
soma to instinct to heart to mindeach dimension
grows by taking root in the previous ones, with the body
thereby becoming the natural doorway to the deepest
levels of the rest of human dimensions. Terefore, the
practice of contemplative physical contact in a context of
relational mindfulness and spiritual aspiration can have
a profound transformative power (see Ferrer, 2003).
In order to foster a genuine embodied practice,
it is essential to make contact with the body, discern its
current state and needs, and then create spaces for the
body to engender its own practices and capabilities
devise its own yoga, so to speak. When the body becomes
permeable to both immanent and transcendent spiritual
energies, it can nd its own rhythms, habits, postures,
movements, and charismatic rituals. Interestingly, some
ancient Indian texts state that yoga postures (asanas)
rst emerged spontaneously from within the body and
were guided by the free ow of its vital energy (prana)
(Sovatsky, 1994). A creative indwelling spiritual life
resides within the bodyan intelligent vital dynamism
that it is waiting to emerge to orchestrate the unfolding
of our becoming fully human.
3. Awakening of the body: Te permeability of
the body to immanent and transcendent spiritual energies
leads to its gradual awakening. In contrast to meditation
techniques that focus on mindfulness of the body, this
awakening can be more accurately articulated in terms
of bodyfulness. In bodyfulness, the psychosomatic
organism becomes calmly alert without the intention-
ality of the conscious mind. Bodyfulness reintegrates in
the human being a lost somatic capability that is present
in panthers, tigers, and other big cats of the jungle,
who can be extraordinarily aware without intentionally
attempting to be so. A possible further horizon of body-
fulness was described by the Mother, the spiritual consort
of Sri Aurobindo, in terms of the conscious awakening of
the very cells of the organism (Satprem, 1982).
4. Resacralization of sexuality and sensuous
pleasure: Whereas our mind and consciousness consti-
tute a natural bridge to transcendent awareness, our body
and its primary energies constitute a natural bridge to
immanent spiritual life. Immanent life is spiritual prima
materiathat is, spiritual energy in a state of transfor-
mation, still not actualized, saturated with potentials and
possibilities, and the source of genuine innovation and
creativity at all levels. Sexuality and the vital world are
the rst soils for the organization and creative develop-
ment of immanent Spirit in human reality. Tis is why it
is so important that sexuality be lived as a sacred soil free
from fears, conicts, or articial impositions dictated by
our minds, cultures, or spiritual ideologies. When the
vital world is reconnected to immanent spiritual life,
the primary drives can spontaneously collaborate in our
psychospiritual unfolding without needing to be subli-
mated or transcended.
Due to its captivating eect on human conscious-
ness and the egoic personality, sensuous pleasure has been
viewed with suspicionor even demonized as inher-
ently sinfulby most religious traditions. In a context
of embodied spiritual aspiration, however, it becomes
fundamental to rescue, in a non-narcissistic manner, the
dignity and spiritual signicance of physical pleasure. In
the same way that pain contracts the body, pleasure
relaxes it, making it more porous to the presence
and ow of both immanent and transcendent spiritual
energies. In this light, the formidable magnetic force
of the sexual drive can be seen as attracting conscious-
ness to matter, facilitating both its embodiment and
grounding in the world and the development of an incar-
national process that transforms both the individual and
the world. Furthermore, the recognition of the spiritual
import of physical pleasure naturally heals the histor-
ical split between sensuous love (eros) and spiritual love
(agape), and this integration fosters the emergence of
genuinely human lovean unconditional love that is
simultaneously embodied and spiritual (for a discussion
of the implications of this integration for intimate rela-
tionships, see Ferrer, 2007).
5. Te urge to create: In Cosmos and History,
Mircea Eliade (1982) makes a compelling case for the
re-enactive nature of many religious practices and
rituals, for example, in their attempt to replicate cosmo-
gonic actions and events. Expanding this account, we
could say that most religious traditions are reproduc-
tive insofar as their practices aim to not only ritually
reenact mythical motives, but also replicate the enlight-
enment of their founder (e.g., the awakening of the
Buddha) or attain the state of salvation or freedom
described in allegedly revealed scriptures (e.g., the moksa
of the Vedas). Although disagreements about the exact
nature of such states and the most eective methods to
attain them abounded in the historical development of
religious practices and ideasnaturally leading to rich
creative developments within the traditionsspiritual
inquiry was regulated (and arguably constrained) by such
predetermined unequivocal goals (Ferrer & Sherman,
2008b).
Embodied spirituality, in contrast, seeks to co-
create novel spiritual understandings, practices, and
expanded states of freedom in interaction with immanent
and transcendent sources of Spirit. Te creative power
of embodied spirituality is connected to its integrative
nature. Whereas through our mind and consciousness we
tend to access subtle spiritual energies already enacted in
history that display more xed forms and dynamics (e.g.,
specic cosmological motifs, archetypal congurations,
mystical visions and states, etc.), it is our connection
to our vital/primary world that gives us access to the
generative power of immanent spiritual life. Put simply,
the more that all human dimensions actively partici-
pate in spiritual knowing, the more creative spiritual life
becomes.
Although many variables were clearly at play,
the connection between vital/primary energies and
spiritual innovation may help to explain, rst, why
human spirituality and mysticism have been to a great
extent conservative; that is, heretic mystics are the
exception to the rule, and most mystics rmly conformed
to accepted doctrines and canonical scriptures (see, e.g.,
Katz, 1983); and second, why many spiritual traditions
strictly regulated sexual behavior, and often repressed or
even proscribed the creative exploration of sensual desire
(see, e.g., Cohen, 1994; Faure, 1998; Feuerstein, 1998;
Weiser-Hanks, 2000). I am not proposing that religious
traditions regulated or restricted sexual activity deliber-
ately to hinder spiritual creativity and maintain the status
quo of their doctrines. In my reading, all evidence seems
to point to other social, cultural, moral, and doctrinal
factors (see, for example, Brown, 1988; Parrinder, 1980).
What I am suggesting, in contrast, is that the social and
moral regulation of sexuality may have had an unex-
pected debilitating impact on human spiritual creativity
across traditions for centuries. Although this inhibition
may have been at times necessary in the past, today an
increasing number of individuals may be prepared for a
more creative engagement of their spiritual lives.
6. Grounded spiritual visions: As we have seen,
most major spiritual traditions posit the existence of an
isomorphism among the human being, the cosmos, and
the Mystery. From this correspondence it follows that the
more dimensions of the person that are actively engaged
in the study of the Mysteryor of phenomena associated
with itthe more complete his or her knowledge will be.
Tis completion should not be understood quantita-
tively but rather in a qualitative sense. In other words,
the more human dimensions creatively participate in
spiritual knowing, the greater will be the dynamic congru-
ence between inquiry approach and studied phenomena
and the more grounded in, coherent with, or attuned to the
ongoing unfolding of the Mystery will be our knowledge
(Ferrer, 2002, 2008).
In this regard, it is likely that many past and
present spiritual visions are to some extent the product
of dissociated ways of knowingways that emerge
predominantly from accessing certain forms of tran-
scendent consciousness but in disconnection from more
immanent spiritual sources. For example, spiritual visions
that hold that body and world are ultimately illusory (or
lower, or impure, or a hindrance to spiritual liberation)
arguably derive from states of being in which the sense of
self mainly or exclusively identies with subtle energies
of consciousness, getting uprooted from the body and
immanent spiritual life. From this existential stance, it is
understandable, and perhaps inevitable, that both body
and world are seen as illusory or defective. Tis account is
consistent with the Kashmir Saiva view that the illusory
nature of the world belongs to an intermediate level of
spiritual perception (suddhavidya-tattva), after which
the world begins to be discerned as a real extension of
the Lord Siva (Mishra, 1993). Indeed, when our somatic
and vital worlds are invited to participate in our spiritual
lives, making our sense of identity permeable to not only
transcendent awareness but also immanent spiritual
energies, then body and world become spiritually signif-
icant realities that are recognized as crucial for human
and cosmic spiritual fruition (Ferrer, 2002; Ferrer &
Sherman, 2008b).
7. In-the-world nature: We are born on earth. I
passionately believe that this is not irrelevant, a mistake,
or the product of a delusional cosmic game whose
ultimate goal is to transcend our embodied predica-
ment. Perhaps, as some traditions tell us, we could have
been incarnated in more subtle planes or levels of reality,
but the fact that we did it here must be signicant if we
are to engage our lives in any genuinely wholesome and
meaningful manner. To be sure, at certain crossroads on
the spiritual path it may be necessary to go beyond our
embodied existence in order to access essential dimen-
sions of our identity (especially when external or internal
conditions make it dicult or impossible to connect
with those dimensions in our everyday life). However,
to turn this move into a permanent spiritual modus
operandi can easily create dissociations in ones spiritual
life leading to a devitalized body, an arrested emotional
or interpersonal development, or lack of discrimination
around sexual behavioras the repeated sexual scandals
of contemporary Western and Eastern spiritual teachers
illustrate (see, e.g., Storr, 1996; Forsthoefel & Humes,
2005; Feuerstein, 2006).
If we live in a closed and dark house, it is
natural that we may feel pushed periodically to leave
our home in search of the nourishing warmth and light
of the sun. But an embodied spirituality invites us to
open the doors and windows of our body so that we can
always feel complete, warm, and nurtured at home even
if we may want at times to celebrate the splendor of the
outside light. Te crucial dierence is that our excursion
will not be motivated by decit or hunger, but rather by
the meta-need to celebrate, co-create with, and revere
the ultimate creative Mystery. It is here in our home
earth and bodythat we can develop fully as complete
human beings without needing to escape anywhere to
nd our essential identity or feel whole.
One does not need to hold a spiritual world view
to recognize the miracle of Gaia (i.e., Earth as a living
organism). Imagine that you are traveling throughout
the cosmos, and after eons of dark and cold outer space,
you nd Gaia, the blue planet, with its luscious jungles
and luminous sky, its warm soil and fresh waters, and
the inextricable wonder of embodied conscious life.
Unless one is open to the reality of alternate physical
universes, Gaia is the only place in the known cosmos
where consciousness and matter coexist and can achieve a
gradual integration through participating human beings.
Te inability to perceive Gaia as paradise is simply a conse-
quence of our collective condition of arrested incarnation.
8. Resacralization of nature: When the body is
felt as our home, the natural world can be reclaimed as our
homeland as well. Tis double grounding in body and
nature not only heals at its root the estrangement of the
modern self from nature, but also overcomes the spiritual
alienationoften manifesting as oating anxiety
intrinsic to the prevalent human condition of arrested or
incomplete incarnation. In other words, having recog-
nized the physical world as real, and being in contact with
immanent spiritual life, a complete human being discerns
nature as an organic embodiment of the Mystery. To sense
our physical surroundings as the Spirits body oers natural
resources for an ecologically grounded spiritual life.
9. Social engagement: A complete human being
recognizes that, in a fundamental way, we are our relation-
ships with both the human and nonhuman world, and
this recognition is inevitably linked with a commitment
to social transformation. To be sure, this commitment can
take many dierent forms, from more direct active social
or political action in the world (e.g., through social service,
spiritually grounded political criticism, or environmental
activism) to more subtle types of social activism involving
distant prayer, collective meditation, or ritual. While there
is still much to learn about the actual eectiveness of subtle
activism, as well as about the power of human conscious-
ness to directly aect human aairs, given our current
global crisis, embodied spirituality cannot be divorced
from a commitment to social, political, and ecological
transformationwhatever form this may take.
10. Integration of matter and consciousness:
Disembodied spirituality is often based on an attempt to
transcend, regulate, and/or transform embodied reality
from the higher standpoint of consciousness and its
values. Matters experiential dimension as an immanent
expression of the Mystery is generally ignored. Tis
shortsightedness leads to the beliefconscious or uncon-
sciousthat everything related to matter is unrelated to
the Mystery. Tis belief, in turn, conrms that matter and
Spirit are two antagonistic dimensions. It then becomes
necessary to abandon or condition the material dimension
in order to strengthen the spiritual one. Te rst step out of
this impasse is to rediscover the Mystery in its immanent
manifestation; that is, to stop seeing and treating matter
and the body as something that is not only alien to the
Mystery but that distances us from the spiritual dimension
of life. Embodied spirituality seeks a progressive integra-
tion of matter and consciousness that may ultimately
lead to what we might call a state of conscious matter.
A fascinating possibility to consider is that a fuller inte-
gration of immanent and transcendent spiritual energies
in embodied existence may gradually open the doors to
extraordinary longevity or other forms of metanormal
functioning attested to by the worlds mystical traditions
(see, e.g., Murphy, 1993).
A Final Word
I
conclude this essay with some reections about the past,
present, and potential future of embodied spirituality.
First, as even a cursory study of the lives of spiritual gures
and mystics across traditions suggests, the spiritual history
of humanity can be read, in part, as a story of the joys and
sorrows of human dissociation. From ascetically enacted
mystical ecstasies to world-denying monistic realizations,
and from heart-expanding sexual sublimation to the moral
struggles (and failures) of ancient and modern spiritual
teachers, human spirituality has been characterized by an
overriding impulse toward a liberation of consciousness
that has too often taken place at the cost of the underde-
velopment, subordination, or control of essential human
attributes such as the body or sexuality. Tis account does
not seek to excoriate past spiritualities, which may have
been at timesthough by no means alwaysperfectly
legitimate and perhaps even necessary in their particular
times and contexts, but merely to highlight the historical
rarity of a fully embodied or integrative spirituality.
Second, in this essay I have explored how a
more embodied spiritual life can emerge today from
our participatory engagement with both the energy of
consciousness and the sensuous energies of the body.
Ultimately, embodied spirituality seeks to catalyze the
emergence of complete human beingsbeings who, while
remaining rooted in their bodies, earth, and immanent
spiritual life, have made all their attributes permeable to
transcendent spiritual energies, and who cooperate in soli-
darity with others in the spiritual transformation of self,
community, and world. In short, a complete human being
is rmly grounded in Spirit-Within, fully open to Spirit-
Beyond, and in transformative communion with Spirit
In-Between.
Finally, embodied spirituality can access many
spiritually signicant revelations of self and world, some
of which have been described by the world contemplative
traditions, and others whose novel quality may require
a more creative engagement to be brought forth. In this
context, the emerging embodied spirituality in the West
can be seen as a modern exploration of an incarnational
spiritual praxis in the sense that it seeks the creative
transformation of the embodied person and the world, the
spiritualization of matter and the sensuous grounding of
Spirit, and, ultimately, the bringing together of heaven and
earth. Who knows, perhaps as human beings gradually
embody both transcendent and immanent spiritual
energiesa twofold incarnation, so to speakthey can
then realize that it is here, in this plane of concrete physical
reality, that the cutting edge of spiritual transformation
and evolution is taking place. For then the planet earth
may gradually turn into an embodied heaven, a perhaps
unique place in the cosmos where beings can learn to
express and receive embodied love, in all its forms.
Notes
1. An abridged version of this essay was originally
published in 2006 with the title Embodied Spiritu-
ality, Now and Ten in Tikkun: Culture, Spirituality,
Politics (May/June), 41-45, 53-64.
2. Te chakras (or cakras), whose number varies across
the traditions, are the living bodys subtle energetic
centers that store and channel the vital force (prana-
sakti) of the individual. Te Indian tantric tradition
identies six of these centers, located respectively at
the base of the spine (muladhara), the pelvic sexual
area (svadhisthana), the solar plexus (manipura), the
heart (anahata), the throat (visuddha), and in the
center of the eyebrows or third eye (ajna) (Basu,
1986). Whereas all these centers were considered in
many religious practices, the overriding tendency has
been to transmute the primary expressions of the
vital forceconnected to the lower chakrasinto
the subtle qualities and ecstasies of the heart and
consciousnessconnected to the higher chakras.
If we accept the Indian account of the primordial
vital force (sakti) as feminine and of consciousness
(shiva) as masculine, traditional tantric practice can
be seen as a kind of internalized patriarchy in
which feminine energies are used at the service of
masculine goals and expressions.
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About the Author
Jorge N. Ferrer, PhD, is chair of the Department of East-
West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral
Studies, San Francisco, where he teaches courses on
transpersonal studies, comparative mysticism, embodied
spiritual inquiry, and spiritual perspectives on sexuality
and relationships. He is the author of Revisioning
transpersonal theory: A participatory vision of human
spirituality (SUNY Press, 2002) and co-editor of Te
participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies
(SUNY Press, 2008).
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 12 Rock & Krippner
Attempts to elucidate the kinds of thing or things to which the term shamanic journeying
image is referentially linked must grapple with two related questions: what is the funda-
mental nature of shamanic journeying images, and how might the origin of a shamanic
journeying image be found? Te rst question is ontological, concerned with the nature
and essence of shamanic journeying images. In contrast, the second is epistemological and
methodological, concerned with how to acquire knowledge of shamanic journeying images.
We demonstrate how inductive and deductive reasoning, the private language argument,
and reication render problematic the resolution of both. Finally, we present a method to
preliminarily formulate an ontology and epistemology of shamanic journeying imagery.
Some Rudimentary Problems
Pertaining to the Construction
of an Ontology and Epistemology
of Shamanic Journeying Imagery
Adam J. Rock Stanley Krippner
1
Deakin University Saybrook Graduate School
Melbourne, VIC, Australia San Francisco, CA, USA
T
he term shamanism typically refers to a group
of techniques by which its practitioners enter the
spirit world, purportedly obtaining information
that is used to help and to heal members of their social
group (Krippner, 2000, p. 93). Several researchers
(e.g., Heinze, 1991; Ripinsky-Naxon, 1993) argue that
this information is accessed during altered states of
consciousness (ASCs), principally those ASCs involving
soul ight (i.e., ecstatic journeying; Krippner, 2002). Tat
is to say, shamanic practices (e.g., ingesting psychoactive
plants, sonic driving, ritualized dancing) ostensibly
produce shifts in consciousness which Harner (1990)
referred to as shamanic states of consciousness. In other
papers (e.g., Rock & Krippner, 2007a, 2007b), we have
provided our rationale for replacing the term shamanic
state of consciousness with shamanic pattern of phenomenal
properties, and will use the latter term throughout this
article.
Noll (1985) asserted that an integral feature
of shamanism is the utilization of techniques for
inducing, maintaining, and interpreting the experience
of enhanced visual mental imagery (p. 445). Similarly,
Peters (1989) stated that, Te shaman is a visualizer
(p. 130) who relies on this modality to access
transpersonal realms. Indeed, Houran, Lange, and
Crist-Houran (1997) analyzed 30 phenomenological
reports concerning shamanic journeying, derived from
Harner (1990), and found that 93.3% emphasized visual
phenomena. Shamanic visualizations (i.e., journeying
imagery) typically reect ones cultural cosmology
(Krippner, 1990; Walsh, 1995, 2007), which tends to
be a multi-layered universe consisting of an upper world,
middle world (the terrestrial world or Earth) and lower
world (Ellwood, 1987).
2

In recent years, shamanic practices have generated
increasing interest as a complementary therapeutic
strategy in the traditional medical and psychological
arenas (Bittman et al., 2001). Consequently, it may prove
prudent to further investigate the nature of shamanic
patterns of phenomenal properties (e.g., journeying
imagery). Nevertheless, to our knowledge, there exists
a lacuna in the literature with regards to a systematic
analysis of the philosophical problems that hamper
the development of an ontology and epistemology of
shamanic journeying imagery.
Ontology may be dened as the matter of
what there is in the world (Chalmers, 1996, p. 41); it
is concerned with an overall conception of how things
are (Heil, 1998, p. 6). Te term ontological foundations
refers to the fundamental nature or essence of a particular
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 13 Shamanic Journeying Imagery
variable, X (e.g., a shamanic journey image). For example,
an ontologist might be concerned with whether the kind
of thing that a shamanic journeying image is referentially
linked to is imaginal (e.g., derived from material stored
in ones long-term memory system) or transpersonal (i.e.,
independent of the percipients mind-body complex)
(Walsh, 1990).
In contrast, epistemology may be dened as
the study of the origins, nature, methods, and limits of
human knowledge (Reber & Reber, 2001, p. 246). With
regards to shamanic patterns of phenomenal properties,
one might, for example, investigate the epistemological
process that results in a percipient becoming aware of
a shamanic journeying image. While epistemological
debates in the philosophy of religion have tended to focus
on mystical experience (e.g., Evans, 1989; Forman, 1996;
Gill, 1984; Katz, 1978, 1983; Stoeber, 1991), one might
contend that the epistemological problems discussed
are also applicable to shamanic patterns of phenomenal
properties. For example, there is no reason in principle
why the epistemological issue of whether mystical
experience is shaped conceptually and linguistically
by ones cultural milieu is not applicable to shamanic
patterns of phenomenal properties. Indeed, a recent series
of papers (e.g., Rock & Baynes, 2005, 2007) investigated
the extent to which shamanic journeying imagery is
shaped by contextual inuences (e.g., the shamans
cultural cosmology and autobiographical memories).
3
Te purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how
various philosophical problems impede the formulation
of an ontology and epistemology of shamanic journeying
imagery. We proceed by demonstrating that the problem
of induction constitutes an inherent limitation associated
with recent experimental studies investigating the origin
of shamanic journeying imagery. Subsequently, we
develop and critique a deductive argument concerning the
ontology of shamanic journeying imagery. Wittgensteins
(1958) private language argument and the fallacy of
reication are also considered in the context of shamanic
journeying imagery. Finally, we present a methodology
that arguably constitutes a preliminary step towards the
formulation of an ontology and epistemology of shamanic
journeying imagery.
Previous Experimental Research
Concerning the Origins
of Shamanic Journeying Imagery
A
ttempts to elucidate the kinds of thing or things that
the term shamanic journeying image is referentially
linked to may prompt one to address two intimately
related questions: (1) What is the fundamental nature of
shamanic journeying images? (2) How might one nd the
origin of a shamanic journeying image? Te rst question
is ontological; that is, it is concerned with the nature and
essence of the shamanic journeying image. In contrast,
the second is an epistemological and methodological
question; it relates to how one might acquire certain
knowledge. It is arguable that 1 and 2 are inextricably
bound at a fundamental level. Tat is to say, answering 2
presumably provides one with the methodology necessary
to address 1.
Rock and Baynes (2005, 2007) addressed 2 by
developing a non-hypnotic version of Watkins (1971)
Aect Bridge (a hypnotic technique used to uncover the
origin of an aect) for the purpose of investigating the
origins of shamanic journeying imagery. Te Modied
Aect Bridge was developed as one potential partial
solution to 2; it was not designed to facilitate unrestricted
access to ones unconscious material, but rather to facilitate
ordinary remembering among ordinary participants in
a non-clinical context. Te Modied Aect Bridge was
rst applied in an experimental context by Rock, Casey
and Baynes (2006) and, subsequently, Rock (2006).
Rock, Casey, and Baynes (2006) reported that
ostensibly shamanic journey images encountered by
nave participants journeying to the lower world with
the aid of monotonous drumming at 8 beats-per-second
for 15 minutes were just as likely to be derived from
autobiographical memories as spontaneous visual mental
images reported by nave participants assigned to the
control condition of sitting quietly with eyes open for 15
minutes. Tis nding suggests that the epistemological
process that results in one being consciously aware
of an ostensibly shamanic journeying image involves
memory recall and superimposition within ones
phenomenal space. Consequently, the journeying images
may be tentatively assigned an imaginal ontological
status. Subsequently, Rock (2006) randomly allocated
participants to counterbalanced factorial combinations of
a repeated-measures factor and a between-groups factor.
Te repeated-measures factor consisted of four stimulus
conditions (i.e., monotonous drumming, Ganzfeld,
relaxation, sitting quietly with eyes open). Te between-
groups factor consisted of three sets of instructions (i.e.,
journeying to the lower world with or without religious
instructions, no instructions). It was concluded that visual
mental images encountered while journeying to the lower
world were derived primarily from autobiographical
memories. Other visual mental images were tentatively
labelled as symbolic, transpersonal, and indeterminate.
Te results of Rock, Casey, and Baynes (2006) and
Rock (2006) facilitated the development of a tentative four-
fold ostensibly shamanic journeying imagery origin typology
consisting of autobiographical, symbolic, transpersonal
and indeterminate sources. An ostensibly shamanic
journeying image may be categorized as autobiographical
if it appears to be the derivative of an autobiographical
memory, that is, a memory for events that have occurred
in ones life (Reber & Reber, 2001, p. 423). Te symbolic
characterization of an ostensibly shamanic journeying
image is invoked if the image seems to perform a symbolic
function without appearing to mentally represent a
previous sensory experience. An ostensibly shamanic
journeying image may be conceptualized as transpersonal
if the image appears to be linked to something that exists
independently of the participants mind-body complex.
Finally, an indeterminate status is conferred upon an
ostensibly shamanic journeying image if the participant
is unable to isolate its origin (Rock & Baynes, 2007).
Given that the Modied Aect Bridge was
formulated as a potential partial solution to 2, and
has yielded four imagery-origin categories thereby
addressing 1, it might be asked, How might one resolve
the ontological foundations of shamanic journeying
imagery? In this context, it may be ecacious to consider
Mercantes (2008) suggestion that a persuasive argument
for considering imagery associated with the Ayahuasca
experience (i.e., mirao, singular; miraes, plural) an
involuntary and spontaneous process is that voluntary
events rely on memory (pp. 6-7). Extrapolating from
Farthings (1992) discussion of mental imagery to
mirao, Mercante (2008) wrote:
If the arrival and dissipation of miraes were subject
to the command of the individual, it would follow
that no alien elements (outside a persons familiar
universe) would be present.... Te idea is that one can
only voluntarily manipulate images that are impressed
upon the memory through sensation. Not that a
person cannot assemble new patterns from recorded
sensory data, but he or she cannot manufacture
fundamental data beyond the pale of experience. Te
revelatory qualities of the mirao would be lost or at
least considered illusory if the experience of it were
limited to the cache of existing memory (pp. 6-7).
One may apply Mercantes (2008) argument
to shamanic journeying imagery and contend that if
shamanic journeying images are immune to voluntarily
manipulation, then shamanic journeying images are not
constructed from material derived from a percipients
long-term memory system. Ethnographic data, however,
suggests that shamans tend to cultivate a mastery over
journeying images (e.g., Noll, 1985), thus indicating
provided one accepts Mercantes (2008) preceding
argumentthat shamanic journeying imagery is the
result of an epistemological process involving memory
recall and superimposition within a percipients
phenomenal space.
Furthermore, it is arguable that even if the
outward appearance of a shamanic journeying image, X,
is derived from material stored in a percipients long-term
memory system, this does not necessarily preclude the
ontological foundations of X from being transpersonal.
For example, if a shaman or experimental participant
encounters a predatory creature during a journey to
the lower worldand the outward appearance of this
predatory creature is the derivative of an autobiographical
memoryit remains possible that the predatory creature
is merely the manifestation or persona of an external
entity. Strassman (2001), for instance, suggested that
entities encountered during dimethyltryptamine-
induced patterns of phenomenal properties tend to
manifest in forms recognizable to the percipient (e.g.,
elves, aliens, angels, deceased relatives), and yet
may reside in parallel universes or dark matter realms.
Problems of Induction and Deduction
L
et us assume, for the sake of argument, that there
are six necessary conditions (hereafter N
1
N
6
) for a
visual mental image to qualify as a shamanic journeying
image and that the conjunction of N
1
N
6
constitutes
a sucient condition. Let us further assume that N
6

states that the ontological foundations of a visual mental
image, X, must be Y (where Y is currently unknown). An
ontologist might be concerned with whether the kind of
thing (i.e., denoted by Y) that a shamanic journeying
image is referentially linked to is imaginal (i.e., a
projection of the shamans mental set) or transpersonal
(i.e., independent of the shamans mind-body complex)
(Walsh, 1990).
Future research might formulate an a posteriori
derived denition for Y by comparing Xs that satisfy
N
1
N
5
(group 1) with Xs that satisfy four or less of
the aforementioned necessary conditions (group 2).
Specically, one may use the Modied Aect Bridge to
investigate whether group 1 is associated with dierent
categories of Ys compared to group 2. Given that group
2 does not satisfy N
1
N
5
(N
6
notwithstanding), the
ostensible shamanic journeying image status of this group
is falsied. In contrast, the constituents of group 1 have
not been falsied because they satisfy N
1
N
5
. If it is
observed that all of the constituents of groups 1 are derived
from, for example, a transpersonal source, then one might
tentatively infer that Y is a transpersonal source and,
thus, N
6
would state that the ontological foundations of a
visual mental image, X, must be transpersonal. However,
if, for instance, some constituents of group 1 appear
to be derived from a transpersonal source, while other
constituents of group 1 do not, then it may be such that
the transpersonal constituents of group 1 are shamanic
journeying images and, thus, Y is a transpersonal source;
whereas the non-transpersonal constituents of group 1
are merely visual mental images. Tat is, if N
6
, in fact,
states that the ontological foundations of a visual mental
image, X, must be transpersonal, then the transpersonal
constituents of Group 1 satisfy N
1
N
6
, which is
a sucient condition for qualifying as a shamanic
journeying image. In contrast, the ostensible shamanic
status of the non-transpersonal constituents of group 1
would be falsied on the grounds that these constituents
fail to satisfy N
6
. It is, of course, logically possible that
Y, in fact, denotes a non-transpersonal source and, thus,
the non-transpersonal constituents of group 1 satisfy
N
1
N
6
, while the transpersonal constituents of group 1
would be falsied.
However, if one were able to denitively
demonstrate that shamanic journeying images X
1
, X
2
,
X
3
X
10
were all derived from, for example, transpersonal
sources, then to presuppose that X
11
is also derived
from a transpersonal source is to commit the fallacy
of induction, that is, moving from particular instances
to general principles. For example, Rosenberg (2000)
suggested that the observation that the sun has risen
many days in the past is good grounds to believe it will do
so tomorrow, but does not make it logically certain that
it will (p. 177). Consequently, induction is inherently
limited. Additionally, if the ontological foundations were
dierent for X
1
, X
2
, X
3
X
10
(e.g., autobiographical for X
1

and X
2
, symbolic for X
10
, indeterminate for X
7
and X
8
),
then one might contend that such variability hampers
N
6
s usefulness as a necessary condition.
Similarly, deductive models (i.e., moving from
general principles to particular instances) are inherently
limited. For example, one may formulate a logically valid
argument concerning the identity of Y but there is no
guarantee that such an argument is logically sound.
Consider the following deductive argument:
1. All shamanic journeying images are derived
from transpersonal sources;
2. X is a shamanic journeying image;
3. Terefore X is derived from a transpersonal
source.
It may be observed that while the preceding arguments
conclusion follows logically from its premises, it may of
course be such that all shamanic journeying images are
not derived from transpersonal sources.
Te aforementioned problems associated with
attempts to formulate an ontology and epistemology
of shamanic journeying imagery using inductive
or deductive reasoning are further complicated by
Wittgensteins (1958) private language argument and the
fallacy of reication.
Te Private Language Argument
I
n a private language it is held that terms refer to what
can only be known to the person speaking; to his
immediate private sensations. So another person cannot
understand the language (Wittgenstein, 1958, pp. 88-
89). Te notion of a private language is underpinned by an
argument for solipsism: I can only believe that someone
else is in pain, but I know if I am (Wittgenstein, 1958,
p. 102). A privileged observer (i.e., rst-person) may, for
example, establish a link between the term pain and the
phenomenal properties of pain. However, it is possible
that the privileged observers private denition may
be erroneously applied in subsequent instances due to
false memory impressions concerning the phenomenal
properties of pain (Malcolm, 1981). Consequently,
Wittgenstein (1958) asserted that one should, always
get rid of the idea of a private object in this way: assume
that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice
the change because your memory constantly deceives
you (p. 207). To summarize, Wittgensteins (1958)
private language argument undermined: (1) the ability
of a nonprivileged observer to correctly apprehend the
meanings of terms applied to phenomenal properties by a
privileged observer; and (2) the reliability of a privileged
observers application of terms to the phenomenal
properties known by his or her conscious awareness.
Te epistemological presuppositions associated
with shamanic journeying imagery are two-fold and
inextricably related at a fundamental level: (1) a privileged
observer can, via introspection, know a shamanic
journeying image; and (2) a privileged observer may
communicate the introspected shamanic journeying
image to a nonprivileged observer. Clearly, in order to
categorize an image as shamanic one must rst learn the
meaning of the term shamanic. A nonprivileged observer
might endeavor to learn the meaning of objects
commensurate with a shamanic journeying image, X,
by attempting to correctly apprehend the meanings of
linguistic terms applied by a privileged observer to the
set of constituents associated with X, xyz. However, as
previously stated, Wittgenstein (1958) asserted that
such terms refer to what can only be known to the
person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So
another person cannot understand the language (pp.
88-89). Tat is, while a nonprivileged observer may be
informed that X exhibits a certain set of constituents,
xyz, Wittgensteins (1958) private language argument
undermined a nonprivileged observers ability to correctly
apprehend the meanings of linguistic terms applied to
xyz by a privileged observer. Consequently, while it is
possible that a nonprivileged observer may subsequently
engage in the privileged observation of xyz, and thus X,
it is impossible to verify that such a mental event has
occurred. Tis epistemological problem is compounded
by the suggestion that a privileged observers false
memory impressions concerning xyz, and thus X, may
result in the unreliable application of linguistic terms to
xyz, and thus X, in future instances.
Tis raises a further epistemological problem.
Tart (1975) emphasized the state-specicity of
knowledge, while Fischer (1980) asserted that one may
experience diculty recalling events that occur in
another state of arousal (p. 306). Consequently, the
probability of a privileged observer unreliably recalling
a phenomenal property associated with what Tart (1975)
referred to as a particular state of consciousness, SoC
1
,
due to a false memory impression, may exponentially
increase when functioning in a SoC other than SoC
1

(e.g., SoC
2
n
). Consequently, this may compromise a
privileged observers ability to retrospectively assess an
image as shamanic while functioning in ordinary waking
consciousness.
Te Fallacy of Reication
R
eichenbach (1951) employed the axiom sub-
stantialization of abstracta to denote the fallacy of
reication whereby an abstract noun (e.g., consciousness)
is confused with a thing-like entity. Similarly, Whitehead
(1946) referred to reication as the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness, which he dened as the accidental error
of mistaking the abstract for the concrete (p. 66).
An awareness of the fallacy associated with
reifying consciousness may be observed in James
(1890) contention that consciousness does not exist,
which Chalmers (1996) suggested is interpretable as an
attempt to argue that consciousness does not exemplify
the property of thing-ness. Indeed, Klein (1984) stated
that James (1890) avoided committing the fallacy of
reication by asserting that consciousness is a function
or process of knowing, rather than a thing-like entity.
One might argue, with some justication, that
experimental studies of shamanic journeying imagery
that use, for example, Pekalas (1991) Phenomenology of
Consciousness Inventory (PCI; a 53-item questionnaire that
purportedly quanties the structures of consciousness)
commit an ontological mistake by concretizing mental
phenomena (e.g., visual mental imagery), thereby
conating mentalism with materialism. Pekala (1991)
has committed the fallacy of reication (Eacker,
1972) or misplaced concreteness (Whitehead, 1946)
by attempting to quantify consciousness, and thus
contravenes James (1890) contention that consciousness
is not a thing-like entity, but rather a function or process
of knowing (Klein, 1984). Indeed, Pekala (1991) has
routinely engaged in the kind of fallacious reasoning
whereby an abstract noun (e.g., state absorption,
rationality, positive aect) is reied and ascribed
a numerical value. Te problem of reication would
appear dicult to circumvent, however, given that,
presently, mental phenomena cannot be investigated via
the scientic methodand thus measureduntil they
are reied by the assignment of operational denitions
commensurate with the ontological status of thing-like
entities.
While Wittgensteins (1958) private language
argument and the fallacy of reication problematize the
ndings of shamanic research, it does not necessarily
follow that the ndings are rendered spurious. Indeed,
a more measured approach might be to develop an
appreciation of these issues and merely interpret ones
results with a suitable level of caution.
A Way Forward
P
rior to formulating an ontology and epistemology
of shamanic journeying images one must develop
criteria designed to distinguish shamanic journeying
images from other images. Tat is to say, one cannot
investigate a particular phenomenon if one is bereft
of a methodology that may be used to identify that
phenomenon.
One may assess the ostensible shamanic status
of visual mental images using Rock and Krippners
(2008) criteria for the necessary conditions for shamanic
journeying imagery. Te rst necessary condition (N
1
)
states that a visual mental image, X, must be integrated
with other visual mental images. Te term integrated is
invoked to underscore that during shamanic journeying
experiences various visual mental images coalesce to
form cohesive geographies or landscapes. N
2
states
that the outward appearance (i.e., form or garb) of X
must be consistent with a shamanic cosmology. N
3
states
that X must be consistent with the purpose of the specic
shamanic journey. Finally, N
4
states that the function
of X must be consistent with X. Te term function is
employed to indicate the activities or actions expected
of X according to a specic shamanic cosmology. If
an X satises N
1
N
4
, then the purported shamanic
journeying status of X is not falsied. It is noteworthy,
however, that it does not necessarily follow that X is a
shamanic journeying image because the conjunction of
N
1
N
4
may not constitute a sucient condition (i.e.,
there may exist other necessary conditions that have been
overlooked).
Future research may use Rock and Krippners
(2008) criteria to evaluate Xs reported by participants
exposed to shamanic techniques (e.g., rhythmic
drumming). Subsequently, the ontological status of Xs
that satisfy N
1
N
4
could be explored. Methodological
advances in the eld of consciousness studies provide
an indication of how this secondary aim might be
accomplished. For example, as previous stated, Pekala
(1991) developed the PCI to ostensibly quantify the
structures of consciousness. Te PCI contains a three-
item dimension that purportedly quanties ones
subjective sense of an altered state of awareness (SSAS;
e.g., I felt in an extremely dierent and unusual state of
consciousness). However, there is no reason in principle
why ones subjective sense of the imaginal and the
transpersonal could not be similarly explored. Indeed,
items could be constructed to quantify the intensity of
ones subjective sense that a shamanic journeying image
is derived from an imaginal or transpersonal source
(e.g., Te image seemed to be created by my mind and
Te image seemed to be linked to an entity beyond my
personhood, respectively).
While the aforementioned methodology clearly
does not resolve the various problems that constitute the
foci of this paper, it does ostensibly allow researchers
to: (1) identify shamanic journeying images, and
(2) assess a percipients subjective sense of whether a
shamanic journeying image is imaginal or transpersonal.
Consequently, it is arguable that this methodology
constitutes an initial step towards the formulation of
an ontology and epistemology of shamanic journeying
imagery.
Conclusion
I
t was suggested that the utility of empirical ndings
concerning the origins of shamanic journeying imagery
are inherently limited by the problem of induction.
Subsequently, we developed a deductive argument
regarding the ontology of shamanic journeying imagery
and demonstrated that while the argument was logically
valid (i.e., the conclusion followed logically from its
premises), there was no guarantee that the argument was
logically sound. We further argued that an application
of Wittgensteins (1958) private language argument to
shamanic journeying imagery undermines: (1) the ability
of a nonprivileged observer to correctly apprehend the
meanings of the term shamanic journeying imagery
applied to phenomenal properties by a privileged
observer; and (2) the reliability of a privileged observers
application of the term shamanic journeying imagery
to the phenomenal properties known by his or her
conscious awareness. Finally, we suggested that attempts
to quantify the phenomenology of consciousness (e.g.,
journeying imagery) constitute an ontological mistake
referred to as reication by conating mentalism with
materialism.
Te inherent inadequacies of methodologies
underpinned by inductive and deductive reasoning
coupled with philosophical problems associated with
reication and a private language referentially linked
to mental objects facilitates what Walsh (1990) referred
to as ontological indeterminacy. Indeed, it may not be
hyperbole to suggest that the fundamental nature of
shamanic journeying imagery is currently unresolvable
because there is no absolute method with which to
examine this phenomenon. Nevertheless, it is arguable
that Rock and Krippners (2008) necessary conditions
for a visual mental image to qualify as a shamanic
journeying image, coupled with items designed to assess
a percipients subjective sense of whether a shamanic
journeying image is imaginal or transpersonal, constitute
an initial step towards the formulation of an ontology
and epistemology of shamanic journeying imagery.
Notes
1. Tis study was supported, in part, by the Chair
for Consciousness Studies, Saybrook Graduate
School.
2. Shamanic journeying imagery is not restricted to
any particular sensory modality; that is, journeying
imagery may be visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory,
tactile or multi-modal (Walsh, 1995). However,
for the purpose of the present paper, shamanic
journeying images will be delimited to their visual
modality because these are arguably the most
abundant (Houran, Lange, & Crist-Houran, 1997;
Noll, 1983).
3. One might argue that philosophical problems, by
denition, resist empirical testing. It is noteworthy,
however, that motivation and learning were once
conceptualized as philosophical problems and, thus,
held to be incongruent with the methodology of
science (Eacker, 1972).
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About the Authors
Adam J. Rock, PhD, is a lecturer in psychology at Deakin
University, Melbourne, Australia, and an Adjunct
Research Fellow at the Windbridge Institute for Applied
Research in Human Potential, Tucson, Arizona. His
research interests include the phenomenology of what have
typically been referred to as altered states of conscious-
ness; conceptual problems associated with consciousness;
shamanism and shamanic journeying experiences with
special emphasis on the ontology and epistemology of
shamanic journeying imagery; philosophical problems
of psychology; and purported discarnate communication
experiences. He has published in all of these areas.
Stanley Krippner, PhD, is Alan Watts Professor of Psy-
chology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center,
San Francisco, California. In 2002, the American Psy-
chological Association presented him its Award for Dis-
tinguished Contributions to the Advancement of Inter-
national Psychology. His award speech, Conicting
perspectives on shamans and shamanism: Points and
counterpoints, was the rst article on shamanism to
be published in the American Psychologist. In 2007, he
gave an invited address, Learning from the Spirits, at
the American Anthropological Association, reviewing his
eldwork in Brazils spiritistic religions. He is a former
president of the International Association for the Study of
Dreams and a Fellow in several professional organizations
including the Society for the Scientic Study of Sexuality
and the Society for the Scientic Study of Religion.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 20 Brier
A Peircean Panentheist Scientic Mysticism
1
Sren Brier
2
Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen, Denmark
Peirces philosophy can be interpreted as an integration of mysticism and science. In Peirces
philosophy mind is feeling on the inside and on the outside, spontaneity, chance and chaos
with a tendency to take habits. Peirces philosophy has an emptiness beyond the three worlds
of reality (his Categories), which is the source from where the categories spring. He empha-
sizes that God cannot be conscious in the way humans are, because there is no content in
his mind. Since there is a transcendental
3
nothingness behind and before the categories,
it seems that Peirce had a mystical view on reality with a transcendental Godhead. Tus
Peirce seems to be a panentheist.
4
It seems fair to characterize him as a mystic whose path
to enlightenment is science as a social activity.
Introduction

T
he relation between science and Christianity in
the West has been somewhat hostile ever since
the trials against Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) in the Renaissance. But
so have relations between the Church and the mystics ever
since Meister Eckhart (12601328) was excommunicated
from the church after his death in the Middle Ages. In
modernity, science and religion have divided the arena
of metaphysics between them. Tey are, however, still
competing about how to explain the origin of humans
and the universe, especially in the situations where
fundamentalist versions of one or both of them are being
promoted. But in general they seem to have established
a peaceful division of territory in which mechanistic
sciences Big Bang theory covers nature, including the
human body, and religion covers the area of the inner
world or the soul. As the scientic worldview has
not been able to render the idea of a metaphysics of the
sacred and of personal and cultural values superuous,
institutionalized religion is still one of the major forms
of organizing the existential-phenomenological aspect
of human life. But there are neither empirically nor
philosophically good reasons to believe that either classical
mechanical and positivistic science, or the present forms
of organized religion, or attempts to combine their
knowledge, have made usor will make usable to
understand and control the fundamental processes of
mind and nature. Te promise of articial intelligence,
which would represent such mastery, remains unfullled
(Ekbia 2008). Where questions of the origin of mind,
life, matter, and nature meet, there seems to be a black
hole in our conceptual knowledge. Tis chasm points to
a fundamental lack in the foundation of our knowledge
and/or our understanding of knowledge. It is here that one
can see Peirces (1866-1913/1994) semiotic philosophy of
religious and scientic knowing as an attempt to create
a new transdisciplinary start on what I claim to be a
panentheistic basis.
5

Classical positivism, and later classical empiricism
and rationalism, developed into the logical positivism
and nally logical empiricism with its physicalistic
vision of the unity of science; these are the rst real
reective philosophies of that conception of the
empirical-mathematical sciences that emerged during the
Renaissance. Logical empiricism owered, especially in the
1930s, and after World War II almost rose to be sciences
only well-established self-understanding. But after World
War II, the majority of the theoretical developments
within the philosophy of science became critical of this
paradigm. An attempt was made to develop a more
comprehensive understanding of the cognitive processes
of science, as well as an epistemological understanding
of its type of knowledge vis--vis other types of knowing
such as an everyday understanding of the world.
Karl R. Popper (1972) and Tomas Kuhn (1970)
are two of the most prominent philosophers of science
in this development. Poppers and Kuhns theories of
science discuss whether observations and experiments can
expand our knowledge of nature in such a way that we
get a more and more truthful description. Is the growth
of science an approach to a nal description of the law(s)
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 21 Peircean Panentheist Scientic Mysticism
of nature, or are we just establishing still moreoften
incompatibleviewpoints to describe an impenetrable
complexity? Are we just receiving more information
without getting nearer the truth? Popper (1972) has been
endorsed as believer in the view that science get closer
to the truth, and Kuhn (1970) as a social constructivist
denying any kind of objective measure of truth and
scientic progress. But Popper and Kuhns viewpoints
are not as incompatible as they might appear. According
to my analysis (Brier, 2006), Kuhn and Popper meet in
the middle, the former attaching more importance to the
social psychological mechanisms in science and the latter
more to the logic of research. Te important point is that
both abandon the simple view of sciences truth-value that
is often based on a mechanical monistic or dualistic view
of the world. Pierce, like both Kuhn and Popper, points
to the fallibility and incompleteness of science and to the
important inuence of metaphysical ideas and values
upon the development of scientic knowledge. Both
Popper and Kuhn agree that we cannot measure how near
a theory is to truth or if science should even be portrayed
as getting nearer to some kind of big truth, but we can
see that knowledge grows and evolves and becomes more
comprehensive. Tus it seems that science alone is not an
applicable tool to reveal the big truth about the nature,
meaning, and purpose of life and/or the nature of the
universe. Peirce wrote:
Tus, the universe is not a mere mechanical result
of the operation of blind law. Te most obvious of
all its characters cannot be so explained. It is the
multitudinous facts of all experience that show us
this; but that which has opened our eyes to these
facts is the principle of fallibilism. Tose who fail to
appreciate the importance of fallibilism reason: we
see these laws of mechanics; we see how extremely
closely they have been veried in some cases. We
suppose that what we havent examined is like what
we have examined, and that these laws are absolute,
and the whole universe is a boundless machine
working by the blind laws of mechanics. Tis is a
philosophy which leaves no room for a God! No,
indeed! It leaves even human consciousness, which
cannot well be denied to exist, as a perfectly idle and
functionless neur in the world, with no possible
inuence upon anything -- not even upon itself.
(Peirce, 1866-1913/1994, Vol. 1, p. 162.)
Since the start of classical physics in the 16th
century, our mathematical and logical description of the
physical, chemical, and biological universe has gradually
grown to dominate our worldview. Our understanding
has been invaded by this universe to an extent where it has
become common sense to see our lived worlds as a part
of the universe, each individuals life a small subjective
world full of signication and sense-making within
an objective universe. Trough communication and co-
operation these small signication spheres (Brier, 1999)
are connected in social and cultural practice domains
to that world of signication we call a culture. But still
this world isfrom natural science-based disciplines
such as Western medicineparadoxically seen as part
of an objective and meaningless universe (well-described
by Monod, 1972). Te paradox lies in realizing that the
ability to obtain knowledge comes before science, that
symbolic knowing needs a self-conscious, embodied
language user, that language needs signs to represent
the nature and origins of reality and a society to convey
meaning. Tis allows one to see the limitation of purely
scientic explanations of the phenomenon of knowledge
(Brier, 2008a, b, c).
Te process of knowing is the prerequisite for
science. How then can knowledge and intelligence ever
be thought to be fully explained by a science based on
physicalistic or functionalistic worldviews? As there is
no knowledge without mind, no mind without nature,
and no meaning without meaningfully embodied signs
communicated in a society, how are we to explain
knowing (the process) from a materialistic, bottom-up
model based on a mechanistic understanding of the
Big Bang theory, where life, intelligence, language,
and knowledge are supposed to be explained through
mathematical laws and logic? My suggestion is, therefore,
that we have to live with both the universe and the world
in a new and fruitful way, rst by acknowledging that
there are dierent worlds of description (Brier, 2008a, b,
c).
Human scientic knowledge seems to be con-
nected to an undetermined amount of non-knowledge,
and it seems that the more exact and universal we want
to make our knowledge, the more non-knowledge goes
with it. It does leave open the possibility that reality
provides an inner connection between dierent worlds,
and that the universe is beyond a thorough scientic
description but roughly describable anyway. Such a
framework might help us to gain a less fundamentalist
view of science and religion, and give us a better chance to
judge the inner logic and consistency of dierent kinds of
spiritual healing practices. Based on C. S. Peirces (1866-
1913/1994) semiotic philosophy, I will attempt to outline
a modern metaphysics of origin and cognition with the
purpose of adding the existential-phenomenological
dimension to the modern scientic evolutionary Big
Bang model of the creation of the Universe by relating
feeling, meaning, willing and conscious knowing to
our scientic concept of reality without experienced
meaning. Tus I will interpret Peirce in the light of the
modern development of science and philosophy.
Te Myth of Creation
and the Teory of Evolution
I
n the Christian world, the biblical stories of creation
are the principle myths of origin. Here the world is
understood as being created by a personal God through a
period of seven days. All order in nature (laws of nature)
and in the human world (morals, laws) are given once
and for all. Tere is nothing new under the sun. Tere
is more in the cause than in the means. Man has, as
something quite exceptional, received a soul. Nature as
such is without soul. Tese myths in their fundamentalist
and dogmatic understanding do not allow any symbolic
interpretation and are in conict with modernitys
material, evolutionary self-understanding.
An important feature of modernity is its
conception of itself as a participant in a unique cultural
process of progress. Te universal, historical, linear
understanding of time, which appeared in the 18th
century in connection with the Enlightenment, is an
important contribution to mankinds view of the world
and itself. In the 19th century it spread from geology
(e.g., Charles Lyell [1842], Principles of Geology) to
an evolutionary understanding of the origin of the
species advocated by Charles Darwin (1859/1998) and
others. Trough thermodynamicsas in Prigogines
(1980; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) understanding
this materialistic conception of evolution can now be
coupled to the 20th centurys cosmological understand-
ing of the universe as something that came into being
once, approximately 15 billion years ago, with a Big
Bang, when nothing became everything.
In the modern developments of historical
materialistic theory of society and culture, the world
and humankind are seen as historical developments
carrying this grand evolution. We understand thereby
our world(s) as something, which has developed from the
universe through time from simple physical beginnings
(Popper, 1972). Furthermore we understand ourselves
fundamentally as material end-products of an historical
development. Tis has very often been considered as the
absolute opposite to the more phenomenological idea of
creation.
Te question now is whether the dierence between
evolution and creation is of an absolute character. What
is the relation between the physical and the phenomeno-
logical reality, if any? Is there no connection between
the universe and our worlds? Should it not be possible
to make a modern metaphysics of creation, which does
not contradict physics and, at the same time, aims
at explaining the organizing power of evolution and
thereby the origin of mind and consciousness? For it
is a peculiarity that modern evolutionary materialism
actually ascribes all creative abilities in the universe
either to absolute deterministic law or to absolute chance
(often understood as the negation of deterministic law)
and postulates that life, mind and consciousness appear
out of the organization of dead matter as new emergent
qualities in self-organized systems. It is here the concept
of information in nature is introduced as an objective
organizing power, a natural force (Brier, 1992). But
unfortunately, as soon as information is scientically
dened as objective, mathematical and mechanical, it
can no longer be used as a tool to explain the emergence
of life and mind in evolution (Brier, 1999).
Te Cartesian metaphysics of modern science
forces it to look for some kind of meeting point of the
inner and outer worlds in the dynamics of the human
brain. For medicine, this is where the psychosomatic link
must be. Tat we have not found this link is supposed
to be caused by our lack of physiological knowledge of
the nervous system, especially the brain. Tat is one of
the reasons neurosciences and cognitive sciences have
experienced such a big boom over the last decade: we
want to nd that connection (Penrose, 1995; Searle,
1986). To Peirce (1866-1913/1994),
6
it was his triadic,
evolutionary, pragmaticistic semiotics that provided the
connection between inner and outer, or rather the basis
for going beyond this dichotomy.
We have come to understand that the nervous
system, the hormone system, and the immune system
are chemically linked to each other like a biological
self in the way that they all produce receptors for each
others messenger molecules. Tis supports the idea of a
second-order cybernetics, one which sees living systems
as self-organized and self-producing beings: autopoietic
as Maturana and Varela (1986) called it. From a bio-
cybernetic point of view, one can point out that living
systems organize worlds, which I, from a semiotic point
of view, call signication spheres (Brier, 2008a). But
this theory is still based on the pre-assumption of an
inner world or life of the living systems in the form
of an observer (Brier, 1999) and it does not provide the
explanatory connection. It is too cybernetic to develop
a theory of rst person experience, emotion, will, and
qualia (Brier, 2008b).
Is it possible to arrive at an understanding of man
and the universe that embraces modern science without
seeing phenomenological man as a gypsy on the edge of a
dead, foreign, and meaningless wastelandwhat Monod
(1972) so eloquently described as the consequence of
mechanism also encompassing the biological description
of life? Is it possible in the natural-science-technical age to
bring man and the living into the center of a philosophical
existential vision again? Tis is in my opinion what
Peirce (1992) does in his scientic mysticism. To name
his view as scientic mysticism will seem to many to be
a paradox. Mysticism is a mode of thought, or phase of
intellectual or religious life, in which reliance is placed
upon a spiritual illumination believed to transcend
the ordinary powers of understanding. As such is it is
often viewed as opposing a rational understanding of
the world, and therefore the whole scientic enterprise.
But Peirce shows that it is actually mysticism and
rationalism that represent opposite poles of theology.
Rationalism regards reasonoften in the form of logic
or mathematicsas the highest faculty of man. In a
modern (positivistic) interpretation of Plato, then, it
is the rational thought of the philosopher or scientist,
or both working together, that is the sole arbiter in all
matters of knowledge and as such overthrows all religious
doctrines. Tis view often sees the world as a computer
and believes that all knowledge can be algorithmically
represented. Mysticism, on the other hand, is often
understood to declare that spiritual truth cannot be
apprehended by the logical faculty, nor adequately
expressed in any form of natural language. Peirce manages
to combine both views in a pragmaticistic semiotic
evolutionary philosophy, where logic is semiotics.
If it is correct, as Prigogine and Stengers (1984)
claimed, that thermodynamics and quantum physics,
seen together philosophically, are a more realistic and
comprehensive worldview than classic mechanism, then
spontaneity, irreversibility, time, and evolution have
made their entrance as basal conceptions in physics
(Prigogine, 1980). Ten the belief in the complete
scientic description of nature also ceases. We must
realize that it is probably not possible for natural science
to uncover Natures or matters inner being, if there
is one. In natural science we are obliged, on the basis
of observation, experiment, and generalization to make
statistical models or laws based upon the calculus of
probability and our critical judgment.
Te new recognition of complex non-linear
systems accentuates that, even if one knew the laws that
govern a systems basic dynamics, this is not enough
to understand its detailed development, as the initial
conditions are very crucial. Physics also realizes that
no version of the Big Bang theory will tell us how the
Universe was created, because the original singularity
eludes scientic examination. Physical explanations do
not start until after the universe is initiated. Further,
mechanical physics does not have an interest in
explaining the rise of mind and consciousness through
evolution, as it was founded in a dualistic worldview
where nature was mechanical by necessity. Tis was a
foundational aspect in Kants (1781/1990) philosophy,
an approach that Peirce (1866-1913/1994) further
modied.
As Kultgen (1959-60) argued, it is important that
both Peirce (1866-1913/1994) and Whitehead (1929)
deny Kants (1981/1990) distinction between nature
and freedom. To Peirce, nature has spontaneity and
pure feeling at its basis in Firstness and teleology in its
agapistic habit-taking of Tirdness. Tus Peirce denies
the distinction between the phenomenological and the
noumenalunderstood as the thing in itselfbecause
this idea of the incognizable appears as a null-term of
theoretical and practical thought. It is not fruitful to try
to think about something that one cannot think about.
For Peirce, the real is wholly open to our pragmatic
observation and thinking and there is no absolute
dierence between the object of theoretical and practical
thought. Metaphysics is seen as an observable ideal
limit of empirical inquiry (Kultgen, 1959-60, p. 288).
Peirce did not have the modern and post-modern fear
of metaphysics, and certainly did not see it as opposed
to the scientic inquiry; therefore, he did not have the
type of conict between science and religion that is seen
in the modern debate about intelligent design theory
(see Fuller, 1998, 2002a, 2002b).
Peirces Philosophy
of Creation and Evolution
I
t is important to notice that we do not here discuss
religion as a social enterprise or the dogmas of
established religions. Peirce (1976) is against dogmas in
religion and he does not cling to any single religion. In a
letter to William James he wrote:
I cant help thinking that the mother of Christianity,
Buddhism, is superior to our own religion. Tat is
what one of my selves, my intellectual self says. But
enough, I will keep my religion to myself and to One
that does not sco at it. (Vol. 3[2], p. 872)
In the quote above Peirce seems keen to work
with that which is the foundation of all religions. His
theory of the immanent
7
divine as Firstness
8
is close to
the Buddhist idea of the void. Secondness is, in Peirces
philosophy, necessary in order for anything to take form in
this world, while Tirdness is needed to stabilize any kind
of structure and process. Tis is a principal philosophical
discussion of how and where a concept of God may enter
or have to enter a philosophy that can produce a concept
of meaning and signication. It is important to note
that Peirce is inspired in his theological philosophy not
only by transcendental Christianity and by Buddhism
with its concept of emptiness, but also by Aristotle and
Plato.
9
Te divine is both immanent and transcendent in
Peirces philosophy. It is both an emptiness behind and
before the manifested world in time and space as well as
a Firstness of possibilities, random sporting, qualia, and
possible mathematical forms. Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
wrote:
If we are to proceed in a logical and scientic manner,
we must, in order to account for the whole universe,
suppose an initial condition in which the whole
universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of
absolute nothing. . . .
But this is not the nothing of negation. . . . Te
nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which
comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure
zero is the nothing of not having been born. Tere
is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor
inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the
whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such,
it is absolutely undened and unlimited possibility
boundless possibility. Tere is no compulsion and no
law. It is boundless freedom.
Now the question arises, what necessarily
resulted from that state of things? But the only sane
answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing
in particular necessarily resulted. . . .
I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the
Nothing of boundless freedom. Tat is, nothing
according to deductive logic. But such is not the
logic of freedom or possibility. Te logic of freedom,
or potentiality, is that it shall annul itself. For if it
does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle
and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle
potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness.
(Vol. 6, pp. 215-219)
On this basis of the divine, the concept of law in Peirces
philosophy is not the same as in Platonic inspired
deterministic mechanism, where laws are universal,
precise, mathematical, and therefore deterministic
in themselves, upholding their own existence in the
transcendent. Peirce wrote:
I do not mean that potentiality immediately
results in actuality. Mediately perhaps it does; but
what immediately resulted was that unbounded
potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort
that is, of some quality.
Tus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary
logic, leapt into the unit of some quality. (Vol. 6, p.
220)
For Peirce, Firstness is a vague, dynamic, random mix
of possible forms of existence in pure feeling. Te
potentiality of a quality, in Peirces metaphysics, is a
timeless, self-subsisting possibility that serves as the
metaphysical ground of the world of actual existence. He
wrote:
Te evolutionary process is, therefore, not a mere
evolution of the existing universe, but rather a process
by which the very Platonic forms themselves have
become or are becoming developed. (Vol. 6, p. 194)
Tese forms start as vague qualities and become developed
in the irreversible evolution of the worlda concept
foreign to Platoto become more stable and precise in
form. Peirce further wrote:
Te evolution of forms begins or, at any rate, has for an
early stage of it, a vague potentiality; and that either
is or is followed by a continuum of forms having a
multitude of dimensions too great for the individual
dimensions to be distinct. It must be by a contraction
of the vagueness of that potentiality of everything in
general, but of nothing in particular, that the world
of forms comes about. (Vol. 6, p. 196)
Tus in Peirces cosmology the qualities are vague; Peirce
saw trancendentality and vagueness as going together in
reality. It is not as in classical logic, where the very precise
is also the very abstract and universal, which is also the
way in which Platos ideas are usually interpreted. Peirce
wrote:
We must not assume that the qualities arose separate
and came into relation afterward. It was just the
reverse. Te general indenite potentiality became
limited and heterogeneous. (Vol. 6, p. 199)
Tis is when the basic categories manifest or sort themselves
out. As the categories are phaneroscopic, Peirce also refers
to them as universes of experience. With the emergence
of the continuum of positive possibility, the Universe of
Ideas or Possibility, Firstness is established (Vol. 6, p.
455). Te next step is then the emergence of Secondness,
as Peirces categories are also evolutionary:
Tere is, however, an element of Secondness in the
emergence of the continuum of forms where there was
only indenite nothingness before, and an element of
Tirdness in the continuity and eternal subsistence of
those forms. As the evolution continues, Secondness
comes to the fore. Nascent relations of identity
and dierence emerge in and among parts of the
continuum of forms, and qualities thereby come to
be dierentiated.
Te second element we have to assume is that
there could be accidental reactions between those
qualities. Te qualities themselves are mere eternal
possibilities. But these reactions we must think of as
events. Not that Time was. But still, they had all the
here-and-nowness of events. (Vol. 6, p. 200)
Peirce also stated that Secondness is the category of
brute facts, resistance, will, force, and concreteness. He
therefore wrote: Te next milestone in the evolution of
the cosmos is the appearance of enduring existence, the
Universe of Brute Actuality of things and facts (Vol. 6,
p. 455).
How is this possible? Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
has the following suggestion that is very similar to the
way modern physics talks about the universe emerging
from a quantum vacuum eld, except that Peirces eld
has another nature because it is in another metaphysical
framework. Like Aristotle, he is a hylozoist
10
and a
continuation thinker. Hyl
11
the sensitive matteris a
kind of eld. He wrote:
Out of the womb of indeterminacy we must say that
there would have come something, by the principle
of Firstness, which we may call a ash. Ten by the
principle of habit there would have been a second
ash. Tough time would not yet have been, this
second ash was in some sense after the rst, because
resulting from it. Ten there would have come other
successions ever more and more closely connected,
the habits and the tendency to take them ever
strengthening themselves, until the events would
have been bound together into something like a
continuous ow. (Vol. 1, p. 412)
Here Peirce is close to the quantum eld view of the origin
of the universe, where original quantum events, such as
the constant spontaneous play of virtual particles within
the Planck time and space limit, is suddenly pushed over
the limit and starts a new form of regular existence. Tis
is what Peirce described as nature taking habits and drastic
events in that habit-taking are often in physics called phase
shifts. Peirce next turns to the principle of habit-taking,
which is so essential for stability and evolution at the same
time:
all things have a tendency to take habits. . . . [For] every
conceivable real object, there is a greater probability of
acting as on a former like occasion than otherwise.
Tis tendency itself constitutes a regularity, and is
continually on the increase. . . . It is a generalizing
tendency; it causes actions in the future to follow some
generalizations of past actions; and this tendency itself
is something capable of similar generalizations; and
thus, it is self-generative. (Vol. 1, p. 409)
Peirce is again close to how modern quantum metaphysics
conceptualizes a many-world ontology, where mutual
universes are possible, existing side by side unaware of each
other. He wrote.
Te quasi-ow which would result would, however,
dier essentially from time in this respect that it
would not necessarily be in a single stream. Dierent
ashes might start dierent streams, between which
there should be no relations of contemporaneity or
succession. So one stream might branch into two, or
two might coalesce. But the further result of habit
would inevitably be to separate utterly those that were
long separated, and to make those which presented
frequent common points coalesce into perfect union.
Tose that were completely separated would be so
many dierent worlds which would know nothing of
one another; so that the eect would be just what we
actually observe. (Vol. 1, p. 412)
Peirce then described how the forms of the world appear
through stabilization of the early habit-formation tendencies
in ways similar to how modern science also describes the
early universe before matter and radiation separate. Pairs
of states will also begin to take habits, and thus each state
having dierent habits with reference to the dierent
other states will give rise to bundles of habits, which will
be substances. Some of these states will chance to take
habits of persistency, and will get to be less and less liable to
disappear; while those that fail to take such habits will fall
out of existence. Tus substances will get to be permanent.
Peirce does not assume eternal transcendental
ideas, like Plato, or their existence only in consciousness,
like Husserl. As a true evolutionary, he started with vague
beginnings, which within the Firstness of all possibilities
crystallize out in a kind of phase shiftI suggestinto
some basic dierences that make up the foundation of
the evolution of what Peirce call Secondness. In this
way the cosmos develops into a state where Secondness
predominates, which Peirce calls the Universe of Actuality
(Parker, 2002).
In this way Peirce dares to give an ontological
explanation based on a metaphysics of how the rst
dierences come about and then avoids the philosophical
embarrassment of an open ontology as in Luhmanns
(1995) ontological foundation of his epistemology. Still Peirce
avoids a deterministic universe because in such a domain
nothing forces there to be a tendency in evolution toward
regularity in what Peirce calls the Universe of Actuality. He
does not use the concept of forces here, because the notion
of force implies necessity, and here we are rather talking
about a selection process out of a spontaneous variety.
Tis of course brings in the concept of irreversible time,
where Pierce is close to Prigogine and Stengerss (1984)
interpretation of thermodynamics and the arrow of time.
Habit-taking can grow by its own virtue (Peirce, 1866-
1913/1994, Vol. 6, p. 101) and is a self-amplifying process,
which leads to the ordered regularity and reasonability of
Peirces Tirdness.
Te laws in the universe represent deviations from the
random and are therefore of signicance. As argued earlier,
it is dicult to talk about knowledge without assuming any
kind of regularity in both the inside and outside reality, as
also Heinz von Foerster realized (Brier, 2005). Peirce (1866-
1913/1994) wrote:
Uniformities are precisely the kind of facts that
need to be accounted for. Tat a pitched coin should
sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls
for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads
every time, we wish to know how this result has
been brought about. Law is par excellence the thing
which wants a reason. (Vol. 6, p. 12).
But as regularity comes to operate with increasing force
in the universe, law takes hold. In the innite future,
Peirce saw a universe developing in which law would
become (almost) perfect. But he also saw that the only
possible way of accounting for the existence of laws of
nature and uniformity in general was to suppose them
results of evolution. Ten his concept of law becomes
qualitatively dierent from the mechanistic one.
He does not suppose the laws to be absolute or to be
obeyed precisely. Tere will always remain an element
of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in
nature. Tis view also pertains to his concept of time.
In the following quote he sums it up his view on law,
physicality, mind, and time. He wrote:
I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical.
But then I suppose matter is merely mind deadened
by the development of habit. While every physical
process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such
reversal. Accordingly, time may have been evolved
by the action of habit. At rst sight, it seems absurd
or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is
no serious objection, and nothing can be simpler.
Time consists in a regularity in the relations of
interacting feelings. Te rst chaos consisted in an
innite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there
was no continuity about them, it was, as it were,
a powder of feelings. It was worse than that, for of
particles of powder some are nearer together, others
farther apart, while these feelings had no relations,
for relations are general. Now you must not ask
me what happened rst. Tis would be as absurd
as to ask what is the smallest nite number. But
springing away from the innitely distant past to
a very very distant past, we nd already evolution
had been going on for an innitely long time. But
this time is only our way of saying that something
had been going on. Tere was no real time so far as
there was no regularity, but there is no more falsity
in using the language of time than in saying that
a quantity is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of
similitude had appeared, been swallowed up again.
Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency to
generalization had here and there lighted up and
been quenched. Had reappeared, had strengthened
itself. Like had begun to produce like. Ten even
pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus
relations of contiguity, that is connections other than
similarities, had sprung up. All this went on in ways
I cannot now detail till the feelings were so bound
together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the
ideally perfect time has even yet been realized. Tere
are no doubt occasional lacunae and derailments.
(Peirce, 1866-1913/1994, Vol. 8, p. 318)
Tus we have a profound evolutionary and process
view, with only three basic categories, which determines
the types of possible interactions, the triadicity of semiosis
being the third mediating type that is the primary drive
of evolution. Tis is also the Universe in which the
(almost) completely reasonable state of thingsthat
Peirce in his esthetics saw as an idealwould be made
possible. Te (almost) caveat is there because this universe
is unrealizable in principle, as it would destroy any sort
of the spontaneity and feeling that emanates from
Firstness balancing necessity. But it is the regulative ideal
toward which self-controlled thought and action move,
and which is Peirces personal, social, and philosophical
aim: the summum bonum in Peirces philosophy
12
(see
Parker, 2002) that is the inspiration of many of the
above formulations. Tus Peirces (1866-1913/1994)
pragmaticist concept of truth is dierent from analytical
philosophy combined with that dualistic combination
of mechanism and Platonism that Descartes founded.
Peirce wrote:
truth is the concordance of an abstract statement
with the ideal limit towards which endless
investigation would tend to bring scientic belief,
which concordance the abstract statement may
possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy
and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential
ingredient of truth. (Vol. 5, p. 565)
Te scientic nding of truth is thus in principle a
possibility and is therefore still a guiding light for all
scientic and scholarly enterprise. Te world is made of a
kind of abstract knowledgethe dynamic structures and
processes, which in themselves are a kind of signsand
therefore it is knowable. It is the indierence of the sign
to mind-independence or mind-dependence that makes
it possible for us to relate the real and the ideal without
detriment to either.
In Brier (2007, 2008a) I argued that the rst
distinction or sign making process must be breaking
some kind of original wholeness. Teoretically some
kind of original observer
13
has to be accepted in order to
understand the rst semiotic creation of an interpretant.
Tus this theory for philosophical consistency demands
a kind of objective idealism where mind is rst, matter
is second, and the tendency to take habits is third, as
Peirce theorized. Tere has to be some kind of awareness
resting in itself, that can make the rst distinction,
and therefore the rst system-environment dierence,
which is something else than the wholeness.
14
It breaks
the wholeness and makes space and time appear. Tis
is consistent with Peirces view that time emerges with
evolution. For Peirce, his creational understanding
means that subject/selves are elements in the potential
super mind and that they discover themselves as partly
ignorant beings that make mistakes. Tey/we come to
know themselves as individual selves or egos because
they/we lack knowledge of the whole. Tey/we realize
that they are not the whole and are therefore imperfect
and distinct from the whole. We are individual imperfect
selves.
To Peirce cognition is sign producing and therefore
the production of signication and meaning. Peirce
(1868) saw introspection as one of the four incapacities
of the human being. To him knowledge of the internal
world is wholly a matter of inference by way of sign
making. Te human self can therefore only be inferred
(Peirce, 1866-1913/1994, Vol. 5, p. 462) and surprisingly,
it is inferred from our mistakes, from realizing that as
self-conscious semiotic beings we are not the whole (i.e.,
we are not the Godhead). Human individuation is found
in ignorance and error. Peirce wrote that Ignorance
and error are all that distinguish our private selves from
the absolute ego of pure apperception (Peirce, 1866-
1913/1994, Vol. 5, p. 235). Peirces argument concerning
the self was developed in his discussion of the dawning
of self-consciousness in children:
It must be about this time that he [the child] begins
to nd that what these people about him say is
the very best evidence of fact. So much so, that
testimony is even a stronger mark of fact than the
facts themselves, or rather than what must now be
thought of as the appearances themselves. (I may
remark, by the way, that this remains so through
life; testimony will convince a man that he himself
is mad.) A child hears it said that the stove is hot.
But it is not, he says; and, indeed, that central body
is not touching it, and only what that touches is hot
or cold. But he touches it, and nds the testimony
conrmed in a striking way. Tus, he becomes aware
of ignorance, and it is necessary to suppose a self in
which this ignorance can inhere. So testimony gives
the rst dawning of self-consciousness.... (Vol. 5, p.
233)
He continued and concluded this way:
[Tus children] infer from ignorance and error their
own existence. Tus we nd that known faculties,
acting under conditions known to exist, would rise
to self-consciousness. (Vol. 5, p. 236)
We then here see the metaphysical foundation
that supports Peirces view on science and the religion
or rather the relation between the search for truth and
the divine in a way that is unique and which I interpret
as a new type of mysticism. Te unity of truth is not in
the explicit knowledge system as a grand story. Tis
is what the postmodern movement rightfully objected
against (Luntley, 1995). Peirce realized this, but kept it
like a regulative idea (i.e., similar to Kant, 1781/1990),
as a stage we might reachnot only in theory, but as
lived reason in harmony with ethics and aestheticsin
a very distant future. I therefore agree with Deely (2001)
in calling Peirce the rst true postmodernist.
Religion and the Sacred
T
o go beyond fundamentalist religion and its dogmas,
I would like to maintain a distinction between
religion and the sacred. Religion is predominantly a
social-political institution that organizes the relationship
between the sacred and the profane with the help of
rituals and codes. Te sacred is dened through the
fundamental myths, which in the same breath establish
the worldview and understanding of the human,
meaning, and society. Trough the sacred, the world
is given meaning, and thereby makes a distinction
between meaning and the meaningless possible. Te
sacred, therefore, seems to be a power of a completely
dierent form than those powers of nature that science
describes. Typical for many religions is precisely that
they organize the sacred by combining the emergence of
the world with the history of the emergence of society
and its cultural meaningful order based on distinction
of right and wrong as well as good and bad. In this way,
it seems obvious that nothing could be dierent. Tere is
therefore no room for a gradual development of religious
truth, when all the dogmas have been written down. It
was this understanding of religion that Peirce broke with
in his new synthesis.
It is, however, exactly the reective knowledge
of the fact that we can change paradigms that we have
gained from modern philosophy of science, which is
a decisive trait in the democratic (dialogue-ethical)
societys liberation from fundamentalist religions. In
the liberal democratic society we are human being rst
(i.e., we start in the world of the living, feeling, language
using, and embodied knowing beings), then we can
choose to be Christian, Muslim, Marxist, Scientistic, or
embrace other traditions. Tis means that one is human
and has ones own existential relation to the sacred before
one is religious, ideological, scientic, party political, or
anything else. I think Peirce would have agreed with this
view.
Fundamentalism can now be formulated as the
opposite view, namely those who understand themselves
as belonging to a given system rst, and second as a
member of the human race. It is within such beliefs that
the goal easily becomes justiable for any means. When
you know the fundamental truth, then you also know
that the others are fundamentally wrong and need to
be saved, or condemned as evil should they resist. Te
pattern is the same within religion, philosophy, politics,
and science (Brier, 2008a).
It is important to stand by the fundamental
status of the estimation/abduction principle for all
knowledge, both regarding religion and the sciences:
none of them should be assigned the patent of truth.
Peirce (1866-1913/1994) wrote on universality:
I object to absolute universality, absolute exactitude,
absolute necessity, being attributed to any proposition
that does not deal with the Alpha and the Omega,
in the which I do not include any object of ordinary
knowledge. (Vol. 6, p. 607)
Tis is exactly where Peirce started in his A Neglected
Argument for the Reality of God (p. 452), where he
further developed the philosophical foundation for his
concept of abduction. Tere is in his semiotic philosophy
neither skepticism about human ability to acquire
knowledge about the world, nor about the existence
of a partly independent material reality, living reality,
or about the reality of mind as well as of the sacred.
Combined with his profound evolutionary thinking this
is a highly original point of view that may nally have
found its time. But before we analyze Peirces viewpoint
we must briey discuss the concept of mysticism. In the
Christian tradition this worldview has often been seen as
an opposition to the churchs dogmas and in science as
an opposition to belief in scientic method as the only
way of obtaining reliable and clear rational knowledge.
Mysticism
T
he word mystery (mysterion) comes from the
Greek verb muo, to shut or close the lips or eyes.
Today the concept mysticism points to a belief in
the possibility of the mind to make a break through
the world of time and space into a phenomenological
beingness of eternal timelessness, all-presence, and
spacelessness. About this idea of a general mystical
level, often called the perennial philosophy, Happold
(1973) wrote:
In the deepest religious experience, whether it be
Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Mohammedan,
when all ideas, thoughts, sensations, and volitions
which make up the self are exhausted, there is found
to remain only a Void, the One of Plotinus, the
Godhead of Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, the Brahman
of Hinduism. Te Void is not only Emptiness. In
mystical experience it is found to be a Plenum-Void.
Te Emptiness and the fullness are one. (p. 80)
Mysticism includes the theory of a unity between
consciousness, body, and universe that is beyond
language (Happold, 1973; Maharishi, 1979; Stace,
1960): a unity where distance is gone (i.e., beyond
space) and presence is total (i.e., beyond time), and
where words and objects unite (the triadicity of semiosis
collapses into unity).
To Peirce (1866-1913/1994), Firstness is an
element of experience unrelated to other experiences.
Everything starts as mixed together as a vagueness
overwhelmingly present in the now that cannot be
grasped in signs and language. He wrote:
Te idea of the absolutely rst must be entirely
separated from all conception of or reference to
anything else; for what involves a second is itself a
second to that second. Te rst must therefore be
present and immediate, so as not to be second to a
representation. It must be fresh and new, for if old
it is second to its former state. It must be initiative,
original, spontaneous, and free; otherwise it is
second to a determining cause. It is also something
vivid and conscious; so only it avoids being the
object of some sensation. It precedes all synthesis
and all dierentiation; it has no unity and no parts.
It cannot be articulately thought: assert it, and it
has already lost its characteristic innocence; for
assertion always implies a denial of something else.
(Vol. 1, p. 357)
All these qualities of absolute Firstness ts
with the descripton of the mystical union or pure
consciousness. As Peirce wrote, then it is not an
experience or a cognition because that would demand a
full semiosis and therefore the presence of Secondness
and Tirdness. Te Peircean Firstness of monadic
vagueness becomes the Secondness of a dyadic
separation through interaction. Consciousness, the
body, and reality have a sort of common foundation
in something beyond what we can experience by the
semiosis of cognition. It is interesting that rational and
empirical analysis of space and time in physics actually
leads theories into this paradoxical domain as they
point beyond the Planck Scale where measuring of time
and space become impossible. Te Planck scale limit of
meaningful measurement is a part of the foundation
for quantum theory.
In his Confessions, St. Augustine (1961) made
a famous analysis of time where he already made it
clear that the universe is not created in time but with
timeand Aristotle draws our attention to the fact
that the universe, which is the place for everything,
has no place for itself (i.e., one cannot ask meaning-
fully what there was before the universes creation, still
less, where it was or what is/was outside, as time and
space only exist as a possibility in a universe). Tis is
in accordance with general mysticism, as for instance
in the writings of Meister Eckhart (1958) and Happold
(1973, p. 269). Spirit or the sacred is precisely that
which is transcendent, says the mystic. Terefore it
is also everywhere at the same time, and thereby
also inside you and me, as well as outside us. Te
quotation marks are put in to show that the usual
conceptions and distinctions are not enough when
we speak of spirit. Te mystics here will also say that
innityand with it this space-timelessnessis
found behind or in every point in the universe (pp.
119-120). Te spirit is also immanent in the world as
love and creative power in matter. Te mystics see it
shine through the material appearances. Every self-
conscious person therefore has in principle direct
access to the spirit, since consciousness is also one of its
manifestations. When consciousness is without content
it is pure consciousness: that is to say, consciousness
that is only conscious of itself (Maharishi,
15
1968,
1979). Te human nervous systems most fundamental
achievement is precisely this capacity to reect realitys
non-manifest aspect, which is the connection between
the inner and the outer world. Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
is a bit skeptical about this capacity. He wrote:
Te immediate present, could we seize it, would
have no character but its Firstness. Not that I mean
to say that immediate consciousness (a pure ction,
by the way), would be Firstness, but that the quality
of what we are immediately conscious of, which is
no ction, is Firstness. (Vol. 1, p. 343)
Tis mystical understanding of the ability
of human consciousness to be in a sort of absolute
Firstness as foundational to human consciousness is
central to mysticism and so persistent over dierent
cultures, historical periods, inside and outside dierent
religions that the philosopher Leibniz (1992) called
this view the perennial philosophy, a name Aldous
Huxley (1945/1979) renewed in 1945 with a book on
the subject. Te perennial philosophy is the idea that
a common, eternal philosophy exists that underlies all
religious movements, in particular the mystical streams
within them. Te induction on many observations
is that humans in many dierent cultures and all
historical eras have recorded similar perceptions and
experiences about the nature of reality, the self, and the
world, including the meaning and purpose of existence
and human life. Scholars supporting this view argue
that these similarities point to underlying universal
principles. Tey further conclude that these are the
principles that form the common ground of most
religions. Opposing those who claim that experiences
among them the religious onesare totally determined
by the cultures metaphysical views in the given period
of history, the perennial philosophy claims that the
dierences in the way these fundamental perceptions
are described arise from dierences in human cultures.
Tus in opposition to those scholars that claim that
there is no unity behind the dierences, the perennial
philosophy claims that there is a fundamental unity
and the dierences can be explained in light of cultural
conditioning. In a philosophical analysis, Stace (1960)
and Happold (1973) concluded that this is a well
founded theory and, in his history of philosophy, the
Norwegian ecological philosopher Arne Nss (1969, p.
69) pointed to convincing similarities between Master
Eckhart and Shankaras paradigms of consciousness,
even though one of them is a German Christian and
the other an Indian Hinduand several centuries
divide them. Happold (1973) wrote:
the essence of that perennial mystical philosophy
which is found in all the higher theistic religions:
Tat the Godhead is absolute Stillness and Rest, free
of all activity and inaccessible to human thought,
yet alive through and through, a tremendous
Energy, pouring Itself out into the created world
and drawing that world back into Itself.
Tat there is a complete unity in everything, all is
in God and God is in all.
Tat mans real self is divine.
...the Godhead is not only Eternal rest,
Unconditioned Dark, the Nameless Being, but
also the Superessence of all Created things. Man
is, thus, not a creature set over against God; he
is united with this triune life, and, this union is
within us by our naked nature and were this nature
to be separated from God it would fall into pure
nothingness. (p. 66)
Conscious development is thus to regain
consciousness (the full awareness of ) realitys immanent
as well as transcendent aspects without violating the
diversity in the relative manifestation. Expressed in
concepts from Heideggers (1949/1962) philosophy,
it is to be aware of the connection between dasein
and the universe in which we are thrown. It is to be
conscious of the roots of our thrownness. Only from
this position can we get rid of the blindness in our
perception of reality.
16
I think Heideggers concept of
blindness is pointing out what in the Vedic tradition
is called Maya. It is that, which the unenlightened
considers ultimate reality, but is still only a veil, a
construction projected by our own inability to see
things as they are in full.
17
In science, it is the physical
reality that is the last veil. Grand narratives are also
veils. Te relative (Maya) is not unreal in the sense
that it does not exist, but rather in the sense that
there is a more stable background behind it of pure
consciousness, in which the root of all knowledge is to
be found. Happold (1973) wrote that this is found:
when religious feeling surpasses its rational content,
that is, when the hidden, non-rational, unconscious
elements predominate and determine the emotional
life and the intellectual attitude. In the true mystic
there is an extension of normal consciousness, a
release of latent powers and a widening of vision,
so that aspects of truth unplumbed by the rational
intellect are revealed to him. (p. 19)
Knowledge (gnosis) has here a deep
phenomenological foundation that transgresses but does
not rejectour normal understanding of the scientic
and the rational. Mystical knowledge is subjective,
without being personally individualistic, in that it bases
itself on subjectivitys general aspect. To reach this is to
attain what our culture once called wisdom. Tis type
of knowledge may well be the central or fundamental
aspect of human knowledge. It is embodiment of the
deepest knowledge of ourselves and nature connecting
inner and outer being. It is from his musing that Peirce
created his concept of science as a social and ethical
commitment to create a logically consistent foundation
of knowledge for the development of human culture. He
saw science as another form of religious commitment in
the never-ending search for truth. I think the second part
of the following quote by Happold (1973) describes very
well Peirces understanding and the basis of his method
of musing:
One view of the world is that it is an intelligible
presentation which is spread out before us for our
detached and dispassionate examination; its nature
can be grasped by thought, analysis and classication
alone. Tis view has been held by most philosophers
and scientists. Another view is that the world is not
like that at all, that it is a mystery, the secret of which
can only be partially grasped by thought, analysis,
and classication. To penetrate its deepest secrets
one must not stand aside from it but try, as it were,
to feel it. One must be content, intently and humbly,
to contemplate it, to gage at it as one might gage at
a picture, not in order to analyse the technique of its
brushwork or colour arrangement, but to penetrate
its meaning and signicance. Tis intent, loving
gazing in order to know and understand is what is
meant when we say that contemplation is a tool of
knowledge. (p. 70)
One can say that Peirce combined both visions by
considering none of them to be absolutely true alone,
but both may well be true together. A lot of the universe
is within the reach of human understanding through
science, but it seems that only a very little part is laid out
in the open as simple computational laws. Still Peirce
believed that in principle we should be able to get to know
everything if we worked on it in a dedicated scientic
way. But in reality he was aware that there was probably
not time and money enough to ever reach that stage in
semiotically based knowledge.
Peircean Scientic Mysticism
18
I
n the article A Neglected Argument for the Existence
of God, Peirce (1866-1913/1994, Vol. 6, p. 452)
contended that the very rst step in abductive reasoning
is a form of Pure Play, which he calls Musement. He
describes it this way:
Pure Play has no rules, except this very law of liberty.
It bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, unless
recreation. Te particular occupation I meana
petite bouche with the Universesmay take either
the form of aesthetic contemplation, or that of distant
castle-building (whether in Spain or within ones own
moral training), or that of considering some wonder
in one of the Universes, or some connection between
two of the three, with speculation concerning its
cause. It is this last kindI will call it Musement on
the wholethat I particularly recommend, because
it will in time ower into the N.A. One who sits
down with the purpose of becoming convinced of the
truth of religion is plainly not inquiring in scientic
singleness of heart, and must always suspect himself of
reasoning unfairly. So he can never attain the entirety
even of a physicists belief in electrons, although this is
avowedly but provisional. But let religious meditation
be allowed to grow up spontaneously out of Pure Play
without any breach of continuity, and the Muser will
retain the perfect candour proper to Musement. (Vol.
6, p. 458)
Tis rst stage of abduction is to be undergone
without rules or restrictions. Tere should be no censorship
as to what can or cannot be considered. To that end, a
positive attitude towards the world and the possibility
of knowledge is needed, as a pessimistic outlook would
eliminate the open mind attitude. Tere are all sorts of
relations not amenable to being investigated if it is decided
a priori that they are not worth making. Chiasson (1999)
ended her analysis of the Neglected Argument for God
in the following way:
From this criterion, perhaps we could say that we
could redene Peirces use of the word God into: any
hypothesis-formed by means of optimistically undergone
abductive reasoningthat leads one into consciously
choosing ethical conduct that results in the living of a good
lifewhether or not the concepts we know as God or
an after-life enter into the matter at all. (n.p.)
On this basis the search for scientic knowledge for the
benet of mankind is seen as a sort of holy quest, like it was
in the early Renaissance and long after, maybe especially
until Darwins evolutionary theory. Only Peirce managed
to take that into account and still keep the original vision
of science intact, but now also combined with aesthetics
and ethics.
Knowledge thus has its origin in the divine
stability and intelligibility of the world according to Peirce.
As Descartes (1984), Peirce saw the divine as the guaranty
against total skepticism. But Peirce went much further in
his evolutionary metaphysics. Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
wrote in the Monist paper Evolutionary Love:
Everybody can see that the statement of St. John
is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which
teaches that growth comes only from love, from I will not
say self-sacrice, but from the ardent impulse to fulll
anothers highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I
have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is
my creature; it is a little person. I love it; and I will
sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out
cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make
them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I
would the owers in my garden. Te philosophy we
draw from Johns gospel is that this is the way mind
develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is
mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution.
Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful,
gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. Tat
is the sort of evolution which every careful student of
my essay Te Law of Mind must see that synechism
calls for. (Vol. 6, p. 289)
In Peirces philosophy, the production of meaning is brought
into what mechanism sees as dead nature by the concepts
of Firstness and Synechism, combined with hylozoism
and the development of the universe through the three
dierent kinds of evolution: (1) evolution by fortuitous
variation (tychasm); (2) evolution by mechanical necessity
(anancasm); and (3) evolution by creative love (agapism).
But it was with Peirce (1866-1913/1994) as it was with St.
John that, of those three, love is the greatest and the most
profound. He wrote:
Evolution by sporting and evolution by mechanical
necessity are conceptions warring against one another.
Lamarckian evolution is thus evolution by the force
of habit. Tus, habit plays a double part; it serves to
establish the new features, and also to bring them into
harmony with the general morphology and function
of the animals and plants to which they belong. But
if the reader will now kindly give himself the trouble
of turning back a page or two, he will see that this
account of Lamarckian evolution coincides with the
general description of the action of love, to which, I
suppose, he yielded his assent. (Vol. 6, p. 301)
Further we must keep in mind that matter is eete mind.
Tus the Law of Mind also breaks up habits of matter.
Peirce wrote:
Remembering that all matter is really mind,
remembering, too, the continuity of mind, let us ask
what aspect Lamarckian evolution takes on within
the domain of consciousness. the deeper workings
of the spirit take place in their own slow way, without
our connivance Besides this inward process, there
is the operation of the environment, which goes to
break up habits destined to be broken up and so to
render the mind lively. Everybody knows that the long
continuance of a routine of habit makes us lethargic,
while a succession of surprises wonderfully brightens the
ideas. A portion of mind, abundantly commissured
to other portions, works almost mechanically. It sinks
to a condition of a railway junction. But a portion
of mind almost isolated, a spiritual peninsula, or
cul-de-sac, is like a railway terminus. Now mental
commissures are habits. Where they abound,
originality is not needed and is not found; but where
they are in defect spontaneity is set free. Tus, the
rst step in the Lamarckian evolution of mind is the
putting of sundry thoughts into situations in which
they are free to play. (Vol. 6, p. 301)
Tis, of course, relates to his epistemology of abduction
founded in Pure Play. It is the Lamarckian development
of mind that makes science as a collective inquiry possible
at all. Tus in Peirces philosophy, the categories work
according to the Law of Mind and there is an inner
aspect of Firstness (pure feeling) in matter. But one has to
be aware of Peirces (1866-1913/1994) special conception of
mind and consciousness. He wrote:
Far less has any notion of mind been established and
generally acknowledged which can compare for an
instant in distinctness to the dynamical conception
of matter. Almost all the psychologists still tell us
that mind is consciousness. Butunconscious mind
exists. What is meant by consciousness is really in itself
nothing but feeling.there may be, and probably is,
something of the general nature of feeling almost
everywhere, yet feeling in any ascertainable degree is
a mere property of protoplasm, perhaps only of nerve
matter. Now it so happens that biological organisms
and especially a nervous system are favorably
conditioned for exhibiting the phenomena of mind
also; and therefore it is not surprising that mind and
feeling should be confounded.that feeling is nothing
but the inward aspect of things, while mind on the
contrary is essentially an external phenomenon. (Vol.
7, p. 364)
Tus, the essence of consciousness is feeling and an
important aspect of Firstness is pure feeling. Te possibility
of being aware on other levels may be reinterpreted as a
mystical theory in a Peircean framework, as is the possibility
of being aware of the basic Firstness uniting all manifest
things. Te universe is permeated with Firstness, but that
is not the same thing as human self-conscious awareness,
though a consistent theory of evolution has to point to
it as the origin of human consciousness. Peirce (1866-
1913/1994) wrote:
What the psychologists study is mind, not consciousness
exclusively. consciousness is a very simple thing.
notSelf-consciousness consciousness is nothing
but Feeling, in general, -- not feeling in the German
sense, but more generally, the immediate element of
experience generalized to its utmost. Mind, on the
contrary is a very dicult thing to analyze. I am
not speaking of Soul, the metaphysical substratum
of Mind (if it has any), but of Mind phenomenally
understood. To get such a conception of Mind, or
mental phenomena, as the science of Dynamics
aords of Matter, or material events, is a business
which can only be accomplished by resolute scientic
investigation. (Vol. 7, p. 365)
Peirce was not speaking of human self-consciousness but
of the essence of consciousness as a phenomenon that
develops in nature to emerge in new and more structured
forms in living beings, nervous systems, and language-
based culture. Being a sort of semiotically objective
idealist, Peirce argued for a scientic study of mind seen
as a foundational aspect of reality. Tis is in my view
(Brier, 2008a) not possible for the mechanistic science
that starts o with xed and dead laws that cannot
develop and cannot encompass emotions and free will
as causal powers. I am also convinced that cybernetic
informational computational articial intelligence
approaches will also be insucient (Brier, 2008a), as well
a biosemiotic ideas of semiosis without interpretation,
which has it most well argued form in Marcello
Barbieris work (Barbieri, 2008). My main interest in
Peirce is his work on establishing a new foundation that
will make it possible for us to work scientically with
both matter, mind, and consciousness within the same
framework. Peirce (1866-1913/1994) wrote about this
concept of thought, understood as a function of mind
and semiosis:
Tought is not necessarily connected with a brain.
It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and
throughout the purely physical world; and one can
no more deny that it is really there, than that the
colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there.
Not only is thought in the organic world, but it
develops there. But as there cannot be a General
without Instances embodying it, so there cannot be
thought without Signs. We must here give Sign a
very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense
to come within our denition. (Vol. 4, p. 551)
Here Peirce widened the semiosis concept to include
pattern-creating processes as natures thinking. I would
prefer to call these proto- or quasi-semiotic processes to
avoid a too broad sense of the concept leading into a pan-
semiotic metaphysics. Nevertheless, Peirces metaphysics
operated with the inside of material nature. He wrote,
Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the
same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the
outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling (Vol.
6, p. 265). I nd it compatible with an interpretation
of Peirces theory and in accordance with perennial
philosophy mysticism (Stace, 1960) to see living systems,
most of all the human, as the way in which the universe
is becoming aware of itself. Evolution is the development
of self-organization of systems until they become closed
and thereby individuals with their own cognition and
intentions. One needs a body and a nervous system to
become (self )-conscious! As Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
wrote:
Since God, in His essential character of Ens
necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since
there is strong reason to hold that what we call
consciousness is either merely the general sensation
of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some
visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no
consciousness. (Vol. 6, p. 489)
Tus, Peirces concept of God is rst and most basically
an abstract transcendental origin and continuity behind
it all. It is a state of utter nothingness like the Godhead
of Eckhart and the emptiness of the Buddhists, and it
manifests as an immanent order and drive in evolution
reminding me most of Hegels spirit, but in a somewhat
dierent metaphysical framework where evolution and
scientic thinking is integrated in a model that deviates
from the Greek Logos thinking and does not have the
same sort of determinism as Hegels theory had. In trying
to give some hints about what pragmatism is and how
it can be used on the highest metaphysical principles,
Peirce summed up his general view of cosmic evolution
in the following way:
A disembodied spirit, or pure mind, has its being
out of time, since all that it is destined to think is
fully in its being at any and every previous time.
But in endless time it is destined to think all that
it is capable of thinking. Order is simply thought
embodied in arrangement; and thought embodied
in any other way appears objectively as a character
that is a generalization of order, and that, in the
lack of any word for it, we may call for the nonce,
Super-order. It is something like uniformity. Pure
mind, as creative of thought, must, so far as it is
manifested in time, appear as having a character
related to the habit-taking capacity, just as super-
order is related to uniformity. perfect cosmology
must show that the whole history of the three
universes, as it has been and is to be, would follow
from a premiss which would not suppose them to
exist at all. But that premiss must represent a
state of things in which the three universes were
completely nil. Consequently, whether in time or
not, the three universes must actually be absolutely
necessary results of a state of utter nothingness.
We cannot ourselves conceive of such a state of
nility; but we can easily conceive that there should
be a mind that could conceive it, since, after all,
no contradiction can be involved in mere non-
existence. (Vol. 6, p. 490)
Here Peirce dealt with the classicalseemingly as
we shall seemystical paradox of the impossibility
of characterizing the transcendent or absolute in any
precise way. It is not directly conceivable in concepts
and it cannot be perceived in the way things can.
Nevertheless, it seems a logical inference of the analysis
of Plato. In the Christian mystical tradition, the problem
is often formulated as the relation between God and the
Godhead.
Godhead and Superorder
O
ne of the worlds most famous interpreters of the
mystical tradition in the East and the West is
Daitsetz Suzuki,

who lived in periods both in the East
(Japan) and the West (United States). He specialized in
the mystical foundations for Buddhism and Christianity
and wrote a book comparing them that was recognized
as a masterpiece. Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist
(Suzuki, 2002) is now a world classic published on the
Internet. What is most interesting though is that Suzuki
was a contemporary of Peirce and worked for the editor
of Te Monist, Dr. Paul Carus
19
. Peirce had an intensive
exchange with Carus and the Monist was the journal in
which Peirce published some of his most famous articles
(see for instance Peirce 1892 a, b, & c, 1893). Like Carus,
Peirce had an interest in the mystical side of Buddhism.
Suzuki (2002) commented about the above-mentioned
paradox within the mystical view and explained why it
is only seemingly a paradox in the following way:
God goes and comes, he works, he is active, he be-
comes all the time, but Godhead remains immovable,
imperturbable, inaccessible. Te dierence between
God and Godhead is that between heaven and earth
and yet Godhead cannot be himself without going
out of himself, that is, he is he because he is not
he. Te contradiction is comprehended only by the
inner man, and not by the outer man, because the
latter sees the world through the senses and intellect
and consequently fails to experience the profound
depths of Godhead. (p. 9)
In the last quote by Peirce, he also touched upon the
necessity of a generalization of order as the drive behind
the evolutionary processes of the three basic categories.
Tis pull towards order seems to be the nal causation
of the evolution of the universe. It has an urge to embody
its thoughts in manifest creation. Or as Plato (2004)
put it in Timaeus, the One desire to share its love and
perfection with the imperfect.
20
It ows over from the
transcendent into the relative and manifest in time and
space creating matter as eete mind. Te last is a Peircean
formulation. Te paradox is that such a transcendent
order cannot be formulated in any human language.
David Bohm (1983) discussed the same consequences
of his own ideas of Wholeness and the Implicate Order,
the famous book where he worked with the idea of an
immanent order in natureinspired by the mystic
Krishnamurtithat produces the holomovement.
Tus I would say that Bohms conception of evolution is
close to Peirces in having a sort of immanent Firstness
ontology in a process philosophy. In an interview (Weber,
1972), Bohm talked about the super implicate order,
which seems very similar to Peirces Super-order that
has its existence out of time.
Like the Buddhists, Peirce saw this order as
no-thing. Te Buddhists talk about emptiness. Peirce
wrote that the three universes, Firstness (qualia and
potentialities), Secondness (resistance, will, and brute
force), and Tirdness (mediation, understanding, and
habit-taking) must evolve from a transcendental basis in
an evolutionary metaphysics. Such metaphysics is also
behind Shankaras Advaita Vedanta that represents one
of the purest mysticisms based on the Vedas, and Master
Eckharts Christian mysticism (Nss, 1971). Suzuki
quoted Eckhart in this matter (Suzuki, 2002, pp. 12-13),
but here is the original quote from Eckhart (1929/1941):
When I existed in the core, the soul, the river, the
source of the Godhead, no one asked me where I
was going or what I was doing. Tere was no one
to ask me, but the moment I emerged, the world
of creatures began to shout, God. If someone
were to ask me: Brother Eckhart, when did you
leave home?Tat would indicate that I must have
been at home sometime. I was there just now. Tus
creatures speak GodBut why do they not mention
the Godhead? Because there is only unity in the
Godhead and there is nothing to talk about. God
acts. Te Godhead does not. It has nothing to do
and, there is nothing going on in it. It is never on the
lookout for something to do. Te dierence between
God and the Godhead is the dierence between
action and nonaction.
When I return to God, I shall be without form,
and thus my reentry will be far more exalted than
my setting out. I alone lift creatures out of their
separate principle into my own, so that in me they
are one. When I return to the core, the soil, the river,
the source which is the Godhead, no one will ask me
whence I came or where I have been. No one will
have missed mefor even God passes away. (pp.
225-226)
Suzuki (2002) commented on this: It is in perfect accord
with the Buddhist doctrine of snyat and advances
the notion of Godhead as pure nothingness (ein bloss
niht) (pp. 12-13). Te formulation out of this paradox is
essential in much mysticism and in panentheism. Tere
is a transcendental reality beyond time and space that
cannot be spoken of but, still, it is somehow the source of
everything. Why is it necessary? Peirce (1866-1913/1994)
explained:
For all Being involves some kind of super-order. For
example, to suppose a thing to have any particular
character is to suppose a conditional proposition to
be true of it, which proposition would express some
kind of super-order, as any formulation of a general
fact does. To suppose it to have elasticity of volume
is to suppose that if it were subjected to pressure its
volume would diminish until at a certain point the
full pressure was attained within and without its
periphery. Tis is a super-order, a law expressible by a
dierential equation. Any such super-order would be
a super-habit. Any general state of things whatsoever
would be a super-order and a super-habit. (Vol. 6,
p. 490)
Tus logically the idea of things having universal
properties demands a logos as universal foundation.
Te big question is then, how does evolution start from
there? Plato wrote in Timaeus that the One overows
by love to create something that can contain at least
some love in an imperfect way, as it is not jealous. In the
Vedas, it is desire that makes Brahman create the world
through his Shakti (female force of creation; Sharfstein,
1978). Brahman is in itself the unmovable foundation,
like Aristotles unmoved mover. In Christianity, it is
the Holy Ghost that acts in creation on behalf of the
unmovable Father. Peirces solution is close to these.
But it is formulated within his own metaphysics and,
therefore, much closer to a view and a wording acceptable
from a scientic viewpoint of, for instance, quantum
eld theory and its idea of the world developing from
a vacuum eld that is never quite at ease. Its nature is
a spontaneous quantum uctuation within the limits
of the Planck Scale (see, for instance, Bohm, 1983).
Peirce (1866-1913/1994) wrote the following about his
Cosmology in 1891:
I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten
years has been to develop my cosmology. Tis theory
is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that
is, proceeds from one state of things in the innite
past, to a dierent state of things in the innite
future. Te state of things in the innite past is chaos,
tohu bohu,
21
the nothingness of which consists in
the total absence of regularity. Te state of things
in the innite future is death, the nothingness of
which consists in the complete triumph of law and
absence of all spontaneity. Between these, we have
on our side a state of things in which there is some
absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some
degree of conformity to law, which is constantly
on the increase owing to the growth of habit. Te
tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize,
is something which grows by its own action, by the
habit of taking habits itself growing. Its rst germs
arose from pure chance. Tere were slight tendencies
to obey rules that had been followed, and these
tendencies were rules which were more and more
obeyed by their own action. Tere were also slight
tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and
these destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would
sometimes be strengthened by the opposite tendency,
but the stronger they became the more they would
tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of time on
the further side of eternity which leads back from
the innite future to the innite past, it evidently
proceeds by contraries. (Vol. 8, p. 317)
Tus Peirce believes in creation ex nihilo (out of nothing),
but as an evolution going from Tohu Bohu to some kind
of perfect order, as soon as the rst tendency to take habit
manifest itself in and with space and time. Tis is very
close to David Bohms view of the Super Implicate Order
(Bohm & Weber, 1983) that is his attempt to unite the
mysticism of Krishnamurti with the modern quantum
theoretical understanding of reality. Clearly, we move
over from Firstness into Secondness and Tirdness as
soon as the tendency to take habits has some dierences
to work on that will not self-destruct. Peirce (1866-
1913/1994) wrote:
Hyperbolic philosophy has to assume for starting-
point something free, as neither requiring
explanation nor admitting derivation. Te free is
living; the immediately living is feeling. Feeling,
then, is assumed as starting-point; but feeling
uncordinated, having its manifoldness implicit.
For principle of progress or growth, something
must be taken not in the starting-point, but which
from innitesimal beginning will strengthen itself
continually. Tis can only be a principle of growth
of principles, a tendency to generalization. Assume,
then, that feeling tends to be associated with and
assimilated to feeling, action under general formula
or habit tending to replace the living freedom and
inward intensity of feeling. Tis tendency to take
habits will itself increase by habit. Habit tends to
coordinate feelings, which are thus brought into the
order of Time, into the order of Space. (Vol. 6, p.
585)
For David Bohm this will be when we go form the
Super Implicate Order to the Implicate Order; or put
in another way from the transcendent to the immanent.
Here is another quote from Peirce where he makes this
clear:
In that state of absolute nility, in or out of time,
that is, before or after the evolution of time, there
must then have been a tohu bohu of which nothing
whatever armative or negative was true universally.
Tere must have been, therefore, a little of everything
conceivable. Tere must have been here and there
a little undierentiated tendency to take super-
habits. But such a state must tend to increase itself.
For a tendency to act in any way, combined with a
tendency to take habits, must increase the tendency
to act in that way. (Vol. 6, p. 490).
I think that Peirces semiotics ts both Suzukis mysticism
and Eckharts, since Suzuki (2002) pointed out that
God is not creating the world in time, mathematically
enumerable:
His creativity is not historical, not accidental, not
at all measurable. It goes on continuously without
cessation with no beginning, with no end. It is not
an event of yesterday or today or tomorrow, it comes
out of timelessness, of nothingness, of Absolute
Void. Gods work is always done in an absolute
present, in a timeless now which is time and place
in itself. Gods work is sheer love, utterly free from
all forms of chronology and teleology. Te idea of
God creating the world out of nothing, in an absolute
present, and therefore altogether beyond the control
of a serial time conception will not sound strange to
Buddhist ears. (pp. 3-4)
Tus the Big Bang theory does not tell us how the world
was created. It is an attempt to tell us about the physical
development of time, space, and energy. Transcendence
breeds immanence and immanence makes the distinction
back to transcendence before time and outside space
in an ever ongoing process of being and becoming.
To return to this articles argument, then, it is
possible to understand Peirces (1866-1913/1994, Vol. 6,
p. 452) Neglected Argument for the Reality of God
through the musing of pure play in the light of his
benign form of panentheistic mysticism.
22
To make
valuable abductions, the scientist must in a positive way
open his mind to the basic creative dynamics of both
mind and matter. Many mystics speak of emptying
the mind, being simple, going beyond the ego, and
letting God in. But this is not to be understood as divine
and intentional messages from a personal God or the
perception of some ready-made and exact transcendental
ideas. It is rather a listening to the hum of creation or
the general or basic vibration of the Godhead, owing
into time, space, life, and mind and back again into its
own nothingness in that fundamental vibration that
upholds our reality.
23

As Suzuki (2002) pointed out, God is neither
transcendental nor pantheistic (p. 9, emphasis supplied),
meaning that God in this conception is not only
pantheistic or transcendental, but both (panentheism
24
),
and thereby the concept covers innitely more. Tis
mystical theory lifts theories of knowledge and nature
out of determinism. We cannot give a nal deterministic
description of nature, culture, or the knowledge process.
Tus knowing is much more than knowledge.
25
Human
knowing is a processional ow. It is only by letting go
into this sporting of pure musement, as Peirce (1866-
1913/1994) called it, by leaving behind any limits imposed
by previous knowledge and skeptical attitudes that one
can hope to abduce basic and universal knowledge. I
think that Suzukis (2002) understanding ts well with
Peirces when he wrote:
Eckhart quotes St Augustine: Tere is a heavenly
door for the soul into the divine nature where some
things are reduced to nothing.
Evidently we have to wait for the heavenly door to
open by our repeated or ceaseless knocking at it when
I am ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving,
dark with light. Everything comes out of this basic
experience and it is only when this is comprehended
that we really enter into the realm of emptiness
where the Godhead keeps our discriminatory mind
altogether emptied out to nothingness. (p. 14)
Tus the completely open mind that does not have
any goal of its own gain is the position where your
consciousness is open for abducting new ideas through
musing. But that is of course not the mystical union that
the mystics seek to stay in. In musing you can at the most
get a few glimpses and get inspired by those. Although
Peirce actually did have a mystical experience, which
he reported in a letter to a priest but never sent (Brent,
1998), his major path to the divine insight was clearly
science,

but an abductive-fallibilist pragmaticistic science.
Where Plato and Descartes believed in transcendental
ideas that our mind could contemplate in the highest
and most divine status of mind, Peirces abduction with
a basis in musing gives an evolutionary view on the basic
source of human ideas. Te ideas are vague and can only
be claried through the collective dynamic processes of
science, which is the collective eect of being logical and
pursuing the empirical testing of hypotheses through
induction and deduction.
Our understanding is not ready made and xed
but fallible, and has to be tested and developed through
human scientic practice. Tus, although Peirces musing
can be seen as a technique of mystical revelation as
abductive inspiration, it is not about forgetting real life in
the ultimate divine existentiality, but a rich inspiration in
building a common cultural understanding of reality.
Peirce does not underline the paradoxicality
of the mystical experience and how it escapes linear
thinking and presentation in language as, for instance,
in the Tao Te Ching:
When you look at it you cannot see it;
It is called formless.
When you listen to it you cannot hear it;
It is called soundless.
When you try to seize it you cannot hold it;
It is called subtle.
No one can measure these three to their ultimate
ends,
Terefore they are fused to one.
It is up, but it is not brightened;
It is down, but it is not obscured.
It stretches endlessly,
And no name is to be given.
It returns to nothingness.
It is called formless form, shapeless shape.
It is called the intangible.
You face it but you cannot see its front.
You follow it but you cannot see its back.
Holding on to the Ancient Way (Tao)
You control beings of today.
Tus you know the beginning of things,
Which is the essence of the Way (Tao-chi).
(Suzuki, 2002, p. 15)
On the other hand, Peirce said that Firstness is vague.
It is only beingnot existence, as Secondness is
existence. Qualisigns need signs of Secondness to be
manifest. Peircean philosophy thus can be viewed as
being on a mystical metaphysical foundation. But like
Aristotle he develops a philosophy of science on this
basis, but Peirces logos of evolutionary love is vague
and evolutionary. With his theory of abduction, Peirce
places himself between Plato and Aristotle. It is our
access to the divine that inspires our understanding
of the material world through abduction. Induction is
fallible because the ideas are vague and the laws of nature
not exact. We have to deduce tests from our abductively
created theories and then make inductions from them
to test our fallible theories and keep on correcting them
in the hope of a steady evolutionary improvement of our
societys knowledge basis.
Time, Creation and Evolution
Seen from the Eternal Now
T
he mystical theory of cognition and consciousness
thus point to an inner link between universe and
world. If this is possible it should also be possible to
conceive of an outer link between universe and world.
Now, recapitulating that we cannot speak of time
and space outside and before the universe comes
into being, we must realize that, seen from the non-
manifest, one can therefore neither say that the world
came into existence at a certain time nor that it always
has been, because time rst came into existence during
and with the creation of the universe. Te Universe is
created and recreated in every eternal now in this view.
When asked what was before the universe was created
by Good, Master Eckhart (1979) answered that the
universe was always in the thoughts of God. Seen from
the Godhead all is one and time is eternity: To see the
universe in a grain of sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild
Flower / Hold Innity in the palm of your hand / And
Eternity in an hour wrote William Blake in Auguries
of Innocence.
On the other hand time, seen from a human
materialistic viewpoint, is real. Time is both attached to
the phenomenon of perception and to the phenomenon
of memory. We reconstruct reality historically-
backwards from our memory, and extrapolate the future
from now as a consequence of our expectations based
on the past. Prigogine and Stengers (1984) underline
that time is connected to the irreversibility of physical
complex processes.
In this way, the conception of time is directly
attached to our existence as material self-organizing
cognitive systems (autopoietic systems). It is precisely
this that is the human viewpoint: a material, autopoietic
and cognitive system. Reading the Monist paper Te
Law of Mind (1892b), it is clear that Peirces solution
to the problem of the worlds existence before existence
of any observer, is a unique variation of the objective
idealistic position. Peirce (1866-1913/1994) wrote:
Te law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all
physical laws in the character of its commands.
A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an
exact relation. Tus, a physical force introduces
into a motion a component motion to be combined
with the rest by the parallelogram of forces; but
the component motion must actually take place
exactly as required by the law of force. On the
other hand, no exact conformity is required by
the mental law. Nay, exact conformity would be
in downright conict with the law; since it would
instantly crystallize thought and prevent all further
formation of habit. Te law of mind only makes a
given feeling more likely to arise. It thus resembles
the non-conservative forces of physics, such as
viscosity and the like, which are due to statistical
uniformities in the chance encounters of trillions of
molecules.
Te old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so
prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically dierent
kinds of substance, will hardly nd defenders to-
day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of
hylopathy, otherwise called monism.....
Te only intelligible theory of the universe is
that of objective idealism, that matter is eete mind,
inviscerate habits becoming physical laws. (Vol. 6, p.
23)
From this position he proceeded to develop the theory
into the realm of semiotics and knowing. Terefore, in
the present interpretation where the mathematical laws
are not considered transcendent, his mystical vision
seems to oer a combination of the phenomenological
cognitive approach with the scientic aim to produce
empirical-mathematical models.
To be able to accept such a unifying theory as
that of Peirce, one must consequently admit that energy
has other aspects than those physics until now has
described. It is in my opinion precisely this organized
power that Peirce (1892a & b, 1893) attempted to
conceptualize in his theory of evolution, where he united
the mental and the material as an evolutionary variant of
objective idealism that can encompass modern physics.
His triadic semiotics and its dynamics are also a major
improvement over Hegels dialectics and later versions of
modern emergence theories (see Christiansen, 1995).
Seen from mysticisms perennial philosophy, there
is no absolute dierence between the two viewpoints of
science and religion; on the contrary, they supplement
each other as Peirce saw in his theory of the origin of
abduction or what Sebeok and Danesi (2000) would later
call modeling capacity. Tat capacity is a prerequisite
for language. Tus the perennial philosophys ultimate
phenomenology can be united with the modern Big
Bang materialistic evolutionism into a new vision that
does not contradict the core of the scientic discoveries
and admits them as parts of a greater comprehensive
vision that reinstates mankind at the center of both the
world and the universe.
Mysticism does notas so many believehave
to be a contradiction of science or philosophy; it is on
the contrary a theory of their cognitive and existential
basis. It is precisely mysticisms reservation with regard to
the completeness of linguistic knowledge that assures a
human-centered holism, which is not totalitarian exactly
because the philosophical-scientic conceptualizing
process will never be completed. As Nagel (1986) pointed
out:
If we try to understand experience from an
objective viewpoint that is distinct from that of the
subject of the experience, then even if we continue
to credit its perspectival nature, we will not be
able to grasp its most specic qualities unless we
can imagine them subjectively. ... Since this is so
no objective conception of the mental world can
include it all. (p. 259)
Notes
1. Another way of expressing the content of this article
could be : Peirces benignant form of the monstrous
mysticism of the East: Panentheism and Scientic
collectivism combined. See also note 22 for the
Peirce quote that inspired this version.
2. I am grateful to Charls Pearson for inviting me
to the conference on Peirces Religious Writings in
Denver 2003 and to all the participants for their
inspiration. Special thanks go to Michael Raposa
(1989) for sending me his masterpiece of a book,
Peirces Philosophy of Religion, which really opened
my eyes for this aspect of Peirces philosophy. I want
to thank my colleagues and friends Peder Voetmann
Christiansen, Claus Emmeche, Ole Fogh Kirkeby,
Allan Combs, and John Deely for their inspiration
and support for this line of work. Finally I thank
Gary Fuhrman for his valuable and productive
critique of an earlier version of the manuscript.
3. Transcendenta philosophical and theological
conceptin this context refers to that which is
beyond our senses and experience; existing apart
from matter (Raposa, 1989). It is beyond and
outside the ordinary range of human experience or
understanding. In theology, the concept transcendent
pertains to God as exalted above the universe.
4. In Baldwins Dictionary, to which Peirce contri-
buted, Panentheism is described as:
A name given by Krause to his attempted
reconciliation of theism and pantheism; the
doctrine that God is neither the world, nor yet
outside the world, but that the world is in him,
and that he extends beyond its limits. (vol. 2,
p. 255)
Te term panentheism is Greek for all-in-God,
pan-en-theos. Panentheism posits a god that
interpenetrates every part of nature, but is also fully
distinct from nature. God is part of nature, as in
pantheism, but still retains an independent identity.
Panentheism is a metaphysics which posits that God
exists and interpenetrates every part of nature, and
timelessly extends beyond as well. Panentheism is
distinguished from pantheism, which holds that
God is synonymous with the material universe.
In panentheism, God is viewed as creator and/
or animating force behind the universe, and the
source of universal truth. A panentheistic view is
conceiving of God as both immanent in Creation and
transcendent from it. Plotinus taught that there was
an ineable transcendent god (Te One) of which
subsequent realities were emanations. From the One
emanates the Divine Mind (Nous) and the Cosmic
Soul (Psyche). We will look at Peirces philosophy
in this light also, thanks to Kelly Parker (2002).
Te German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich
Krause (17811832) seeking to reconcile monotheism
and pantheism, coined the term panentheism (all in
God) in 1828. Tis conception of God inuenced
New England transcendentalists such as Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Panentheism was a major force
in the Unitarian church for a long time, based on
Ralph Waldo Emersons concept of the Oversoul. It
is well known that Peirce was inuenced by the trans-
cendentalists and the unitarians (see note 22). But
the word panetheism was not used by him, probably
because it had not found a common recognized
denition at that time, as far as we know. Te term
was popularized by Charles Hartshorne (18972000)
an American philosopher who developed Alfred
North Whiteheads (1929) process philosophy into
process theology, which is panentheist. See Clayton
and Peacock (2004) and Grin (2004) for a
modern discussion of the possible relations between
panentheism and scientic naturalism.
5. Te Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox
Churches also have a doctrine called panentheism
to describe the relationship between the Uncreated
(God, who is omnipotent, eternal, and constant)
and His creation. Most specically, these Churches
teach that God is not the watchmaker God of the
Western European Enlightenment. Tus another
foundation for science will have to be build up.
Tis isin my viewwhat Peirce does in his semiotic
pragmaticism. Likewise, they teach that God is not
the stage magician God who only shows up when
performing miracles. God is not merely necessary
to have created the universe, but that His active
presence is necessary in some way for every bit of
creation, from smallest to greatest, to continue
to exist at all. Tat is, Gods energies maintain all
things and all beings, even if those beings have
explicitly rejected Him. His love of creation is such
that he will not withdraw His presence. Tis is close
to Peirce Agapistic view of evolution as we shall see.
Tus the entirety of creation is sanctied, and thus
no part of creation can be considered innately evil.
6. Tis journal has asked me not to use the standard
Peirce scholar reference system with CP for collected
papers and the like as it violates APA format.
7. Immanence is a theological and philosophical
concept. It is derived from the Latin words, in and
manere, the original meaning being to exist or
remain within.
8. Firstness has no concrete forms, only potential
qualities.
9. Te following pages owe a lot to Kelly A. Parkers
(2002) brilliant article. He has found a lot of quotes
and inserted them in a meaningful order, which I
have borrowed as it ts into the view I have already
started to develop in Brier (2007, 2008a). But the
vision of the Neo-Platonist features in Peirces theory
is of course his own theory. I see the similarity, but
I think his hylozoism is at least as important and
in combination with Peirces openness to the value
of empirical science brings him closer to Aristotle.
Still his evolutionary thinking including Darwins
understanding of evolution brought into a semiotic
framework makes him unique. Te view I present
here seems to t well with Sheri (1994).
10. Greek hyl: matter, literally, wood + zos alive,
living. Te English term was introduced by Ralph
Cudworth in 1678. Hylozoismin this contextis
the philosophical conjecture that all or some material
things possess life, or that all life is inseparable from
matter. It was a doctrine held especially by early
Greek philosophers. Panpsychism is any system of
thought that views all matter as alive, either in itself
or by participation in a world soul, its processes, or
some similar principle. Here Peirces Firstness is an
interesting candidate. Hylozoism is dierent from
the panpsychist idea of possessing a soul, but it
does attribute some form of sensation to all matter,
very much like Whiteheads panexperientialism.
Hylozoism it is not a form of animism either, as this
tends to view life as taking the form of discrete spirits.
Scientic hylozoism is a protest against a mechanical
view of the world as dead, but at the same time upholds
the idea of a unity of organic and inorganic nature
and derived all actions of both types of matter from
natural causes and laws. Hylozoism is maintaining
that living and non-living things are, essentially, the
same and stipulating that they behave by the same
set of laws. Peirce presents us with his own semiotics
version of hylozoism based on his (non-mechanical)
evolutionary semiotic triadic laws.
11. In philosophy, hyle refers to matter or stu. Te
Greeks originally had no word for matter in general, as
opposed to any raw material suitable for some specic
purpose, so Aristotle adapted the word for lumber for
his ontology. It became the material cause underlying
change in Aristotelian philosophy. It is that which
remains the same in spite of the changes in forms.
In opposition to Democritus atomic ontology, hyle
in Aristotles ontology is a plenum or a sort of eld.
Aristotles world is an uncreated eternal cosmos, but
Peirce used the term in an evolutionary philosophy in
a world that has an end and a beginning.
12. To get a more full understanding of Peirces summom
bonum, one will also have to go into his Agapistic
theory of love and the divine, which was inspired
by the apostle Paul (Peirce, 1893; see also Potters,
1997).
13. Here I am thinking of the ability to make observations
and therefore distinctions, so important to the
foundation of cybernetics and Luhmanns system
theory through the work of George Spencer-Brown.
To make distinctions one needs to have qualia to for
instance make a distinction between black and white.
I posit that we need semiosis to produce a distinction
(Brier, 2008a). Triadic semiosis has Firstness
potentiality and pure feeling as a prerequisite. One
can hardly talk of time and space in Firstness and one
needs Secondness and Tirdness to form the concept
of Firstness at all in a conscious mind. Firstness is
the beginning and Secondness is the end. Tirdness
is the mediation between them. It is minds tendency
to take habits.
14. I have argued this point in Brier (2007) and
followed George Spencer-Browns very clear theory
development on this matter, showing that it lead him
to much the same philosophical position as Peirce.
15. I have chosen Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a modern
interpreter of Shankaras Advaita Vedanta, as
his teacher was the leader of the order Shankara
created.
16. But Heidegger was not a part of the mystical
traditions perennial philosophy.
17. A theory that was central to the Matrix movies where
only the enlightened one could see the Matrix (the
real reality) and therefore manipulate time and
space.
18. Peirce denes mystical theory the following way:
mystical theories (by which I mean all those which
have no possibility of being mechanically explained)
(Peirce, 1866-1913/1994, Vol. 6, p. 425).
19. Eugene Taylor (1995) wrote about Suzukis story and
interaction with American pragmatism:
Deitsetz Suzuki was born in Kanzawa, an area
north of Tokyo, in 1870 into a family of Renzai
Zen lineage. When he nished his schooling
he became a teacher in a small shing village
until his mother died, when he moved to Tokyo
and began taking classes at Tokyo Imperial
University. Suzuki entered zen training at this
time under Setsumon-roshi and began with koan
training under the Master Kosen. Tereafter,
under Soyen Shaku, he lived for four years in
the strict life of a novice monk at Engakuji,.
Here Suzuki also came under the inuence of
Kitaro Nishida, a Japanese thinker well versed
in German idealist philosophy, whom Suzuki
was later to introduce to the writings of William
James. During this time Suzuki undertook the
rst of his many translation projects, rendering
Dr. Paul Caruss Gospel of Buddhism into
Japanese. Suzuki was invited by Paul Carus
... to come to the United States, where he was to
undertake the translation of Chinese and Japanese
texts for Caruss business enterprise, Te Open
Court Publishing Company. Meanwhile, the
invitation from Carus seems to have precipitated
a crisis in Suzukis zen practice, which had
become very intense in his four year struggle to
master the meaning of his koan, Mu, meaning
nothing. Just before he left, according to his
teachers, Suzuki experienced self-realization. In
honor of this occasion his teacher Soyen Shaku
gave him the name Daisetz, meaning Great
Simplicity. Suzuki arrived in San Francisco
in February 1897. His rst project for Carus
was an English rendering of the Tao te Ching,
the famous Chinese classic attributed to Lao-tzu,
followed by Ashvaghoshas Awakening of Faith
in the Mahayana. He also began work at this
time on his rst book, perhaps one of the most
inuential for American readers, his Outlines
of Mahayana Buddhism, which sketched the
mystical aspects of Buddhism before it came to
Japan. In all, Suzuki spent almost eleven years
working for Carus . Suzuki came into contact
with the pragmatic American philosophy of
William James and Charles S. Peirce. James and
Carus were correspondents, while Peirce had
published his pioneering series of cosmological
essays in Carus journal (Te Monist) in the
early 1890s. . (n.p.)
20. God made the world good, wishing everything to
be like himself. To this end he brought order into
it and endowed it with soul and intelligence. Let
me tell you then why the creator made this world
of generation. He was good, and the good can never
have any jealousy of anything. And being free from
jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like
himself as they could be. Tis is in the truest sense
the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall
do well in believing on the testimony of wise men:
God desired that all things should be good and
nothing bad, so far as this was attainable. Wherefore
also nding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but
moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out
of disorder he brought order, considering that this
was in every way better than the other. Now the
deeds of the best could never be or have been other
than the fairest; and the creator, reecting on the
things which are by nature visible, found that no
unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer
than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that
intelligence could not be present in anything which
was devoid of soul. For which reason, when he was
framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and
soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work
which was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore,
using the language of probability, we may say that
the world became a living creature truly endowed
with soul and intelligence by the providence of
God. Source: <http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/
Plato0204/Dialogues/HTMLs/0131-03_Pt03_
Timaeus.html#hd_lf131.3.head.034> Updated:
April 20, 2004.
21. Te Oxford English Dictionary denes tohu-
bohu as Tat which is empty and formless; chaos;
utter confusion (also tohubohu). Tohu Bohu is
the formless primordial nothingness of things not
yet created, the primordial state before Creation.
It is not really a place, rather a state of being, a
nonplace. It is the absence of time, form, and space.
Tohu va-bohu in the Torah is usually translated as
empty and shapeless, from tohu wasteness + bohu
emptiness, void , but in Hebrew tohu means ruin,
and bohu, desolation. Tese two words are closely
similar in meaning, tohu signifying that which
lies waste, without inhabitants or other manifested
activity, and bohu signifying that which is empty
or void, so that the combination can be translated
as the uninhabited void. Used in Genesis (tohu
wabohu) for the state preceding the appearance of
the manifested universeprimeval chaos: And the
earth was without form, and void; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2).
22. Peirce (1866-1913/1994, Vol. 6, p. 102) himself
admitted in the following quote to hold a benign
form of it:
I have begun by showing that tychism must
give birth to an evolutionary cosmology, in
which all the regularities of nature and of
mind are regarded as products of growth, and
to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds
matter to be mere specialized and partially
deadened mind. I may mention, for the benet
of those who are curious in studying mental
biographies, that I was born and reared in
the neighborhood of ConcordI mean in
Cambridgeat the time when Emerson,
Hedge, and their friends were disseminating
the ideas that they had caught from Schelling,
and Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or
from God knows what minds stricken with
the monstrous mysticism of the East. But
the atmosphere of Cambridge held many an
antiseptic against Concord transcendentalism;
and I am not conscious of having contracted
any of that virus. Nevertheless, it is probable
that some cultured bacilli, some benignant
form of the disease was implanted in my
soul, unawares, and that now, after long
incubation, it comes to the surface, modied
by mathematical conceptions and by training
in physical investigations.
In his review of Josiah Royces book, Te World
and the Individual, Peirce (1866-1913/1994, Vol. 6,
pp. 106, 108) mentioned mysticism in a somewhat
skeptical fashion.
23. Te last formulation is inspired by Vedic mysticism.
24. In panentheism, God is viewed as creator and/or
animating force behind the universe, and the source
of universal truth. Heraclitus (ca. 535475 BC)
viewed the Logos as that which pervades the Cosmos
and is the force and rationality whereby all thoughts
and things originate. Gnosticism is Panentheistic,
believing that the true God is separate from the
physical universe, but that there are aspects of the
true God in the physical universe as well. Valentinian
Gnosticism claims that matter came about through
emanations of the Supreme Being. To other Gnostics,
the emanations are akin to the Sephiroth of the
Kabbalistsdescription of the manifestation of God
through a complex system of reality. Panentheism is
often viewed as a component of Hassidic Judaism
and Kabbalah. Several Su saints and thinkers,
primarily Ibn Arabi, held beliefs that were somewhat
panentheistic. Tese notions later took shape in
the theory of wahdat ul-wujud (the Unity of All
Tings). Twelver Shiism has a panentheistic trend,
represented by scholars such as Sayyid Haydar Amuli,
Mulla Sadra, and Ayatollah Khomeini (all of whom
were inuenced by Ibn Arabi). Many interpretations
of Hinduism can be seen as panentheistic and the
rst and most ancient ideas of panentheism originate
in the Bhagavad Gita. For example, Lord Krishnas
saying to Arjuna: I continually support the entire
universe by a very small fraction of My divine
power, has been interpreted to support panentheism
(Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 10, verse 42.). Panentheism
is the view that the universe is part of the being of
God; it holds that God pervades the world, but is
also beyond it. He is immanent and transcendent,
relative and Absolute. Tis embracing of opposites is
often called dipolar. For the panentheist, God is in
all, and all is in God.
25. Hence the title of the journal, Cybernetics & Human
Knowing.
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About the Author
Sren Brier, PhD, is a full professor in the semiotics of
information, cognition, and communication sciences at
the department of International Studies in Culture and
Communication in the research center for Language,
Cognition, and Mentality at the Copenhagen Business
School, Frederiksberg, Denmark. He is Editor-in-Chief
of the journal, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, and
an editoral board member on several other journals.
He serves on the board of the Sociocybernetic Group,
the Foundation of Information Science group, and the
International Association of Biosemiotic Studies, and is a
trustee in the American Society for Cybernetics. His major
book in English is Cybersemiotics: Why information is not
enough (Brier, 2008a). He can be reached by mail at:
Sren Brier, Professor in Semiotics, IKK, CBS, Dalgas
Have 15, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark; e-mail contact:
sb.ikk@cbs.dk.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 46 Grof
Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology
Stanislav Grof
Grof Transpersonal Training
Mill Valley, CA, USA
Te International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes
of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring
global conferences for the international transpersonal community. Te association was
subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalized.
As background for this development, this paper reviews the history of ITA including its
international conferences and noteworthy presenters, the organizations denition, strategies,
and specic goals, and details of its contemporary revival.
I
n the middle of the twentieth century, American
psychology was dominated by two major schools
behaviorism and Freudian psychology. Increasing
dissatisfaction with these two orientations as adequate
approaches to the human psyche led to the development
of humanistic psychology. Te main spokesman and
most articulate representative of this new eld was the
well-known American psychologist Abraham Maslow.
He oered an incisive critique of the limitations of behav-
iorism and psychoanalysis, or the First and the Second
Force in psychology as he called them, and formu-
lated the principles of a new perspective in psychology
(Maslow, 1969).
Maslows (1969) main objection against
behaviorism was that the study of animals such as rats
and pigeons can only clarify those aspects of human
functioning that we share with these animals. It thus
has no relevance for the understanding of higher,
specically human qualities that are unique to human
life, such as love, self-consciousness, self-determi-
nation, personal freedom, morality, art, philosophy,
religion, and science. It is also largely useless in regard
to some specically human negative characteristics,
such as greed, lust for power, cruelty, and tendency to
malignant aggression. He also criticized the behav-
iorists disregard for consciousness and introspection
and their exclusive focus on the study of behavior.
By contrast, the primary interest of human-
istic psychology, Maslows (1969) Tird Force, was
in human subjects, and this discipline honored the
interest in consciousness and introspection as important
complements to the objective approach to research.
Te behaviorists exclusive emphasis on determination
by the environment, stimulus/response, and reward/
punishment was replaced by emphasis of the capacity of
human beings to be internally directed and motivated
to achieve self-realization and fulll their human
potential.
In his criticism of psychoanalysis, Maslow
(1969) pointed out that Freud and his followers drew
conclusions about the human psyche mainly from the
study of psychopathology, and he disagreed with their
biological reductionism and their tendency to explain
all psychological processes in terms of base instincts.
By comparison, humanistic psychology focused on
healthy populations, or even individuals who showed
supernormal functioning in various areas (Maslows
growing tip of the population; p. 5), on human
growth and potential, and on higher functions of the
psyche. It also emphasized that psychology has to be
sensitive to practical human needs and serve important
interests and objectives of human society.
Within a few years after Abraham Maslow
and Anthony Sutich launched the Association for
Humanistic Psychology (AHP) and its journal, the new
movement became extremely popular among American
mental health professionals and even in the general
public. Te multidimensional perspective of human-
istic psychology and its emphasis on the whole person
provided a broad umbrella for the development of a rich
spectrum of new eective therapeutic approaches that
greatly expanded the range of possibilities of dealing
with emotional, psychosomatic, interpersonal, and
psychosocial problems.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 47 Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology
Among the important characteristics of these
new therapies was a decisive shift from the exclu-
sively verbal strategies of traditional psychotherapy to
direct expression of emotions, and from exploration of
individual history and of unconscious motivation to the
feelings and thought processes of the clients in the here
and now. Another important aspect of this therapeutic
revolution was the emphasis on the interconnectedness
of the psyche and the body and overcoming of the taboo
against touching, previously dominating the eld of
psychotherapy. Various forms of bodywork thus formed
an integral part of the new treatment strategies: Fritz
Perls Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowens bioenergetics
and other neo-Reichian approaches, encounter groups,
and marathon sessions can be mentioned here as salient
examples of humanistic therapies.
In spite of the popularity of humanistic
psychology, its founders Maslow and Sutich themselves
grew dissatised with the conceptual framework they
had originally created. Tey became increasingly aware
that they had left out an extremely important element
the spiritual dimension of the human psyche (Sutich
1976). Te renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual
philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation,
ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread
psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s,
made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross-
culturally valid psychology had to include observations
from such areas as mystical states, cosmic consciousness,
psychedelic experiences, trance phenomena, creativity,
and religious, artistic, and scientic inspiration.
In 1967, a small working group including
Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Stanislav Grof,
James Fadiman, Miles Vich, and Sonya Margulies met
in Menlo Park, California, with the purpose of creating a
new psychology that would honor the entire spectrum of
human experience, including various non-ordinary states
of consciousness. During these discussions, Maslow
and Sutich accepted Grof s suggestion and named the
new discipline transpersonal psychology. Tis term
replaced their own original name transhumanistic,
or reaching beyond humanistic concerns. Soon after-
wards, they launched the Association of Transpersonal
Psychology (ATP), and started the Journal of Transper-
sonal Psychology. Several years later, in 1975, Robert
Frager founded the (California) Institute of Transper-
sonal Psychology in Palo Alto, which has remained at the
cutting edge of transpersonal education, research, and
therapy for more than three decades. Te International
Transpersonal Association was launched in 1978 by
myself, as its founding president, and Michael Murphy
and Richard Price, founders of Esalen Institute.
Transpersonal psychology, or the Fourth Force,
addressed some major misconceptions of mainstream
psychiatry and psychology concerning spirituality and
religion. It also responded to important observations
from modern consciousness research and several other
elds for which the existing scientic paradigm had no
adequate explanations. Michael Harner, an American
anthropologist with good academic credentials, who
had experienced during his eld work in the Amazon
a powerful shamanic initiation, summed up the short-
comings of academic psychology succinctly in the
preface to his book Te Way of the Shaman (Harner,
1980). He suggested that the understanding of the
psyche in the industrial civilization is seriously biased in
two important ways: it is ethnocentric and cognicentric (a
better term would probably be pragmacentric).
It is ethnocentric in the sense that it has been
formulated and promoted by Western materialistic
scientists, who consider their own perspective to be
superior to that of any other human groups at any time
of history. According to them, matter is primary and
life, consciousness, and intelligence are its more or less
accidental side products. Spirituality of any form and
level of sophistication reects ignorance of scientic
facts, superstition, child-like gullibility, self-deception,
and primitive magical thinking. Direct spiritual experi-
ences involving the collective unconscious or archetypal
gures and realms are seen as pathological products of the
brain. Modern mainstream psychiatrists often interpret
visionary experiences of the founders of great religions,
saints, and prophets as manifestations of serious mental
diseases, although they lack adequate medical explana-
tions and the laboratory data supporting this position. In
their contemptuous dismissal of ritual and spiritual life,
they do not distinguish between primitive folk beliefs
or the fundamentalists literal interpretations of scrip-
tures and sophisticated mystical traditions and Eastern
spiritual philosophies based on centuries of systematic
introspective exploration of the psyche.
Psychiatric literature contains numerous
articles and books that discuss what would be the most
appropriate clinical diagnoses for many of the great
gures of spiritual history. St. Anthony has been called
schizophrenic, St. John of the Cross labeled a hereditary
degenerate, St. Teresa of Avila has been dismissed as a
severe hysterical psychotic, and Mohammeds mystical
experiences have been attributed to epilepsy. Many other
religious and spiritual personages, such as the Buddha,
Jesus, Ramakrishna, and Sri Ramana Maharshi have
been seen as suering from psychoses, because of
their visionary experiences and delusions. Similarly,
some traditionally trained anthropologists have argued
whether shamans should be diagnosed as schizophrenics,
ambulant psychotics, epileptics, or hysterics. Te famous
psychoanalyst Franz Alexander (1931), known as one
of the founders of psychosomatic medicine, wrote a
paper in which even Buddhist meditation is described
in psychopathological terms and referred to as articial
catatonia.
While Western psychology and psychiatry
describe the ritual and spiritual life of ancient and native
cultures in pathological terms, dangerous excesses of the
industrial civilization potentially endangering life on
the planet have become such integral parts of our life
that they seldom attract specic attention of clinicians
and researchers and do not receive pathological labels.
We witness on a daily basis manifestations of insatiable
greed and malignant aggression: the plundering of non-
renewable resources and their conversion into industrial
pollution, deling of natural environment critical for
survival by nuclear fallout, toxic chemicals, and massive
oil spills, abuse of scientic discoveries in physics,
chemistry, and biology for development of weapons of
mass destruction, invasion of other countries leading to
massacres of civilians and genocide, and designing of
military operations that would kill millions of people.
Te main engineers and protagonists of such
detrimental strategies and doomsday scenarios not only
walk freely, but are rich and famous, hold powerful
positions in society, and receive various honors. By the
same token, people who have potentially life-trans-
forming mystical states, episodes of psychospiritual death
and rebirth, or past-life experiences end up hospitalized
with stigmatizing diagnoses and suppressive psychophar-
macological medication. Tis is what Michael Harner
(1980) referred to as the ethnocentric bias in judging
what is normal and what is pathological.
According to Harner (1980), Western
psychiatry and psychology also show a strong cogni-
centric bias. By this he means that these disciplines
formulated their theories on the basis of experiences
and observations from ordinary states of consciousness
and have systematically avoided or misinterpreted the
evidence from non-ordinary states, such as observa-
tions from psychedelic therapy, powerful experiential
psychotherapies, work with individuals in psychospir-
itual crises, meditation research, eld anthropological
studies, or thanatology. Te paradigm-breaking data
from these areas of research have been either systemati-
cally ignored or misjudged and misinterpreted because
of their fundamental incompatibility with the leading
paradigm.
In the preceding text, I have used the term non-
ordinary states of consciousness. Before we continue our
discussion, a semantic clarication seems to be appro-
priate. Te term non-ordinary states of consciousness is
being used mostly by researchers who study these states
and recognize their value. Mainstream psychiatrists
prefer the term altered states, which reects their belief
that only the everyday state of consciousness is normal
and that all departures from it without exception
represent pathological distortions of the correct
perception of reality that have no positive potential.
However, even the term non-ordinary states is too
broad for the purpose of our discussion. Transpersonal
psychology is interested in a signicant subgroup of
these states that have heuristic, healing, transformative,
and even evolutionary potential. Tis includes experi-
ences of shamans and their clients, those of initiates in
native rites of passage and ancient mysteries of death
and rebirth, of spiritual practitioners and mystics of all
ages, and individuals in psychospiritual crisis (spiritual
emergencies; Grof & Grof , 1989, 1991).
In the early stages of my research I discovered
to my great surprise that mainstream psychiatry has no
name for this important subgroup of non-ordinary states
and dismisses all of them as altered states. Because I felt
strongly that they deserve to be distinguished from the
rest and placed into a special category, I coined for them
the name holotropic (Grof, 1992). Tis composite word
means literally oriented toward wholeness or moving
in the direction of wholeness (from the Greek holos =
whole and trepein = moving toward or in the direction of
something). Tis term suggests that in our everyday state
of consciousness we identify with only a small fraction of
who we really are. In holotropic states we can transcend
the narrow boundaries of the body ego and encounter a
rich spectrum of transpersonal experiences that help us
to reclaim our full identity. I have described in a dierent
context the basic characteristic of holotropic states and
how they dier from conditions that deserve to be
referred to as altered states of consciousness (Grof, 2000).
For greater clarity, I will be using the term holotropic in
the following discussion.
Transpersonal psychology has made signicant
headway toward correcting the ethnocentric and cogni-
centric biases of mainstream psychiatry and psychology,
particularly by its recognition of the genuine nature of
transpersonal experiences and their value. In the light
of modern consciousness research, the current conceited
dismissal and pathologization of spirituality charac-
teristic of monistic materialism appears untenable. In
holotropic states, the spiritual dimensions of reality can
be directly experienced in a way that is as convincing as
our daily experience of the material world, if not more
so. Careful study of transpersonal experiences shows that
they cannot be explained as products of pathological
processes in the brain, but are ontologically real.
To distinguish transpersonal experiences from
imaginary products of individual fantasy, Jungian
psychologists refer to this domain as imaginal. French
scholar, philosopher, and mystic Henri Corbin, who
rst used the term mundus imaginalis, was inspired in
this regard by his study of Islamic mystical literature
(Corbin, 2000). Islamic theosophers call the imaginal
world, where everything existing in the sensory world
has its analogue, alam a mithal, or the eighth climate, to
distinguish it from the seven climates, regions of tradi-
tional Islamic geography. Te imaginal world possesses
extension and dimensions, forms and colors, but these
are not perceptible to our senses as they would be when
they are properties of physical objects. However, this
realm is in every respect as fully ontologically real and
susceptible to consensual validation by other people as
the material world perceived by scientists.
Spiritual experiences appear in two dierent
forms. Te rst of these, the experience of the immanent
divine, is characterized by subtly but profoundly trans-
formed perception of the everyday reality. A person
having this form of spiritual experience sees people,
animals, plants, and inanimate objects in the environment
as radiant manifestations of a unied eld of cosmic
creative energy. He or she has a direct perception of the
immaterial nature of the physical world and realizes
that the boundaries between objects are illusory and
unreal. Tis type of experience of reality has a distinctly
numinous quality and corresponds to Spinozas deus
sive natura, or nature as God. Using the analogy with
television, this experience could be likened to a situation
where a black and white picture would suddenly change
into one in vivid, living color. When that happens, much
of the old perception of the world remains in place, but is
radically redened by the addition of a new dimension.
Te second form of spiritual experience, that of
the transcendent divine, involves manifestation of arche-
typal beings and realms of reality that are ordinarily
transphenomenal, that is unavailable to perception in the
everyday state of consciousness. In this type of spiritual
experience, entirely new elements seem to unfold or
explicateto borrow terms from David Bohmfrom
another level or order of reality. When we return to the
analogy with television, this would be like discovering to
our surprise that there exist channels other than the one
we have been previously watching, believing that our
TV set had only one channel.
Te issue of critical importance is, of course,
the ontological nature of the spiritual experiences
described above. Can they be interpreted and dismissed
as meaningless phantasmagoria produced by a patho-
logical process aicting the brain, yet to be discovered
and identied by modern science, or do they reect
objectively existing dimensions of reality, which are
not accessible in the ordinary state of consciousness.
Careful systematic study of transpersonal experiences
shows that they are ontologically real and contain infor-
mation about important, ordinarily hidden dimensions
of existence, which can be consensually validated (Grof,
1998a, 1998b, 2000). In a certain sense, the perception
of the world in holotropic states is more accurate than
our everyday perception of it.
Quantum-relativistic physics has shown that
matter is essentially empty and that all boundaries in the
universe are illusory. We know today that what appears
to us as discrete static objects are actually condensations
within a dynamic unitive energy eld. Tis nding is in
direct conict with the pedestrian perception of the
world and brings to mind the Hindu concept of maya, a
metaphysical principle capable of generating a convincing
facsimile of the material world. And the objective nature
of the historical and archetypal domains of the collective
unconscious has been demonstrated by C.G. Jung and
his followers years before psychedelic research and new
experiential therapies amassed evidence that conrmed
it beyond any reasonable doubt. In addition, it is possible
to describe step-by-step procedures and proper contexts
that facilitate access to these experiences. Tese include
non-pharmacological procedures such as meditation
practices, music, dancing, breathing exercises, and other
approaches that cannot be seen as pathological agents by
any stretch of the imagination.
Te study of holotropic states conrmed Jungs
(1964) insight that the experiences originating on deeper
levels of the psyche (in my own terminology, perinatal
and transpersonal experiences) have a certain quality
that he called (after Rudolph Otto) numinosity. Te
term numinous is relatively neutral and thus preferable
to other similar names, such as religious, mystical,
magical, holy, or sacred, which have often been used
in problematic contexts and are easily misleading. Te
sense of numinosity is based on direct apprehension of
the fact that we are encountering a domain that belongs
to a superior order of reality, one which is sacred and
radically dierent from the material world.
To prevent misunderstanding and confusion that
in the past compromised many similar discussions, it is
critical to make a clear distinction between spirituality
and religion. Spirituality is based on direct experiences
of non-ordinary aspects and dimensions of reality. It
does not require a special place or an ocially appointed
person mediating contact with the divine. Te mystics do
not need churches or temples. Te context in which they
experience the sacred dimensions of reality, including
their own divinity, are their bodies and nature. Instead
of ociating priests, the mystics need a supportive group
of fellow seekers or the guidance of a teacher who is more
advanced on the inner journey than they are themselves.
Spirituality involves a special kind of relationship
between the individual and the cosmos and is, in its
essence, a personal and private aair. By comparison,
organized religion involves institutionalized group
activity that takes place in a designated location such as
a temple or a church, and involves a system of appointed
ocials who might or might not have had personal
experiences of spiritual realities. Once a religion becomes
organized, it often completely loses the connection with
its spiritual source and becomes a secular institution that
exploits human spiritual needs without satisfying them.
Organized religions tend to create hierarchical
systems focusing on the pursuit of power, control,
politics, money, possessions, and other secular concerns.
Under these circumstances, religious hierarchy as a rule
dislikes and discourages direct spiritual experiences
in its members, because they foster independence and
cannot be eectively controlled. When this is the case,
genuine spiritual life continues only in the mystical
branches, monastic orders, and ecstatic sects of the
religions involved. While it is clear that fundamentalism
and religious dogma are incompatible with the scien-
tic world view, whether it is Cartesian-Newtonian or
based on the new paradigm, there is no reason why we
could not seriously study the nature and implications of
transpersonal experiences. As Ken Wilber (1983) pointed
out in his book, A Sociable God, there cannot possibly
be a conict between genuine science and authentic
religion. If there seems to be such a conict, we are very
likely dealing with bogus science and bogus religion,
where either side has a serious misunderstanding of the
others position and very likely represents a false or fake
version of its own discipline.
Transpersonal psychology, as it was born in
the late 1960s, was culturally sensitive and treated the
ritual and spiritual traditions of ancient and native
cultures with the respect that they deserve in view of
the ndings of modern consciousness research. It also
embraced and integrated a wide range of anomalous
phenomena, paradigm-breaking observations that
academic science has been unable to account for and
explain. However, although comprehensive and well
substantiated in and of itself, the new eld represented
such a radical departure from academic thinking in
professional circles that it could not be reconciled with
either traditional psychology and psychiatry or with the
Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm of Western science.
As a result of this, transpersonal psychology
was extremely vulnerable to accusations of being
irrational, unscientic, and even akey, particu-
larly by scientists who were not aware of the vast body of
observations and data on which the new movement was
based. Tese critics also ignored the fact that many of the
pioneers of this revolutionary movement had impressive
academic credentials. Among the pioneers of transper-
sonal psychology were many prominent psychologists,
such as James Fadiman, Jean Houston, Jack Korneld,
Stanley Krippner, Ralph Metzner, Arnold Mindell,
John Perry, Kenneth Ring, Frances Vaughan, Richard
Tarnas, Charles Tart, Roger Walsh, as well as others
from many disciplines (e.g., anthropologists, such as
Angeles Arrien, Michael Harner, and Sandra Harner).
Tese individuals created and embraced the transper-
sonal vision of the human psyche not because they were
ignorant of the fundamental assumptions of traditional
science, but because they found the old conceptual
frameworks seriously inadequate and incapable to
account for their experiences and observations.
Te problematic status of transpersonal
psychology among hard sciences changed very
radically during the rst two decades of the existence
of this edgling discipline. As a result of revolutionary
new concepts and discoveries in various scientic elds,
the philosophy of traditional Western science, its basic
assumptions, and its Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm
were increasingly challenged and undermined. Like
many other theoreticians in the transpersonal eld,
I have followed this development with great interest
and described it in the rst part of my book, Beyond
the Brain, as an eort to bridge the gap between the
ndings of my own research and the established scien-
tic worldview (Grof, 1985).
Te inux of this exciting new information
began by the realization of the profound philosophical
implications of quantum-relativistic physics, forever
changing our understanding of physical reality. Te
astonishing convergence between the worldview of
modern physics and that of the Eastern spiritual
philosophies, foreshadowed already in the work of
Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin
Schrdinger, and others, found a full expression in the
ground-breaking book by Fritjof Capra (1975), his Tao
of Physics. Capras pioneering vision was in the following
years complemented and rened by the work of Fred
Alan Wolf (1981), Nick Herbert (1979), Amit Goswami
(1995), and many others. Of particular interest in this
regard were the contributions of David Bohm, former
co-worker of Albert Einstein and author of prestigious
monographs on the theory of relativity and quantum
physics. His concept of the explicate and implicate
order and his theory of holomovement expounding the
importance of holographic thinking in science gained
great popularity in the transpersonal eld (Bohm,
1980), as did Karl Pribrams (1971) holographic model
of the brain.
Te same is true for biologist Rupert
Sheldrakes (1981) theory of morphic resonance and
morphogenetic elds, demonstrating the impor-
tance of non-physical elds for the understanding of
forms, genetics and heredity, order, meaning, and the
process of learning. Additional exciting contributions
were Gregory Batesons (1979) brilliant synthesis of
cybernetics, information and systems theories, logic,
psychology, and other disciplines, Ilya Prigogines (1980)
studies of dissipative structures and order out of chaos
(Prigogine and Stengers 1984), the chaos theory itself
(Glieck, 1988), the anthropic principle in astrophysics
(Barrow & Tipler, 1986), and many others.
However, even at this early stage of the
development, we have more than just a mosaic of
unrelated cornerstones of this new vision of reality.
At least two major intellectual attempts at integrating
transpersonal psychology into a comprehensive new
world view deserve to be mentioned in this context.
Te rst of these pioneering ventures has been the
work of Ken Wilber. In a series of books beginning
with his Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber (1977) has
achieved a highly creative synthesis of data drawn from
a vast variety of areas and disciplines, ranging from
psychology, anthropology, sociology, mythology, and
comparative religion, through linguistics, philosophy,
and history, to cosmology, quantum-relativistic physics,
biology, evolutionary theory, and systems theory. His
knowledge of the literature is truly encyclopedic, his
analytical mind systematic and incisive, and his ability
to communicate complex ideas clearly is remarkable.
Te impressive scope, comprehensive nature, and intel-
lectual rigor of Wilbers work have helped to make it
a widely acclaimed and highly inuential theory of
transpersonal psychology.
However, it would expect too much from an
interdisciplinary work of this scope and depth to believe
that it could be perfect and awless in all respects and
details. Wilbers writings thus have drawn not just enthu-
siastic acclaim, but also serious criticism from a variety
of sources. Te exchanges about the controversial and
disputed aspects of his theory have often been forceful
and heated. Tis was partly due to Wilbers often
aggressive polemic style that included strongly worded
ad personam attacks and was not conducive to productive
dialogue. Some of these discussions have been gathered
in a volume entitled Ken Wilber in Dialogue (Rothberg
& Kelly, 1998), and others in numerous articles and
Internet websites.
Many of these arguments about Ken Wilbers
work focus on areas and disciplines other that transper-
sonal psychology and discussing them would transcend
the nature and scope of this paper. However, over
the years Ken and I have exchanged ideas concerning
specically various aspects of transpersonal psychology;
this involved both mutual compliments and critical
comments about our respective theories. I rst addressed
the similarities and dierences between Kens spectrum
psychology and my own observations and theoretical
constructs in my book Beyond the Brain (Grof, 1985). I
later returned to this subject in my contribution to the
compendium entitled Ken Wilber in Dialogue (Rothberg
& Kelly, 1998) and in my own Psychology of the Future
(Grof, 2000).
In my attempt to critically evaluate Wilbers
theories, I approached this task from a clinical perspec-
tive, drawing primarily on the data from modern
consciousness research, my own and that of others. In
my opinion, the main problem of Ken Wilbers writings
on transpersonal psychology is that he does not have
any clinical experience and the primary sources of his
data have been his extensive reading and the experiences
from his personal spiritual practice. In addition, he has
drawn most of his clinical data from schools that use
verbal methods of psychotherapy and conceptual frame-
works limited to postnatal biography. He does not take
into consideration a large portion of the clinical evidence
amassed during the last several decades of experiential
therapy, with or without psychedelic substances.
For a theory as important and inuential as
Ken Wilbers work has become, it is not sucient that
it integrate material from many dierent ancient and
modern sources into a comprehensive philosophical
system that shows inner logical cohesion. While logical
consistency certainly is a valuable prerequisite, a viable
theory has to have an additional property that is equally
if not more important. It is generally accepted among
scientists that a system of propositions is an acceptable
theory if, and only if, its conclusions are in agreement with
observable facts (Frank, 1957). I have tried to outline the
areas where Wilbers speculations have been in conict
with facts of observation and those that involve logical
inconsistencies (Rothberg & Kelly, 1998).
One of these discrepancies was the omission
of the pre- and perinatal domain from his map of
consciousness and from his developmental scheme.
Another was the uncritical acceptance of the Freudian
and post-Freudian emphasis on the postnatal origin of
emotional and psychosomatic disorders and failure to
acknowledge their deeper perinatal and transpersonal
roots. Wilbers description of the strictly linear nature
of spiritual development, inability to see the paradoxical
nature of the pre-trans relationship, and reduction of the
problem of death (thanatos) in psychology to a transition
from one developmental fulcrum to another have been
additional areas of disagreement.
An issue of considerable dissent between us has
been Ken Wilbers insistence that opening to spirituality
happens exclusively on the level of the centaur, Wilbers
stage of psychospiritual development characterized by
full integration of body and mind. I have pointed out,
in fundamental agreement with Michael Washburn
(1988), that spiritual opening often takes the form of a
spiral combining regression and progression, rather than
in a strictly linear fashion. Particularly frequent is the
opening involving psychospiritual death and rebirth, in
which case the critical interface between the personal
and transpersonal is the perinatal level. Tis can be
supported not just by clinical observations, but also by
the study of the lives of mystics, such as St. Teresa of
Avila, St. John of the Cross, and others, many of whom
Wilber quotes in his books. Particularly problematic and
questionable is Wilbers (2000) suggestion that we should
diagnose clients in terms of the emotional, moral, intel-
lectual, existential, philosophical, and spiritual problems
that they show according to his scheme, and assign
them to several dierent therapists specializing in those
respective areas. Tis recommendation might impress
a layperson as a sophisticated solution to psychological
problems, but it is nave and unrealistic from the point
of view of any experienced clinician.
Te above problems concerning specic aspects
of Wilbers system can easily be corrected and they do
not invalidate the usefulness of his overall scheme as a
comprehensive blueprint for understanding the nature
of reality. In recent years, Ken Wilber distanced himself
from transpersonal psychology in favor of his own vision
that he calls integral psychology. On closer inspection,
what he refers to as integral psychology reaches far
beyond what we traditionally understand under that
name and includes areas that belong to other disci-
plines. However broad and encompassing our vision
of reality, in practice we have to pare it down to those
aspects which are relevant for solving the problems we
are dealing with. With the necessary corrections and
adjustments discussed above, Wilbers integral approach
will in the future represent a large and useful context for
transpersonal psychology rather than a replacement for
it; it will also serve as an important bridge to mainstream
science.
Te second pioneering attempt to integrate
transpersonal psychology into a new comprehensive
world view has been the work of Ervin Laszlo, the worlds
foremost system theorist, interdisciplinary scientist, and
philosopher of Hungarian origin, currently living in
Italy. A multifaceted individual with a range of interests
and talents reminiscent of great gures of the Renais-
sance, Laszlo achieved international fame as a child
prodigy and concert pianist in his teens. A few years
later he turned to science and philosophy, beginning his
lifetime search for understanding of the human nature
and the nature of reality. Where Wilber outlined what
an integral theory of everything should look like, Laszlo
actually created one (Laszlo, 1993, 1996, 2004; Laszlo
& Abraham, 2004; Laszlo, Grof, & Russell, 2003).
In an intellectual tour de force and a series of
books, Laszlo has explored a wide range of disciplines,
including astrophysics, quantum-relativistic physics,
biology, and psychology. He pointed out a wide range
of phenomena, paradoxical observations, and paradig-
matic challenges for which these disciplines have no
explanations. He then examined the attempts of various
pioneers of new paradigm science to provide solutions
for these conceptual challenges. Tis included Bohms
theory of holomovement, Pribrams holographic model
of the brain, Sheldrakes theory of morphogenetic elds,
Prigogines concept of dissipative structures, and others.
He looked at the contributions of these theories and also
at problems that they had not been able to solve.
Drawing on mathematics and advances in hard
sciences Laszlo then oered a solution to the current
paradoxes in Western science, which transcends the
boundaries of individual disciplines. He achieved that
by formulating his connectivity hypothesis, the main
cornerstone of which is the existence of what he calls
the psi-eld, (Laszlo, 1993, 1995; Laszlo & Abraham,
2004). He describes it as a subquantum eld, which
holds a holographic record of all the events that have
happened in the phenomenal world. Laszlo includes in
his all-encompassing theory quite explicitly transper-
sonal psychology and the spiritual philosophies, as
exemplied by his paper on Jungian psychology and my
own consciousness research (Laszlo, 1996) and his last
book, Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Teory of
Everything (Laszlo, 2004).
It has been very exciting to see that all the new
revolutionary developments in science, while irreconcil-
able with the 17
th
century Newtonian-Cartesian thinking
and monistic materialism, have been compatible with
transpersonal psychology. As a result of these conceptual
breakthroughs in a number of disciplines, it has become
increasingly possible to imagine that transpersonal
psychology will be in the future accepted by academic
circles and become an integral part of a radically new
scientic world view. As scientic progress continues to
lift the spell of the outdated 17
th
century materialistic
worldview, we can see the general outlines of an emerging
radically new comprehensive understanding of ourselves,
nature, and the universe we live in. Tis new paradigm
should be able to reconcile science with experientially
based spirituality of a non-denominational, universal,
and all-embracing nature and bring about a synthesis of
modern science and ancient wisdom.
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About the Author
Stan Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fty
years of experience in research of non-ordinary states
of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances
and various non-pharmacological methods. Currently,
he is Professor of Psychology at the California Insti-
tute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco and
Wisdom University in Oakland, CA, conducts profes-
sional training programs in holotropic breathwork and
transpersonal psychology, and gives lectures and seminars
worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theo-
reticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding
president of the International Transpersonal Association.
In October 2007, he received the prestigious Vision 97
Award from the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation
in Prague. Among his publications are over 140 papers in
professional journals and the books Realms of the Human
Unconscious; LSD Psychotherapy; Te Adventure of Self-
Discovery; Beyond the Brain; Te Cosmic Game; Psychology
of the Future; When the Impossible Happens; Te Ultimate
Journey; Spiritual Emergency; and Te Stormy Search for
the Self (the last two with Christina Grof ). He may be
reached at: stanG@infoasis.com.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 55 International Transpersonal Association
Te Past and Future of the
International Transpersonal Association
Stanislav Grof
Grof Transpersonal Training
Mill Valley, CA, USA
David Luko
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Te International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes
of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring
global conferences for the international transpersonal community. Te association was
subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalized.
As background for this development, this paper reviews the history of ITA including its
international conferences and noteworthy presenters, the organizations denition, strategies,
and specic goals, and details of its contemporary revival.
T
he Association of Transpersonal Psychology
(ATP) was created in the late 1960s and has
held regular conferences in California since
its inception. Later, several transpersonal conferences
were held outside of California but still within the US,
including those held in Council Grove, Kansas, which
were started in 1969 by a small group of people (e.g.,
Walter Pahnke, John Lilly, Ken Godfrey, Helen Bonny,
Elmer Green, Alyce Green, and Stan Grof ). Tese
Kansas conferences had some participants from abroad
and represented the precursor of later international
transpersonal conferences.
As interest in the transpersonal movement
grew, extending beyond the San Francisco Bay area and
outside of the US, occasional international transpersonal
conferences were held. Te rst was in Bifrost, Iceland
in 1972, organized by Geir and Ingrid Vilhjamsson.
Among the attendants were Joseph Campbell and Jean
Campbell-Erdman, Huston Smith, Walter Houston
Clark, and Icelandic mythologist Einar Palsson. Tis
was followed by another conference held in Bifrost in
1973, again organized by Geir and Ingrid Vilhjamsson.
Te third international transpersonal conference was
held in a school in Inari, Finland in 1976, on the Soviet
border. Among its participants were Salvador Roquet
and Prince Peter of Denmark. Te fourth international
transpersonal conference was held in Belo Horizonte,
Brazil in 1977, organized by Pierre Weil and Leo Matos.
During the nal meeting of this 1977 conference, it was
noted that these conferences had become quite popular
and well attended, so it was suggested that the tradition
of the international transpersonal conferences should
be formalized and hosted through the creation of an
international association of transpersonal psychology.
Out of this, the International Transpersonal
Association (ITA) was launched in 1978 by Stan Grof, its
founding president, and Michael Murphy and Richard
Price, the founders of Esalen Institute in California, the
rst modern human potential (growth) center. ITA was
incorporated in California on February 27, 1980 as a
scientic and educational corporation whose mission
was to promote transpersonal education and scientic
research, as well as to guarantee continuation of these
international transpersonal conferences into the future.
In contrast to ATP, which was founded primarily as
an American institution limited to the discipline of
psychology, ITA was explicitly formed to be international
and interdisciplinary in its focus, as it had become
obvious that the transpersonal vision was being embraced
globally and that it transcended psychology as a singular
discipline. Also, since calling the new organization the
International Association of Transpersonal Psychology,
as some had suggested, would have also implied a
hierarchical superiority over the extant organization
Harris Friedman
Gainesville, FL, USA
Glenn Hartelius
Palo Alto, CA, USA
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 56 Grof, Friedman, Luko, & Hartelius
ATP, this name was soundly rejected. After a discussion
with Arthur Hastings, Stan Grof decided to use the name
ITA and determined that its primary activity would
involve continuing to hold international transpersonal
conferences in dierent parts of the worldsomething
which did happen for many years. Te interdisciplinary
nature of these international transpersonal conferences
is exemplied by the fact that they featured not just
prominent transpersonal psychologists but also many
from other healing professions such as physicians,
psychiatrists, and non-psychologist psychotherapists,
as well as anthropologists, artists, biologists, educators,
economists, mathematicians, mythologists, philosophers,
physicists, politicians, spiritual teachers, and leaders from
many other areas of human endeavor inuenced by the
transpersonal orientation.
Te International Transpersonal
Conferences Held by ITA
Te following lists and summarizes the various
international transpersonal conferences held by the
ITA:
1. Danvers (Boston), USA, 1979. Te rst project of
the new ITA was to organize the next international
transpersonal conference. Elias and Isa Amador
oered to be the organizers, while Stan and Christina
Grof chose the topic, Te Nature of Reality. Te
responsible parties decided to make an attempt to
bring together all major representatives of the eld
and make it a coming out for ITA and the global
transpersonal movement. All the presenters invited to
the conference agreed to present in return for only
traveling expenses and accommodations, despite the
fact that many were able to command signicant fees
for presenting elsewhereand this then became the
tradition that continued at all the subsequent ITA
international transpersonal conferences. Te Grofs
were the program coordinators and a special guest of
the conference was Swami Muktananda.
2. Melbourne, Australia, 1980. Alf and Muriel Foote,
Australians who attended an Esalen workshop
with the Grofs, oered to be organizers of the
next international transpersonal conference. Since
transpersonal psychology was completely unknown
in Australia, the conference desperately needed
advertising so the Grofs traveled to Australia to
give a series of workshops, lectures, and TV/radio
interviews. Te conference had over 400 participants
and brought together people from all over Australia
who had interest in transpersonal subjects, often
without their having any prior knowledge of the term.
Tis meeting started the transpersonal movement in
Australia.
3. Bombay, India, 1982. Te next international
transpersonal conference was organized in
cooperation with the Siddha Yoga Foundation and
the site coordinator was Marilyn Hershenson. Its
theme was Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science and
focused on bringing together spiritual teachers and
new paradigm scientists to show the convergence of
worldviews. Te conference was to be opened by
the Dalai Lama and closed by the Karmapa with the
Black Crown ceremony, but the illness of the Dalai
Lama and death of the Karmapa prevented this.
However, presentations included many prominent
spiritual gures (e.g., Swami Muktananda, Mother
Teresa, and the Parsee high priest Dastoor Minocher
Homji) and scientists (e.g., Karl Pribram, Fritjof
Capra, Rupert Sheldrake, Elmer and Alyce Green).
Te rst connection was made with Karan Singh,
former Maharaja of Kashmir and Jammu, an
Aurobindo scholar and a brilliant speaker who later
participated in a number of ITA conferences. Tere
was also a cultural program featuring the then Indian
rising star, dancer Alarmel Valli, Paul Horn with Al
Huang, an evening of Jewish mysticism with Shlomo
Carlebach and Zalman Schachter, and a zikr by the
Halveti Jerrahi dervishes. Over seven hundred people
participated in this conference.
4. Davos, Switzerland, 1983. At the end of the Bombay
conference, Stan Grof passed the ITA presidency on
to Cecil Burney, who organized the next international
transpersonal conference with the help of Rashna
Imhasly. Te Dalai Lama was able to come this time
and among the special guests were Frederic Leboyer,
Elizabeth Kbler-Ross, Sri Chakravarti, Gopi
Krishna, Karan Singh, and Marie-Louise von Franz.
5. Kyoto, Japan, 1985. Te theme of this international
transpersonal conference was Spirituality and
Technological Society. After the success of the Davos
conference, Cecil Burney traveled to Japan with his
teacher, who was extremely popular in Japan. He
managed to recruit to the conference organizing
committee the founder and honorary chairman
of Sony and the founder of Kyocera, then the
fastest growing company in Japan. Encouraged
by this alliance, Burney decided to rent the Kyoto
International Conference Center at the cost of $11,000
a day for the conference. Tis was based on the fact
that he expected to get 1,500 paying participants.
He did not realize, however, that he had to sell not
only transpersonal psychology (unknown at the
time in Japan), but also the concept of a conference
where the Japanese needed to take a week o from
their work to attend a meeting unrelated to their job.
Among the guests were prominent Japanese spiritual
teachers and philosophers (e.g., Nikitani Roshi),
African shaman and anthropologist Credo Mutwa,
and astronaut Rusty Schweickart. Te conference
was extraordinary, particularly its cultural program
(an imperial drama, a Shinto re ceremony, a ute
performance by a group of monks who live with their
heads covered by special baskets, etc.). Unfortunately,
only 700 people attended the conference, which,
though quite impressive under the circumstance, was
still a nancial disaster. Te conference lost over U.S.
$50,000 and sent the ITA into bankruptcy.
6. Santa Rosa, CA., USA, 1988. Some fortuitous
circumstances allowed the ITA to survive. After
diculties with Heldref Publications, the publisher of
the Re-Vision Journal, Ken Wilber resigned as editor of
that journal and Stan Grof was invited to take his place.
Heldref sent one of its sta members, Stuart dEggnu,
as observer to the Kyoto international transpersonal
conference. After this observer gave an enthusiastic
report about the conference, Heldref oered a loan
as seed money for another international transpersonal
conference and ITA was resurrected, this time with a
home in Washington, D.C., while Stan Grof resumed
as its president. Stan and Christina Grof then faced
the problem of avoiding another Kyoto asco, while
working under debt to Heldref. To increase the
likelihood of nancial viability, they decided to place
the meeting close to the San Francisco Bay Area,
where a large number of prominent presenters could
participate without incurring signicant traveling
expenses. Te participation of this core group made
the conference attractive not only for participants,
but also for additional presenters. Te theme of
this international transpersonal conference was Te
Transpersonal Vision: Past, Present, and Future. Te
coordinator was John McKenzie, helped by Tav
and Cary Sparks. Among the special features of the
conference was participation of Albert Hofmann and
an evening with Mickey Hart. Te conference was a
great nancial success, with the prot over $130,000
USso ITA not only returned the loan to Heldref
($70,000), but also had enough seed money for its
next conference.
7. Eugene (Oregon), USA, 1990. Te theme of this
international transpersonal conference was Mystical
Quest, Attachment, and Addictions, emphasizing
spiritual treatments within scientically-acceptable
transpersonal frameworks. Representatives from
the addiction eld (e.g., John Bradshaw, the Sierra
Tucson sta, Linda Leonard, etc.) were highlighted.
8. Atlanta, USA, 1991. Te next international
transpersonal conference was on the same theme,
Mystical Quest, Attachment, and Addiction. It was
brought to the East Coast after the success of the
previous Eugene conference. After that conference,
Stan Grof passed the ITA presidency to Patricia
Demetrios-Ellard.
9. Santa Clara (San Francisco), USA, 1994. Te
theme of this international transpersonal conference
was Spirit in Action: Awakening to the Sacred in
Everyday Life, bringing the transpersonal perspective
into politics, business, economy, and medicine. New
presenters included Isabel Allende, Gloria Steinem,
Jerry Brown, Jim Garrison, Tomas Benyaka, Michel
Odent, and others.
10. Killarney, Ireland, 1995. Te next international
transpersonal conference was to some extent
a continuation of the Santa Clara meeting, an
application of transpersonal psychology to urgent
problems in other areas. Te conference theme was
Spirituality, Ecology, and Native Wisdom, and its
coordinator was Ralph Metzner.
11. Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1992. After the death of
Patricia Demetrios-Ellard, Stan Grof resumed the
presidency of ITA. After an unsuccessful attempt to
organize a conference in Russia (due to perestroika
and glasnost), the conference on the theme of Science,
Spirituality, and the Global Crisis: Toward a World
with a Future was held in Prague and was enormously
successful. Te hall with a capacity of 1600 people
was sold out and the registration for Westerners had
to be stopped a month before the conference, while
hundreds of interested Czechs could not be admitted
to the conference due to space limitations. Te
participants came from 36 dierent countries.
12.Manaus, Brazil, 1996. Te theme of this international
transpersonal conference was Technologies of the
Sacred: Ancient, Aboriginal, and Modern. Shamans
from Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and representatives
of the Santo Daime people, members of Union de
Vegetal, and spiritists attended. Te cultural program
included capoeira, School of Samba, Santo Daime
chants, and others. Te highlight of the conference
was a concert in the famous Manaus opera house
featuring Jai Uttal, Geo Gordon, Chungliang Al
Huang, and others. Over 900 people participated in
the conference.
13. Palm Springs, CA, USA, 2004. Te theme of the
most recent international transpersonal conference
was Mythic Imagination & Modern Society: Te Re-
Enchantment of the World. Te conference was inspired
by the 100th anniversary of the birth of Joseph
Campbell. Te coordinator was Robert Duchmann.
Among the special guests were John Cleese, Lorin
Hollander (playing Mussorgskys Pictures at an
Exhibition), and Indian classical dancers Vishnu
Tattva Dass and Barbara Framm.
Outstanding Presenters at ITA Conferences
Many of the presenters at ITA Conferences
have been outstanding representatives of various
elds. Tese include luminaries from psychology and
psychiatry, other sciences, spiritual life, art and cultural
life, and politics, some of whom are listed as follows:
psychology and psychiatryFrances Vaughan, Roger
Walsh, Sandra Harner, June Singer, John Perry, James
Fadiman, Arthur Hastings, R. D. Laing, Virginia Satir,
Dora Kal, Elisabeth Kbler-Ross, Marie-Louise von
Franz, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Claudio Naranjo, Ken
Pelletier, Ralph Metzner, Angeles Arrien, Christopher
Bache, Paul Grof, Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof,
Charles Tart, Steven Larsen, Robin Larsen, Kenneth
Ring, Arthur Hastings, Judith Cornell, Richard Tarnas,
Jean Houston, Steve Aizenstat, Arnold Mindell, Amy
Mindell, Roger Woolger, Gilda Moura, Raymond
Moody, John Bradshaw, Pierre Weil, Marion Woodman,
Massimo Rosselli, Ann Armstrong, Paulo Rzezinski,
Linda Leonard, Jane Middelton-Moz, Rokelle Lerner,
Charles Whiteld, John Mack, Robert Jay Lifton, Robert
McDermott, Stanley Krippner, Andrew Weil, Seymour
Boorstein, Dean Shapiro, Charlene Spretnak, Marilyn
Schlitz, Ingo Jahrsetz, Hrcoles Jaci, John Beebe, Harris
Friedman, Jenny Wade, Michael Mithoefer, Charles
Grob, Richard Yensen, Vladimir Maykov, Donna Dryer,
Dennis Slattery, Rick Strassman, Phillippe Bandeira de
Melo, Michael Grosso, David Ulansey, Don Juan Nuez
del Prado, and Roberto Baruzzi; other sciencesDavid
Bohm, Karl Pribram, Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake,
Fred Alan Wolf, Ervin Laszlo, Elizabeth Kbler-Ross,
Willis Harman, Albert Hofmann, Orlando Villas-
Boas, Vasily Nalimov, Ilya Prigogine, Lee Sannella,
Igor Charkovsky, Elmer and Alyce Green, Michael
Harner, Peter Russell, Richard Katz, Russell Targ,
Arthur Young, Jean Achterberg, Duane Elgin, Ivan
Havel, Zdenek Neubauer, Carl Simonton, Frederic
Leboyer, Peter Schwartz, Bernard Lietaer, Brian
McCusker, Terence McKenna, Brian Swimme, Amit
Goswami, Igor Charkovsky, Luiz Augusto de Queiroz,
Michel Odent, and Rachel Naomi Remen; spiritual
life--Mother Teresa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
Swami Muktananda, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Pir
Vilayat Khan, Sheikh Muzaer and the Halveti-Jerahi
dervishes, Sogyal Rinpoche, Ram Dass, Chungliang
Al Huang, Matthew Fox, Jack Korneld, Wes Nisker,
Nishitani Roshi, Gopi Krishna, Tomas Banyacya,
Don Manuel Qespi, Andrew Harvey, Lauren Artress,
Alex Polari de Alverga, Huston Smith, Cecil Williams,
Shairy Jose Quimbo, Brooke Medicine Eagle, Zalman
Schachter, Olotunji Babatunde, and Shlomo Carlebach;
art and cultural lifeJohn Cleese, Alarmel Vali, Paul
Horn, Mickey Hart, Steven Halpern, David Darling,
Randall Bramblett, Michael Vetter, Gabrielle Roth,
Nina Wise, Jiri Stivn, Patricia Ellsberg, Alex Grey, Silvia
Nakkach, Lorin Hollander, Tara Tupper, Nina Simons,
Jon Voight, Jai Uttal, Georey Gordon, Russell Walder,
Vishnu Tattva Das, Barbara Framm, Susan Grin,
Robert Bly, Robert Schwartz, Gloria Steinem, Isabel
Allende, Jill Purce, Georgia Kelly, Steve Roach, Rusty
Schweickart, Raizes Caboclas Orchestra, Mar Azul
Capoeira group, and Lost at Last; and politicsKaran
Singh, Jerry Brown, John Vasconcellos, Jim Garrison,
Burnum Burnum, and Sulak Sivaraksa.
Documents of the ITA
Te following Denition and Description of
the ITA, as well as its Teoretical Position and General
Strategy and Specic Goals were produced at the time
of the organizations founding and evidently were
upgraded over time. Tey are reproduced as they were
last documented, with slight editing, and they are as
apropos today as they were in January, 1980 when rst
signed by ITAs founding president, Stan Grof.
Denition and Description of the ITA
Te ITA is a scientic organization that unites
individuals of dierent nationalities, professions, and
philosophical or spiritual preferences who share the
transpersonal orientation. Tat means that using the
specic methods of their disciplines and the results of
their observations they are moving toward or have arrived
at the recognition of the fundamental unity underlying
the world of separate beings and objects and are applying
this new understanding in their respective elds.
In theory, the ITA supports the development
of new scientic paradigms recognizing the role of
consciousness and creative intelligence in the universe,
emphasizing the unity of the mind and body, and
studying human beings in their complex interpersonal,
social, ecological, and cosmic context. It is interested
in bridging the gaps existing at present between
various scientic disciplines and seemingly disparate or
contradictory approaches, such as ancient wisdom and
modern science or the Eastern spiritual philosophies and
Western pragmatism. Te ITA encourages all serious
eorts to formulate a comprehensive and integrated
understanding of the cosmos and of human nature.
In practice, the ITA works to facilitate the
application of the new principles and conceptual
frameworks to therapy, scientic research, education,
spiritual practice, economy, ecology, politics, and
other areas of human life. Te following groups can
be mentioned as typical representatives of the ITA
membership:
1. Psychiatrists and psychologists with a transpersonal
orientation, interested in consciousness research,
mystical states and other experiences of non-ordinary
realities, metavalues and metamotivations, meditation
and other forms of spiritual practice, clinical and
laboratory techniques of inducing unusual states of
consciousness, paranormal phenomena, therapeutic
value of the death-rebirth process and unitive
experiences, revisioning of everyday life, spiritual
emergency, and other related subjects.
2. Physicians who are trying to overcome the mechanistic
and overspecialized approaches of medicine and
develop a holistic understanding of human beings,
including the psychological, interpersonal, social,
philosophical, and spiritual dimension. Such an
orientation is usually associated with an interest in
the healing potential of the organism, awareness of
the relevance of emotional and transpersonal factors
for the disease process, and exploration of alternative
approaches to therapy. An important task of the
medically oriented members of the ITA is to develop
models of the mind, body, and the central nervous
system that would bridge the present gap between
biology, medicine, and transpersonal psychology.
3. Scientists exploring the philosophical implications of
modern physics, the nature of reality, the relationship
between consciousness and matter, the role of creative
intelligence in the universe, and the convergence of
modern science and mysticism.
4. Anthropologists holding a transpersonal orientation,
studying shamanic practices, rites of passage, spiritual
healing ceremonies, trance phenomena, aboriginal
technologies of inducing non-ordinary states of
consciousness, and development of paranormal
abilities by individuals and entire groups, or native
religions, mythologies, and cosmologies.
5. Educators interested in the application of the
principles and techniques of transpersonal psychology
to education and to the process of enhancing learning
capacity and creativity.
6. Teologians, priests, spiritual teachers, and creative
thinkers interested in direct experiences of spiritual
realities and techniques of inducing them, as well as
in attempting to bridge the gap between spirituality,
philosophy, and science.
7. Practitioners of complementary medicine, holistic
health, and alternative health modalities who seek
to understand and treat the whole human being.
8. Sociologists, economists, ecologists, politicians,
philosophers, and members of other groups trying to
develop conceptual systems and practical approaches
that can help to overcome the antagonism between
individuals and groups separated by racial, sexual,
cultural, social, and political dierences or economic
interests, and facilitate interpersonal, international,
and interspecies synergy, as well as ecological
harmony.
9. Musicians, painters, sculptors, dancers, poets, and
other artists who are interested in conveying through
various media the nature of transpersonal experiences
or transpersonal philosophy.
10. Individuals who have paranormal abilities, have
had episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness
or are involved in systematic spiritual practice and
search for a deeper understanding of their personal
process or are willing to share their experiences with
interested researchers and audiences.
Teoretical Position
and General Strategy of the ITA
1. To emphasize inner life, quality of the human
experience, self-actualization, and the evolution of
consciousness, as compared to a one-sided focus on the
quantity and quality of external material indicators,
and to acknowledge the importance of spiritual needs
and impulses as integral aspects of human nature. To
recognize subjective experiences and introspection as
valid sources of scientic data.
2. To respect every individuals right to pursue the
spiritual path and choose his or her own approach to
self-discovery. Tis is based on the assumption that
systematic self-exploration conducted with integrity
and honesty will eventually lead to the recognition
of the unity underlying creation and result in a better
adjustment of the individual to family members,
fellow humans, and nature than externally imposed
and enforced rules and restrictions.
3. To explore and develop safe and eective techniques
of in-depth self-exploration and inner transformation
and to make these approaches available as a
complement to the typical Western strategies of
problem-solving that rely entirely on manipulation
and control of the external world.
4. To encourage and emphasize complementarity,
synergy, and cooperation versus antagonism and
competition, a holistic approach versus the focus on
isolated aspects of reality, and harmonious tuning into
the cosmic process versus manipulative intervention.
5. To maintain an open-minded approach to the
exploration of the world unimpeded by rigid
adherence to the existing paradigms. Tis is based on
the recognition that reality is innitely more complex
than any scientic theory can describe and that
theoretical models of any kind are just temporary
approximations and integrations of the data known at
a particular time; they can never represent an accurate,
exhaustive, and nal description of objective reality.
Specic Goals of the ITA
1. To create a network of cooperating organizations in
dierent countries of the world that would locally
organize lectures, seminars, and workshops with
transpersonal focus.
2. To facilitate international exchange of information
in the form of guest lecturers, researchers, students,
books, journals, articles, lms, and tapes.
3. To apply the transpersonal theory and its specic
practical approaches to the pressing problems in the
world, particularly reducing the political tensions and
the danger of wars, helping various underprivileged
groups, and alleviating the ecological crisis.
4. To publish an international journal reecting the
basic philosophy of the ITA.
5. To organize and coordinate international research
project focusing on crosscultural comparison of
various transpersonal phenomena, such as spiritual
practices, healing ceremonies, culture-bound forms
of transpersonal states, rites of passage, attitudes
toward death, near-death-experiences, paranormal
performances, etc.
6. To encourage the establishment of chairs and
departments at universities and other teaching
facilities oering transpersonally oriented courses
and training.
7. To continue the tradition of the International
Transpersonal Conferences. Te past thirteen
conferences were held in Iceland, Finland, Brazil,
Australia, India, Switzerland, Japan, USA,
Czechoslovakia, and Ireland.
8. To raise funds for an International Center for
Transpersonal Studies to be established in the San
Francisco Bay Area. Tis is an ambitious and long-
term project and the ITA board deeply appreciates
any advice and assistance in this regard.
Death and Rebirth of the ITA
After the 2004 International Transpersonal
Conference in Palm Springs, CA, the ITA dissolved
as an organization when Stan and Christina Grof did
not want to invest time and energy into yet another
transpersonal conference and none of their transpersonal
friends who they approached was willing to take on the
task. Te death of ITA was noticed when it became
apparent to two individuals that there was a lacuna
created by its absence. Specically, Harris Friedman,
Editor of the International Journal of Transpersonal
Studies (see <transpersonalstudies.org>), was looking for
an organization to sponsor this journal after Saybrook
Graduate School, its previous owner, had some nancial
diculties and withdrew its commitment to the
journal. It occurred to Friedman that an international
journal would be best sponsored by an international
organization, something he began to discuss with the
then Managing Editor of the IJTS, Glenn Hartelius, as
well as other members of the journals editorial board,
particularly Les Lancaster, IJTSs Coordinating Editor,
who accepted the role of exploring how to use the
journals website to link the international transpersonal
communityand who also received a small grant
from the British Psychological Society to fund this
eort. Simultaneously David Luko, Co-president of
ATP, began to explore the possibility of forming a new
international organization, which led to his creating
a google group (see http://atpweb.org/googlegroup/)
for what he called the International Associations of
Transpersonal Psychology, which was conceptualized
to become an organization of organizations, uniting the
various other worldwide transpersonal organizations.
At the World Congress of Spirituality and Psychology
held in Delhi, India in January 2008, Luko sponsored
a meeting to discuss forming such a group, which
was well attended, including by Friedman, Hartelius,
Lancaster, Luko, and many others. As a follow-up
to that meeting, there was discussion on the google
group from some of the meetings participants, as
well as others who joined in, regarding the shape
and direction of such a new organization. Friedman
advocated exploring a resurrection of the ITA name and,
after much debate on the google group, it was decided
to name the new organization ITA, after the original
ITAand to continue the ITA tradition, including its
conferences. Stan Grof gave his blessing to the idea and
Friedman oered to solicit funding from the Floraglades
Foundation, a nonprot organization that owns IJTS, to
incorporate ITA again, this time as a Florida nonprot.
Te participants on the google group agreed to support
this plan with initial ocers being Friedman serving as
its President, Luko as Vice President, and Hartelius as
Secretary and Treasurerand with the initial ocers
being the incorporating board.

ITAs Future
After incorporation occurs,
1
a number of future
steps are anticipated. First, a mission statement and
other documents for the newly resurrected ITA need to
be developed or further specied. All involved in this
discussion seem to agree that extending the tradition
of holding international transpersonal conferences is a
high priority and already there is discussion of holding
the next such conference in either Brazil or Russia. In
addition, an expansion of the ITA board to include
leaders from the global transpersonal community is in
line, as is development of a website that can link the
international transpersonal community. Current plans
call for a transfer of the IJTS to ITA; as part of this
transition, Friedman will relinquish the journals editor
role to devote more time to presiding over ITA, while
Hartelius has agreed to replace Friedman as IJTSs editor.
All in all, these are exciting times for the international
transpersonal community and everyone interested is
invited to participate in ITAs newly unfolding future.
oooo Note
1. Te ITA was incorporated on May 27, 2008.
About the Authors
Stan Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fty
years of experience in research of non-ordinary states
of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances
and various non-pharmacological methods. Currently,
he is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute
of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco and
Wisdom University in Oakland, CA, conducts pro-
fessional training programs in holotropic breathwork
and transpersonal psychology, 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 October 2007, he received the
prestigious Vision 97 Award from the Dagmar and
Vaclav Havel Foundation in Prague. Among his pub-
lications are over 140 papers in professional journals
and the books Realms of the Human Unconscious;
LSD Psychotherapy; Te Adventure of Self-Discovery;
Beyond the Brain; Te Cosmic Game; Psychology of the
Future; When the Impossible Happens; Te Ultimate
Journey; Spiritual Emergency; and Te Stormy Search
for the Self (the last two with Christina Grof ). He may
be reached at: stanG@infoasis.com.
Harris Friedman, PhD, received his degree from
Georgia State University in psychology. He is Research
Professor of Psychology at University of Florida, as well
as Professor Emeritus at Saybrook Graduate School
and a licensed psychologist. He has written over 100
articles and book chapters, focusing primarily on sci-
entic approaches to transpersonal psychology. He
has also authored the Self-Expansiveness Level Form, a
widely-used measure of transpersonal self-concept, and
edits the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.
He may be reached at harrisfriedman@oraglades.org.
David Luko, PhD, is a and Professor of Psychology
at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and a
licensed psychologist in California. He is author of
70 articles and chapters on spiritual issues and mental
health, co-author of the DSM-IV category Religious
or Spiritual Problem, co-president of the Institute for
Spirituality and Psychology and of the Association for
Transpersonal Psychology, and maintains the Spiritual
Competency Resource Center at www.spiritualcompe-
tency.com
Glenn Hartelius is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, and secre-
tary of the newly re-formed International Transpersonal
Association. Te focus of his research is in the areas of
consciousness studies, somatic psychology, phenomenol-
ogy, intersubjective inquiry, the participatory paradigm,
post-Cartesian philosophy, and transpersonal psychology.
He may be reached at ghartelius@mac.com.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 63
Approaches to Transpersonal Psychotherapy:
Introduction to Special Topic Section
Harris Friedman
Gainesville, FL, USA
Glenn Hartelius

Palo Alto, CA, USA
T
ranspersonal psychotherapy, as the practical
application of transpersonal psychology, has
arguably received less attention in transpersonal
literature than the broad conceptual frameworks of
the discipline. Yet it is the clinical embodiments of
transpersonal principles that have the potential to bring
transformative energies into the practice of psychology.
As a small contribution toward this enterprise, this issues
special topic section presents ve very diverse papers
focused on transpersonal psychotherapy.
Liora Birnbaum, Aiton Birnbaum, and Ofra
Mayseless explicate a way to understand various levels
of bringing spirituality into psychotherapy in their
paper, Te Role of Spirituality in Mental Health
Interventions: A Developmental Perspective. Tis
clearly-presented stage model can serve as a useful guide
for experienced transpersonal psychotherapists who seek
to better conceptualize their own way of introducing
transpersonal content into therapeutic arenas. It may
also provide encouragement to psychotherapists who
have been thus far hesitant to introduce a transpersonal
approach into their work to sense a way to both begin
working in this mode, as well as oering insight into how
deeper engagement of this sort might be accomplished.
Jos M. Tirado, in his paper titled, Te Buddhist
Notion of Emptiness and its Potential Contribution
to Psychology and Psychotherapy, contrasts Western
and Eastern views of the individual, focusing on how
overly-narrow and reied Western views of the self as
an isolated monad may lead to psychological diculties
which, in turn, might be remedied by Eastern views and
their related practices, particularly as derived from the
rich insights stemming from the Buddhist tradition.
Specically, this could lead to the recognition of a
dierently conceived and constructed sense of self as
part of healing in psychotherapy.
In contrast to how transpersonal studies so
often turn to the rich insights within Eastern cultures
while ignoring the equally rich and often forgotten
Western spiritual traditions, Dennis Patrick Slattery
explores the applicability of a classic poem in his paper,
Dantes Terza Rima in Te Divine Comedy: Te Road of
Terapy. Te map provided in this poem, which is much
more than a mere cognitive map but, rather, a coherent
literary device to alter consciousness, operates through
a constantly oscillating rhythm uniting past, present,
and future in a tapestry of history, memory, mimesis,
and myth. Together, these can serve as a transpersonal
guide to the journey clients take in psychotherapy, as
they learn to relate their personal narratives of past,
present, and possible future selves to the heartbeat of
their more mundane lives and their higher spirituality.
In the Integral Approach to Mental Suering,
Laura Boggio Gilot proposes a model of psychological
suering that unites scientic psychology and meditative
wisdom. Trough comparing these disparate traditions,
she expands both developmental and psychotherapeutic
theory, providing many insights applicable to the
practice of psychotherapy.
Last, Andre Salom, in Te Terapeutic
Potentials of a Museum Visit, outlines the
transformational potential of museums. As the repository
of archetypal objects, museums can elicit transpersonal
experiences and can be used as part of psychotherapy
to promote expanded awareness and transpersonal
growth.
Together, these ve papers share a common
theme, namely that the range of possibilities for
developing and rening transpersonal approaches
to psychotherapy are only in the beginning stage of
being explored. It is our hope that this special topic
section will stimulate such exploration and encourage
psychotherapists to creatively reach out with avowedly
transpersonal approaches in their work.
Harris Friedman, Editor
Glenn Hartelius, Editor
Friedman & Hartelius
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 65 Spirituality in Mental Health Interventions
Te Role of Spirituality
in Mental Health Interventions:
A Developmental Perspective
Liora Birnbaum Aiton Birnbaum
Kfar Yona, Israel Kfar Yona, Israel

Ofra Mayseless
Haifa University
Haifa, Israel
Tis article presents a four-level developmental description of the extent to which clinicians
apply spirituality in therapy. At the rst level, clinicians begin to sense dissonance regarding
their traditional, positivist worldview while conducting conventional psychotherapy, espe-
cially in cases involving life-threatening situations or loss. At the second level, clinicians
open up to the possibility of the existence of a metaphysical reality and to spiritual/transper-
sonal beliefs expressed by clients. At the third level, clinicians may cautiously contact this
transcendental reality and seek ways to utilize this dimension to access information relevant
to therapy. At the fourth level, clinicians actively engage in implementing transpersonal
interventions aimed at facilitating change and healing. Tese levels of integration are delin-
eated along with inherent changes in therapist worldview, perceived professional role, and
relevant dilemmas.
T
here is a large body of empirical evidence
suggesting links between spiritual and religious
experiences and health (Miller, 1999; Koening
& Larson, 2001; Koening, McCullough, & Larson,
2001; Pargament, 1997), thus underscoring the
important role of patients spirituality in their mental
health. In clinical practice, too, greater attention is being
placed on the role of religious faith and spirituality in
an eort to humanize psychotherapy (Beck, 2003) and
to bring a more comprehensive and holistic approach to
intervention (Frame, 2003; Miller, 1999, 2003; Richards
& Bergin, 1997, 2004; Shafranske, 1996; Sperry, 2001).
Internationally, mental health professional associations
have highlighted the need for developing sensitivity to
this life dimension (Culliford, 2002) because: in every
human being there seems to be a spiritual dimension, a
quality that goes beyond religious aliation that strives
for inspiration, reverence, awe, meaning and purpose,
even in those who do not believe in God (Murray &
Zentner, 1989, p. 259).
For example, in a longitudinal study by the
Higher Education Research Institute (HERI, 2004)
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),
112,000 undergraduate students at 236 colleges around
the United States (US) were surveyed in order to
understand their perceptions of spirituality and its role
in their lives. Most students demonstrated a remarkably
high level of interest and participation in the spiritual
domain, with many involved in a spiritual search and/or
a search for meaning and goals in life, and reporting a
sense of commitment to relevant beliefs. Moreover, they
arrived at the university with the expectation that their
academic pursuits would further not only accumulation
of theoretical or professional knowledge but also enhance
their spiritual development.
Similarly in a smaller, clinical sample of seriously
ill patients with diagnoses including schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, schizoaective
disorder, and personality disorder (Koening & Larson,
2001), 60% reported that religion/spirituality, including
transpersonal beliefs, had a signicant positive impact
on their illness.
Tus, there is growing recognition that spirit-
uality represents a central factor in individuals lives and
of the need to take it into consideration in mental health
interventions. It is, however, as yet unclear how this
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 66 Birnbaum, Birmbaum, & Mayseless
sensitivity to the spiritual domain might be implemented
and what might constitute a full acknowledgement of this
dimension in individual psychotherapy (see discussions
by Corbett & Stein, 2005; Elkins, 2005; Epstein, 1995;
Germer, Siegal, & Fulton, 2005; Luko & Lu, 2005;
Miller, 1999; Shafranske & Sperry, 2005; Welwood,
1985, 2002).
In this paper we present a conceptual discussion of
the possible ways by which spirituality might be (and has
been) incorporated in mental health interventions. We
suggest a developmental approach involving various levels
of integrating spirituality into mental health practice.
Successive levels denote a more comprehensive and perhaps
advanced stage in the introduction of spirituality into the
sphere of mental health. Te various levels representation
of increased spiritual understanding and use of relevant
concepts and techniques in therapy may also be seen to
reect parallel shifts in attitude and practice evident in
the world of psychology. Tey also mirror gradual shifts
in the way clinicians perceive themselves as helpers and
the nature of the service they provide their clients.
We have identied four such levels of spirituality
integration, which can be briey described as follows:
(a) Dissonance: Te clinician maintains their traditional
materialist position but senses dissonance between its
implications and the needs of clients in certain extreme
situations; (b) Opening up: Te clinician acknowledges
the validity of diverse world views, including the
existence of a transcendent or transpersonal reality,
and passively accepts and responds to clients spiritual
material; (c) Contact with caution: Te clinician actively
acquires knowledge about the self in treatment
through various spiritual channels, for example, accessing
altered states of consciousness; (d) Engaged: Te clinician
is able to fully integrate and implement transpersonal
interventions to promote health and empower clients.
Each of these levels is related to ontological and
epistemological shifts and also involves various ethical
dilemmas as to the nature and purpose of intervention
and the techniques used, as well as the nature of the
relationship between clinician and client change.
Dissonance
O
ne reason for the neglect of the spiritual dimension
by mental health professionals has to do with the
19
th
century positivist worldview regarding the material
world as the only existing world. Within this paradigm
there was no room for the metaphysical. Te soul was
basically seen as derived from the physical body or, within
a dualistic approach, as separate but dependent on the
body; when the body dies, everything (mental world,
soul) ceases to exist. Spiritual experiences and beliefs
were mostly seen as reecting anomalous activity of
the mind or brain, or as a sort of delusional belief. In
the rst case (anomalous mind or brain activity), these
experiences or beliefs (e.g., talking to someone who
does not exist in material reality) might have been seen
as reecting disease or drug abuse. In the second case
(delusional thinking), well functioning individuals who
believe in the existence of a metaphysical, transcendental
world were often seen as deranged, irrational, or as lying
to themselves in this specic domain. Such illogical
beliefs were attributed to a fear of death and diculty
to accept the truth that we completely cease to exist
once we die. Alternatively, when such ideas were part of
a recognized religious belief system, their validity was
neither contested nor accepted; they were conceived to
be outside the domain of valid scientic knowledge:
Tere are things you know and there are things you
believe in (Mayseless, 2006). (Yet we note that clinical
interventions within a religious framework by priests,
ministers, rabbis, or pastors did openly acknowledge and
use the spiritual and transpersonal dimensions all along,
[Koening, McCullough, & Larson, 2001].)
Interestingly, there were certain situations
in clinical practice that seemed to allow the use of
patients spiritual beliefs in the existence of a higher
power and /or another reality without raising undue
criticism. Tese were conditions of existential crisis
and life threatening situations such as terminal illness,
loss or grief, or contemplation of suicide. In such cases,
issues related to meaning, higher purpose in life, the
existence of a higher being, life after physical death, and
other spiritual concerns are quite common. In the case
of suicide contemplation, for example, Birnbaum and
Birnbaum (2005) identied central concerns regarding
relationship with God (perceived as forgiving, punishing,
guiding, or containing), belief in reincarnation, and life
after death.
Such situations were open to diverse interven-
tions based on patients spiritual beliefs or those oered
by therapists. Perception of a continuing relationship
with a deceased person, a search for a higher purpose or
mission in life, and the concept of God or a higher power
and its relationship with the individual have long been
perceived as intuitive and integral parts of the therapeutic
discourse in these particular situations. Te same goes for
the famous 12-step approach to addictions, which was
built upon acceptance of, and reliance on, a higher power
(Miller, 1999).
Te question is: Why? What is it in these
circumstances that shields them from practitioner
resistance and condemnation of irrational spiritual
beliefs? Tere seem to be three relevant themes in such
life threatening situations that allow clinicians to go
beyond their dominant materialist beliefs: (1) Tese cases
are usually perceived as crises that demand individuals
ultimate inner resources of strength, including their
spiritual beliefs, which receive legitimacy in light of the
crisis; (2) Te human quest for hope in such situations
calls for solutions beyond human control and rational
perception; if practitioners adhered to their usual reality
perception, no hope, solace or consolation would be
forthcoming; (3) Compassion towards seriously ill or
dying people relaxes practitioners judgmental criteria;
individuals are given the privilege of observing their lives
from a transcendental-holistic perspective without having
to worry about being seen as irrational.
In sum, at this rst level, spiritual beliefs and
concerns are usually not evoked by the clinician but
are acknowledged and allowed without criticism due to
extreme situations. Of course this delineation is highly
prototypical and, hence, may not do justice to the
exibility with which many clinicians actually exhibit
when spiritual issues are raised in therapy. Te point
we are making is that at this level professionals typical
ontological assumptions (only the material exists; the
mental world dies when the body dies) and epistemological
beliefs (we cannot get information from deceased people,
higher beings, or a cosmic, universal wisdom) signicantly
limit the therapeutic process. Teir inuence may be all
the more powerful and insidious since they are often
not openly acknowledged or stated, yet they are likely
to aect both style and content of therapy (e.g., what is
considered relevant and solicited in the evaluation and
what is not, what receives attention or emphasis and what
is downplayed or ignored, what is merely allowed and
what is reinforced), thus coloring interpretations given,
interventions oered, and the entire encounter.
Some relevant questions and dilemmas relating
to this level might include: Should clinicians accept non-
scientic phenomena as legitimate? Should they honor
such concerns and worldviews even if they clearly do not
share them and actually think that they are fantastic
creations of the imagination? For example, if a widow tells
a therapist about her conversations with her late husband
whom she believes contacts her from the other side,
should clinicians (as many do) interpret this as an internal
conversation with her representation of her husband,
or should they accept the possibility that the deceased
actually exists in another dimension and continue from
there to explore her possible relations with him in other
incarnations?
Opening Up
T
he second phase in the inclusion of spiritual facets
in mental health interventions involves a personal
paradigm shift on the part of the clinician. In this stage,
therapists can place spirituality and psychology side-by-
side. Tis requires that they relinquish the positivism
and empiricism characteristic of the previous stage in
favor of a post-modern or existential-humanistic position
(Capra, 1983; Lorimer, 1998; Ravindra, 2000). From
such a post-positivist view, the clinician can question
the validity of 19
th
century empirical science, realizing
that there is no objective reality, only interpretations of
realities. Hence, a clients view of realityhis or her life
story or narrativeis what matters, and clinicians cannot
and should not disqualify it, just as they cannot and
should not convince a client who believes in God or in a
certain religious tradition that this is simply a subjective,
non-valid belief. According to this view, a spiritual or
transcendental reality can be accepted as a legitimate
worldview to be explored in therapy if and when the
client raises such issues.
If an existential-humanistic view is adopted,
and especially if the assumptions of transpersonal
psychology are considered (Wilber, 1977), the paradigm
shift involves entertaining the possibility that a spiritual
sphere actually exists and may be explored. A clinician
at this level would assert that if spiritual phenomena or
beliefs have any inuence on the mental and physical
world, there should be no obstacles in the way of assessing
this inuence via accepted research methodologies
(Mayseless, 2006). In line with this view is the large
body of research examining associations between
spiritual activities such as meditation and varied physical
and mental states. Studies have described the impact of
meditation on the nervous system, including changes
of brain waves, changes of perception, improvement
of emotional regulation, and more (Anand, China, &
Singh, 1961; Brown & Engler, 1986; Davidson, Kabat-
Zinn, & Schumacher, 2003; Kasamatsu & Harari, 1966;
Lutz, Greschar, Rawlings, Ricard, & Davidson, 2004).
Scientic inquiry into the relationship between
spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of reality has
taken many other forms. For example, Sabom (1982) and
vanLommel, Wees, Meyers, and Elerich (2001) have
researched near death experiences. Schwartz and Simon
(2002) have conducted experiments examining scientic
evidence for life after death via channeling. Stevenson
(1997) reported on work with children suggestive of
reincarnation. Tough these studies may not furnish
conclusive evidence for spiritual beliefs, they reect
the capacity to apply scientic methodology to the eld.
One of the most rigorous attempts of this kind is the
series of experiments examining anomalous processes of
information or energy transfer (i.e., telepathy; Bem &
Honorton, 1994, p. 4), and Schnidt, Schneider, Utts, and
Walachs (2004) meta-analysis of experiments examining
the feeling of being stared at by a distant observer in
another room. Tese experiments provided evidence for a
small but reliable eect of information or energy transfer
that cannot be explained by current scientic theories.
In accordance with this ontological and
epistemological shift (i.e., accepting the possibility
that a spiritual realm exists), some researchers have
experimented with interventions reecting such change.
An interesting example can be found in a recent study
where dreams were interpreted in a series of clinical
sessions using either a spiritual or a non-spiritual approach
(Davis & Hill, 2005). Te study used a controlled pre-
post design and concluded by suggesting the benet of
incorporating spirituality into dream interpretation for
spiritually oriented clients (p. 492). Another intriguing
example can be found in the psychomanteum research
conducted at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
in Palo Alto, California (Hastings et al., 2002). A
psychomanteum process involving mirror-gazing was
used in a research setting to explore the possibility of
facilitated contact with deceased friends and relatives
and to collect data on these experiences and their eects
on bereavement. Te process included three stages: (1)
talking about memories of the deceased, (2) sitting in a
darkened room gazing into a mirror while thinking of
the deceased, and (3) discussing the resulting process
with the clinician. Te study reported strong experiences
and a few apparent contacts.
Obviously, such research not only challenges
practitioners limits in terms of their beliefs, but it may
also raise several dilemmas: To what extent should their
openness to a metaphysical reality be expressed in the
therapy room? Is it necessary for practitioners to stretch
and modify their own beliefs in order to meet clients
spiritual needs and if so, to what extent? Should clinicians
raise these possibilities actively or should they wait for
their clients to raise them and then follow them in their
clinical interventions?
An example of a clinician engaging his or her
client from this second stage may be relevant. A doctor
presented for therapy following traumatic exposure
to severe physical injuries sustained by a young boy in
a biking accident while under his care. After several
sessions, the client reported that as he bent over the boys
body and attempted to tend to his wounds and support
him, he experienced the presence of a woman with long
white hair telling him that he was in the right place and
doing the right thing. He felt surrounded by love and
was lled with a strong sense of inner compassion and
calm. Te therapist had not initiated exploration in such
a direction and was not particularly oriented toward such
metaphysical phenomena, but he reacted to the clients
statement of his experience with complete acceptance
and empathic amazement.
In sum, the second level reects a conceptual shift
that involves ceasing to relate to metaphysical phenom-
ena and altered states of consciousness (channeling
and contacts with alternative realities) as pathological
responses. Te possible acceptance of a metaphysical
reality is reected in the writings of scholars about
the fundamental wholeness and interconnectedness of
human existence (Capra, 1983; Findlay, 2000; Powel,
2001). Tese scholars suggested that if we acknowledge
the existence of such alter-reality, we should not only
respect clients experiences in these domains but also
ask ourselves as practitioners: What is the meaning of
human existence and how do we actively implement our
beliefs relating to these domains? Such questions lead us
to our third level.
Contact with Caution
A
t the third level of incorporating spirituality into
therapeutic practice, the common relationship
between valid knowledge and invalid knowledge is
shattered and spiritual/transpersonal ways of knowing are
accepted as legitimate ways of understanding the world,
the human experience, and gathering information about
them. For example, in such a worldview, the Jungian
concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes
might be accepted as legitimate and used as part of
clinicians interpretations.
Te outlook of the clinician at this level
corresponds with transpersonal and psychospiritual
psychology as rst introduced by William James in 1905
(Benson, 1999). As a leading gure in modern psychology,
he introduced the possible existence of a dimension of
the self that is beyond the conscious ego and through
which the spiritual manifests itself. James concluded (and
after him Jung, 1961) that our consciousness is a small
and limited part of a wider consciousness. Around our
conventional awareness and separated by a thin boundary
lie other types of consciousness, giving access to other
realities and knowledge. James sought to legitimize the
study of the entire range of human experience including
religious experience, mystical states, psychic phenomena,
and non-Western conceptions of personality and
consciousness. In line with this pioneering work, current
conceptualizations of transpersonal experiences view
them as going beyond the ordinary sense of identity or
personality to encompass wider dimensions of the psyche
and the cosmos (Wilber, 1977).
At this level, the changed ontology is reected
mostly in clinicians ways of knowingthat is, their
epistemology. Clinicians may use various means of
accessing transcendental knowledge about themselves,
their clients, clinician-client relationships, and the best
ways to help their clients. One spiritual way of knowing
the world may include therapists ability to use altered
states of consciousness to gain access to intuitive or
transcendental knowledge (Sollod, 1993). Te clinician
may also openly accept and utilize knowledge accessed
by the client through such channels.
Tere are various techniques known to
provide access to such knowledge about the self, such
as the dierent types of meditation (Glickman, 2002;
Germer, Siegal, & Fulton, 2005), as well as channeling
and regression therapies (Jue, 1996). For example,
mindfulness meditation entails clearing the mind and
observing mental, emotional, or imaginary occurrences
while accessing altered states of consciousness. Te
meditator may receive insights: some truth derived from a
universal intelligence (or wisdom). Te process is similar
to the reective orientation advocated by most schools
of psychotherapy. In the words of Epstein (1995), Tis
examination is, by denition, psychological. Its object is
to question the true nature of the self and to end the pro-
duction of self-created mental suering. (p.3). Insights
derived from access to altered states of consciousness
may be expected to include new perspectives and more
holistic and integrative insights regarding life issues and
struggles. For example, in the case of a young woman
who complained of a conictual relationship with her
husband, the focus was the couples inability to share
parenthood; the client felt her husband was withdrawing
and abandoning her to handle their three kids by herself.
After a couple of sessions the feeling in the room was
that therapy was not progressing. Between sessions, the
therapist engaged in meditation focusing on the case and
received information pointing toward the fathers fears
about the oldest son (10 years old) being gay and his
confusion about how to approach the matter. After some
hesitation and tentative exploration around the issue, the
therapist decided to share the results of her meditation
with the client. Te relevance of this issue was quickly
conrmed and facilitated a dramatic shift in the course
of therapy.
In this phase, clinicians accept that an alter-
reality exists and that spiritual issues need to be
addressed. Tey actively collect pertinent information
via various channels but remain hesitant to use such data
in therapeutic interventions with clients. Tey may well
use spiritual dimensions when thinking about the clients
presenting problems, yet they do not present themselves
openly as spiritual or holistic therapists. Various reasons
may underlie such hesitation even among clinicians
who have gone beyond any residual conscious and
unconscious doubts about spirituality characteristic of
level two. Tey may lack knowledge and experience in
implementing such interventions, and they may fear
disapproval by potential clients and their professional
community. In general, the clinician at this level may be
described as a spiritual novice.
In sum, in this phase of incorporating spiritual-
ity into therapy, clinicians acknowledge the existence of
a spiritual realm and recognize and utilize the capacity
to know more about the self and the universe through
connection to higher levels of consciousness. Tey tend,
however, to avoid actively and openly employing spiritual
techniques in therapy sessions, and they use them only
sporadically and with caution. For example, they may
meditate to understand the clients situation and get help
from what they perceive as higher wisdom or external
guidance and use this information in their intervention
without revealing the source of their insights to their
clients.
Some questions surfacing naturally at this
level include: Who should collect the transcendental
knowledge, and how should it be used? Is it the
professional and ethical duty of the clinician to actively
use their spiritual abilities for the benet of their clients?
Should the clinician meditate on behalf of their clients,
even if this was not part of the therapeutic contract? If
so, what measures can the clinician use to assure this
knowledge is reliable? Should the client be asked to
open up for such experiences (e.g., to meditate) and then
discuss the experiences with the therapist? How active
should clinicians be in bringing in their own spiritual
worldview and knowledge? Should the clinician actively
present the client with these ways of knowing?
Engaged
I
n this fourth level, spirituality is fully and actively
incorporated in mental health interventions. Clients are
helped to actively engage in exploring their relationship
with the cosmos/higher power and therapists freely use
their own power or connection with higher existence
to facilitate healing. Such clinicians own a distinctly
spiritual and holistic worldview, and actively apply it in
dening clinician-client relationships, conceptualizing
presenting problems, and introducing various techniques
and interventions in and outside therapy sessions. Te
various spiritual denitions of the relationship and the
therapeutic process, as well as the therapeutic techniques,
are derived from healing traditions, which emphasize the
central importance of the connection of all life to cosmic
realities. In this view, healing is usually seen as restoring
a condition of wholeness or harmony, in contrast to
psychotherapeutic approaches that perceive human
beings as isolated from universal and spiritual purposes
(Sollod, 1993).
Te ways in which people are interconnected
with one another (including with the therapist) can
also be explored as part of the spiritual connection with
the universal collective consciousness. Tis involves
seeking meaning behind signicant relationships and
life events in a dierent manner than the usual line of
inquiry, simply because it relies on dierent assumptions
regarding reality. From such a perspective, a search for
an assumed pre-existing and higher common purpose,
which emphasizes primarily spiritual connectedness and
a natural unity between clinician and client, is common.
(Birnbaum, 2005).
For example, rather than the why me? question
clients often ask regarding their problem (and therapists
in reference to certain clients), clients may become aware
of a sense of mission in their current life in which the
current problem plays some role. Te following questions
can be asked: Assuming there is a higher purpose behind your
life events and that they arent random, what do you think
is the meaning of your illness/problem at this point in
your life? What could be the meaning of the fact that the
two of us are working together in this particular setting?
Terapists can ask themselves, How do I understand
the assignment of this particular client to me, now?
Clinicians and clients can work this way during
ordinary waking consciousness (everyday mindfulness)
and also using altered states of consciousness.
Interconnectedness can be taken a step further when
the therapist has expertise in entering dierent states of
awareness and can use this ability to enhance a variety
of therapeutic processes. In such states, clinicians rely on
factors outside their ordinary ego to facilitate healing.
Tey are then open to other states of receptivity, which
may involve a deep feeling of unselsh love, enhanced
sensitivity to the other, and contact with inner resources
of compassion and understanding (Sollod, 1993), as
well as transcendental knowledge. Clients too may be
encouraged to use various techniques such as meditation,
channeling, past life regression (Jue, 1996), or other
healing procedures to nd out about themselves, about
their problems and about the universe.
Tis phase of incorporating spirituality in
therapy raises specic ethical and professional issues.
If clients can be encouraged to acquire such skills,
which clients are appropriate for it? Can every client
benet from some form of spiritual self-inquiry? What
would indications and contraindications for this be, in
terms of the client and their life circumstances? With
what cultural and special populations and problems, at
what ages and developmental stages, and at what point
in therapy might such interventions be more or less
appropriate?
Finally, this phase may represent the apex of
clinicians professional-spiritual development and the
development of their self-identity. At this stage, therapists
may have a sort of identity crisis (or opportunity), as they
wonder: Am I a therapist or a healer? Is my therapeutic
work geared toward problem solving or toward a
spiritual quest? Are these two distinct ways to achieve
transformation of the self? How do I as a clinician dene
myself, the type of work I do and the kind of service I
provide for my clients?
Discussion
F
our levels of therapist incorporation of spirituality
in mental health practice have been suggested and
illustrated. Te rst two levels represent primarily
epistemological and ontological shifts in clinicians
worldviews, while the next two levels reect translation
of the continuing shift into action. Te four levels taken
together are viewed as developmental. Tey involve a
gradual increase in the centrality of spirituality in mental
health intervention, each presenting dierent associated
professional dilemmas, ways of conceptualizing the
relationship, and roles clinicians play in therapy.
Important implications relating to this developmental
process revolve around two major themes: similarities
and dierences between psychotherapy and healing and
the changes implied by this model in the realm of the
therapeutic relationship.
Sollod (1993) has suggested that the similarities
between psychotherapy and healing have to do with the
therapeutic situation, involving a client with a problem
and a helper who is viewed as the potential healer.
However, following Welwood (1985), we might want to
distinguish between the processes of psychotherapy and of
spiritual quest. Are these simply two dierent approaches
to achieve mental health and personal fulllment?
In a lecture on mindfulness and healing, Epstein
(2005) provided an interesting working assumption
that identies the need to employ spiritual techniques:
You cant solve a problem with the same consciousness
that created it. His approach emphasizes that healing
is about our relationship with and attitude toward our
experiences, among them our illness. He argued that
people who seek cure are those who look for a way to
get rid of the sickness and make it disappear, whereas
people who seek to heal themselves engage in a journey
of exploring and studying their true self. Such a mindful
journey encourages the client to ask: Is there a meaning
and a message behind what is happening in my mind?
What is the opportunity? How can the problem serve
as a vehicle to healing? In other words, Epstein talks
about healing the whole for the sake of curing the ill
part. In this approach, the clinician is not viewed just
as a therapist or a practitioner but as a healer. Tus, the
dierent developmental levels discussed in this paper
may also be conceived as involving changes in the role of
the clinician from curing to healing.
Te shifts in understanding, learning, and
treating necessarily lead also to a change in clinicians
professional identity and self-perception. Terapists
who perceive themselves and their role dierently may
be expected to structure dierent types of relationships
with their clients while trying to sort out some of the
dilemmas connected to spiritual practices. For example,
Sollod (1993) suggested that in cases where altered states
of consciousness are used in the course of therapy, there
is no clear separation between the processes of the healer
and those of the client, and these lead occasionally to
the point of mindful fusion. Tis unusual fusion
contradicts the focus in traditional dynamic approaches
on dierentiation between therapist and client. Even
if we were to set aside such untraditional phenomena,
mutual implementation of spiritual practices in therapy
can be seen as an aspect of human interconnectedness
with the potential to transform the clinician-client
relationship into a mutual spiritual journey.
Birnbaum and Birnbaum (2005) suggested that
spiritual practices, which demand special qualications,
should be carried out only by trained professionals
and that careful appraisal should be employed as some
of these practices and ways of viewing the world may
not be suitable for everyone. Spiritually-oriented and
trained clinicians should be able to assess, using the
various spiritual means at their disposal, whether their
clients are ready and open to view the world from a
transpersonal perspective and to use transpersonal ways
of knowing in the therapeutic session. Clinicians will
obviously collect and use information from the various
sources they believe in (both traditional and spiritual),
but the introduction of dierent ways of thinking and
working on the problem or illness should be guided
rst and foremost by the needs and mental and spiritual
condition of the client.
Te view presented here is an attempt to
integrate the dierent voices that are raised in reference to
spirituality and therapy and to make sense of the various
modes in which spiritually-sensitive therapists work.
We do not, however, suggest that all clinicians should
examine themselves according to our proposed model
and nd ways to acquire transpersonal strategies. It may
well be that the incorporation of spirituality in clinical
work best begins naturally with the clinicians awareness
of clients spiritual needs, and that empathic and sensitive
clinicians would not ignore such needs regardless of their
personal religious or spiritual preference or lack thereof.
Te diverse changes discussed here might serve
to encourage us all to expand our views regarding the
situation in which one human being seeks help from
another. Clinicians need not experience themselves as
healers if they feel detached from certain connotations
associated with that concept; however, they should take
into account that there is more to mental health than the
therapy of the psyche.
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About the Authors
Liora Birnbaum, PhD, is a certied family therapist in
private practice in Israel. She uses mindfulness to develop
experiential working and learning methods in therapy
and in students professional training. She publishes
and presents her work internationally and was the rst
to teach a course on spirituality and social work in
Israel.
Aiton Birnbaum, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist in
private practice in Kfar Yonah, Israel, and an EMDR-
Europe certied consultant in EMDR. He teaches
college courses and publishes in the eld of psychology
and Bible, focusing on topics relevant to clinical and
community psychology such as trauma, loss, and positive
psychology.
Ofra Mayseless, PhD, is the Dean of the Faculty of
Education at the University of Haifa, Israel. She is
a certied clinical psychologist and a professor of
Developmental Psychology. Her current research focuses
on the caregiving/nurturing motivational system as it
manifests itself in leadership, parenting, teaching, and
role reversal, as well as in how it relates to the spiritual
realm and spiritual development.
Te Buddhist Notion of Emptiness
and its Potential Contribution to Psychology and Psychotherapy
Jos M. Tirado
Saybrook Graduate School
Hafnarfordur, Iceland
A growing number of psychologists now have their practices and theories informed by Bud-
dhist meditation practices. Tese practices, however, are themselves deeply informed by the
Buddhist notion of emptiness (nyat). Tis Buddhist concept oers a rich vein of possibili-
ties in informing psychology and psychotherapy. Te present paper examines the develop-
ment and potential of this concept for inuencing these and other areas.
I
n his rst book, Toughts Without a Tinker: Psycho-
therapy from a Buddhist Perspective, Epstein (1995)
beautifully encapsulated within the titles rst
clause a potentially innovative contribution to modern
psychology. Within this intriguing statement are hints of
the Buddhist concept of emptiness, including its possible
benets, prospective applications, and impact on psycho-
therapy. For if there really is no thinker, who precisely
is caught up in the snares of psychological illnesses?
Elaborating on this question, Epstein has said that this
emphasis on the lack of a particular, substantive agent
is the most distinctive aspect of traditional Buddhist
psychological thought (p. 41). He also suggested,
correctly, that this Buddhist notion of a lack of self
may point us toward a new understanding of conscious-
ness.
Te Buddhist answer to this question of who
suers might be posited as follows: the attachment to the
sense of a thinker is the ultimate source of our illness, and
therefore, upon release from this conning xation, our
illness will subside. Yet to whom does this attachment or
xation occur? Our very use of a language that requires
subjects and objects, referring to essential entities and
things, becomes problematic from a Buddhist standpoint
because what is being pointed at is said to be insubstantial,
possessed of an ineable nature. Te potential contribu-
tions this notion might oer to the world of psychology
and psychotherapy are therefore signicant.
While the accumulation of material goods and
the ever-increasing lling up of our lives with more
invasive forms of entertainment and communication
accelerates at seemingly breakneck speed, few would
suggest that our collective lives have become more whole.
Even with an abundance of easily available psychothera-
peutic modalities, hardly any would say we have become
happier or less neurotic. Who can dismiss entirely the
tongue-in-cheek title of a book co-penned by Jungian
analyst James Hillman (Hillman & Ventura, 1993),
Weve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the
Worlds Getting Worse?
Since Buddhism argues that grasping onto the
notion of a self is at the root of the most essential existen-
tial human problem, Buddhist critiques of this notion of
the self might helpfully address the narcissistic emphases
of psychology. Tese critiques are salient because, as
Epstein (1995) stated, the overwhelming dis-ease of
the human condition is narcissism, which he dened in
part as the inability to tolerate unpleasant truths about
oneself (p. 48). According to Epstein, the Buddha was
articulating a vision of a psyche freed from narcissism
(p. 41), adding that, all the insults to our narcissism can
be overcome, the Buddha proclaimed, not by escaping
them but by uprooting the conviction in a self that
needs protecting (p. 45). Few concepts seem as eminently
suited for such a task as the central Buddhist concept
of emptiness. Tis concept directly challenges the very
notion of an independent, inherently existent self and
therefore oers an initially uncomfortable but possibly
groundbreaking palliative to some of the most pressing
psychological diculties in the human condition. Te
positive interpretation of emptiness allows for a philo-
sophically deconstructed yet healthily adaptive self that
responds to psychological challenges with neither narcis-
sistic myopia nor dissociative fragmentation.

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 75 Buddhist Notion of Emptiness in Psychotherapy
It is the purpose of this paper to briey dene
and describe the ramications of adopting this Buddhist
idea into the realm of psychology and thereby hopefully
contribute a bit to its understanding and possible use.
Emptiness
Te English word, emptiness, is universally
agreed upon as a proper translation of the Sanskrit word,
nyat. nyat has been dened as, the ultimate nature
of reality which is the total absence of inherent existence
and self-identity with respect to all phenomena (Coleman,
1993, p. 304 [emphasis added]). It is further character-
ized more specically as empty and void of Perma-
nency, of true Happiness, Personality, and Pleasantness
(Nyanatiloka, 1952, p. 132). Tus, being devoid of any
phenomenal characteristics, void or the indescribable
is the real nature of things (Grimes, 1989, p. 354).
Te word nyat is made of two parts: nya
or empty (its root svi refers to being swollen, as in
a belly, and this lends itself to the image of a swollen
belly, presently devoid of any contents, but laden with
possibilities) and t, describing the quality of being
ascribed to the former part of speech (i.e., equivalent to
the English sux ness): thus, empty-ness. Since within
most Western languages this writer is familiar with the
notion of emptiness is understood as pejoratively negative,
describing the absence of any thing (nihilism in Buddhist
terms), it might be less misleading and more helpful to
follow the broader Buddhist development of this idea as
Buddhism moved from India to Tibet, China, Japan,
and Korea.
It should be noted at the outset that the Buddha
made clear his determination to keep the interpretation
of his teachings away from the two extremes of what
he called nihilism and eternalism. Te former position,
nihilism, would argue that nothingness is the natural
conclusion derived from analyzing the nature of self as
empty. Tis lent itself to the rejection of any Ultimate
Reality and denial of the possibility of apprehending
anything beyond our senses. It had potentially disastrous
consequences morally as well, for if no ultimate standard
for moral behavior exists, it could be argued that no
restraints on moral behavior are necessary.
Te latter concept of eternalism was akin to
Vedantic beliefs in (1) the soul, an eternal, transmigrating
entity possessed of an inherent identity, and (2) God, the
Ultimate substratum of Reality representing Reality in
its truest sense. With regard to this sense of a personal
self, it seems that human dispositionstend to move
in two dierent directions.the rst is in the direction
of absolute negation.the other is in the direction of
making it a permanent and eternal reality (Kalupahana,
1987, p. 40). Neither position was correct according to
the Buddha, and both represented distortions of his own
Middle Way. Tis said, it should be noted that, both
Madhyamaka and Advaita Vedanta deny that ultimate
reality can be understood in a dualistic manner (King,
1995, p. 135 [emphasis added]).
Te eort to translate religious or spiritual
terms from one language to another is always fraught
with diculty. It was no dierent in the transition from
the literary, spiritual languages of the Indian subconti-
nent, Pali and Sanskrit, to East Asia, where many of the
languages adopted the Chinese ideographs (known in
Japanese as kanji) as the whole or part of their own writing
systems. Tese ideographs were able to visually contain a
wealth of information, deposited as it were within each
sub-section (called a radical) of the character, from which
literally tens of thousands of compounds with multiple
meanings could then be made. Te languages themselves
(Chinese in particular, certainly Japanese as well) were
quite comfortable with ambiguities and subtleties, dier-
entiating them from the precision and denitive clarity
of, say, Sanskrit. Te ideograph adopted to represent this
word, nyat, is ku [], which means, sky, [to] make/
be unoccupied, empty (Hadamitzky & Spahn, 1997, p.
92). Its signicance in this discussion lies in the tradi-
tionally dual expositions of its value as a synonymous
reading for nyat.
Te reasoning of the rst reading went as follows:
as the sky is not a thing but rather, a space, it can be
said to be without solidity, empty of things and thingness.
It only hosts, so to speak, all passing phenomena,
remaining without inherent identity or substance (a bird,
for example, in the literal sky image, and thoughts, for
its application to objects of consciousness). So too with
nyat. Tis was the negative formulation. It does not
mean that things do not exist but rather that they are
nothing but appearances (Schuhmacher & Woerner, 1989,
pp. 330-331 [emphasis added]). Traditional Zen imagery,
the moons reection in a dew drop for example, capture
somewhat the essence of what mistaking the image for
the reality might be like.
Tere remained however another positive formu-
lation most emphasized by various Tibetan schools, which
asserted that, while the sky itself is empty of substance,
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 76 Tirado
it might also be characterized as a self-luminous back-
ground to all phenomena, mental or physical, and
pregnant with innite possibilities. While emptiness
is indicated in traditional Madhyamaka by saying what
it is not, in Mahamudra and Dzogchen it is viewed in
positive terms. nyat here becomes openness that is
inseparable from clarity (luminosity) (Schuhmacher &
Woerner, 1989, p. 331).
Tis positive aspect might be of most interest in
modern consciousness studies and its practical applications
within the realm of psychotherapy. By way of example,
the patient who is oered a positive, open-ended vision
of their full potentialities, beyond any and all aspects of
their presenting conditions, will be empowered far more
than the one oered a more constricted sense of self by
the therapist. As well, changes in consciousness associ-
ated with positive mental states have been examined quite
a bit of late, including promising research involving the
Dalai Lama whose interest in these matters has proven
helpful to scientists studying their relationship.
Emptiness, Language, and a Psychology of Self
Western psychology is rooted in an understand-
ably Western view of individuality: a separate self, relating
to a world of separate entities. Tis view might also be
alternatively described as a Judeo-Christian model with
regards to soul and a Cartesian-Newtonian model with
regards to matter. All of which together represent the
foundation of most of what is characterized as Western
thought. Te interaction of these separate entities forms
dynamic relationships, which, through those interactions,
can positively or negatively aect each of the entities in
relationship. For example, when internal views about the
entities outside or the internal components of the indi-
vidual become distorted or inappropriately focused upon,
then psychological diculties may occur.
By contrast, Eastern psychologies (if we may use
that word in this context) are thoroughly informed by
ideas predisposed towards a more collective view of what
constitutes an individual and the world around one. A
sharp distinction between individualism and collec-
tivismcharacterizes important analyses of Western
versus Asian approaches [to psychology] (Rao, 2002, p.
265). A brief examination of the Japanese understanding
of individuals might be helpful here.
Kasulis (1981), in Zen Action, Zen Person,
expounded on denitions of self in Japanese Zen and
their relationships to related Western ideas. In Japanese,
several words are used in speaking of a person: the terms
kojin, ningen, and hito are all used in dierent contexts.
However, as this is a great deal due to Buddhist inu-
ences upon the language and society he noted that,
when the Japanese see someone as an individual
(kojin), they see him or her as one object among
many, but when they see someone as a human being
(ningen), they see that person in a context.While
the individual (kojin) is a real entity, one most fully
becomes a human being (ningen) when one is in
relationship.Te individual becomes meaningful
insofar as he or she is an outgrowth of the relation-
ships established by the operative context, not vice
versa (pp. 6, 9; emphasis added).
We should note that this notion of emptiness, or
at least a set of analogous concepts or positions, has been
tested or touched upon and essentially rejected by Western
thought: Heraclitus, with his image that everything ows
and that you cannot step in the same river twice (Russell,
1984), is one example. Hume, with his empirical observa-
tion that self, other, cause, eect, and more are all merely
habits of mind and concepts overlaid on the bare world of
experience, is another. Daniel Dennett, with his notion
of the mind as having no continuity or unchanging self
(see Rao, 2002) would be a third. So why has the West
run screaming from this idea? How is it that Buddhism
approaches non-self in such a way that is less terrifying
in the East than in the West? In fact, what the Buddha
posited was that instead of a solid, inherent self, there was
only a changing stream of becomingconstantly fed by
perceptions, which does not represent a static entity to
which everything belongs (Kalupahana, 1987, p. 38).
We may further understand the importance
of emptiness by looking at its relationship to another
important Buddhist idea, dependent origination, or
pratitya samutpda. Tis notion, described by some as
interconnectedness, was sometimes utilized to justify the
nascent inux of emptiness into later Buddhist thought.
Since interconnectedness was regarded as an early
Buddhist teaching and therefore considered authorita-
tive, its general thrust contained seeds for a new way of
viewing self. By saying that there exists no thing whose
full identity, arising, sustenance, and eventual passing,
was not due to elaborately intertwined matrices of rela-
tionships to other things similarly entangled, it implied
that nothing therefore existed as an inherently inde-
pendent unit. Pratitya samutpada isthe principle
ofthe essential dependence of things on each other,
i.e., the unreality of separate elements (Murti, 1980,
p. 7 [emphasis in original]). Tis concept could then be
extrapolated to characterize the nature of all existence as
emptinessempty of substance, of properties that suggest
solidity in identity, and of denitive characterization.
It was Ngrjuna, writing in the 2nd/3rd
cent. CE (Murti, 1980), with his collected aphorisms
and dialectic analyses, who ingeniously revived a then-
moribund Buddhist movement by putting forth his
middle path, or Madhyamaka. Te function of the
Madhyamika dialectic is not to bring about a change in
things but in our mentality (p. 233). Ngrjuna did not
deny the existence of things as phenomena, but declared
their absence of essence. Tus it is false to say that things
exist or that they do not exist. Te truth lies in the middle,
in emptiness (Schuhmacher & Woerner, 1989, p. 238).
Ngrjuna endeavored to undermine Indian
(non-Buddhist as well as abhidharmic) arguments about
causality by proving the relationship between cause and
eect to be neither absolute nor unparadoxical (Kasulis,
1981, p. 20). For Nagarjuna, concepts are samvriti; they
literally cover or obstruct the way things are actually
experienced (p. 23). Releasing ourselves from the
propensity to conceptualize, and therefore, to reify the
objects of our experience, we liberate ourselves from the
most ensnaring of human propensities associated with
our minds. Tis is the inevitable and invariant grasping
after the objects of experience, traditionally delineated as
1) the desire to get those things we want, 2) to avoid the
things we do not wish to be near to, and 3) to cling to the
memory of things lost.
One can easily see the areas in which such a
perspective might be put to use in psychology. It is possible
to suggest that most psychotherapy clients, at least those
in non-psychotic or extreme dissociative conditions, are
involved in one way or another with some xation of at
least one of these three conditions. A person aected by
compulsive gambling, obsessively avoiding cracks in the
sidewalk, or grieving inconsolably from the traumatic
memory of parental loss might all respectively be specic
examples of these three aictions.
Aside from Buddhism, most other Indian
schools of thought still accept the notion of a deeper
substratum of individuality, one that is more self than
the provisionally understood individual self. When we
look at Smkhya or Vedanta, two dominant philosoph-
ical trends still surviving within the various strands of
Hinduism, then we see the utter reliance upon this notion
of a deeper substratum of existence. Tis substratum may
also be described as the sense that beneath, or, better put,
beyond the phenomenal world we experience lies a more
real Reality. However, emptiness according to Buddhism
undercuts this notion as well, arguing that any imputa-
tion we ascribe to existence remains an imputation and
little else. Tus, the intellectual and linguistic precision
normally used in stripping language of its propensities to
reify concepts is here brought to bear on considerations
of religious import. Tis process may be subsequently
applied to a psychological context and in so doing,
might illuminate a new angle for addressing other age-
old problems. Tese problems are related to the ontology,
epistemology, and phenomenology of being, of conscious-
ness and human life itself.
Kasulis (1981) has written, since language can
never leave its own constructs and internal rules, it cannot
serve as a vehicle for philosophical truth (p. 22 [emphasis
in original]). One might add as well that language
presents no vehicle for psychological truth, for the same
limiting reasons Ngrjuna has so amply demonstrated
(Murti, 1980). But the search for philosophical Truth
is not generally considered the driving motivation in
psychological practice. Insights, cures, solutions, reasons,
suggestions, therapies, counsel, answers, and directions
are more along the line of what is sought. Here again
we are presented with emptinesss unusual utility, for it
squarely confronts the ultimate inadequacies of all these
and directs the pursuer back to the uidity of experience
itself. In so doing it begins to peel away, layer after layer,
the errant presumptions in all our questioning, leading
toward a state of unknowing. While one might initially
approach anxiously, with context and guidance this
unknowing can prove as liberating as realizing the skys
immeasurable potentiality versus its insubstantiality.
We have already suggested that the Buddhist
notion of emptiness can provide an excellent series of
ideas that may inform the therapeutic encounter. Te
suering of the false self derives from attachment to
the two extremes of self-suciency and emptiness. By
bringing awareness to those very attachments, they can
be released (Epstein, 1995, p. 67). It is not too hard
to imagine (and Epstein provides concrete examples of
such) psychotherapists utilizing insights derived from
meditation or the contemplation of emptiness in order to
assist clients in loosening the seemingly intractable grasp
many have on their problems. Tis eort, in fact, has
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 78 Tirado
been explored in a number of areas. For example, both
Fenner (1995) and Wilber (1997) have said some inter-
esting things about its possible application in psychology.
In addition, there have been eorts to incorporate
Buddhist mindfulness practices with cognitive behav-
ioral therapies (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999; Kabat-
Zinn, 1994; Linehan, 1993a, 1993b; Segal, Williams, &
Teasdale, 2002). Terapies incorporating mindfulness
alone (Germer, 2005) or programs utilizing variations of
Buddhist mindfulness-based meditation for group coun-
seling (Tirado, 2007) are also becoming more common.
Epstein (1995) wrote, the true self experience
that has come to preoccupy Western analysis is achiev-
able most directly through the appreciation of what the
Buddhists would call emptiness of self (p. 72). Tis
self, a more uid, less centralized (non)entity may be
compared to an ever-owing sea whose waters can roll
over any obstacle and whose depth belies any notion of
its insubstantiality.
Conclusion
We might summarize the Buddhist perspective
as saying that, once rmly convinced that our nature is
occluded by a number of delusions (most important of
which is the delusion that we have a nature or a xed,
inherent self ), only then might we begin the therapy that
relieves not only our psychological illness, but our exis-
tential anxieties as well. We may actually come to expe-
rience, rather than simply intellectually conclude, that,
disturbing thought patterns and their corresponding
emotional reactions are baseless, or lack any foundation,
and that therefore, the problems themselves [become]
impotent or incapable of drawing mental attention and
energy (Fenner, 1995, p. 166).
But the great challenge to traditional Western
psychology may be less disruptive than the implications
of what a more interconnected, less centrally placed,
separate individual might mean to an entire culture built
upon selshness and narcissistic materialism. Any such
challenge is bound to disturb the philosophical under-
pinnings of so much of our distinctly Western cultures so
that novel ways of constructing our societal relations may
be required, with implications for our social economic
structures. While the inuence of Buddhist ideas such
as interconnectedness or emptiness has not necessarily
tempered consumerist or material excesses in Eastern
societies, there remain many areas from where the West
can learn.
While the initial reaction to any therapeutic use
of the notion of emptiness might be a frightening sense of
identity loss, a separate internally more positive movement
may also occur, that is, one of recognizing a dierent self
dierently conceived and dierently constructed. Tis
self, acknowledged as an empirically veriable, practical
but ultimately provisional concept, can be utilized to reach
potentially new heights of human integration. We might
further state that any insights emptiness has to oer may
suggest modication to our current models of conscious-
ness. For example the positive aspect of emptiness, which
has been described within later Buddhist traditions as the
tathgatagarbha, literally the Buddha-womb, is also the
womb of unfettered possibilities. Tis notion comports
quite comfortably with the humanistic and transpersonal
movements in psychology and their goals for ennobling
the human condition.
References
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About the Author
Rev. Jos M. Tirado is a Shin Buddhist priest living in
Iceland with over 30 years experience in three Buddhist
traditions, Zen, Vajrayana, and Pure Land. He has con-
tributed articles and poetry to CounterPunch, Swans
Commentary, Gurdjie Internet Guide, Dissident Voice,
and other publications. Last year he presented at the an-
nual All & Everything Conference. His paper, entitled,
Beelzebubs Buddhas: Te Inuence of Buddhism and
its Tibetan Variants on Gurdjies Fourth Way, com-
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thing: Beelzebubs Tales to his Grandson. He has a B.A. in
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International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 80 Slattery
Dantes Terza Rima in Te Divine Comedy:
Te Road of Terapy
Dennis Patrick Slattery
Pacica Graduate Institute
Carpinteria, CA, USA
Wisdoms pursuit through symbols, metaphors, poetry, and therapy is a path of indirection,
less available the more ones pursuit is direct. Wisdom may be gained through particular
processes of knowing, pilgrimages towards the truth of things. Dantes 14
th
century poem
engages a new rhyme scheme to further this pursuit of knowing towards wisdom. He called
it terza rima, or third rhyme. Its structure, the essay argues, embodies two movements of the
soul: the journey towards knowing, one which is always bending back in memory, and the
movement of therapy itself, wherein one becomes more conscious by seeing in the present a
conuence of ones history and ones destiny at the same instant.
Love and the gracious heart are but one thing,
As that wise poet puts it in his poem;
As much can one without the other be
As without reason can the reasoning mind.
(Dante Alighieri, 1290/1992, p. 39)
T
he pursuit of gnosis seems a perennial desire of
being human and feeling that re of desire in
the belly to gain greater consciousness. Perhaps
knowing, a present participle and a gerund, is both an
action from the verb and a condition from the noun. As
a part of speech, gerunds may comprise the linguistic
structure of the new physics because of their ability to
include at once both movement and matter. As such,
present participles not only represent a part of speech,
but more to our concerns, may indeed be archetypes of
rhetoric because they allow something like knowing to
be both an action and a state of being, which encourages
a new pattern of awareness, as in the following two
sentences:

Knowing that Italy would be warm in July, Sandy
packed several sleeveless blouses.
In this structure knowing is an action. But a crucial shift
occurs in the second sentence:
Knowing is one corridor that may lead to wisdom.
Here is the same word, but strolling now in a new
neighborhood, knowing is a condition of being.
To pursue what may be archetypally resolute
about wisdom traditions invites a few earlier questions:
What is knowing? Is there a stream of consciousness
that leads from perception to reection to knowledge
to wisdom? Does wisdom erupt, full blown, when the
goddess Athena is deployed in all of her resplendent
warrior wisdom from the forehead of her father,
Zeus, as an icon for consciousness itself? Te Spanish
philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (2002) called that
condition faced by all human beings, to have it out with
their surroundingsthey have to know what to abide
by about it (p. 198). He referred to this condition of
guring out what to believe about ones surroundings
the construction of a primordial reality which is to set
in motion their intellectual apparatus, the main organ of
whichI contendis the imagination (p. 198).
Is there inherent, therefore, in the nature and
indeed the structure of poetic knowledge, an organizing
principle that oers a particular angle of vision on
wisdom as part of a poetic tradition? My thesis here
is that poetry is mimetic precisely because psyche is
analogic, metaphoric, and mythic in both its posturings
as verb and as noun. We could, with some reward,
open psyche up to a discussion of adjectives, pronouns,
prepositions, even the psycho-dynamics of commas
and semicolons, but that is another essay on psyches
grammatical proclivities.
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 81 Dantes Terza Rima: Te Road to Terapy
By asserting the above observation, I want to
create a short but richly endowed pearl necklace, the
beads of which include Aristotle, Dante, and C.G. Jung,
in that historical order, but not necessarily in that same
mythic beadwork. Te reclusive and profound poet of
New England, Emily Dickinson (1960), gathered so
much of what will be explored here in one of her most
pithy poetic pronouncements:
Tell all the Truthbut tell it slant,
Success in Circuit lies;
Too bright for our inrm Delight
Te Truths superb surprise.
As Lightning to the Children eased,
With explanation kind
Te truth must dazzle gradually,
Or every man be blind (#1129, pp. 506-507)

Te truth must be grazed, perhaps leaving a
discernible burn mark on the exposed arm as it passes
intimately by; it must not be assaulted directly from
front or behind. Rather, it must be taken in subtly, with
nuance aforethought. So might the same be said for
wisdom itself. Te slant part of telling the truth is a poetic
move because it suggests that the major vehicles to carry
the tenor of truth are metaphor and analogy, both eager
presenting symptoms that encourage indirection to nd
direction outwhich the obsequious Polonius suggested
to his daughter Ophelia during the early warning storms
of deceit in Shakespeares Hamlet.
Moreover, my sense is that metaphorical
knowing is archetypal, what Jung (1971) himself called
an archetype of transformation. In Te Archetypes and
the Collective Unconscious, his rst chapter, Archetypes
of the Collective Unconscious, was devoted to outlining
the physiology of archetypes. As he neared the end of
an in-depth discussion of three archetypal gures
the shadow, the anima and the wise old manthose
gures which he believes can be directly experienced
in personied form ( 80), he decided to include,
in what feels almost like an after-thought, another
brand of archetype, what he referred to as archetypes of
transformation. Tey are not personalities, he insisted,
but are rather akin to typical situations, places, ways
and means, that symbolize the kind of transformation
in question. Tey are genuine symbols because they are
ambiguous, full of half-glimpsed meanings, and in the
last resort, inexhaustible ( 80).
Symbolic reality then, if we cull Jungs insight,
is a valid and perennial way both of knowing and
of seeking wisdom. Symbols, like metaphors, which
the mythologist Joseph Campbell called the native
tongue of myth (2002, p. 8), includes as well similes,
correspondences, analogies, all of which oer pathways
to wisdom through knowledge that is gural in their
intention, indirect in their focus, and precise in their
structure. Te importance of such power to direct the
soul towards knowledge and wisdom Campbell corraled
in the following assertion: Te life of a mythology
springs from and depends on the metaphoric vigor of
its symbols (p. 6). By the rich word vigor I understand
him to mean it must contain enough psychic libidinal
energy to further the knowledge contained therein. Like
a particularly powerful dream, it must amass enough
energy to break through into conscious awareness and
settle with surety in the memory. When a metaphor, or
even an entire mythos, loses vigor, it collapses like a wet
rag into a personal or cultural clich.
Knowing, in addition, is by indirection, one
of the hallmarks of poetic intuition or instinct, what I
choose to call a gnosopoetics or mythopoetics, for it requires
something to be taken in by perception, imagined anew,
ordered in its content, and then articulated through some
medium of coherence to form a complete experience. Not
meaning but an experience of life itself is what Campbell
believed people sought in their lives. Meaning is often
overrated while life itself remains on the shelf, in the
back, unlived and perhaps underrated.
Moreover, the physicist and educator, Donald
Cowan (1988), informed us in Unbinding Prometheus:
Education for the Coming Age, that fundamentally
learning occurs in three moments: 1. an apprehension
or grasping; 2. a mapping; and 3. a making something
from the previous two moments (p. 85, emphasis
supplied). Tis last condition activates poiesis, what
the philosopher Aristotle referred to as a making or a
shaping into a coherent form what had hitherto been
untended and unexpressed. Knowledge grows directly
from such a process, a pilgrimage of sorts, through just
such an imaginal working. It carries with it a tendency
to cultivate, a tending, as one does to a eld of crops. As
such, it is intimately connected with culture, for culture
itself is a consequence and a product of cultivating. As
the philosopher, poet, and Kentucky farmer Wendell
Berry (1978) articulated so elegantly in Te Unsettling
of America: Culture and Agriculture, A fully vibrant
culture, it seems to me, is one which cultivates the soil
of wisdom herself; wisdom is indeed soiled and of the
earth (p. 43).
In his Poetics, if we leave Jung and poetry for a
moment and return to 5
th
Century BCE Athens, Aristotle
(trans. 1969) made a profound discovery when he explored
in detail Sophocles Oedipus Rex as a paradigm for the
genre of tragedy and as a tting launch pad for remarks on
poetrys general nature. In what may be perhaps the rst
work of literary theory in the West, Aristotle set out in
rather rigid prose to catalogue and dierentiate the parts
of tragedy as drama. In his exploration, however, I believe
he anticipated some major insights of depth psychology,
hence his inclusion here. He founded his sense of imitation
in pleasure, the kind of pleasure a child experiences by
mimicking or imitating, often in exhaustive repetition,
some action in play: For the process of imitation is natural
to mankind from childhood on: Man is dierentiated
from other animals because he is the most imitative of
them, and he learns his rst lessons through imitation
(p. 7). I want to set in motion here, but not extend it,
a relevant connection between repetition and the more
subtle recursivity of psyches perennial motion to return,
to retrieve, and to renew what already enjoys a certain
familiar domicile in memory. My last observation here
serves as a brief prolegomenon to Dantes Commedia,
which will shortly enter this discussion.
Learning is a pleasurable act, Aristotle (trans.
1969) believed. It grows from viewing representations
because it turns out that they learn and infer what each
thing isfor example, that this particular object is that
kind of object (p. 7). Knowing by analogy gives pleasure,
if not joy, in the act of learning. To think, remember, and
articulate by analogy is joy-full because it aords pleasure
in the act of creating one-in-relationship to what may be
unfamiliar, and then successfully yokes it to the familiar.
Te heartbeat of poetry throbs right here, as does the
pleasure which accrues from such a sustained blood
pressure.
Aristotle (trans. 1969) suggested this is an inborn
impulse; perhaps like an instinct it has its corollary in the
archetypal realm of psyche and in an archetypal ways and
means of Jungs denition of archetypes of transformation
cited earlier. Poetry, here tragedy specically in Aristotles
calculus, imitates an action, not of men, but of life, for
life consists in action (p. 8). Not only is this action the
origin of poetry, it is the origin of learning, itself. I further
assert that it is the origin of archetypes and of their study
in archetypal psychology, their aesthetic presence in art
and poetry, and the origin of the road to wisdom. Such
an action resides at the center of therapy itself and may
constitute a central motion in all healing.
I say this because of a dependent adverbial
clause of Jungs (1970) that arrested me years ago, and
that I contend carries the payload inherent in depth
psychology. I cite it here from Aion: Researches into the
Phenomenology of the Self: Since analogy formation
is a law which to a large extent governs the life of the
psyche ( 441). I sidestep the main clause of this
sentence; it is not needed for my purposes here. But I
do believe this dependent clause is worth a moment of
meditation for what it implies.
In this clause Jung is Aristotelian in a very
specic way: both Aristotle and Jung shared a belief that
innate to the human being is an impulse towards analogy
formation, or an instinct to imitate. Advertising knows
this implicitly and any successful marketing campaign is
predicated on this core insight. Both Aristotle and Jung
share as well a similar sense of the power of analogys
presence as a way of knowing. Te subtle slide from
knowledge is yet to be explored. Analogy, moreover, is
the cloak worn by symbol, metaphor, simile, and myth,
often of a brightly colored fabric.
Let us add Joseph Campbell (2002) to the
discussion in order to reveal his connection to both
Aristotle and Jung. He insisted at the end of the rst
chapter of Tou Art Tat: A system of mythological
symbols only works if it operates in the eld of a
community of people who have essentially analogous
experiences, or to put it another way, if they share the
same realm of life experience (p. 8); not duplicate lives,
but the same realm, which allows sucient latitude for
one to achieve an original journey in this sublunary
realm.
In our story, plot for Aristotle (trans. 1969), was
the soul of tragedy (p. 13) and we could add, the soul of
poetry; character is second in importance, for character
is the vehicle that carries the tenor of the plot. Tragedy,
Aristotle further asserted, is an imitation of an action;
and it is, on account of this, an imitation of men acting
(p. 13). Francis Fergusson, commenting on the word
action in this edited volume of the Poetics, believed it
is not overt action, but rather, citing Dante, whom we
will welcome in a moment, a movement of spirit (p.
8)and even that is invisible but no less real, taking
place sub rosa, in the realm of the invisible movement
of psyche; what Aristotle suggested of the action of
Tragedy I believe can be extended to include other plot
structures as well: Tragedy is an imitation, not of men,
but of an action and of life, and life consists in action,
and its end is a mode of action, not a quality (p. 62).
Such an action, furthermore, does not occur without
the presence of psychic energy that gives the action its
impetus and its sustained motion towards completeness.
Paul Ricoeurs (1997) in-depth work on mimesis yielded
this observation: mimesis performs the same kind of
guiding-concept function for poetry that persuasion
does for prose in the public arena (p. 36). Poetry and
prose both persuade with a force that while shared are
not identical. Teir energy valences are quite dierent
but not unrelated.
To say we are moved by a lm, a story, a paint-
ing, or a piece of music, even a personal memory, or that we
feel the power of a poem or an image, is to be mimetically
engaged in something profound and transpersonal being
imitated in our own being that resonates and mirrors
the plot or soul of the works movement even while it
sparks a vague intuitive knowing within us. Dualistic
responses that split self from world, spirit from matter,
and soul from mimetic artall collapse here under
the weight of imaginal involvement. In an insightful
foreword to a recent book on Jung and Henry Corbin,
spiritual psychologist Robert Sardello (2005) called this
form of perception subjectively-objective, wherein in
an imaginal metaphysics all dualism is resolved so that
there is no longer a subject-object distinction; rather,
subject and object are one (p. xv). Dantes Commedia
reects, as a poetic artifact, such a collapse or resolution
by deploying the reader into the actual pilgrimage of
the poet who recollects that experience. By extension,
moreover, the reader is cast upon the story of his/her own
growth into consciousness, realized in the pilgrimage of
reading and imagining Dantes own fabricated journey.
Mythopoiesis, then, includes not just the creation
of the work of art, but the way in which the myth
inherent in the work is reshaped in our own imagination
by this universal mimetic faculty or capacity to imagine.
Wisdom, archetypal wisdom, is spawned in just this
mythic backwater through the sluice of imaginal
knowing. One important implication here is that psyche
is fundamentally aesthetic, that aisthesus is its ground of
being, its fundamental ontology.
Let me conjecture at this juncture, a metaphor:
Plot is to character
as
Action is to wisdom.
Te rst part of the metaphorplot is to characteris
the embodied, incarnate, and perceivable reality. But
underneath the hood beats the engine of action-wisdom,
the power source that, like a poetic delivery system,
oers plot-character both its energy and its motion
even its motivation. Moreover, under this same hood
resides the intensity of vigor that, as Campbell reminded
us, the metaphor must contain if it is to unleash the
energy necessary to both raise and shape consciousness
and with it, perception. Here reside the words of O.
B. Hardison (1968), scholar and commentator of the
Poetics. In discussing Aristotles critical apparatus, he
sprang forward in time to the neo-platonist Plotinus.
Hardison interpreted Plotinus understanding of nous
as a creative force seeking to emanate outward, to ll
all possible gaps in the scale of being, and to realize
itself in material creation (p. 282). John Dillon in Te
Extracts from the First Edition of Te Enneads called
nous Divine Mind or Divine Intellection (Plotinus,
trans. 1991, p. xxxiii).
Te poet begins to take shape here (this is my
abiding hope) as a divinely-chosen individual, one
numinously inspired, not one who creates falsehoods,
illusions, and wretched simulacra of the Truth, a word
Dickinsons poem earlier encouraged us to consider.
What the poet creates is charged with divine energia
andhas a priest-like function of revealing truth to
mens clouded vision (Hardison, 1968, p. 283). One
key passage into such a revelation, Hardison insisted, is
by imitating the world through looking to their divine
archetypes and producing images of them as they might
or ought to be (p. 284). His thought is in line not
only with Jungs but with the profound meditations of
anthropologist Robert Plant Armstrong (1981).
Writing in the same imaginal grooves as the
above two thinkers, Armstrong (1981) diligently
developed in a beautiful and complex way the idea that
all works of art carry or embody a force or presence
which tend to gratify the human psyche (p. 4).
Briey, works which carry the power of aecting
presence have a certain mana personality about
them: they are special kinds of things (works) which
have signicances not primarily conceptual (they are
aecting), and which own certain characteristics that
cause them to be treated more like persons than like
things (presence) (p. 5). Moreover, like persons, they
exist in a state of ambiguity (p. 5). Yet they also carry
the status of a thing, so they are both subjective and
objective. In fact, power seems the most appropriate
name for those distinctive though elusive properties.
It is power which quickens us so that we greatly prize
such things and, thus, so universally make them (p. 6).
Trough the powers of aecting presence, things have
the capacity to assume mythic qualities, which once
again implicate vigor, power, energy: Tese universal,
generative energies and states are mythologems (a word
I borrow from Jung, who uses it to mean archetype),
and they occur in fairly stable form from people to
people (pp. 48-49).
From this weaving of the various voices
collating the dierent energy sources, I discern that
without contact with the myth in the matter, wisdom
remains ever-elusive. Wisdom in some manner or
condition resides in the ability of the energy innate in
aective presence to work on us, to shape us poetically
as we imagine the work. Of course, the relationship
is reciprocal: what are the eects of my own aective
presence on the work of art?
Te discussion grows even richer when we
remember that etymologically, the word plot translates
as muthos, and for Aristotle (trans. 1969) the plot must
follow the inner logic of poetic art (p. 31). In other
words, present is an organizing principle at work in the
plot, which I suspect nds its correspondence in the
inner logos of the audience members. Active, therefore,
is an interior logos in the plot that nds its analogies
in the guiding mythos of each individual. Mythos,
therefore, is an invisible inner logos, as a visible analogy
of a deeper mystery that mythos taps, provokes, incites.
Te plot of a work of art is then both a content and an
action, since each of our lives shuttles between noun and
verb. Te plot itself, then, is the aperture into wisdom,
gleaned through the deeper reservoir of the action, a
reservoir of the mythologems.
I understand now how Plotinus (trans. 1991)
himself can ask in the Seventh Tractate: Is Tere an
Ideal Archetype of Particular Beings? (pp. 406-409);
this is the title of his very short chapter of Te Enneads,
which in this Tractate rests on a principle of doubling
and analogy. Plotinus puts forth the idea that each of
us has a Soul which contains the Reason-Principles of
all that it traverses, [then] once more all men have their
(archetypic) existence (pp. 406-07). Not only is this
so, but he further suggests that every soul contains all
the Reason-Principles that exist in the Cosmos: since
the Cosmos contains the Reason-Principles not merely
of man, but also for all individual living things, so must
the Soul (p. 407). He tells us clearly, lest we become
confused over the term Soul, that for him it means
principle of Life (p. 409).
Tis very principle of life is the fuel for the
engine of mimesis in poetry itself. Aristotle, if I grasp
at all Stephen Halliwells (1998) excursus on the
nature of imitation (mimesis), as well as the structure
of poetic unity, tended us closer to the poetic wisdom,
archetypally-grounded and psychologically-oriented,
that set the stage for the pilgrim-poet Dantes lifes
journey both as pilgrim and as poet in the Commedia.
If poetry is an imitation of an action that must
through its plot, represent one complete action whole
and complete and of a certain magnitude (Halliwell,
1998, p. 14), as Aristotle insisted, then some imaginal
dance must arise between the world we know and the
world that poetry makes visibleand most crucially,
possibleto our discerning aesthetic gaze. Here
Halliwell is very helpful: the events of a dramatic
poem should exhibit a higher intelligibility, particularly
causal intelligibility, than is usually to be found in life
(p. 135). He further argued that the plot of a dramatic
poem, which is its essential structure of action, is not to
be understood as simply corresponding to reality past or
presentbut as representing a heightened and notional
pattern of possibility, and as therefore more accessible to
rational apprehension than are the events of ordinary
experience (p. 135, emphasis supplied). Let us pause for
a moment on the phrase representing a heightened and
notional pattern of possibility. Aristotle, as understood
through Halliwells interpretation, suggested that poetry
contains or perhaps is, an aesthetic expression of a more
deeply intuited pattern of psyche that may just establish
a power of aecting presence. More time would prompt
me right here to develop how this last sentence conveys
the genesis of ones personal mythos.
Nonetheless, I believe this notional pattern of
possibility is the realm of the archetypal. Unless the poem
generates sucient wisdom energy, it does not have
the sforza, as Italians label it, or the strength, the Eros,
or the libidinal power to shape our imaginations into
an awareness of this pattern of possibility. Terefore,
in its proportions and in its expression of a single action
that itself is whole and complete, it inaugurates a certain
joy in witnessing it because it aesthetically delights the
senses, the intellect, and the emotions, as well as the
more collective archetypal level embedded in the specic
action. Moreover, at least in any discussion of poetry and
wisdom derived therefrom, one that inclines towards
Aristotle, the apprehension of beauty is part of this
experience. Aesthetics itself has its own hydraulicsits
own turbines of energy, to extend the metaphor a bit.
To achieve it, however, perhaps on the rst,
the fourth, the fteenth reading, is to gain wisdom
inherent in the action. Te biologist Brian Goodwin
(2001) reminded us that ideas have their time, and if
you happen to discover something before people are ready
to recognize its signicance, you might as well leave it in
the bottom drawer until the climate is receptive (p. 46).
So with a deepening mimetic understanding of a poem:
it has its own time to reveal itself. Mimesis is achieved on
some level, determined of course by our growing capacity
to discern this pattern of possibility. We are speaking less
of content than of coherence, discerned, wisely enough,
from an expanded and deepened awareness of the works
action. Not its message, not its meaning, not its character
development, but its internal form is most relevant to
shape matter into meaning.
To touch this formative principle by the ngertips
of our imaginal involvement is the goal of the reading
itself a complex pilgrimage through the poems lush or
austere landscapeas well as by apprehending at least a
fraction of its generic form. Now all of the above is in the
service of getting us to Halliwells (1998) nal insight:
It is not immediately to life that the poet must turn
for his material, but to an imagined world (including
that of inherited myth) in which the underlying
designs of causality, so often obscured in the world as
we encounter it, will be made manifest. (p. 135)

By turning to myth, I suspect, the poet reshapes and
reforms the lineaments and contours of it to suit his/
her vision of patterned possibilities (general) by means
of the specic plot, wherein characters interact, think,
feel, and react to their surroundings and to one another
(particular). Te general or universal or archetypal action
is thus embedded squarely in the particular sinews of the
concrete narrative.
Te reader then experiences deeply in his/her soul
the imagined world in the makingwhat I would term a
mytho-poetic achievement of consciousness. To enter such
a realm is to know, to come to a knowledge unavailable
any other way or through any other disciplines. Poetic
knowledge is its own form of ontological awareness.
It deepens and expands, even makes elastic, our own
limited world view. It does so, not by trying to match its
reality to the one we swim in daily, but by creating an
imagined form of a reality that exists only in the poem.
Not sociology, politics, theology, or political correctness
but poiesis is what the poet seeks to imagine into a formed
experience.
Te Commedias Force Field: Terza Rima
T
he depth psychologist Michael Conforti (2003) has
explored the self-organizing dynamics in the natural
order in Field, Form and Fate. He began in that study
by deploying, in part, Jungs (1971) analogy between
the nature of the archetype and the axial system of a
crystal which determines the crystalline structure in the
liquid, although it has no material existence of its own
(155). Te analogy here in poetry is the substance of the
form of a poem. I remember reading this comparison for
the rst time and being moved to assent to the wisdom
inherent in its power.
My intention in this essay is to suggest that a
similar action occurs between the nature of the archetype
and the axial system of a poem, such as Dantes, within
the imaginal life of the reader. Te reader in the act of
reading is a pilgrim companion, and no less analogous to
Dantes voyage as pilgrim, and his second pilgrimage as
writer of the voyage we, he assumed, have signed on and
submitted to.
I wish less to interpret the almost incompre-
hensively brilliant content of this poem but to reside
and dwell instead in its rhythmic and constant dance
pattern: the terza rima. Dante, scholars assert, invented
such a rhyme scheme for this poem, written between
1310-1313; he then backlled its plot to 1300 to assure
that his prophetic pronouncements would enjoy a certain
historical veracity. I underscore or place in italics the
pattern of the poems rhyme scheme, for in it, of course
married to the content of the lines, is a pattern of wisdom,
if such a property is possible, both of learning and of
therapeutic healing. I am indebted to the last chapter of
the Dante scholar, John Frecceros (1986) superb study,
Dante: the Poetics of Conversion, for introducing me to
the subtle motions of the poems patterned canzone.
At the outset I suggest that the terza rima is
an archetype of transformation; to be transformed is
predicated on being in motion. Terza rima is both noun
and verb. Much more can be said of the tri-partite or
trinitarian structure of the entire poem; however, my
goal is to explore just this rhyme scheme in its triune
structure. As a structure and an action it is as well a
gerund in its dramatic role in the poem. Perhaps therapy
itself must be willing to oscillate between the noun and
verb forms of the psyche.
Te entire 100 cantos of Dantes Commedia
relate in memory the plot, or muthos, of one soul waking
in a dark wood to recognize that he has lost the path of
his life, his connection to himself and to any allegiance
or presence of the divine. In short, he has stepped out of
the coherent mythos that gives meaning and coherence to
life. Almost immediately, and spurred by fear, he attempts
the heros journey on his own but is quickly rebued by
three beasts who confront him; they can be understood
as gures of Dantes own excessive appetites. Only with
the help of three primary guides and mentors, originating
in their call by the Blessed Virgin Marythe classical
poet Virgil, the lovely and forceful historical gure of
Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante knew in Florence, and,
in the last steps in Paradiso, the holy gure of Bernard of
Clairveaxis the pilgrim led to confront the paradox of
his nal vision. Each gure assists him dierently on his
therapeutic journey towards wholeness.
In the course of his pilgrimage deep into the
oal of Inferno, up into the wounding, then cleansing
habitation of Mount Purgatory, and nally through
the celestial highways of the planets to the Primum
Mobile in Paradiso, Dante meets, argues with, feels pity
for, chastises, loves an entire population of gures that
populate variously myth, poetry, and history. Te poem
is, among other things, the richest and most detailed
exemplum of what Joseph Campbell discovered was
inherent in so many mythologies world-wide: the heros
struggle to enter the woods of unknowing, to confront
oppositions and aids, and to return to his/her community
with the boon of new knowledge, indexed and catalogued
now under M for mystical wisdom narrative.
To tell his story, Dante (Alighieri, 1313/1982)
adapted the rhythmic rhyme scheme of terza rima in which
three lines, akin to the poems footsteps, or footprints,
detail the motion of the poem and our involvement in
both its sustained rhythm and content. Let us look at the
rst examples of this structure in Inferno 1 that begins
with these lines:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita A
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, B
che la dirritta via era smarrita. A
Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura B
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte C
che nel pensier rinova la paura! B
Tant e amara che poco e piu morte; C
ma per trattar del ben chI vi trovai, D
diro de laltre cose chI v vho scorte. C
Io non so ben ridir com I vintrai, D
tant era pien di sonno a quell punto E
che la verace via abbandonai. D (lines 1-12)
Allen Mandelbaums translation follows:
(When I had journeyed half of our lifes way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and dicult,
which even in recall renews my fear:
so bitterdeath is hardly more severe!
But to retell the good discovered there,
Ill also tell the other things I saw.
I cannot clearly say how I had entered
the wood; I was so full of sleep just at
the point where I abandoned the truth path).

Dante has entered as awakened pilgrim the
wisdom path which he now relates to us in the residue
of memory through narrative. Tat the poem begins
midway carries a reection in the middle term of the terza
rima. Form and content cannot be separated; knowing
grows, I believe, from the interstices, the metaxes of the
rhyme scheme, and the rhythm of each lines syllables,
which remains more or less consistent throughout, the
conversation that ensues between cantos that precede
and follow the one being read.
Indeed, perhaps the current clich that lifes
progress is often comprised of two steps forward and
one step back was born here, in the rhyme scheme. But
as with most clichs, it skips across the surface of what
treasures might dwell in a lower layer. Te movement
of this scheme, moreover, is for one thing the motion of
psyche herself as she seeks understanding and indeed,
wisdom. Terza rima is psyches rhythm, its method, its
scheme, for knowing; its repetition of rhymed words
suggests it is a patterned knowing, a duplicative knowing
in fact, wherein some insight is mirrored both backward
and forward and gains in the motion a texture and
profundity that rests on imitation and remembrance.
Te rhythm is based, moreover, on what Freccero (1968)
installed as a constant recapitulation (p. 263).
Consider rst the forward movement of A to B.
But at this step in the pilgrimage forward, something
happens to return one to A that in the word that ends
the line at the same instant rhymes with but is not
identical to, or an exact copy of, the original A. Not a
repetition compulsion is active here but a retreat back
into something familiar as well as a step into newness.
What is crucial to see is the simultaneous motion into
the familiar and unfamiliar at once. Te dramatic genius
of this structure is that the familiar is new and what
newness sprouts here in the retreat to the original rhyme
is indeed familiar territory. Te second A therefore
completes the rst foot of the terza rima, yet it is and is
not the rst A. What has intervened to interrupt the two
As not being duplicates is of course, the middle term: B.
What the middle term signies will be suggested in a
moment. Nevertheless, we can venture that intervention
of the new term saves the similar but not identical terms
from rigidifying into a trap of repetition, entrapment,
and loss of motion in a shuttling rhythm that is a constant
recapitulation into new ground.
Nor is it the rst A even if the word vita was
repeated in the second A such that the rst terza rima
would then read vita, oscura, vita (instead of smarrita),
because something crucial has intervened: history
itself, in the form of B (oscura). Between the forward
movementsa two-stepand the backward motion
a one-step, history erupts into presence as a specic
modality of temporality, both in the motion of the
bodys movement in the pilgrimage and in the motion
of the poems movement in the language. History itself
becomes a way of knowingboth personal memory
or biography and a larger vessel of history itself; not
just Dantes own personal memory and biography, but
history itself becomes known, both as a structure for
understanding the great patterns that seem to govern
human life collectively, and as the specic cultural
history of his own era.
Such is Dantes archetypal genius: to wed poiesis
(imaginations shaping capacity) to history, perception to
memory, body to spirit, and motion to myth. I include
this last term because in the language of the poem,
what has been rst experienced as a literal eventthe
journey through inferno, purgatory, and paradiseis
now recollected. But this recollection is also a new form,
a fresh telling or expression of the original journey. It
is more a recollection deeply imagined for its further
possibilities. Terefore it is a recollection in hope. Te
journey has taken on mythic proportions, or better said,
mytho-poetic proportions in the recollection that is also
an imaginal motion forward. I should note as well that in
this microcosm of the terza rima is the complex journey
of the hero as Campbell adumbrates it repeatedly in his
writings, but most fully in Te Hero with a Tousand
Faces (1973, pp. 49-244).
Terapy as Terza-Rimic Motion of Soul
T
he meaning of the poem, but only after the experience
of the journey that is its content and structure, stirs
to the surface like sea life from fathomless depths, through
the oscillating rhythm of the rhyme scheme. Structure
is archetypal and yields its own form of knowing; it
connects intimately with the movement or rhythm of the
reader-pilgrim-interpreter that is the poems Trinitarian
audience. Te poems wisdom stretches out in sympathy
to meet the readers own psychic rhythm; we learn, the
poem seems to insist, by recollecting into newness. I say
this with one eye on the rhyme scheme:
ABA
to
BCB
so that the rst B (oscura), the middle term of the rst
terza rima becomes
B (dura)C (forte)B (paura!)
Te middle term of the preceding terza rima
metamorphosis into the rst and last rhymes of the next
terza rima. In that transformation, moreover, what do
we discern and experience as readers?
Memory herself in the gure of the Greek
goddess, Mnemosyne, stirs the hearts vessel of forward
motion, of breaking into new ground, or seeing anew by
means of what has just passed. Now the past is retrieved
into new envisionings. If we pull the lens back just a
bit for a moment, we as pilgrim-readers (and it appears
that all deep reading is a pilgrimage of memory wedded
to imagination), do sense that the rst terza rima deals
with the pastI found, I had lostthe next with
the presentit is hard to speak of what it wasas it
unfolds, unfurls, curls or spirals back into the past
which even in recall renews my fear (che nel pensier
rinova la paura!and the third envelops the future
But to retell the good discovered there/Ill also tell the
other things I sawwhich wraps past/present/future
into a tightly corded knot of omni-temporal meaning.
My own sense is that in therapy, all three dimensions
must be operative, provoked, evoked so that the entire
person as client is present in his/her past-future being.
Such complexity, to thicken the baroque quality
of the poems structure further, is braided into another
gure, one that Freccero (1986) discerns in this manner:
Te geometric representation of forward motion which
is at the same time recapitulatory is the spiral (p. 263).
Terefore, the reader must assuredly tread this poem
wearing non-skid hiking boots, for he/she is going to be
asked to traverse tough terrain with often cantankerous
talus slipping under ones feet; to move backward and
forward in the terza rima rhythm, and to spiral down,
then up, through the rst 67 cantiche that comprise the
Infernal and Purgatorial realms, is the dance Dantes
poem insists we engage if we are to grasp its moving
meanings. A rough and tenuous pilgrimage indeed,
not for the faint of heart or the visually unchallenged
reader.
Finally, and for the ritual of therapy itself,
something that might seem obvious here should not be
missed or down-sized: the middle term of the terza rima
scheme becomes the rst and last terms of the next step in
the poem. Now if we think of the three parts of the foot
of terza rima comprising past, present, future, and the
middle term as present becoming both past and future of
the next foot, then the notion of the linear trajectory of
pastpresentfuture is an illusion that Dantes poem
exposes. In other words, rather than there being a past
presentfuture, there is only present. Tere is a present
of the past, a present of the present, and a present of the
future. Presencing is the heart of therapy; the idea that the
past is recollected or that the future is anticipated is true
with the caveat that it is their presentness that is always
exercising its sovereignty, not a past being recollected,
but a presencing of the past as well as a presencing of the
future. Not linear but rather mythic time is the frame for
therapy, for poetry, and for increasing ones orbit of being
conscious.
1
For practical application to therapyand
recall that I am not a therapistis to assist the client in
collapsing the notion that the past is back there and that
the future is out there; quite to the contrary: both past
and future are imbedded in the middle term of the terza
rima temporal scheme. Ones ability to imagine time
dierently through the rhyme scheme would elicit, it
seems to me, very dierent responses to ones relation to
the story of their past and the trajectory of their future.
Finally, let us allow Jung (1960) in on the
conversation at this juncture since his insight bears
directly on the rhythmic rhyming structure of the poem.
In developing his discussion on the qualities of psyche
that leads to understanding, Jung centers on intuition,
which he understood as a way of feeling: But intuition,
as I conceive it, is one of the basic functions of the
psyche, namely, perception of the possibilities inherent in
a situation ( 292). Implicit in his remark is Dantes
terza rima structure, to this extent: the movement
forward from AB and then a return to Aadvances a
particular perception based on re-cognition that is much
richer than one aorded the pilgrim as he journeys from
A to B before retreating back to a new A!
What is gained in this reversal, or backward
motion, which both prepares and anticipates another
movement forward, is a new horizon of possibilities, what
one could not see at rst, but sees forward in retrospect.
In other words, each step of the terza rima opens up
its own brand of perception or reection. A sensibility
that there are more possibilities inherent in the situation
at any step of the poems forward thrust is deployed
through a greater consciousness when one returns to the
rst term in the third moment of the terza rimic unity:
ABA. Te second A is the moment of intuiting
what might be possible, based squarely on what has
been certain. At every step of the epic pilgrimage, then,
certainty consistently collides with uncertainty, clarity
with ambiguity, paradox with potentialities, the light of
greater understanding with the darkening aspect of the
souls mystery. Such is the psychic rhythm of the poems
organic life throughout the 100 cantos. Such as well
is the psychic life of the individual in the therapeutic
encounter.
Memory itself, the act of imaginally remember-
ing the future, is the pivot or hinge of the poems action,
exactly marking where the present and the future receive
their energy, their direction, and their resolve. Memory
for the individual reader-pilgrim blossoms out to become
history for an entire people, as Freccero (1986) traces
later in the chapter. What at one moment in time and
space is anticipated, is in another moment remembered,
and in another moment perceived, so that the dance
of terza rima is a constant pirouette between past and
future with something of the eternal Now of the present
embodying or incarnating the life force or principle of
souls poetic dynamism.
My sense is that the poems wisdom is revealed
in multiple ways, but here specically in the rhyme
scheme as it weds the content of each three-line foot.
What is created in the space of the relation of what
is anticipated growing back and down into what is
remembered? I suggest it is a metaphorical awareness,
a gural sensibility that expands and deepens our
capacity for consciousness itself. Tat Dante makes
this abundantly clear in the poems insistence that one
traverse its landscape incarnately, not just intellectually,
points us to the primary but not exclusive myth that
drives its enginesthe incarnation, life, crucixion, and
resurrection of Christ as an archetype of the Self.
May not the terza rima structure also mirror
this mythosthe movement forward into some new
event and insight being birthed, that grows and develops,
suers, falls back into the past, but is then resurrected
not quite as a recapitulation but as rejuvenation. Such is
the structure, complex and recursive, of the pilgrimage
of life itself, what Aristotle intuited was the real subject
matter of poetry mimetically tailored for the audience.
Te spirit of rejuvenation through memory,
history, mimesis, and myth is the constantly oscillating
heartbeat, the systole and diastole, of the poem. I am
not certain where a more profound archetypal wisdom
may be found than in the texture and textual structure
of such a living, breathing art form that asks each of us
to pilgrimage it in his/her own style, in unison with ones
own heart rhythm, but always with a certain abandon, so
that one is saved from abandoning the true way that is
ones destiny, with its origin in the will of He or She who
moves and designs all things.
Note
1. I am indebted here to James Olneys (1998) work on
St. Augustines Confessions and his development of
the all-inclusive presence of ones life (pp. 2-11).
References
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Alighieri (A. Mandelbaum, Trans.). New York:
Bantam. (Original work published 1313)
Alighieri, D. (1992). Vita Nuova. (M. Musa, Trans.).
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Original
work published 1290)
Aristotle (trans. 1969). Poetics (S. H. Butcher, Trans.).
New York: Hill and Wang.
Armstrong, R. P. (1981). Te powers of presence:
Consciousness, myth and aecting presence.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Berry, W. (1978). Te unsettling of America: Culture and
agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Books.
Campbell, J. (2002). Tou art that: Metaphor as myth and
as religion. Novato, CA. New World Library.
Campbell, J. (1973). Te hero with a thousand faces.
Bollingen Series XVII. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Conforti, M. (2003). Field, form and fate: Patterns in
mind, nature and psyche (Rev. ed.). New Orleans,
LA: Spring Journal Books.
Cowan, D. (1988). Unbinding Prometheus: Education for
the coming age. Dallas, TX: Te Dallas Institute.
Dickinson, E. (1960). Te complete poems of Emily
Dickinson (T. H. Johnson, Ed.). New York: Little
Brown.
Freccero, J. (1986). Dante: Te poetics of conversion.
Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press.
Goodwin, B. (2001). How the leopard changed its spots:
Te evolution of complexity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Hardison, O. B. (1968). Aristotles poetics (L. Golden,
Trans.). Englewood Clis, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Halliwell, S. (1988). Aristotles poetics. Chicago: University
of Chicago.
Jung, C. G. (1971). Archetypes of the collective
unconscious. In Te Collected Works of C.G. Jung:
Vol. 9, Part 1 (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; pp. 1-41).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1960). On the nature of the psyche. In Te
Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Vol. 8 (R. F. C. Hull,
Trans.; pp. 159-236). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1970). Te structure and dynamics of the
self. In Te Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Vol. 9, Part
2 (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; pp. 222-265). Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Olney, J. (1998). Memory and narrative: Te weave of life-
writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Gomez, Trans. & Ed.). Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.
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Trans.). New York: Penguin Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1997). Te rule of metaphor: Multi-disciplinary
studies of the creation of meaning in language (R.
Czerny, K. McLaughlin, & J. Costello., Trans.)
Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
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About the Author
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., is Core Faculty in the
Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology Programs
at Pacica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara, CA.
A teacher for 39 years, he has authored or co-edited 13
books, including three volumes of poetry (two with
accompanying CDs) and over 225 articles, reviews, and
popular culture essays for journals, books, newspapers,
and magazines. His most recent work, co-edited with
Jennifer Selig, is Educating with Soul: Retrieving the
Imagination of Teaching, due out in January 2009 (Spring
Journal Books). He serves on the boards of Spring
Journal Publications and the Jung Journal: Culture &
Psyche, of San Francisco. He is also a Fellow of the Dallas
Institute of Humanities and Culture. Dr. Slattery oers
workshops in the United States on Joseph Campbell and
personal mythology. E-mail: <dslattery@pacica.edu>
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 91 Integral Approach to Mental Suering
Integral Approach to Mental Suering
Laura Boggio Gilot
Italian Association for Transpersonal Psychology
Rome, Italy
Tis article further develops one section by the same name in another article published in
the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies entitled Integral Approach in Transpersonal
Psychotherapy (Boggio Gilot, 2003) by proposing a model of mental suering based on
uniting scientic psychology with meditative wisdom (e.g., derived from Yoga Vedanta). Te
role of spiritual vision underlines a wider understanding of the origins of mental suering,
including damage from ontological unawareness and egoism, non-ethical factors usually
ignored in psychology. Tese give rise to destructive poisons of the mind such as pride,
greed, fear, resentment, envy, and intolerance, which characterize egoic narcissism. Tis
comparative approach to psychology and meditative wisdom allows for an expansion of
developmental and psychotherapeutic theories.
W
ithin the perspective of Western psychology,
psychotherapy deals with a complex range
of suering involving physical, emotional,
cognitive, and behavioral states, which aect persons
relation to life and produce an intimate and existential
suering that undermines the achievement of personal
and interpersonal goals. In particular, it hurts the quality
of individual freedom and frequently its aims. Mental
suering always involves drives, feelings, thoughts, and
behaviors, and manifests itself through the subjective
expression of painful emotions and distorted thoughts,
as well as through objective behaviors of a destructive
and irrational type.
Tese painful states of sentiment may produce
alterations in the sense of reality and antagonistic and
separative attitudes in the inner and outer world, thereby
hindering any harmonious integration in the intraper-
sonal and interpersonal relationships. To cure this inner
suering, psychotherapy uses the therapeutic relation-
ship, but there is no univocal view of this clinical art.
Tere are various schools of psychotherapy, each based
on a set of notions on the nature of the human person
and of health and suering, developed according to a
given cultural paradigm and the corresponding phi-
losophy and world vision, which is the context of the
science of psychotherapy. We thus see great dierences
in the so-called four forces of Western psychology:
psychoanalysis, behavioral and cognitive psychology,
humanistic psychology, and transpersonal psychology.
Te former two, psychoanalysis and cognitive-behav-
ioral psychology, are the product of the mechanistic
paradigm and the materialistic vision that restricts
reality to the physical universe. Humanistic psychology
includes existential philosophy and systemic science in
its embrace, as the human being is primary and central
to its vision. Transpersonal psychology, however, is
based on a vision of the human being and the world
that includes spiritual reality and considers its experi-
ence and expression as the utmost peak of psychological
growth.
Te study, interpretation, and vision of mental
suering are strictly connected to the vision of the
world and the human person on which are based the
above psychological and psychotherapeutic theories. In
the conceptions born in the framework of mechanistic
and materialistic science, the reading of suering takes
place in the context of personal biography and connects
to a disturbance of the instinctual-aective dimension
that is close to the biological life, in which context it is
studied and dealt with. When human existence is only
seen associated to bodily life, even the psychological
experience is seen as the result of the persons contact
with the surrounding physical and relational world, and
each reaction is attributed to positive or negative experi-
ences in the world. Tere being no possible assumption
that life may originate before birth and may be inde-
pendent of external experience, the causes of personal
suering are all looked for in the context of personal
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 92 Boggio Gilot
biography and the relations with the environment,
parents, and society. Tus, in the psychoanalytic litera-
ture, the mental suering, called psychodynamics, is
all in the incapability of adapting to reality, because of
impulses that cannot be regulated by reason or morals
often reduced to some maladjustment in the so-called
object relations, where object basically stands for the
parental gures. Te psychoanalysis requires going back
to early history and the interiorized experience of object
relations. Te goal is a normal social adjustment, for
which what is needed is to restructure the malignant
internal objects and their structural by-products that in
turn cause the conicts, complexes, and inhibitions of
personality that make it dicult to establish satisfactory
social relations.
In behavioral and cognitive psychology, mental
suering consists of a disturbance of the construc-
tion of thought due to a negative conditioning of the
environment. Terapy requires revising the texture of
thought and freeing it from the dysfunctional construc-
tions in order to reach a satisfactory adjustment to social
reality.
Te humanistic-existential view largely refers to
a vision of the world extending from the mechanistic-
materialistic context to the recognition of the interde-
pendence of the various human, ecologic, and cosmic
systemseven the conception of suering changes. Te
human being who recognises himself as part of a wider
universe than family and society is in search of a goal
and a task going beyond simple adjustment. Te reading
of symptoms, in this context, looks at not only the
damages of interpersonal and socio-cultural relations,
but also at the inhibition of a free relation with existence
due to the lack of meaning and the lack of free expres-
sion of ones creativity. Te humanistic-existential con-
ception underlines that the cause of suering lies not
only in early life events, but in the repression of ones
emotions, talents, and most authentic valuesa crushing
of the truly original tendencies of the person which
hinders the natural track of self-realization and the
expression of higher fundamental needs. Healing here
requires the courage to exist with ones ideas and ones
values, as well as nding an existential direction capable
for facing the great themes of lifethe result being
otherwise to fall into discouragement, boredom, insig-
nicance, and eventually despair. Whereas the therapy
of psychodynamic suering considers the dysfunctional
object relations and requires going back to the patients
past and transforming those elements that hinder the
adjustment to reality, existential therapy of suering
requires going beyond adaptation and conformity and,
instead, living according to ones real nature, free from
the need of conrmation from others and conventional
safety.
Tis means that adaptation, which for ordinary
psychodynamic suering is the goal of a much longed-
for normality, becomes an unbearable limit from the
perspective of existential suering. As Jung himself had
to note on this issue, to be normal is a splendid ideal
for those who are a failure, for those who have not been
able to adapt. But for the ones who are more capable
than the average, for those who never nd it dicult
to be successful and do their share in the world, to be
bound to normality is a Procrustean bed, un unbearable
bore, an awful sterility and desperation. It so happens
that many persons become neurotic because they are
just normal, whereas others become neurotic because
they are unable to become normal (Jung, 1939).
With transpersonal psychology, a suering is
described that relates to the separation of the ego from
its spiritual essence: this involves not only the depri-
vation of the most profound values and the lack of
meaning in life with the associated feelings of alien-
ation, boredom and despair, but also the lack of con-
nection with the spiritual dimension toward which the
individuality naturally tends. Transpersonal psychology
underlines a suering that is more specically related to
the removal of the sublime and the crises faced in the
phase of spiritual awakening, which generally occurs
around the middle of life.
Te various conceptions of suering all share
a least common denominator: the recognition that
suering manifests itself through a state of lack, which
reects the frustration of fundamental human needs.
Te psychodynamic conceptions, more related to early
biographic experiences, refer to the primary needs of
safety, love and esteem, whereas the humanistic-existen-
tial conceptions refer to the needs of growth, self-realisa-
tion, and meaning. Te transpersonal conception refers
to the lack in the needs of connection with the Sacred,
of knowledge, truth and self-transcendence. Here, going
back to a spiritual cultural context recognizing the unity
of life and its transcendent matrix, it appears that the
greatest source of suering is the ontologic ignorance,
the deprivation of a contact of individual life with the
universal life, due to the identication with the histor-
ical ego, immersed in the outer ow and separated from
developmental and ideal values.
In the spiritual vision, the lack of an encounter
with universal archetypes impoverishes individual life:
it is the lack of the feeling of belonging to the unity of
life that produces the anguish of life and death. Spiritual
poverty, due to the ignorance of ones essence, condemns
one to compensate through the importance of the sense
of the ego, conned to the body and its attachments
while unable to grant safety and continuously generating
conditions of separateness, fear, anxiety, and aggressive
defensiveness.
Te application of the principles of transper-
sonal psychology is based of the following developments
of transpersonal psychotherapy. In the words of Walsh
and Vaughan (1993), transpersonal psychotherapy aims
at the integration of physical, emotional, mental, and
spiritual aspects of wellbeing. Its objectives include the
classical ones of a normal psychological functioning,
adding to these the fostering of human growth and
awareness beyond the notion of health as convention-
ally recognised. Te potential of healing implicit in the
modication of ordinary consciousness and the validity
of the transcendent experience is here strongly under-
lined. A transpersonal psychotherapist can utilise tra-
ditional techniques as well as methods derived from
spiritual disciplines, such as meditation and mental
training. According to Boornstein (1992), psycho-
therapy also deals with the psychological processes
related to the realization of the states of enlightenment,
bliss, transcendence, and mystic union, as well as of the
psychological conditions directly or indirectly under-
lying these events. According to Washburn (1994), a
fundamental objective of transpersonal psychotherapy
is the integration of the spiritual experience with a wider
understanding of human nature and the development of
suering.

Ken Wilbers Integral Approach
O
ver the past 25 years, the historical development
of psychotherapy models has produced a progres-
sive tendency toward an integrative and intercultural
approach. Tis stemmed from the need to coordinate
the theoretical and epistemological body of knowledge
of the four fundamental schools of psychology and
psychotherapy (psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral,
humanistic-existential, and transpersonalsee Table
1), along with psychologies coming from other contexts
than scientic ones, such as the meditative traditions.
Te aim is to go beyond the atomistic and totalitarian
vision of the scientic model that has ignored the dis-
coveries of others and the intercultural aspects.
Tis tendency has emerged in the International
Journal of Psychotherapy (2002), with special reference
to the distinction between the risk of a hybrid syn-
cretism, clearly to be avoided, and a pluralistic model
recognising the complementarity of the various concep-
tions with the aim of a unied and wider vision of
psychological distress and the methods to heal it. Inte-
grative conceptions combining psychology and spiri-
tuality include the work of Naranjo (1989), the psy-
chology of Almaas (2004), and particularly the integral
approach of Ken Wilber (2000), already a leader of
transpersonal psychology who brilliantly combined the
theories and methods of Western psychology with the
wisdom of meditative traditions. According to Wilber,
human totality is composed of body, mind, soul, and
spirit. Development occurs through a process of inte-
gration of the potentialities of these levels in an arch
that goes from a prepersonal-prelogical-preegoic stage,
to a personal-logical-egoic, and then to a transpersonal-
translogical-transegoic one. At each stage, specic dis-
turbances are possible and therefore specic psychopa-
Conceptions of mental suering
Psychoanalytic Incapability of adapting to reality, due to dysfunctional object relations
Cognitive Disturbance of the construction of thinking and of the systems of
dierentiation and correlation, due to a negative conditioning
Humanistic- Failure of self-realisation, due to frustration of the needs of growth and
existential lacking sense of existence
Transpersonal Removal of the sublime and conicts inherent to spiritual crises
Table 1.
thologies, requiring an accurate dierential diagnosis
and dierential healing methods. With this complex
spectrum of psychopathological development, Wilber
coordinated the psychoanalytic, cognitive, human-
istic, and transpersonal conceptions and proposed a
new image of an integral therapist capable of working
with the dierent bands of the spectrum. Exploration
on meditative states sheds new light on the theories of
suering and psychotherapy, both with respect to phe-
nomenological and prognostic aspects and with respect
to the signicance of suering and its developmental
value.
Spiritual Vision of Mental Suering
I
n the scientic approach, mental pathology is
signalled by a suering exhibiting symptoms and is
faced according to a deterministic vision that attributes
its origins to a cause external to the patient (e.g., in early
traumas due to dysfunctional relations with the family
and the environment). In this deterministic frame of
reference, mental suering derives from others: the
patient is a victim of external forces, family, or society,
making him or her the pathetic protagonist of a painful
condition not wanted and unable to be inuenced. Tis
strictly mechanistic vision showing us a human being
that is manipulated by and a victim of hostile external
forces, though partly valid in biographical terms, does
not fully account for the reasons of mental suering nor
help the solution of human unhappiness, while on the
other hand easily stirring up destructive behaviors.
If ones suering is attributed to others, ill-
feelings and anger naturally develop, and particularly
when suering is exclusively related to early emotional
traumas, hate against the parents can burst with unfore-
seeable outcomes. In a rigidly deterministic context,
psychotherapy, rather than being an instrument to
foster peace and unity in the family and society may
instead increase separation. In this perspective, other
negative consequences arise that are hardly coherent
with a positive model of mental health.
Seeing the suering as originated by others, it is
only natural to consider that salvation should also come
from the outside. Te only way to be healed is therefore
seen in psychotherapy, and if will or means to access
it are lacking, then what is left in front of suering
is to dull ones senses, having recourse to pleasure,
alcohol, drug, the alienating hedonistic distraction, and
arming ones power, as means to compensate for the
wrongs one considers to be the victim of. When such is
the human condition, suering is no longer an instru-
ment of contact with oneself, a means of knowledge and
growth, but rather becomes an instrument of alienation
and loss of a realistic and developmental relation with
life. Te scientic and materialistic notion of mental
suering lacks both a wise vision of life and ethical con-
siderations: it deprives the patient of a precise responsi-
bility towards his condition, underestimates the human
capacity to face suering, fails to promote the devel-
opment of good forces, and rather fosters a basic nar-
cissism. To recover, frequently only means acquiring
aggressive forces to use in a more intelligent way (see
also Boggio Gilot, 1997).
Ancient wisdom, that which derives from the
great meditative traditions (especially Yoga Vedanta),
has a profoundly dierent vision of suering, as well
as a dierent approach to recovery. It emphasises that,
although it is true that in ordinary life a great part of
human experience is related to suering, it is also true
that only to a small extent does this suering comes from
external causes. Mostly, it is instead self-produced and
depends on factors that are intrinsic to the self-centered
mental state, that is, on basic narcissistic aictions of
a mind that is unaware of its own potentialities and
spiritual nature. It is this ontologic unawareness that
causes the development of the non-ethical factors and
poisons that inhabit the mind and give rise to wrong
and separative behaviors.
In this context, because the origin of suering
is in the human being, he is responsible for it, and can
overcome it by having recourse to his own inner poten-
tialities, that is, to the development of consciousness,
until reaching the spiritual experience that connects
individual to universal life (Boggio Gilot, 1993). Tese
goals require a profound knowledge and transformation
of oneself.
Te spiritual vision is profoundly dierent from
the scientic one, in that it confers responsibility and
a central role to the patient, making him no longer an
unaware victim but rather the maker of his own destiny.
In looking broadly at the sense and nature of suering,
the Eastern view adds a particularly enlightening per-
spective by emphasizing the central role of karma, that
is, the law of cause and eect, which attributes a determi-
nant value to human action with the consequent produc-
tion of corresponding eects. Te inevitable suering,
such as for instance that related to an organic disease or
the daily problems of existence, that the Western view
attributes to a bizarre and obscure fate, is in the Eastern
view the result of a negative behavior, possibly even
stemming from some previous existence, that created
negative eects precipitating in the present.
Te concept of karma recognises a relative
free-will, in the sense that fortune or misfortune is the
product of previous behaviors and choices. Te present,
however, is not only inevitably predetermined, but is also
the time when new free actions are promoted, thereby
strewing the negative or positive seeds that will sprout
in the future.
Close to the concept of karma is Platos notion
of daimon, reconsidered by Hillman (1997), according
to which the soul becomes incarnated even in choosing
his or her own parents and life events, in order to pass
through a developmental process and face the chal-
lenges needed to reach liberation. In this context, the
suering that life brings along is in no way accidental,
but is rather a signicant and liberating element meant
to foster the perfecting of the individual and elevation
toward the supreme goal of life.
In agreement with the Eastern tradition (e.g.,
Samkara), Plato outlined that not only suering does
not derive from others, but also it is highly useful in
that it serves to lift up oneself: it has a cathartic value
and brings along the possibility to live it as an oppor-
tunity of growth and development. In this spiritual
perspective, suering as such is dignied as an oppor-
tunity of growth, and responsibility is underlined, in
that the individual is at least a co-creator of that which
he lives, and has a task. In short, there is a meaning in
what happens, and this must be understood in terms of
ones own development.
Uniting psychology and the spiritual vision
into an integral conception (Boggio Gilot, 2005), it
is possible to outline two basic categories of human
suering: (1) Tere is one type of suering that has a
developmental signicance: it is useful because it oers
the possibility of a transformation of ones person-
ality and, through this, the opportunity to get rid of a
negative karma accumulated in the past. Tis suering,
if well understood, helps liberation and salvation. (2)
Tere is another type of suering that is useless and self-
produced, in the here and now, through the factors of
self-centered unawareness and the consequent poisons
Human suering according to

...the scientic view
of Western psychology
All human suering comes from the outside:
the human being is a passive victim and is right to be
afraid and to defend himself from external threats.
Mental suering is signalled by symptoms stem-
ming from troubled object relations or negative con-
ditionings. Te human being is right to be resentful,
because he is the victim of the violence of others.
Te healthy mind is identied with the absence
of clinical symptoms and its suering does not re-
quire to be cured.
Te unhealthy mind shows symptoms and must
be cured countering the symptoms, with no refer-
ence to the ethical and spiritual state.
...the meditative tradition
Part of the suering is self-produced through
wrong doings of the past and the present: rather
than being afraid, the human being must take re-
sponsibility for his actions by doing right.
Mental suering is either the result of a previ-
ous negative karma, or the result of the poisons of
the unaware and egocentric mind in the here and
now. Te human being has no reason to be resent-
ful: his task is to proceed towards the understanding
and transformation of himself.
Te absence of clinical symptoms does not
mean that one is healthy. Te healthy mind is the
one which is inhabited by ethical factors and quali-
ties that produce the right perception and is united
with life.
Te unhealthy mind is inhabited by factors of
egocentric unawareness and by poisons that are un-
ethical attributes of illusion and suering. Te cure
implies spiritual development.
Table 2.
of the mind. Tis suering, caused by wrong doings of
the present, is soiled with non-ethical factors and brings
along destructiveness, as well as negative eects for the
future.
Te suering that is not self-produced and is
ultimately useful includes both those disturbances of
development deriving from traumas suered by the
child in the family and early environment, as well as the
suering related to unavoidable life events.
Te suering that is self-produced, instead,
stems from a thought lacking wisdom and from nar-
cissistic and non-ethical personal choices. Here lie the
roots of that negative assimilation of the frustrating
experiences of life and of those reactions of rejection
that frequently give rise to clinical symptoms and the
maladjusted behaviors of overt psychopathology.
Te integral approach is that which takes care of
the various forms of suering with an accurate diagnosis
and using tools derived from Western psychotherapy and
Eastern meditative wisdom: particularly the practice of
ethics and the practice of awareness and transformation
of the Yoga Vedanta systems of meditation, considered
to be particularly useful for taking care of mental and
behavioral suering (see Table 2 and Figure 1).
As has been pointed out, it is and will become
increasingly evident that the only psychology capable of
facing the despair, destructiveness, and bewilderment of
the modern world will be an integral psychology that
includes the wisdom of spiritual traditions. Only these,
in fact, possess the methods to foster the awareness of
the good forces that every human being carries as inner
nature, and only these can foster the trust and the hope
without which neither healing nor the peace of the heart
will ever be realised (Boggio Gilot, in press).
References
Almaas, P. H. (2004). Te inner journey home. Boston:
Shambhala.
Boggio Gilot, L. (Ed.). (1993). Soerenza e guarigione
[Suering and Healing]. Assisi, Italy: Cittadella.
Boggio Gilot, L. (1997). Crescere oltre l io [Growing
Beyond Ego]. Assisi, Italy: Cittadella.
Boggio Gilot, L. (2005). Il cammino dello sviluppo
integrale [Te Path of Integral Development].
Rome: Satya-Edizioni AIPT.
Boggio Gilot, L. (in press). Curare mente e cuore, negli
stadi dello sviluppo dalles all io allanima [Healing
Mind and Heart, in the developmental stages from
id to ego to soul]. Rome: Satya-Edizioni AIPT. (in
press)
Boornstein, S. (1992). Transpersonal psychotherapy (2nd
ed.). Stanford, CA: JTP Books.
Hillman, J. (1997). Il codice dellanima [Te souls
code]. Milano, Italy: Adelphi.
Jung C. G. (1939). Modern man in search of a soul. New
York: Harcomer Brace.
Naranjo, C. (1989). How to be: Meditation in spirit
and practice. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Samkara, V. (1981). Il gran gioiello della discrimina-
zione. [Te grand jewel of discrimination]. Rome:
Asram Vidya.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, F. (1993). Paths Beyond Ego.
Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Washburn, M. (1994). Transpersonal Psychology in Psy-
choanalytic Perspective. Albany, NY: State Univer-
sity of New York Press.
Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology. Boston:
Shambhala.
Human suering
SUFFERING
MEANINGFUL MEANINGLESS
TRANSFORMATIVE DESTRUCTIVE
Disturbances of Diseases and Factors of Poisons
development due unavoidable egocentric of the
to traumatic life events unawareness unethical
factors mind
Figure 1.
About the Author
Laura Boggio Gilot, PhD, is a psychotherapist and
author. She is founder and president of the Italian
Association for Transpersonal Psychology (AIPT), co-
founder and past president of the European Transper-
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 98 Salom
Te Terapeutic Potentials
of a Museum Visit
Andre Salom
Sasana: A Center for Transpersonal Studies
Bogot, Colombia
Museums are safe spaces for the objects they hold and for the persons that visit them,
providing environments that can function in therapeutic ways. Within the wide range of
objects, there is enough diversity to help guests discover what similarities they have with
others as well as what makes them unique as individuals. Within exhibits, individuals can
explore themselves through the reactions they have to particular pieces, through the obser-
vation of what holds their attention within the environment, and through the awareness and
development of their contemplative mind. Museums can introduce transpersonal informa-
tion, add information to previous transpersonal experiences, and even promote expanded
states of awareness. With direction, guests can use museums to learn about themselves, thus
optimizing the therapeutic potentials of these institutions.
M
useums invite visitors to take a peek into
the collective experience of human beings.
Philippe de Montebello (2005), Director of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, described
them, quite literally and succinctly, as the memory of
mankind. Tey are, he said, the repositories of precious
objects and relics, the places where they are preserved,
studied and displayed (editorial page). Museums can
provide an additional service: they can supply therapeutic
experiences that can signicantly impact our well-being if
we place the emphasis in learning about ourselves through
the contents in them.
Supporting Terapeutic Encounters
A Safe Space
T
he term museum comes from the Greek word
mouseion, meaning the shrine of the muses
(Halsey, 1977, p. 668). A muse, used as a noun, is
dened as a spirit or other source of genius or artistic
inspiration; its denition as a verb is to think, reect or
meditate (p. 668). As the roots of the word museum
imply, museums are meant as places of meditation and
contemplation.
Te architectural boundaries of a museum (scale,
lighting, temperature, circulation, display, etc.), along
with the appraisals visitors make of these elements, mark
a clear dierence between the museum and the world
outside of it. Tey propose a shift in behavior, cognition.
and emotion. Many museums pose a spiritual quality
by inviting visitors into a slowed pace, subdued sounds,
and an orderly visual experience. Tey adhere to a code
of good behavior: visitors cannot destroy works that
produce strong negative reactions in them, nor can they
take home those that they adore. Exhibits are carefully
organized, summoning the contemplative mind to come
forth and perceive what is presented. Tis state of aairs
is conducive to self awareness and insight.
Every single piece in a museum is valued and
protected. Tis atmosphere of safety has the potential
to create a sense of security in guests who visit, perhaps
allowing them to risk experiences such as aloneness. At
times, a private encounter can take place between ones
self and a particular piece of art, even as other people
surround. Te protective limits, created to optimize
attention, bid the mind to expand beyond its usual
internal dialogues, and be present with and in the
environment.
Uniqueness and Tolerance of Dierences
A
t times I draw on the works of established artists
for therapeutic interventions. A patient may think
his or her art is not worthy because it is not suciently
structured, it is too gloomy, empty, colorful, or unusual
or perhaps even too ordinary. Here, prints of well-known
art work may come to the rescue. Patients who fear a
lack of ability often dare to draw beginners scribbles
after seeing pieces such as Andre Masons Automatic
Drawing, a piece where the artist aimed at accessing his
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 99 Terapeutic Potentials of a Museum Visit
unconditioned mind by making spontaneous marks on
paper.
Even more impressive for patients is the diversity
of pieces valued and displayed in museum installations.
Witnessing the validity of uniquely personal expression,
(as portrayed, for instance, in the juxtaposition of
Twomblys Lepanto paintings and the Don Juan de Austria
by Velazquez, at the Museo del Prado, two singular and
very dierent artistic voices) reassures patients that it
is not only his or her therapist who validates distinct
personal expressions. It is also museums that authorize
them, and museums, by preserving and interpreting our
heritage, serve as symbols of society (MacDonald, 1989).
Te diversity of art shown in many collections can mirror
our value as individuals with myriad and inimitable ways
of expression. In this way, uniqueness is symbolically
appreciated within a museum.
As the expression of uniqueness is validated, it
arms a multiplicity of possibilities in the manifestation
of singularity. All types of art pieces cohabitate a wide
range of exhibits. Both a modern print, like Lozowicks
New York, and a piece from the Iron Age, such as Te
Stanwick Horse Mask, have their own special place. Te
dribbles of Pollok are valued, as are Pisarros landscapes,
Noguchis stone sculptures, and Piero Della Francescas
linear perspectives. Temes, dimensions, materials, and
techniques that are used in art, are as extensive as we
are ourselves. Views of diverse customs, traditions, and
values are presented through the direct communication
provided by pieces of art themselves, as well as by means
of explanatory description provided by the museum.
Even diverse stages of consciousness are portrayed inside
museums through the medium of artistic expression.
Robbins (1987), stated that form, texture, color, volume,
space, movement, and abstractiondescribethe
nonverbal aspects of internal representational life
(p. 105), and give information about the artists reality,
feelings and ways of relating. Tus, art expresses diversities
of consciousness, whether they be whole, realized, awake,
spontaneous, (Wilber, 1996) or instinctual, impulsive
libidinous[or] apelike (p. 2). Tis armation of
variety encourages tolerance of dierences in others and
in ourselves.

Te Big Group
W
ith uniqueness may come the feeling of being
dierent and secluded. Feeling separate and
unlike others may lead to suering. In my practice
as an art therapist, and in my own personal life, I am
constantly being faced with such suering. Tere is pain
and confusion, there are feelings of isolation, inadequacy,
fear, shame, guilt, and regret. Yet as I watch patients
courageously face their lives, there is a power towards
growth in the exchange between patient and therapist,
a dynamic that is both moving and humbling. Te
suering allies with inner creative source in the search
for ourselves through artistic form. As the suering takes
shape, so does our aliveness, our compassion, and our
beauty.
Museums allow guests to see the artistic
expressions of others who, like them, have explored the
human experience with all its hues, textures, and tones,
and then allowed these experiences to manifest in their
work. By creating an atmosphere that houses expressions
of all dierent states of mind, museums become optimal
for exploring the concepts of imparting information,
universality, and installation of hope that Yalom
(1995) has described as therapeutic in his book, Te
Teory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.
Imparting Information
O
ne of the reasons people go to museums is to acquire
information. Tis information can give perspective
to their daily obstacles. Visitors learn about the life stories
of many artists who created artwork as they coped with
distressing conditions. Tey discover that Monet painted
his water lilies despite problems with his vision (Is It Art?,
1997), and that Kahlo painted much of her work from her
bed, conned by the many surgeries that she underwent
after a bus accident fractured her back. Tey learn that
Matisse started to cut shapes instead of painting them
because cancer forced him into a wheelchair, that Munch
suered from alcoholism, that Van Gogh had bipolar
tendencies, that Hopper underwent acute loneliness, and
that nancial diculties plagued Vermeer and Gauguin.
Te fact that these artists continued to search for meaning
and reach for beauty in the face of adversity may inspire
visitors to do the same.
Universality and Installation of Hope
T
here is no human deed or thought that is fully outside
the experience of other people (Yalom, 1995, p.
6). Tis is claried by studying the works of artists who
have expressed concerns for and zeal towards situations
that individuals can relate to in some way. Humanitys
greatness and frailness are manifested in their art, partly
documented and placed inside museums so that it can
be shared. Te sense of isolation is inevitably shaken in
the face of the realization that humans share so many
common features. Tese can be seen in museum exhibits
that evidence human similarities from beyond ones own
time and place.
Beyond its common diculties, humanity
also share the possibility of resignifying its experiences.
As de Montebello (2005) discussed the importance of
museums, he stated that through them, one can learn
about
mankinds awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to
surpass itselfthat no matter how bleak the times
we may live in, we cannot wholly despair of the
human condition . . . no matter the degree of chaos
and adversity surrounding him, man has shown his
ability to excel, to surpass. (editorial page)
Te restorative factors of exploring our humanness
through our collective art can be similar to the therapeutic
factors of group therapy; in the former, the scale of the
group simply becomes bigger. A sense of universality
may be perceived in museums, and hope in humanity
itself can be installed in visitors if museums are used as
agents for the wellbeing of communities.
Using Museums Terapeutically
Identity and Particular Pieces
I
n museums, people are exposed to material that oers
new opportunities for them to discover themselves.
Collective items surround us in collections, and this
can ignite in us a sense of our distinctiveness. In the
words of Carl Jung (1997), If . . . contents (produced
by the collective unconscious) remain unconscious, the
individual is, in them, unconsciously commingled with
other individuals, in other words, he is not dierentiated,
not individuated (p. 71). Visitors may search for
identity, a crucial aspect of individuation, as they intently
experience museum galleries.
Tis quest for identity might come to rest on a
particular piece. If a visitor is so touched by a piece that
it is the only one they want to consider, and anything
else would be distracting, he or she might ponder
sincerely into the meaning of such an attraction. What
is it that the piece provokes; what could the gures in it
say in relation to their own life story; how do the colors
stir their emotions and aect their internal dialogue;
what memories, movements, or bodily sensations does
it arouse? In this way, contemplation of a particular
object may help individuals note unnoticed aspects of
themselves.
Te Whole Environment
M
useums seek for clarity of perception by providing
carefully chosen stimuli presented in controlled
doses. Tis makes them advantageous environments
for exploring the interaction between surroundings and
their inuence on inner life. Trough the contemplative
nature of the environment, visitors may be cued into an
acute sensitivity that is benecial for exploring the total
setting and the parts that make it up: a beam of light,
the chit-chat of nearby visitors, the lines on a painting,
the smell of coee, the view from a stairway. Museums
can inspire guests to learn about a technique, explore
certain themes, or delve into existential questions. Tey
may rush by, pass leisure time, enthusiastically share
experiences, or contemplate by themselves, seemingly
alone in the innity of the present moment.
I nd that going to an exhibit with another
person requires a lot of cooperation. Each visitors
rhythms, reactions, and desires become clear when in
comparison to others. What wing of a museum are we
interested in? How will we manage time through the
galleries and at particular pieces? How much and in what
way do we wish to talk about the work? What do we each
need along the way? Who makes the decisions? Do we
negotiate, concede, confront, or compromise?
Guests may move from one aspect of a show to
the next, as they see t. Perls (1973) described the humans
capacity to discriminate, stating that acceptance, and
rejection of the environment, are the most important
functions of the total personality. . . . Contact and
withdrawal, in a rhythmic pattern, are our means of
satisfying our needs, of continuing the ongoing process
of life itself (pp. 22-23). Te museum experience can
bring insight into the relationships with others and with
the environment. I may inquire into what holds my
attention, and how this attention accords with what I
feel and think. I can explore the decisions I make as I
move through a display to see whether I am choosing
in accordance with myself, or in accordance with what I
imagine the expectations of others to be.
Letting Go
A
s visitors walk through an exhibit, they may feel
invited to let go of strong emotions and thoughts
produced by one piece or aspect of a museum, in order to
be able to experience whatever is coming next. Tis type of
contemplation can help illustrate the process of letting go
that is part of many schools of meditation. Te therapeutic
value of this is illustrated in the following words:
In meditation, you have the opportunity of easing
your grip on all your preconceptions, images, and
self importance, the opportunity of allowing them to
fade away for a while and nding out that you are
still there. Te repeated experience of this builds trust
that you do not have to gure life out or cling to a
self-image, that you do not have to commandeer your
own spirit, or jump to x every problem you detect in
yourself. (Walsh & Vaughan, 1996, p. 37)
Viewing a museum exhibit with this framework in mind
can teach this contemplative skill by oering a structure
within which to watch patterns of mental grasping and
judging, and thereby support the process of relaxing the
mind into the present.
Museums and Transpersonal Realms
M
useums can serve as vehicles for exploring the
transpersonal realms in many ways. Te objects
inside museums are physical manifestations of the
creative force that runs through humanity, whether or
not the purpose of a particular creation was related to the
sacred. Tese objects carry symbols, and
Real symbolsare not invented or made up, nor
are they poetic or allegorical means to represent a
known fact. On the contrary, they are numinous
and autonomous products of the unconscious,
expressions of unknown, that is unconscious, facts
carrying an energy charge that can aect the psyche
in drastic fashion. (Harding, 1961, p. 2)
As such, the objects are infused with creation, and viewers
can potentially develop relationships with the pieces in
which transpersonal consciousness can be explored.
Introducers of Transpersonal Information
E
xhibits may introduce spiritual traditions or lead to
spiritual inquiry by engaging many of our senses
with unique aliveness, allowing for integral learning
experiences. As educational devices that introduce
information, museums can motivate visitors into further
investigation of dierent traditions and their experiential
explorations, devotional paths, transcendental inquiries,
and roads of service.
Moreover, the learning processes that museums
initiate do not necessarily terminate at the end of an
exhibit. After walking through the Oriental Museum at
the University of Chicago, Te Human Headed Winged
Bull from Khorsabad and Te Bulls Head from Persia
inspired me to explore the topic of Power Animals
(Grof, 1993, pp. 148-150) in various cultures. After
learning about Shamanic rites at the Museo del Oro
in Bogot, a friend explored a ritual with Yaje, the
psychotropic plant of the Amazon. Tough I saw them
a long time ago, Klimts Te Kiss, with its depiction of
union between man and woman, and Michelangelos
Creation of Man, representing for me the union with
divinity, still confront me deeply; they are often in my
mind. When I ask myself if I can unite as those images
propose, my fears and desires arise, allowing for a re-
investigation of my needs for intimacy and independence
at many levels.
Adding to Previous Transpersonal Experiences
D
uring a Holotropic Breathing (cf. Grof, 1993,
pp. 22-23) session, I had images of two beautiful
women. One gracefully danced through my body; the
other, powerful and frightening, surrounded me and
performed rituals to destroy that which was no longer
needed. I do not recall seeing these deities before,
nor did I see them again until months later during a
visit to the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.
I remembered my experience when I recognized
the sculptures of Lakshmi and of Kali as the Hindu
Goddesses who had appeared in my session and re-
energized me. Seeing them in pictures and sculptures,
learning their names, origins, stories, and qualities
further explained my experience and reconnected me to
a devotional feeling toward them. It was wonderful to
realize that the goddesses of my experience existed past
the limits of my own mind. At the museum I got a sense
of what Grof was talking about when he wrote that
our individual consciousness connects us directly
not only with our immediate environment and
with various periods of our own past , but also with
events that are far beyond the reach of our physical
senses, extending into other historical times, into
nature and into the cosmos...we can reach far back
in time and witness sequences from the lives of our
human and animal ancestors, as well as events that
involved people from other historical periods and
cultures with whom we have no genetic connection
whatsoever. (p. 18)
While visiting a particular wing of the Chteau
Neuf at Versailles, my mother experienced anxiety,
oppression, and claustrophobia. Tis fact intrigued me
without resolution until I learned about Grof s (1993)
Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM): experiential patterns
stored in memory that are thought to be connected
to four stages in the biological process of delivery (pp.
28-29). Grof portrays the second of these matrices as
follows:

Te biological basis for BPM II is the termination
of life in the womb and the encounter with uterine
contractionsthe entire world of the fetus is
closing in and crushing it causing anxiety and
great physical discomfort.A person experiencing
a fully developed BPM II feels caged, caught in a
claustrophobic nightmarish world.lled with
terror, suering, wars, epidemics, accidents and
natural disaster. (pp. 46-48)
Years later I described this matrix for her, and she
connected the description to her experience at Versailles.
Tis suggested to me that the exhibit had somehow
triggered my mother into accessing BPM II material.
Kindlers of Transpersonal Experiences
M
useum visits can support expanded states of
consciousness, for there are exhibits that have
specic spiritual purposes. Such is the case of the
Heart Shrine Relic Tour, which displays the relics left
by enlightened Masters in their cremation ashes, pearl-
like crystals believed to hold qualities of wisdom and
compassion. Persons who have seen these relics report
feeling peaceful and moved for days after attending
the show. One visitor described the experience as a
reminder of the sacredness within (Maitrei Project
International, 2000-2008, n.p.).
Museum pieces need not belong to a particular
spiritual tradition to sponsor a transpersonal experience.
I sat at the middle of one of the original oval galleries of
Te Musee de lOrangerie to watch Monets Water Lilies.
Te dark lighting, the curved walls and the gallerys
disposition permitted the Water Lilies to surround and
soothe me with their beauty. I lost the sense of time
and space. I forgot myself and went into deep states of
relaxation. It could have been the symbol of the lilies
oating on water that produced this expansion. Perhaps
it was Monets state of consciousness when drawing
them that touched me. Te colors and textures might
have done the maneuver. What matters is that images
and metaphors present themselves as living psychic
subjects (Hillman, 1991, p. 48) and, since museums
are lled with images, expanded states of awareness may
result.
Conclusion
W
hen discussing art versus therapeutic art,
Arrington (2001) names the importance of a
signicant other (the therapist), and of a theoretical
approach, as part of a therapeutic process. She states that
therapeutic art includes the clients intention, process,
product, and the gestalt of the whole phenomenon of
creating personal image (pp. 105-108). I believe that
similar elements are necessary to transform museum visits
into therapeutic processes, and that that these processes
can easily including transpersonal interventions.
Te rst steps toward therapeutic applications
of museum visits have been taken, as is demonstrated
by various collaborations. Te Boston Museum of
Modern Art has worked with Hearthstone, oering
short focused tours of the museums representational
pieces for Alzheimers patients (Kennedy, 2005). Te
Norton Priory Museum & Gardens collaborates with
Astmoor Day Services, oering direct work with nature
for adults with learning disabilities (Hayden, 2004).
Te Metropolitan Museum of Art oers educational
workshops at social service agencies incorporated into
art-based family programs facilitated by Free Arts NYC,
an organization that works with abused children.
Art making, exhibiting, and museum
involvement through work or volunteering can oer many
benets. Yet I do not believe that these are necessary for a
therapeutic engagement with creativity; a simple visit to
a museum can contribute to this purpose. In this light it
would be benecial to develop collaborative relationships
with museums so that art therapists might have the
opportunity to create a sucient holding environment
for their patients as they visit. A holding environment,
as described by Robbins (1987), is that space between
patient and therapist in which [therapists] complement
or mirror patients inner representational world (p. 61),
and in which empathy is the basis of communication
(p. 27). Tis can be created inside museums as therapists
and patients work empathically with the associations,
feelings, and interpretations aroused by the museum
experience to nd meaning and insight. As they hold
with a therapeutic framework in mind, art therapists can
look after the gestalt of the museum experience itself,
transforming the museum visit into a deeper aair.
References
Arrington, D. (2001). Why do we make art? A reective
paper. Art Terapy: Journal of the American Art
Terapy Association, 18 (2), 105-108.
De Montebello, P. (2005, June 1). Museums: Why
should we care?: For the study and understanding
of mankind. Leisure and Arts, Te Opinion Journal
from the Wall Street Journal, editorial page.
Retrieved March 10, 2006, from < http://www.
opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006760>
Grof, S. (1993). Te holotropic mind: Te three levels of
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About the Author
Andre Salom, MPS, received her B.A. degree in
architecture from Universidad de los Andes, Bogot,
in 1999 and her MPS in Art Terapy and Creativity
Development from Pratt Institute, NY, in 2001. She co-
developed the rst educational courses about Art Terapy
in Colombia, which have been taught at Sasana: A
Center for Transpersonal Studies, in Bogot, since 2006
and is in the process of consolidating the Colombian Art
Terapy Association. She runs art therapy sessions for
groups and individuals from a wide range of populations.
She has authored two childrens books: Todos dejamos los
Panales and Conociendo a Bebe. She may be reached at
andreesalom@yahoo.com.

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