The psychedelic renaissance did not emerge from a void. While a tremendous upswell of interest in psychedelics can be observed today, there is scant acknowledgment of the current spiritual crisis that has led to this burgeoning enthusiasm. Having lost our sense of the sacred, we have—with disastrous consequences—become alienated from ourselves, others, and the natural environment. Secular psychotherapy and psychiatry have failed to address the myriad mental health problems that are prevalent right now, which has compelled people to desperately look (...) for alternatives to fill the void in their lives. Sacred medicines have been used for millennia in humanity’s traditional cultures as part of their spiritual practices. Now that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) is being developed, we must avoid repeating the mistakes of modern psychology, which misguidedly seeks to situate entheogenic therapy on a desacralized foundation of materialism, reductionism, and scientism. Nevertheless, although the full benefit of entheogens can likely be gained only in the context of a sacred tradition, they may still have some measure of therapeutic value even when used in conjunction with secular psychotherapy. This article examines the metaphysical foundations of sacred psychology and argues that entheogenic therapy needs to be grounded on the same basis. The framework employed here is a “transpersonal” perspective that applies the insights found in the world’s great wisdom traditions. It will be argued that the adoption of psychedelics in mental health treatment presupposes a fully integrated psychotherapy that is possible only when it is rooted in a spiritually informed ontology. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two relatively independent forms of human development: waking up, the process and practices of psychospiritual awakening , and growing up, the process of moving from lesser narcissistic and ethnocentric self-identities towards mature postconventional self-identities with greater degrees of inclusion, perspective-taking, caring, and compassion. Each is a unique type of growth, contemplative and transformative, with different ways of engaging and differing goals and results. The former is about transcending or deconstructing the ego and the latter about building, strengthening, (...) and diversifying the ego. Whereas the Buddhist tradition and contemplative practices aim at awakening and transcending samsara (worldly conditions) by cultivating compassion and taming the mind, the Western tradition cultivates greater degrees of care and compassion by developing a mature ego within samsara that is both social-justice and eco-justice informed. The project of transcending the ego should not be confused with growing and maturing the ego. Self-transcendence and self-development must inform each other, and both are necessary for realizing our full human potential. (shrink)

The works by the American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, as well as the poetry of John Keats, especially his “Ode to a Nightingale,” offer new ways to reimagine our relation to the earth, to the dead and to language’s continued vitality. Beginning with a brief overview of some of the major tenets of Campbell’s guiding force of the “monomyth,” which gathers all the various world mythologies as inflections of one universal story, the essay then moves into a discussion of Keats’ poem (...) in order to reveal the power of poetic utterance in reconfiguring a vital mythology. If there is to be a renewed mythos, it may come out of a revisioned care of language itself as a transport vehicle towards the transcendent or invisible realms of being that poetry exposes us to through its aesthetic and linguistic corridors. The purpose of yoking mythology to poetry is to realign consciousness along a mytho-poetic axis of insight and understanding. (shrink)

Ervin Laszlo's revolutionary concept of the Akashic Field and his connectivity hypothesis offer elegant solutions for the baffling paradoxes associated with "anomalous phenomena" - otherwise unexplainable observations which many scientific disciplines encountered in the course of the 20th century. This article explores the ground-breaking contributions that Laszlo's work has made to psychology by providing a plausible conceptual framework for a large number of observations and experiences amassed by modern consciousness research, which challenge the most fundamental assumptions of the traditional scientific (...) worldview. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Dependent Origination is one of the fundamental concepts of early Buddhism. Traditionally, it is interpreted as a description of saṃsāra, the cycle of rebirth. This article offers a psychological interpretation of Dependent Origination as a model that describes how the forming unconscious of the foetus develops into the self-conscious mind of the adult human. This perspective opens new possibilities for the integration of Buddhist mind development, cognitive psychology and psychotherapy.

Dhall (2010) posited that quantum holism can provide an alternate justification for human rights. This article explores how such a foundation challenges aspects of international law and assertions of cultural relativism that have stymied the ongoing development of a universal human rights culture.

The paper continues the model I began in a previous issue of Sophia . It is argued that the predominance of purely ascending or ‘top down’ forms of spirituality which stemmed largely from the axial period and have been carried forward into modern, transpersonal theories of evolutionary spirituality is a mistake and that there exists a lost or largely ignored form of spirituality—which I name somatic—which was the predominant domain of early Neolithic and Palaeolithic experience. Aspects of what I call (...) somatic mystical experiences have certainly been acknowledged at times to a limited degree, though they have rarely been fully explored, and have usually been considered as basic to other kinds of mystical experience, rather than fully developed forms in their own right. This article offers a fuller exploration and places such states more accurately within a detailed developmental framework than has previously been the case. Other issues relating to the horizon model across the two papers are also expanded. (shrink)

The global crisis is heralding change within collective consciousness and humanity will be challenged to transform behaviors to co-create a sustainable future. Ervin Laszlo's Akashic Field could inspire such an archetypal shift, as exemplified in C.G. Jung's individuation process. Jung's encounters with the archetypes from the collective unconscious led him to connect deeply with Akashic experiences, which resulted in him expressing his human potential through renewed ways of doing and being. Humanity has an opportunity to develop and integrate transpersonal consciousness (...) through engaging archetypal and Akashic experiences, which could inspire collective action for the co-creation of an improved future. (shrink)

The ecological crisis is confronting humanity with a need to recognize the interconnectedness of all life, and the Akashic Field as formulated by Ervin Laszlo (2004a) has identified how a universal information field connects humans to a greater transpersonal consciousness. The Akashic Field could provide humanity with a focus to deepen its understanding of a holistic view of life. The global crisis will confront human beings with the need to develop their transpersonal potential and spiritual intelligence, which has the potential (...) to contribute to an ecological actualization of human beings' relationship to the world, and the development of a sustainable future. (shrink)

The concept of transformative experience (TE) has been widely explored by several disciplines from philosophy to neurobiology, and in different domains, from the spiritual to the educational one. This attitude has engendered heterogeneous models to explain this phenomenon. However, a consistent and clear understanding of this construct remains elusive. The aim of this work is to provide an initial comprehensive interdisciplinary, cross-domain, up-to-date, and integrated overview on the concept of TEs. Firstly, all the models and theories on TEs were reviewed (...) to extract and analyze TEs’ main components emerging from different disciplines. Then, this preliminary analysis was integrated with an in-depth examination of redundancies and particularities across domains and disciplines, to provide an integrated theoretical framework of TEs and a preliminary interdisciplinary operational definition of TEs. This examination, in turn, can help organize current research and theories, thus providing suggestions for operationalizing TEs as well as encouraging new interdisciplinary research endeavors. (shrink)

This paper gives continuity to the criticism, undertaken in two papers previously published in this journal, of transpersonal systems that fail to discriminate between nirvanic, samsaric, and neithernirvanic-nor-samsaric transpersonal states, and which present the absolute sanity of Awakening as a dualistic, conceptually-tainted condition. It also gives continuity to the denunciation of the false disjunction between ontogenically ascending and descending paths, while showing the truly significant disjunction to be between existentially ascending and metaexistentially descending paths. However, whereas in the preceding paper (...) the focus was on Wilber’s so-called integral system, in this paper the focus of the main body is on the systems of Washburn and Grof. It features an appendix discussing psychedelics and the use of the term entheogens in their regard, and another appendix showing Wilber’s system to give continuity to the Orphic dualism of Pythagoreans, Eleatics, and Plato, and the covert Orphic dualism of Neo-Platonics. (shrink)

In this article I develop a case for a theory of intelligence incorporating transpersonal dimensions, namely integrated intelligence. Some recent expanded theories of intelligence move into concepts like creativity, wisdom, and emotional intelligence. Yet they remain embedded within mainstream intelligence theory and its reductionist and materialist presuppositions. Although various theorists in consciousness theory have developed transpersonal models that are beginning to be discussed in some mainstream circles, mainstream intelligence theory is yet to address the broader implications of this. Recent changes (...) in the global economy and the needs of populations have created a need for an expanded theory of intelligence, and more intuitive thinking. (shrink)

Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings are subjective experiences characterised by a sudden sense of direct contact, union, or complete nondual merging with a perceived ultimate reality, the universe, “God,” or the divine. These profound transformative experiences have scarcely been researched, despite extensive anecdotal evidence suggesting their potential to catalyse drastic, long-term, and often positive shifts in perception, world-view, and well-being. The aims of this study were to investigate the phenomenological variances of these experiences, including the potential differences between SSAs and Spontaneous Kundalini (...) Awakenings, a subset of awakening experiences that the authors postulate may produce a higher likelihood of both physical and negative effects; to explore how these experiences compare to other altered states of consciousness, including those mediated by certain psychedelic substances; and understand their impact on well-being. Personality trait absorption and temporal lobe lability were assessed as predictors of Spontaneous Spiritual and Kundalini Awakenings. A mixed within and between-participants self-report survey design was adopted. A total of 152 participants reporting their most powerful SSA/SKAs completed questionnaires measuring nondual, kundalini, and mystical experience, as well as depth of ASC, and trait absorption and TLL. Spontaneous Kundalini Awakenings were found to be significantly more physical, but not significantly more negative than SSAs, and overall, both sets of experiences were perceived to be overwhelmingly more positive than negative, even in cases where the experience was initially challenging. The phenomenological distribution of SSA/SKAs was similar to other measured ASCs although greater in magnitude, and appeared most similar in distribution and in magnitude to drug-induced ASCs, particularly classic psychedelics DMT and psilocybin. Temporal lobe lability and trait absorption were found to predict the SSA/SKA experience. The limitations and implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)