What is Transpersonal Psychology?

We Keep Asking Ourselves, What is Transpersonal Psychology?

John Davis
Naropa University

Published in
Guidance and Counselling, (2000, Spring). 15 (3), 3-8.

Abstract

The author introduces transpersonal psychology and its central themes (nonduality, intrinsic health, self-transcendence). Transpersonal psychology is presented as an inclusive approach which values both diversity and unity. The relationships between this field and mainstream psychology, religion, spiritual wisdom traditions, and counselling practice are explored. Finally, transpersonal psychology is shown to be relevant for dealing with tragedies such as a recent shooting in a Colorado high school.

We Keep Asking Ourselves, What is Transpersonal Psychology?

I first heard of transpersonal psychology in 1972 when I was in graduate school on a National Science Foundation fellowship to study experimental psychology. While the term had been around since Abraham Maslow, Stan Grof, Victor Frankl, and others coined it in the late 1960s, it was new to me. I found myself drawn to its integration of spirituality and psychology, and I appreciated the opportunity to explore questions of higher states of consciousness and optimal mental health through a psychological and phenomenological, rather than a religious, framework. I felt this approach offered powerful ways of exploring and understanding these phenomena. I still do.

This field is moving into a maturity in which it has a great deal to offer counsellors, teachers, therapists, and researchers interested in psychological health and the full development of human potential. In this article, I will offer a personal context as well as an overview of the field in order to introduce transpersonal psychology and examine some of its applications in education and counselling.

My graduate studies focused initially on cognitive factors in classical conditioning (Davis, 1974). I felt this research had implications for the self-regulation of dysfunctional conditioned responses and stress-related problems. Later, I looked at it with a broader view and saw it as a study on mindfulness and automaticity. How can we free ourselves from awareness-limiting automatized behaviors and perceptions? One answer is to bring mindfulness to our conditioned responses and witness them in a non-reactive way. Essentially, this research led me to the perennial insights of meditation teachers and toward transpersonal psychology.

At the same time, I became strongly interested in various consciousness-raising techniques as part of my own personal growth. I participated in encounter groups, meditation, massage therapy, EST, rock-climbing, and various means of altering consciousness, including hypnosis, psychoactive drugs, and biofeedback. Each of these gave me important new ways of knowing myself and the world. However, it was as if I were walking in several worlds in my graduate work in experimental and clinical psychology and in my personal search. These came together for me in the psychology of consciousness and transpersonal psychology. I was able to study information processing, attention, and cognitive psychology (my experimental psychology world); biofeedback, stress management, and psychotherapy (my clinical psychology world); and altered states of consciousness, meditation, and self-realization (my transpersonal psychology world).

My dissertation (Davis, 1977) reflected the blend of these perspectives. Using guided imagery to induce emotional states, I found evidence for state dependent learning with moods. This has implications for working with clients' intense feeling states and inaccessible memories. More important to me, however, was what this research said about the nature of identity. As our emotional states change, the information we can readily access changes, bringing subtle (and not-so-subtle) shifts in identity. Our identities are not stable, enduring entities but fluid processes shifting with our physiological and emotional states. Rather than being a rock in the middle of a stream of experience, the self looks more like a standing wave, always changing although with some common patterns. As with my MA thesis research, what had started as conventional psychological research had taken me into one of the fundamental teachings of most spiritual and transpersonal systems.

These insights came home to me as I practiced mindfulness meditation, sensory awareness techniques, ritual, and other transpersonal methods. Transpersonal psychology was giving me means and encouragement to encounter these realms. In 1975, I found the work of Hameed Ali. He was just beginning to teach what he later developed into the Diamond Approach and has described in books using the pen-name, A. H. Almaas (e.g., Almaas, 1986, 1990, 1999). For me, it was intensely personal work, and, for many years, I hesitated to approach it too theoretically or abstractly. Only some time later did I begin to understand the depth and precision of this path. The Diamond Approach is now being recognized as important to the larger project of discovering the role of psychological development in spiritual realization (Cortright, 1997; Wilber, 1997), and I have described it in an introductory book (Davis, 1999a). It is, I feel, the best example we have yet of a genuine integration of spirituality and psychology.

After completing graduate school, I began teaching undergraduate psychology and practicing psychotherapy. I set my professional interests in transpersonal psychology aside, although I pursued them intensely outside of my teaching and therapy practice. I was unsure how to talk about such unconventional topics as meditation, altered states of consciousness, and mysticism in an academic context, and I was splitting my personal life from my professional life. The worlds I had been integrating in graduate school were becoming increasingly separate again.

That is, until I stumbled onto a "vision fast," a wilderness-based rite of passage and reconnection. This form, involving a week-long wilderness trip with a three-day solo fast in the middle, was based on the work of Steven Foster and Meredith Little (1988, 1997; Davis, 1989). It reflects the nearly-universal three-stage rites of passage model: (1) disidentification from one's previous life stage and outdated self-images and roles (severance), (2) a period of solitude, fasting, and exposure to the natural world offering a chance to test and confirm one's fitness and willingness to move on to a new life stage (threshold), and (3) a return to one's life, work, relationships, and community (reincorporation). The wilderness setting, along with the guidance of these stages and the support of ritual, is important to fostering openness to self-realization, initiation, and healing. This practice is at once physical, psychological, interpersonal, and transpersonal. Foster and Little have been at the center of bringing it into the modern Western culture; their article in this issue illustrates their work in the multiracial culture of South Africa. My own vision fast sixteen years ago, along with my work with Almaas and the Diamond Approach, began to heal the split in my life between my personal and professional lives, and I came away with both new understanding and the courage to express my commitment to transpersonal growth in my teaching as well as my personal life.

From this experience, I developed a college course in transpersonal psychology which I have taught nearly every semester since. The course's Web site provides more information, including a syllabus, course notes, and relevant links (Davis, 1999b). Transpersonal psychology has found its way into all of my other classes and professional interests (without being forced), including my courses on research methods (Davis, 1996), environmental psychology (Davis, in press), and health psychology (Davis, Lockwood, and Wright, 1991), as well as my private practice. My ongoing studies of transpersonal psychology, the Diamond Approach, and wilderness-based rites of passage and healing continue to hold, challenge, and reveal my deeper nature and its expression.

A DEFINITION

What are the core concepts, interests, and practices of transpersonal psychology? If transpersonal psychology integrates psychology and spirituality, how well does it reflect their mutual contributions? What is its contribution to each?

Transpersonal psychology stands at the interface of psychology and spirituality. It is the field of psychology which integrates psychological concepts, theories, and methods with the subject matter and practices of the spiritual disciplines. Its interests include spiritual experiences, mystical states of consciousness, mindfulness and meditative practices, shamanic states, ritual, the overlap of spiritual experiences with disturbed states such as psychosis and depression, and the transpersonal dimensions of interpersonal relationships, service, and encounters with the natural world.

The core concept in Transpersonal Psychology is nonduality , the recognition that each part (e.g., each person) is fundamentally and ultimately a part of the whole (the cosmos). As obvious as this might sound, it has radical implications for psychological systems founded on the premises of mechanism, atomism, reductionism, and separateness. From this insight come two other central insights: the intrinsic health and basic goodness of the whole and each of its parts, and the validity of self-transcendence from the conditional and conditioned personality to a sense of identity which is deeper, broader, and more unified with the whole (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992; Scotton, Chinen, and Battista, 1996; Walsh and Vaughan, 1993a).

The root of the term, transpersonal or "beyond the personal," reflects this impulse toward that which is more universal than individual or personal identity. Since the root of the word, personal, comes from persona or the masks worn by Greek actors to portray characters, transpersonal means literally "beyond the mask." These masks both hid the actor and revealed the actor's role. Following this metaphor, transpersonal psychology seeks to disclose and develop the source and deeper nature of our identities, roles, and self-images.

However, it is important that a focus on nonduality, self-transcendence, and intrinsic health not negate the importance of individuality or personalness. Transpersonal psychology's orientation is inclusive, valuing and integrating the following: psychological development as well as the spiritual; the personal and the transpersonal; exceptional mental health, ordinary experience, and states of suffering; ordinary and extraordinary states of consciousness; modern Western perspectives, Eastern wisdom, (some) postmodern insights, and worldviews of indigenous traditions; and analytical intellect and contemplative ways of knowing.

Transpersonal psychology is not a religion; it does not present a belief system or provide an institutional structure. Rather, it is a field of inquiry which includes theory, research, and practice, offering insights based on research and experience and practices for evaluating and confirming or disconfirming its findings. It is scientific in the broader sense of the phenomenological or "human" sciences (Braud and Anderson, 1998; Davis, 1996; Giorgi, 1970). Overlaps between psychology and spirituality have been present in both psychology (e.g., William James, Jung, Maslow) and in the spiritual traditions (which have their own rich views of development, cognition, social interactions, emotional and behavioral suffering, and methods of healing).

A core practice for transpersonal psychology includes meditation, mindfulness, contemplation, and phenomenological inquiry. Comparing the role of meditation in transpersonal psychology to the role of dreams in psychoanalysis, Walsh and Vaughan (1993a) referred to meditation as "the royal road to the transpersonal." In this broad category, I would include other awareness practices such as Gendlin's (1982) Focusing technique drawn from phenomenological philosophy and psychotherapy. While meditation and related practices can be used for self-regulation, relaxation, and pain control or for self-exploration and self-therapy, they have traditionally been used for self-liberation (Shapiro, 1994). Despite their many surface forms, most styles of meditation can be a means of disidentifying from our "masks" or egos and realizing our fundamental nonduality (Goleman and Ram Dass, 1996).

Other practices that are associated with transpersonal psychology include shamanism, lucid dreaming, and psychedelic drugs (Walsh and Vaughan, 1993a). I would add ritual as another important, though less recognized, transpersonal practice. For people in many cultures, ritual is the central means of discovering connections with each other, with communities, with the Earth, and with the cosmos (e.g., Somé, 1998).

Transpersonal psychology has benefits for both psychology and the spiritual disciplines. Psychology can expand toward a fuller and richer accounting of the full range of human experience and potential and incorporate practices that speak more directly to the depth of our nature. The spiritual disciplines can incorporate insights and skills about human development, healing, and growth to deal more skillfully with the psychological issues that arise with spiritual development. It can use these issues as gateways, rather than obstacles, to self-realization.

Psychology and Spiritual Wisdom Traditions

What is transpersonal psychology's place and contribution to psychology and spiritual wisdom? How does transpersonal psychology reflect the influences of both?

Transpersonal psychology and psychology

There are several possibilities for the role of transpersonal psychology in relation to psychology and spiritual traditions, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Transpersonal psychology can be considered an area of psychology. The definition above makes it sound so; the same algorithm that defines other areas of psychology can be used with transpersonal psychology. Just as health psychology applies psychology to medical and health care concerns or school psychology applies psychology to school settings, transpersonal psychology applies psychology to a specific range of concerns, e.g., spirituality, optimal mental health, nonduality, and the quality of nonreactive presence and awareness. Each of these interfaces brings in new questions and generates new approaches, but they still fall within the broad outlines of psychology.

Some influential early psychologists included transpersonal concerns at the center of psychology. Most notable, of course, is William James and his work on mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1902/1958). However, the mystical and introspective aspects of early psychology were marginalized in efforts to move psychology away from philosophy and toward the hard sciences (where there was more power, prestige, and money). This marginalization included the rejection of qualitative and phenomenological methods as well as the rejection of experiences which were not measurable or replicable in laboratory studies, including the transpersonal.

Transpersonal psychology and spiritual wisdom traditions

On the other hand, is transpersonal psychology closer to spirituality than psychology? As such, it may be in a position to use modern psychology as a paradigm for translating the substance of the spiritual wisdom traditions into the contemporary culture. As previous forms of spiritual expression weaken, our deep hunger for the spiritual expresses itself in other ways. Since our culture is so psychologically-oriented, transpersonal psychology could be an avenue for reintroducing spiritual insights and practices as well as for developing new ones. Other arenas for such a bridging include medicine (e . g., Dossey, 1997) and environmental issues (e.g., Davis, in press).

Certainly, at this point, transpersonal psychology is not a spiritual system, per se. However, is it possible that it is a step toward a uniquely contemporary, postmodern spirituality? Psychology has provided many insights which can support spiritual development (even though many approaches within psychology have either ignored or explicitly denied spirituality). There is wisdom in the psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, and systems perspectives that is useful to those exploring spirituality. Deep psychological experience, supported by any of these approaches, can unfold into the transpersonal. We can move from using psychology as a tool for self-regulation and self-exploration to using it for self-liberation. In this view, transpersonal psychology could emerge as the flowering of 100 years of psychology and a container for the emergence of a new world wisdom tradition. What are the dangers of seeing transpersonal psychology as a conduit for bringing spiritual wisdom into our time and place or as the beginnings of a new wisdom tradition? What are the possibilities?

Transpersonal Psychology and Diversity

How does transpersonal psychology express and nourish its multicultural roots and opportunities? What more can we do? How would psychotherapy and transpersonal practices be different if we celebrated our differences more deeply and if we lived our unity more thoroughly?

Transpersonal psychology has been influenced at least as much by Asian and indigenous spiritual systems as European psychlogical and philosophical traditions. It has strong connections to the meditative traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, shamanic traditions, esoteric and gnostic European systems such as alchemy and Celtic mysticism, indigenous African wisdom, and Native American spirituality. From its origins, transpersonal psychology has been strongly multicultural. As psychology (and our culture) wakes up to the reality of diversity and multicultural perspectives, transpersonal psychology has much to contribute.

Transpersonal psychology is strongly multicultural. It values the diversity of expressions of human experience while recognizing the universality of its deeper dimensions. It actively seeks out and integrates insights on human nature and healing from a wide variety of cultures and recognizes the role of the cultural context in the experience of individuals and groups. Transpersonal psychology requires us to challenge our culturally-defined views of mental health and psychotherapy and to draw cross-cultural insights into counselling and education. It can and should do more in this area.

Differences

I would say that transpersonal psychology recognizes two responses to the question of diversity. From one perspective, it can recognize and honor the astounding variety in the manifestations of being. It values a number of dimensions of diversity, including race, culture, gender, age, sexual preference, social class, and biodiversity. Our task is to honor these differences and eliminate bias and oppression from them.

In transpersonal psychology, the value in diversity also extends to definitions of mental health and healing practices. For example, from a modern, Eurocentric point of view, many experiences in meditation or shamanic initiations (e.g., hallucinations, dissociations, body-image distortions) would be seen as pathological. However, from the perspective of meditative traditions or indigenous cultures, these are seen as normal signs of development or indications of extraordinary mental health. Extreme distortions of body image and hearing the voices of ancestors would likely trigger psychiatric treatment in a modern mental health center, but they could be cause for celebration as a shamanic call among indigenous people. Transpersonal psychology seeks to examine critically (as well as experientially) such nonordinary states in order to distinguish their healthy aspects from their distressing aspects. At the same time, I would add that transpersonal psychology's primary focus is not (or should not be) on states of consciousness, per se, but on the meaning of such states for individuals and their communities and on "the ground out of which all states arise" (Walsh and Vaughan, 1993b, p. 202).

Unity

Transpersonal psychology also recognizes universal dimensions of being and the unity that underlies the variety of forms. From this perspective, differences shift to the background, and the fundamental nonduality of the universe comes to the foreground. Holism underpins the transpersonal approach. Transpersonal psychology has been criticized for emphasizing this oneness at the expense of diversity, and this criticism should be heard. I find myself particularly drawn to the argument that unity is an easier position to adopt for those in power than for those who are marginalized. The shadow of "We are one" may be blindness to subtle forms of discrimination and disempowerment. Nevertheless, unity is at the foundation of a transpersonal view.

Transpersonal Counselling

What are the implications of transpersonal psychology for counselling? How can we better understand and manifest a transpersonal context for counselling and psychotherapy? What really helps?

Transpersonal psychology can be applied in many ways, including teaching, organizational development, and health care. Rachel Kessler, for instance, is doing leading-edge work in bringing spiritual perspectives into secular educational settings (1999; in press), and this topic, closely related to transpersonal psychology, is being openly discussed in educational forums (see, for instance the December 1998/January 1999 issue of Educational Leadership ). Its most common application, though, is in counselling, psychotherapy, and clinical psychology.

Vaughan (1979) proposed looking at three dimensions of transpersonal counselling: content, process, and context. These three dimensions also apply to any approach to counselling and psychotherapy and even to theoretical and research paradigms. Content refers to the subject matter dealt with, and in the case of transpersonal psychology, includes transpersonal and mystical experiences, peak experiences, and spiritual emergencies (Grof and Grof, 1989; Watson, 1994). Process refers to the techniques and strategies used. Examples of transpersonal processes include practices drawn from spiritual traditions such as meditation (Goleman and Ram Dass, 1996; Miller, 1994), initiations and vision questing (Foster and Little, 1997), ritual, and shamanic inductions (Walsh, 1990). Context refers to the attitudes and assumptions of the counsellor toward counselling, suffering, healing, and psychological health. Aspects of a transpersonal context include holding in view the client's intrinsic health, being mindful and present-centered regardless of the particular content or processes, seeing psychotherapy as both an act of service and an act of work on oneself, and recognizing the ground of nonduality in the counselling situation (Wittine, 1989).

The context of transpersonal counselling is applicable to any educational or therapeutic situation and any of the predicaments which bring people to counselling or psychotherapy. It can also be practiced in any setting including school settings, educational advising, individual private practice, agencies, and community development. A transpersonal context may not be evident to students, clients, or observers. Transpersonal psychology is not a specific set of beliefs or a religion, but rather an orientation that is compatible with most educational and psychological approaches. Therefore, a transpersonal approach in educational settings can appreciate and support students' belief systems and practices; it is complementary and inclusive rather than exclusive and divisive.

The nature of service

A transpersonal view points to authentic helping which is nondualistic, selfless, and oriented to process as much as outcome. Transpersonal service is a natural reflexive response springing from awareness, love, openness, and understanding. We expect such service by professional counsellors to be informed by skillful means and an open mind.

An important research study examines this view. Montgomery (1991) found that the best caregivers (in her research, they were nurses identified by other nurses as being exceptional at their work) expressed a sense of transcendence, the experience of being part of a larger whole, and a spiritual base for their work (though they said this in many different ways, usually not in the language of specific spiritual or religious approaches). These nurses were intimately involved with patients on emotional and spiritual levels, and as a result, they experienced helping as a source of energy rather than burnout.

Montgomery was not looking for these results. She had set out to identify the behaviors of the most successful nurses but found herself frustrated because she couldn't find what these nurses were doing . She finally realized what set them apart from ordinary nurses was, instead, a way of being . Her research also challenges the conventional psychological wisdom that to avoid burnout, we should not get too involved with our clients. These exceptional caregivers were the ones most involved with their patients. Montgomery referred to this finding as a "paradoxical aspect of caregiving." Finding a transcendent basis for professional service and being deeply involved with those in our care opens us up to a source of energy and sustenance which reduces burnout. In some ways, it makes our work more emotionally demanding than keeping a distance, but holding ourselves back from caring deeply is, in the long run, more detrimental.

Transpersonal context does matter in the outcomes of caregiving, both for the giver as well as for the recipient (see also Parker Palmer's (1998) work on a similar approach in teaching). Deeper caring and more emotional and transpersonal involvement between professionals and those we serve will reduce burnout and promote growth in both caregivers as well as those we care for.

Afterword

As I was finishing writing this article, the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred. Fourteen students and one teacher were killed by two other students with an arsenal of guns and home-made bombs. This was a terribly shocking event, and we took several days in my classes to focus on the shooting and its aftermath. Its relevance to the content of the classes did not matter; we were in shock and grieving, and we had to respond to each other as human beings. I feel that transpersonal psychology must respond to such suffering if it is to have any value or credibility. Thus, it is not surprising that Michael Franklin's article in this issue reflects on the Littleton shooting, too. I want to relate here how we dealt with this event in my Transpersonal Psychology class because it illustrates a concrete application of this approach within the school setting.

After an invitation to participate, which all the students accepted, we brought our chairs together in a circle, council-style (Zimmerman and Coyle, 1996). These students were familiar with this practice from earlier in the semester. We expressed our grief, fear, and outrage, and we listened deeply to each other. Naturally, we sought explanations and solutions; sometimes this helped and gave us new insights into human nature, and other times it fell flat as we grappled with the unthinkable. These were good, deep sessions of grieving and healing.

Yet, I felt we had an opportunity to go deeper. Bringing in the theme of nonduality, we began to recognize that, in a way, we were related to all of the individuals involved. For a number of us, these reflections went from empathy to identification. Beyond understanding the victims, the bereaved, or the shooters because we had felt something similar, we realized that, in a deeper sense, we were all those involved with our own reservoirs of pain, helplessness, rage, alienation, and confusion. We embraced the personal and then shifted to a transpersonal focus. Our feelings did not go away, but they became more meaningful and easier to bear. Transpersonal psychology does not exclude the personal; it integrates it and reveals it as only a small part of a much bigger whole. We began to find in our grief a doorway to compassion, and in our helplessness an impetus to serve. We discovered that working to heal ourselves and others is the whole healing itself.

This tragedy became an opportunity for service in a genuinely transpersonal sense. Responding to it became a reflexive outflow of compassion and aliveness, and in giving space for our responses, we discovered our deeper sources of wisdom a bit more. I summed up our council discussions by reading a poem by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh (1987, p. 63-64), which expresses the transpersonal vision as it relates to violence and compassion. Here are excerpts:

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. . . .

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
My legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. . . .

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

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Davis, J. (In press b). The transpersonal dimensions of ecopsychology: Nature, spirit, and non-duality. The Humanistic Psychologist. GO TO THIS ARTICLE

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Author Note

I thank Deborah Bowman and Sandy Goldman for their original invitation to present this material to the faculty of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department at Naropa University. Correspondence may be addressed to the author via email (jdavis@naropa.edu) or sent to John Davis, Department of Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, Naropa University, Boulder, CO, 80302, USA.

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