Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Relational Spirituality, Part 1 Paradise Unbound: Cosmic Hybridity And Spiritual Narcissism In The “One Truth” Of New Age Transpersonalism, Gregg Lahood
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Cosmological hybridization, a process in which spiritual paradises are bound together, is
highly active in American religious culture. Beginning with an early Christianized version of
the Buddha, this religious Creolization gathered speed after WWII and peaked during the
Vietnam War, leading to a complex spiritual revolution in which transcendence became an
all important orientation. This revolution set the scene for the emergence of a non-relational
transpersonal psychology in which Americanized nondualism gained ascendency. It is argued
here that popular New Age transpersonalism traps the spirit, breeding a self-serving, Selfas-
everything form of spiritual narcissism. Given that some are calling the …