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Relational Spirituality, Part 2 The Belief In Others As A Hindrance To Enlightenment: Narcissism And The Denigration Of Relationship Within Transpersonal Psychology And The New Age, Gregg Lahood
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
The aim of this paper is to tease out from the New Age religion and religious transpersonal psychology a more relational spirituality. Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies were important forces in the emergence of the social phenomenon of the New Age. New Age transpersonalism leans toward a restrictive non-relational spirituality because of its historical affirmation of individualism and transcendence. Relational spirituality, which is central to the emerging participatory paradigm, swims against strong and popular currents in New Age transpersonal thinking which tend to see spirituality as an individual, personal, inner pursuit, often into Eastern/Oriental nondualism. Whatever the merits of impersonal Advaita …
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 …