Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

New Perspectives: How A Dancefloor Of Paradigms Can Save The World, Gill R. Hall

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper explores how the consciousness of Indigenous peoples can facilitate the development of new paradigms to address global issues like climate change and adaptation to global warming. It explores how Indigenous and Western notions of consciousness differ and cannot be reconciled in contemporary models of consciousness without colonising Indigenous ways of knowing. It differentiates maternal and patriarchal consciousnesses and contrasts the body/heart pathway found in many Indigenous cultures with the mental field activity of the Western psyche. Using the concept of a multi-paradigmatic dancefloor, I propose a new model for developing global thinking on complex problems, inviting academics and …

Evolution Of Women’S Consciousness: Toward Integral Consciousness, Katherine T. Ziemke

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article presents research materials which demonstrate historical consciousness for women of ancient European descent, the cultural heritage of the author. Awareness is examined from various historical angles in a transdisciplinary approach to the work. I explore the possibility that women’s historical and continued oppression may be a sign of the disintegration of the mental and a re-emergence of the integral structure of consciousness. A broad examination of women’s historical roles and corresponding thought shows how ancient consciousness may be used to accelerate a path toward integral consciousness today. Finally, this essay proposes that women’s historical consciousness and primordial memories …

On The Topology Of The Noosphere, Julie A. Yusupova

Journal of Conscious Evolution

As a young child I had a certain set of dreams, the enigma of which remained mysteriously hovering in my memories to this day. In one of these earliest dreams of my life, I am playing hide-and-seek with my friends, but am observing myself from an external third-person perspective, just as all my dreams had regularly been until then. I remember that the next morning, my waking conscious mind had noticed this split between self and observer and judged it unusual, and so in the following night’s dream, I somehow willed my observer self to merge into the body of …

Mediumship And Mental Health: Investigating Spirit Communication And The Importance Of Integration, Daniel A. Seda Ph.D.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Sensitivity to paranormal phenomena can be a source of emotional, mental and psychospiritual stress for individuals demonstrating verified mediumistic abilities, yet integrating these anomalous experiences in a healthy, affirming manner can reduce distress and potentially deflect egodystonic diagnoses of pathology. Because mediums can relay information which appear to be otherworldly from meditation, during trance, or by automatic writing and painting, health professionals have diagnosed mediums with mental disorders such as dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia. This overreliance on pathology to explain anomalous experiences is troublesome and can cause severe distress to individuals demonstrating extrasensory capabilities. This paper was written to …

Reflections On Panpsychism, Pantheism, Panentheism And The Hard Problem Of Consciousness, Barbara Engelhardt

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article discusses the concepts of panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism with the intention of formulating a theory and response to what is referred to as the Hard Problem of Consciousness, the question put forth in the latter 20th century by the philosopher David Chalmers (and by many others historically) concerning why and how we have phenomenal experiences. Panpsychism is the view that the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is an elemental principium of the natural world. Pantheism is defined as a philosophy which equates divinity with all reality. Panentheism asserts that God is intrinsic in all things in the known universe, …

Consciousness-Centered Education: An Innovative Approach To Art And Design Curriculum

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper introduces and discusses a consciousness-centered, integrated education model, implemented at the College for Creative Studies. Consciousness, Creativity, and Identity, a liberal-arts course offering, is designed to offer students a greater understanding of human connectivity and empowerment through empathy for themselves and others. This result is achieved in part through the inclusion of meditation training as a core component of the course. By integrating the skills of introspection, silence, and reflection with intellectual engagement, consciousness-centered education initiatives encourage the relationship between compassion, connectivity, inclusion, and wellness as key pedagogic themes in art and design curriculum. This paper offers evidence …

Psychic Cartography: A Review Of Tantric Psychophysics: A Structural Map Of Altered States And The Dynamics Of Consciousness, Michael Pdryzdia

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In 1920 Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture entitled Healing of the Social Organism which is collected in a small and fairly obscure book (Oswald Spengler: Prophet of World Chaos). The lecture was given after Spengler’s The Decline of the West had become a best-seller. In the lecture, Rudolf Steiner takes it upon himself to “deconstruct” his fellow German scholar/intellectual. In the piece, Steiner attacks Spengler’s opposition between “the man of blood” – the man who gets things done, the man of action -- versus “the man of contemplation” -- the theologian, the priest, the scientist with his concept …

What Will Happen If Science Will Develop A Theory Of Consciousness? Negative Ramifications., Sam S.. Rakover

Journal of Conscious Evolution

For a long time, philosophers and scientists have attempted without success to develop a mind-body theory, a consciousness theory (T_c) to explain the exact relation between the mind and the body, a solution which is based on an assumed connection between consciousness and the activity of the neurophysiological processes in the brain. An important concern of the present paper, then, is to address the question of why, despite the great research effort on the subject, no successful T_c has ever been developed. In response, McGinn (1989) proposes that the human being’s cognitive system is not equipped to …

Path To Utopia, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The way to survive in the Anthropocene and transform the world is to end capitalism. Humanity must stop commodifying everything and reifying its value for consumption for the sake of power and survival. The way to do this is through love. This is an inquiry into methods and processes for confronting and transforming the planetary destruction caused by capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism among other phenomena. This paper challenges the idea that it is unrealistic to believe that love can change the world. It posits that loving is caring and caring is the way humanity will shift consciousness so that capitalism …

Mandala: On The Logos Of Place, Michael Schwartz

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Suddenly, during the night, one awakens while dreaming – aware that this is a dream. The “rules” of action, reaction, and of form itself are not that of the waking state – one might leap in the air and fly, transform one’s body into any number of forms, reach up in the sky and grab the sun and clouds, pulling them to the side, bringing forth a canopy of moon and stars. The entire scene, in the lucid dream, has a heightened sense of radiance and joy, vitality and freedom.

Imagine this sense of lucid dreaming is occurring right here …

Consciousness, Evolution, And The Self-Organizing Brain, Karen Seymour

Journal of Conscious Evolution

While evolution is guided by natural selection, it is internally driven by self-organizing processes. The brain encompasses these complementary forces and dynamics of evolution in both its structure and dynamics by embodying a historical record of the factors that have shaped it throughout its evolutionary past, as well as by being shaped by selective parameters in real time. Self-organization is evident in not only the brain’s structure and form, but also in the processes that support consciousness. From the convergence of complex structure and the novelty-generating dynamics of chaos that both characterize the brain arises the experience of explicit consciousness, …

Remembering The Future: Wild Time And The Cosmic Imagination, Arabella Thaïs

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental …

Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness, Adam J. Rock, James Houran, Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Brian Laythe

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the ‘Drake equation’ to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes (i.e., "known confounds") the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of ‘living agent psi’ via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found …

The Varieties Of Afterlife Experience: Epistemological And Cultural Implications, Everton De Oliveira Maraldi

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

When parapsychologists talk about survival, they are usually implying personal survival, that is, a process in which memories, motivations, and personality characteristics of a given person somehow persist after bodily death. Are there other conceptions of survival (and of personal identity) that deserve further scientific examination? My purpose with this brief commentary is to expand on Rock et al’s approach by urging survivalists to discuss and investigate further the many different conceptions of (and explanations for) survival. I propose we critically reflect on our theoretical assumptions and their epistemological and cultural consequences.

Good, Bad, Or Not-Even-Wrong Science And Mathematics In Transpersonal Psychology: Comment On Rock Et Al.'S "Is Biological Death Final?", Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Rock et al. (this issue) used a Drake-like equation to provide an estimate of the mathematical likelihood of survival of consciousness after death based on combining a number of probability guestimates. Although it is refreshing to see a mathematical paper within transpersonal psychology, as this subdiscipline of psychology suffers from a shortage of quantitative research, it is uncertain whether this contribution is good, bad, or not-even-wrong science. The original Drake equation, and its derivative Drake-like equation spinoffs, have been criticized for combining numbers that produce results that lack meaning and thereby perhaps can be seen as using pseudomathematics. This concern …

Book Review: The Myth Of Normal: Trauma, Illness, And Healing In A Toxic Culture, By Gabor Maté And Daniel Maté, Nicholas Grant Boeving

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

No abstract provided.

Decoding Babel: “Ungrieved Futility” And The Unrecognized Order Of The Depression Research Field, Marty Lynn Cooper

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The field of depression research and theory is a preparadigmatic potpourri of different orientations without a central, consensus definition of depression. This study attempted to address these issues by investigating the depression sub-literatures (cognitive–behavioral, psychoanalytic, evolutionary, biomedical, phenomenological, existential–humanistic, cybernetic, environmental, and religious–spiritual theories) using a comparative analytic methodology, which allows for comparing disparate fields that do not share a common definitional set by relating them to a third concept, in this study the construct of “ungrieved futility” (UF) as a dynamic model of depression. UF defines the objective and/or subjective experience of the permanent loss of an attachment object …

Potential Benefits Of Mdma-Assisted Conflict Transformation Informed Couple Therapy: Transpersonal Roots And Future Promise, Antonia George, William Sol

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a chemical compound that produces prosocial effects such as an increase in empathy and social bonding. Due to its profoundly prosocial effects, prior to becoming a schedule 1 drug, MDMA was used as an adjunct to individual and couple therapy, which is a practice that deserves critical reexamination and potential revitalization. MDMA has undergone clinical trials in the United States for FDA approval to treat individuals with clinical diagnoses such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and autism. Current data demonstrates that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has proven successful in treating individuals possessing certain clinical diagnoses; however, there …

Requisite Wisdom: Transpersonal Psychology In The Treatment Of Clinical Depression, Marty Lynn Cooper

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper describes the relationship of Transpersonal Psychology (TP) to the theorizing and treatment of clinical depression. It argues that, rather than TP’s being one of many equivalent clinical lenses that can be applied to depression, TP is actually a necessary framework for understanding the phenomenon of depression, and at least in the case of more severe/chronic depressions, it is required to obtain results beyond mere symptom management. The construct “ungrieved futility” is used to essentialize the structural dynamic nature of depression, and the cybernetic perspective on depression is used to explain why depression’s intrinsic structure mandates a TP lens …

Transpersonal Approaches To Clinical Supervision, Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Transpersonal psychology can provide unique approaches to clinical supervision by offering an interconnected self-expansive view of the self across time and space, as well as can provide a secular avenue to consider the importance of spirituality without relying on supernatural assumptions. Transpersonal supervisors can challenge conventional notions about what and how supervisees know, and even the nature of being a knower, through providing a more inclusive, perhaps even holistic, vantage that is both critical of mainstream approaches and surpasses their ability to provide a coherent “super” (i.e., going beyond the usual more-myopic understandings) vision. Background on transpersonal psychology related to …

Deep Ecology, Nature Spirits, And The Filipino Transpersonal Worldview, Carl Lorenz Cervantes

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Many Filipinos today still believe that the world is filled with invisible entities who can affect their lives in a tangible way. These beings usually reside in nature as the souls of ancestors or other mysterious spirits. This indigenous transpersonal worldview implies that the individual is part of a living world. The modern term “deep ecology” seems to be aligned with this worldview. This paper looks at the implications of the Filipino transpersonal worldview on policies related to the care for environment and biodiversity.

Effects Of Mindfulness And Holotropic Breathwork On The Rehabilitation Of Adolescents Who Use Psychoactive Substances: A Pilot Study, Frank Sanchez-Quijano, Diana Ximena Puerta-Cortés, Julio Eduardo Mazorco Salas

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This pilot study aims to compare the effects of mindfulness and holotropic breathwork treatments on adolescents in the rehabilitation process for psychoactive substance use. Participants comprised 18 female adolescents aged 15–18 admitted to the Fundación Grupo de Apoyo, affiliated with the Colombian Family Welfare Institute. The Fundación is dedicated to rehabilitation from, detoxification from, and prevention of psychoactive substance use. The study utilizes a mixed methods approach with an exploratory design. Heart rate is used as an important indicator of psychological well-being and overall cardiovascular health, and the mean pretest/posttest heart rates of the control and experimental groups are compared …

Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting …

Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study Of Participants' Experiences, Supakyada Sapthiang, Edo Shonin, Paul Barrows, William Van Gordon

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

There are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all …

Mindfulness Traps And The Entanglement Of Self: An Inquiry Into The Regime Of Mind, Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in …

Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, And The Psychology Of Metaphor In Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices, Michael R. Sheehy

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on …

Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology, Elías Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

In the debate between Freud and Romain Rolland the latter asserted the infants’ oceanic feeling to be saner than the adults’ limited sense of self, and that mystics recover the oceanic feeling without losing the learning achieved during socialization. Freud retorted that the oceanic feeling involved a sense of shelterlessness, and whoever went through derealization was psychotic and needed to be cured. However, the feeling of shelterlessness comes from the fledging sense of separation, and although derealization is a dangerous process, when it develops unhindered the result is greater sanity. So, Buddhism and TP agree in valuing transpersonal and holotropic …

Psychology Or Religion? Bridge-Building In The Translation History Of The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, Erin Prophet

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the most popular Eastern scriptures in the West, in part because it has been framed outside of religion, as a kind of psychology. And yet its translators have also used it to stake claims in the debate about the relationship between psychology and religion, generally Buddhism, but also Theosophy, a religious and philosophical system founded in 1875, which tried to unify all religions. The first major English translation of the Book of the Dead was published in 1927, by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, who was a Theosophist, with the assistance of Kazi …

Zen And The Art Of Doughnut Economics: When Limits Are Strangely Liberating, Peter Doran

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Kate Raworth's celebrated book, Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist, calls for a reconciliation of our design principles for society and the economy with the rhythms and tolerances of ecological systems. It will demand something akin to a new axial revolution that will have to be experienced as much in the body and in the intimacies of a renewed care and appreciation for our relational and ecological selves as in the collective re-design of our societies, democratic decision-making and collective provisioning. Buddhist scholarship offers a distinctive contribution to this conversation invoked in a book that …

Continuities Of Consciousness, Life-Worlds, And Numinous Experience: Cognitive-Phenomenological Foundations For An Empirical Neo-Shamanism, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Numinous experience—as the felt sense of the sacred—evokes feelings of allone unity, communality, humility, and healing. Its schematization in the absolutes of traditional religion can also be seen as all-encompassing symbolic unifications of an otherwise fragmented human life-world—as more analytically depicted in the life-world phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger. In both feeling and concept the numinous would be the semantic amplification of the more concrete organism-surround nonduality of non symbolic organisms—as reflected in a primary consciousness shared across Uexkuell’s sentient animal umwelten and Gibson’s “envelopes of flow.” H usserl’s phenomenology of passive synthesis and James on pure experience can be …