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International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Mathematical Calculations For The Finality Of Death? The Drake-S Equation, Glenn Hartelius Jan 2023

Mathematical Calculations For The Finality Of Death? The Drake-S Equation, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness, Adam J. Rock, James Houran, Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Brian Laythe Jan 2023

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

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 …


Table Of Contents--Masthead Jan 2023

Table Of Contents--Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth Jan 2023

Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Table Of Contents—Masthead Jan 2023

Table Of Contents—Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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How Is The Human Pangenome Project Like A Whole Person Psychology? (Editor’S Introduction), Glenn Hartelius Jan 2023

How Is The Human Pangenome Project Like A Whole Person Psychology? (Editor’S Introduction), Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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In This Issue Of Ijts Jan 2023

In This Issue Of Ijts

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Deep Ecology, Nature Spirits, And The Filipino Transpersonal Worldview, Carl Lorenz Cervantes Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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.


The Varieties Of Afterlife Experience: Epistemological And Cultural Implications, Everton De Oliveira Maraldi Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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.


Comments On “Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness”, Christine Simmonds-Moore Jan 2023

Comments On “Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness”, Christine Simmonds-Moore

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The application of the Drake-S equation to the aggregated data suggestive of survival found 30.3% of unexplained variance in the data when other factors were applied to the dataset (including living agent psi, LAP). A number of points are raised in this commentary. These include 1. the aggregated estimate for LAP should factor in implicit psi studies (among others); 2. it is difficult to ascertain the source of psi if psi is not a signal that is caused, but rather an emergent property of a connected system; 3. there may be shared variance between sources that are attributed differently in …


Psi-Entific Approach To Post-Mortem Survival: Employing The Multiple Sources Of Psi (Msop) And Discarnate Psi Hypotheses In The Calculation Of A Drake-S Equation, Serge Merlin Jan 2023

Psi-Entific Approach To Post-Mortem Survival: Employing The Multiple Sources Of Psi (Msop) And Discarnate Psi Hypotheses In The Calculation Of A Drake-S Equation, Serge Merlin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The continued investigations of the paranormal facilitated the development of novel theories and methodologies. Psi functioning of the living and the deceased in survival phenomena suggested the living agent psi (LAP) and discarnate psi hypotheses, but neither has demonstrated sufficient explanatory power to claim superiority in explaining survival data. Mediumship studies cannot determine whether paranormal information is sourced by means of discarnate psi or LAP, presenting the source-of-psi problem. Anomalous information can be obtained from joint sources (LAP, survival, or some other source), which supports the multiple sources of psi (MSoP) hypothesis. The maximized explanatory potential of the MSoP hypothesis …


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 Jan 2023

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

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 …


Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach To Commentaries On The Drake-S Equation For Survival, James Houran, Adam J. Rock, Brian Laythe, Patrizio E. Tressoldi Jan 2023

Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach To Commentaries On The Drake-S Equation For Survival, James Houran, Adam J. Rock, Brian Laythe, Patrizio E. Tressoldi

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators’ input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that …


Review Of: The Myth Of Normal-Trauma, Illness, And Healing In A Toxic Culture, By Gabor Maté And Daniel Maté, Nicholas Grant Boeving Jan 2023

Review Of: 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

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Nondual States Are Not A Thing: This Inspiring New Age Spiritual Idea Is Neither Advaita Vedanta Nor Psychology, Glenn Hartelius Jan 2023

Nondual States Are Not A Thing: This Inspiring New Age Spiritual Idea Is Neither Advaita Vedanta Nor Psychology, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The term “nondual states” has gained some currency as applied to states of mind in which the sense of self is softened, expanded, or shifted from conventional experience. Nonduality is a metaphysical concept about the nature of reality, commonly associated with the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian religion. New Age religious thought has applied the term “nondual” to states of consciousness that are believed to contact or apprehend this speculated metaphysical ideal. However, this use is incompatible with lineage-based teachings of Advaita Vedanta, inadequately precise to serve as a psychological construct, and improper as an insertion of New Age metaphysical …


Continuities Of Consciousness, Life-Worlds, And Numinous Experience: Cognitive-Phenomenological Foundations For An Empirical Neo-Shamanism, Harry T. Hunt Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Western Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology: Cross-Hermeneutic And Engaged Approaches, Debashish Banerji Jan 2023

Western Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology: Cross-Hermeneutic And Engaged Approaches, Debashish Banerji

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Contemporary Buddhism has been fashioned from cross-cultural interactions between a long history of Asian traditions and the expansionist drive of modernity. As part of this engagement, Buddhism, particularly in the West, has developed a close relation with transpersonal psychology. This essay forms an introduction to the special issue of articles approaching this relation between Buddhism and psychology in different ways. While some articles probe the difference in aims of the two disciplines, some are concerned with the decontextualized uses of Buddhist techniques such as mindfulness, some explore the possibilities of Buddhist practice in cognitive or other psychological terms and some …


Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology, Elías Capriles Jan 2023

Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology, Elías Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, And The Psychology Of Metaphor In Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices, Michael R. Sheehy Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Mindfulness Traps And The Entanglement Of Self: An Inquiry Into The Regime Of Mind, Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study Of Participants' Experiences, Supakyada Sapthiang, Edo Shonin, Paul Barrows, William Van Gordon Jan 2023

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

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 …


Zen And The Art Of Doughnut Economics: When Limits Are Strangely Liberating, Peter Doran Jan 2023

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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 …


Wild Otherness Within: A Jungian And Zen Approach To The Untamed Self In The Ten Oxherding Pictures, Sara Granovetter Jan 2023

Wild Otherness Within: A Jungian And Zen Approach To The Untamed Self In The Ten Oxherding Pictures, Sara Granovetter

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The Ten Oxherding Pictures are an ancient allegory for the process of enlightenment. This article analyzes the series of ten paintings through the lenses of Jungian psychology and alterity studies to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the images. This interpretation highlights the relationship between the oxherd and the ox, suggesting that the ox is a wild other that seeks intersubjective understanding. In questioning the meaning of domestication in these images, this investigation deconstructs the traditional allegory of enlightenment as a process of domestication, suggesting that these images instead point towards the importance of releasing the appropriative attitude. Ultimately, the oxherd …


Book Review: The Way Of Psychosynthesis, By Petra Guggisberg Nocelli, Catherine Ann Lombard Jan 2023

Book Review: The Way Of Psychosynthesis, By Petra Guggisberg Nocelli, Catherine Ann Lombard

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Table Of Contents—Masthead Jan 2022

Table Of Contents—Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 2: Recollections Of Fetal Life And Birth, Jenny Wade Jan 2022

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 2: Recollections Of Fetal Life And Birth, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article examines a second set of data produced in a thematic analysis of 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into the world say about their experience prior to and including birth? Part 1 examined the first and largest subset of the data, narratives of an otherworldly existence consistent with Western reincarnation intermission stage 2 experiences, near-death experience accounts and mythic traditions. This article thematically analyzes descriptions of life in the womb, birth, and apparently veridical out-of-body and other paranormal impressions of events …


Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman Jan 2022

Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Self-transcendence is an ambiguous construct without consensual meaning, yet many claim that it relates to, or even causes, beneficial outcomes. Few discuss its potential deleterious side effects, choosing to focus primarily on positive effects. However, anything with sufficient potency to heal may have unintended side effects, especially when it leads beyond a transitory state to becoming an enduring trait, such as when self-transcendence (ST) becomes persistent self-transcendence (PST). With PST, evidence is overviewed here, along with two illustrative case reports, that people can suffer emotional difficulties, motivation changes, loss of self-reflexivity, anhedonia, dissociation, depersonalization, memory problems, and other psychological concerns. …


In This Issue Of Ijts, Glenn Hartelius Jan 2022

In This Issue Of Ijts, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Jenny Wade: Building The Next Generation Of Scholars In Transpersonal Psychology, Glenn Hartelius, Harris Friedman Jan 2022

Jenny Wade: Building The Next Generation Of Scholars In Transpersonal Psychology, Glenn Hartelius, Harris Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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