Philosophy Commons^™

Exceptional Human Experiences Among Pilgrims On The Camino De Santiago: A Study Of Self-Reported Experiences And Transformative Aftereffects, Miran Lavric, Snezana Brumec, Andrej Naterer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is an extraordinary endeavour that tends to trigger exceptional human experiences. Following our previous investigation of this topic, we conducted an online survey of 501 pilgrims in order to assess the frequency of different exceptional experiences (EEs) on the pilgrimage and their transformative aftereffects (TAs) in everyday life afterwards. More than 70% of the respondents reported improvement in terms of self-confidence, personal relationships and letting go of emotional “baggage”. The results show strong correlations between the observed EEs and the (consequent) TAs. We contend that walking the Camino de Santiago often produces exceptional experiences that …

What Is Transpersonal Psychology? A Concise Definition Based On 20 Years Of Research, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Research on definitions of the field of psychology and themes in the literature of the field over a period of 20 years inform this description: Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person embedded within a diverse, interconnected, and evolving world that pays particular attention to states of consciousness and developmental models reflecting expansion beyond conventional notions of self. Each element of this definition is examined, as well as the four phases of definitional development within the field from its founding in 1968 up to the present.

Brain Activity During Paired And Individual Mindfulness Meditation: A Controlled Eeg Study, Hessel Engelbregt, Hugo F. Alderse Baas, Sietske De Grauw, Jan Berend Deijen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Objective: In this study, we evaluated brain electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in healthy participants during the performance of paired and individual mindfulness meditation (MM). We hypothesized that EEG activity is differentially affected by meditation in pairs compared to individual meditation.

Methods: A total of 20 healthy female university students (mean age 19.54 years, SD =1.53) with no prior experience in MM participated in this study. All participants had to perform a 5-minute MM task together and individually while the other participant was in rest or performing a concentration task (control condition). To exclude social interaction as main factor, participants were separated …

The Varieties Of Spiritual States Triggered By Sex: A Systematic Review Of The Empirical Literature, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This systematic review integrates the empirical evidence of spiritual experiences triggered by sexual activity, including studies by 10 authors. Despite venerable sexual meditative traditions of embodied spiritual practices, such as Hindu Tantra, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Taoism, empirical studies of sexual spiritual experiences are in their infancy. This review presents the range of sexual altered states experiences identified to date and how they qualify as spiritual experiences phenomenologically and in terms of their lifechanging effects. Seventeen distinct sexual-spiritual states have been identified across authors, with 4 others identified at significant levels in qualitative studies by individual authors. As an emergent area …

Tripping In The Moment: The Spiritual Journey Of Baba Ram Dass, Charles S. Hamilton

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Ram Dass, the iconic, countercultural, spiritual seeker, brought the wisdom of the East to those of us in the West through his many books and frequent, charismatic dharma talks. This view of his spiritual journey describes the transformation of Richard Alpert, clinical psychologist and product of the Western milieu’s often-shackling conventional expectations, into Ram Dass, the free, embodied soul who, through explication and example, and with witnessing attention, tries to guide us all to the always present abode of loving awareness. Ram Dass’s idea of self in existence was transformed: first, from a psychological object of clinical study, to a …

The Perceived Impact Of Holotropic Breathwork: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Felipe Landaeta Farizo

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Holotropic Breathwork (HB) is a method of self-exploration developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof. Research has only just begun to investigate the effects of HB, while the possible influence of the context and other features of HB within the experience and its impact have not been studied in depth. This qualitative study investigated the perceived impact of HB on 6 women and 6 men (ages 25-67) in Chile, using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an emergent method developed specifically to work with these types of subjective issues. Results revealed 10 major themes involving both intrapsychic and relational features prior, during and …

The Luminous Night Of The Soul: The Relationship Between Lucid Dreaming And Spirituality, Tadas Stumbrys

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Lucid dreams, in which the dreamers are aware that they are dreaming, can be a source of spiritual and mystical experiences. This empirical study aimed to explore the relationship between lucid dreaming and spirituality, taking into account the role of mystical lucid dream experience, in an online sample of 471 respondents, 95% of whom had lucid dream experience and 65% were frequent lucid dreamers. The findings support the relationship between lucid dreaming and spirituality: spiritual transcendence was positively associated with both lucid dream frequency and mystical lucid dream experiences. Thus having recurrent lucid dreams and mystical experiences in them may …

Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The present study asked whether emotional responses to narratives of moral transgressions are shaped by the reader’s assumed relationship with the injured party (i.e., oneself, familiar other, and unfamiliar other). Its goal was to test a cultural, religious, and individualistic account of such responses in young females of a traditional society in transition towards a sustainable integration into the global economy. To this end, female college students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were asked to identify their emotional reaction to each of several moral transgressions, report its intensity and then judge the severity of the transgression. In agreement with …

The Mystical Exodus In Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma And The Wellsprings Of Renewal, B. Les Lancaster

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

No abstract provided.

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 Advance Publication Archive

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 …

The Role Of Spiritual Intelligence And Differentiation In Predicting Marital Adjustment Of Married Iranian Students, Sedigheh Ahmadi, Richard H. Morley, Faezeh Ghalebi, Hossein Ilanloo, Christine D. Nguyen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of spiritual intelligence and differentiation in predicting marital adjustment of Iranian students. The participants of this study were 312 married students from Yazd University. The instruments used in this study were the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) to measure marital adjustment, Differentiation of Self- Inventory, and the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI). The results of the study demonstrated that spiritual intelligence predicted the marital adjustment of married students (p

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

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

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. …

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 1: Recollections Of Another Realm, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Autobiographic memories prior to birth remain controversial in psychology because such memories are traditionally believed to begin much later when some sense of self is formed. Prenatal sentience, including fetal learning, occurs in species from arthropods to humans, and evidence for autobiographic memories from pre- and neo-natal humans has typically come from clinical case histories of altered-state regression techniques eliciting records from adults or clinical case histories of children in normal states. This thematic analysis examined 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into …

Eliciting Awe In The Spectator: The Case Of A Dhrupad-Based Dance Performance, Santarpia Alfonso, Andrée Martin, Armando Menicacci, Pierre De Olivieira, Daniel Lemieux, Laurence Éthier, Caroline Charbonneau, Bruno Pucella, Christophe Flambard, Les Frères Gundecha, Louis-Charles Lusignan, Alice Bourgasser, Élizabeth-Anne Dorléans, Ariane Dubé-Lavigne, Angélique Poulin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper describes “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” an immersive Dhrupad-based dance installation designed to elicit feelings of awe in the spectators, in a real-life artistic context. This study used a mixed-methods approach in order to explore spectators’ awe experience (N=45), using specific scales and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results suggested that “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” with its combination of nature motifs and the slow dance-walk associated with the Dhrupad music in the choreography, was able to produce awe-related moments in some spectators and inspire a degree of positive emotions. Our qualitative results viewed awe explicitly as a positive emotion and showed that generally …

How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Tasseography is a divination method to provide insight about the seeker’s past, present, or future life by interpreting patterns in the dregs of a liquid. Although it has been practiced with coffee throughout Europe and Middle East, particularly among women, no known studies exist on the seer’s perceptual process of the ambiguous patterns or how the roles of the seeker and seer, symbols, ritual, and cultural epistemology shape the divinatory hermeneutics. This study focused on the Armenian coffee divination ritual, asking what are the processes and conditions that enable experienced cup readers to obtain divinatory insight in tasseography? Two seekers …

History, Cognition And Nostromo: Conrad’S Explorations Of Torture, Trauma, And The Human Rage For Order, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

Focusing on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, this essay historicizes the treatment of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, demonstrating how Conrad anticipated our current understanding and treatment of the illness. The second part of the essay addresses Nostromo’s treatment of historiography. Part three is concerned with epistemology and the relationship between neurological discoveries concerning the gap between perception and consciousness, relating those discoveries to Conrad’s use of delayed decoding.

A Journey To Finding Space In The Tension: Experience Of Instructors' Relationship With Religion And Spirituality In Doctoral Psychology Programs, Samantha Mcgee

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Religion and spirituality, when viewed through a holistic lens, can reflect important aspects of a person’s identity. It can be a source of well-being and also struggle. The fields of religion, spirituality and psychology have had a history of being polarized, with some efforts to integrate the two fields. Tensions exist at multiple ecological levels around the topic of religion and spirituality, which can make it easier to avoid discussing it in classrooms and therapy rooms. It is important to address and create room for discussion of experiences around religion and spirituality in classrooms that are training psychologists so they …

Locating Uncertainty In Hospital Leader Sensemaking And Sensegiving Of Organizational Change: A Single Case Study, Sara E. Barry

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Leaders planning strategic change face significant ambiguity and uncertainty due to the complex, fast-paced, and volatile nature of organizational life. What one leader sees as an opportunity, another may view as a threat depending on their past experiences, their existing mental models, and their perceptions of uncertainty. Sensemaking and sensegiving theories provide a framework for how leaders retrospectively make sense of new and disorienting information through recursive cycles of interpretation, action, and learning, and seek to influence the meaning-making of others towards a shared vision of the strategic change. Despite decades of research using these theories, studies have yet to …

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …

Positive Psychological Transformation: A Mixed Methods Investigation Into Catalysts And Processes Of Meaningful Change, Nick Fortino, Paul Dommert Jr., Nadia Santiago, Jen Smith

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This mixed methods study investigated the experience of positive psychological transformation, including its catalysts, dynamics, supportive factors, and outcomes. The first phase of the study was a 13-item survey (N=130) that revealed trends and associations in participants’ experiences of transformation. The most significant correlation was between “expressing myself” and change stabilization (p < .01). Forty-four percent of participants reported trauma or emotional distress as the main catalyst of their transformation. Each of the other three main catalysts (dissonance, adaptation, and inspiration) drew approximately 18% of responses. Connecting with nature (71%), introspection (65%), solitude (63%) and empathy (61%) were commonly reported supportive factors. Common changes related to participants’ way of interacting with others (77%), perception (75%), and emotional patterns (70%). The process of transformation differed substantially depending on multiple factors including the catalyst and demographic categories. Additionally, the survey revealed a trend of moving away from organized religion toward a sense of being spiritual but not religious. The second phase of the study consisted of interviews with a portion of the participants who reported trauma as the main catalyst of their transformation (n = 26) and was focused on the experience of posttraumatic growth. Thematic analysis revealed that transformation is typically initiated by a series of traumatic events and that the process of transformation can involve impaired well-being/functioning before elevated well-being/functioning. The results of thematic analysis were consistent with existing data on posttraumatic growth.

Intra-Participant And Inter-Analyst Cacophony: Working The Hyphen Between Modalities Using Provocative Reflexivity, David A. Caicedo, Andrea Nikté Juarez Mendoza, Miguel Pinedo

Publications and Research

Multimodal psychological research highlights the benefit of using complementary approaches to the phenomenological study of lived experience. Rather than focus on any individual method, this study attempts to concentrate on the transition, or hyphen, between them, as a place for reflexivity, ethics, and theory. Participants were 14 adults, recruited from ‘New York Community College’ and ‘New Jersey Community College’ in the U.S., who engaged in focus groups where they completed two activities: drawing a map of their personal journey to the college or of their self-identity, and their definitions for the immigration-related terms illegal and undocumented. Results demonstrated that …

Pseudo-Science And ‘Fake’ News ‘Inventing’ Epidemics And The Police State, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Aung San Suu Kyi’S Defensive Denial Of The Rohingya Massacre: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Denial And Positive-Image Construction, Idhamsyah Eka Putra, Hema Preya Selvanathan, Ali Mashuri, Cristina Jayme Montiel

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

In December 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accused the Myanmar government of genocide against Rohingya Muslims. Represented by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar authorities denied such accusations. To understand how a political leader can deny ingroup wrongdoings, we unpacked Suu Kyi’s ICJ speech and analyzed her defensive rhetorical style through critical narrative analysis. We aimed to identify and describe the denial strategies Suu Kyi used as well as how she maintained a positive ingroup image to support her position. Our findings showed that Suu Kyi engaged in interpretative denial of genocide by arguing that …

Parental Incarceration: Negative Impacts And How To Find Reform, Emma Melendrez

McNair Scholars Program

It is no secret that the Criminal Justice System has been put into question and even more so in recent years. The following research raises the thought provoking reality regarding the impacts of parental incarceration, more specifically the behavioral, socioeconomic, and placement impacts, as well as raises the question of if there can be or is a possibility of reform to these systems implemented to protect the well-being of these children. For this I have compiled data from articles spanning from across the United States within the past 20 years (2000-2021).

Who Is A Wise Person? Zhuangzi And Epistemological Discussions Of Wisdom, Shane Ryan, Karyn Lai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay articulates the contribution that the Zhuangzi can make to contemporary epistemological discussions of wisdom. It suggests that wisdom in the Zhuangzi involves, in part, correctly distinguishing the "heavenly" (or the naturally given) from human artifice. It is important for humanity to understand naturally given conditions (e.g., seasons, climate, forces, mortality) to grasp what is within, and what beyond, our initiatives. To enable this, we need to be openly engaged with the world, rather than approach it with rigid convictions about outcomes or goals. We characterize such openness and readiness to engage as an attitude, that of "epistemic humility." …

Body Positivity Movement: Influence Of Beauty Standards On Body Image, Alissa Chiat

Antonian Scholars Honors Program

Throughout history, there has always been an idealized depiction of beauty. In each culture the ideal varies but the concept of exclusion is universal. The westernized portrayal of beauty is prevalent throughout and has become ingrained into the fabric of American society. In adolescence, the development of an individual’s body influences their sense of self. With the growing prevalence of social media usage young adults are being introduced to a barrage of images celebrating westernized ideals of beauty. Currently, three out of every four young adults ages 18-24, use at least one social media platform (Perrin & Anderson, 2019). Recently, …

Facial Action Coding System And Induced Compassion, Camille Fogel

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The present study investigated the differential effects of a brief compassion meditation compared to a brief mindfulness meditation on felt and facially expressed compassion while viewing images of suffering. Participants (N = 82) were randomly assigned to one of two meditation conditions designed to promote compassion and relaxation, or relaxation alone. Participants then filmed themselves as they watched a two-minute compassion-inducing video that depicted suffering from around the world. These participant videos were later coded using three-distinct facial coding schemes: Complex FACS, Simplified FACS, and intuition rating. Finally, participants responded to a battery of self-report items about the level of …

A Touchy Subject: Optimality And Coreference, Jill De Villiers, Jacqueline Cahillane, Emily Altreuter

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Four studies are reported that compare production and comprehension of structures involving Principle A and B with 68 English speaking children. The stimuli included simple and complex sentences combined with simple and quantified NPs, each with reflexives and pronouns. A novel technique using a laptop proved successful for eliciting stimulus descriptions as well as truth value judgment. The results test a recent Optimality account of binding by Hendriks and Spenader (2004), but it is argued that more constraints are needed. Although the data can be fit well by the constraints, questions remain about whether it is theoretically satisfactory.

Self-Actualization And The Need To Create As A Limit On Copyright, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Personhood theory is almost invariably cited as one of the primary theoretical bases for copyright. The conventional wisdom views creative works as the embodiment of their creator’s personality. This unique connection between authors and their works justifies giving authors property interests in the results of their creative efforts.

This Chapter argues that the conventional wisdom is too limited. It offers too narrow a vision of the ways that creativity can develop personality by focusing exclusively on the results of the creative process and ignoring the self-actualizing benefits of the creative process itself. German aesthetic theory broadens the understanding of the …

Influencing Capitalist Attitudes To Drive More Capital Towards Social Good, Leah Michelle Burton

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to better understand how to influence capitalist attitudes and drive more capital towards social good. This is why we must explore the prospect of emancipating the capitalists from capitalism. This study identifies capitalism as a form of oppression that is contributing to a newly developed ethics of capital, a term introduced in this study. Emancipatory action research and general systems theory were employed as the primary approaches to engaging a group of venture capitalists and finance professionals in activities and dialogues. Value2 is the theory of action I use to influence the attitudes of …