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Transpersonal Counseling - the pioneers. We are looking at counseling from a transpersonal perspective. “The transpersonal perspective can be understood as the merging of the wisdom of the world's spiritual traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Primal Religions), with some of the philosophical (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Whitehead, Heidegger) and psychological (Jungian, Humanistic, Existential) schools of the West”, says Frank Takei in his article on the subject[1]. In human experience we observe different approaches to the existential question “Who am I?”. Where the spiritual traditions use religious practices to connect to and experience a deeper identity within, the philosophical and psychological schools of the west try to articulated and intellectualize an “I” entity in a cognitive manner and seek to connect with it by means of depth psychotherapy. Scholars like Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli, Ken Wilber and StanislavGrof, among others, recognized the limitations of the field of psychology and sought to combine Western concepts and methods with insights and teachings from the spiritual traditions. The Transpersonal Perspective is the endeavor to create a new synthesis, a symbiosis in which the learning’s from spiritual traditions are integrated with findings from the western schools. Its focus “human consciousness”, now embodies spiritual, philosophical and psychological significance in connecting to an existence beyond the confines of the philosophical/psychological self. The ancient controversy between religion and science[2], between heart and mind… When we are talking about integrating these two very different approaches, we need to be aware that human beings experience reality in different ways, depending on their context and thus on the constructs they have about themselves and what they consider their “truth”. It seems important to look for and acknowledge our common, human ground in being. Maybe, if we can see the bigger picture, the transpersonal perspective, we can, in our field, assist humankind’s growth towards consciousness. 1. Transpersonal Psychology – its pioneers… In his book[3] John Rowan explores the meaning and implications of the transpersonal in psychotherapy. He gives an overview of the most important pioneers; for me a chance to shortly review their work[4]: William James (1842-1910) was one of the first to talk about various levels of self: he defines the level of the personal as the creativeness of our own choices and the level beyond the personal as a surrender to a spiritual or “higher” self(s). This self is in his view connected to the personal yet beyond it and greater/more. James beliefs that the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws it significance and thinks an harmonious relation with that higher universe (ultimately a union) is our true end: “Our deepest destiny, our deepest reality, our deepest truth is God”. James's "radical" view of reality had a pronounced phenomenological bent. For James, mental events stood on an equal footing with observable events as representations of reality. James believed that an individual's immediate experience represented the essence of psychological truth. He says in one of his lectures[5] on “the religious attitude of the soul”: “It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call “something there,” more deep and more general than any of the special and particular “senses” by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed”. Carl Jung (1875-1961) was the first to use the word “transpersonal”, but he used it to differentiate the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious. He considered the transpersonal not personal, nor a part of the self. Freud (1856-1939) said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious: "The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied." Jung set out to make the exploration of this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially knowledgeable in the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. “If anyone could make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in symbolic form, it would be Carl Jung.“[6] Jung points out that we are restricted in understanding the unconscious psyche because it is always expressed by consciousness and in terms of consciousness. Consciousness, Jung claims, is like a surface of a skin upon a vast unconscious area of unknown extent. The area of consciousness is a restricted field of momentary vision, a point of contact, a relation between what we consider “I” (ego) and what we consider not-“I”. Consciousness is in that view the product of our perception and orientation in the world outside us. It is important to realize that our ego, in Jung’s view, is our consciousness’s point of reference; nothing can be conscious without an ego. So Jung defines the ego as our center of consciousness; a complex of psychic facts; constituted by general awareness (of body and existence) and by memory data (recorded past awareness?). “The ego is only a bit of consciousness which floats upon the ocean of the dark things” (the inner things), Jung says. Roberto Assagioli (1888 - 1974) was one of the first psychologists who recognized the spiritual nature of man, along with Abe Maslow. His work has come to be known as Psychosynthesis which was a more clinically applied form of psychotherapy incorporating the transpersonal aspect of human experiences. Assagioli did not make the distinction between personal and collective Jung did, and recognized that the transpersonal was both: within the collective unconscious and in contact with the larger consciousness. He developed a useful model of consciousness in the form of an egg; its center representing our conscious self or “I” (the screen on which the contents of our consciousness, the images, appear), enveloped by an area of consciousness and beyond that a larger area of unconsciousness. The “higher Self” is in this model our permanent center of consciousness (the field behind the screen), multi-dimensional and untouched. Assagioli perceives wholeness through the merging of self and Self[7] (no longer contact with reality, but rather a becoming of reality). StanislavGrof (1931-) – originally trained as an MD, psychiatrist and Freudian psycho-analyst, became increasingly disappointed with psychoanalysis as a practical tool of therapy. He did extensive research of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and concluded that the transpersonal was needed in psychotherapeutic work. Grofphenomenologically studied the experiences of the subjects of his LSD and later “holotropic” experiments. (Holotropicbreathwork is a powerful non-drug approach that uses simple means, such as faster breathing, evocative music and a certain kind of energy-releasing bodywork.) “To account for all the phenomena occurring in holotropic (non-ordinary) states, our understanding of the dimensions of the human psyche would have to be drastically extended”.[8] His new cartography of the psyche includes two additional domains: the perinatal (related to the trauma of birth, expanding the model of traditional “recollective” postnatal biographical analysis) ànd the transpersonal. He asserts that understanding the perinatal and the transpersonal levels challenges the mainstream's views of both mental illness and mental health. Through his work, he has demonstrated the inherent dignity of the human being to access inner wisdom to heal and resolve the most challenging concerns. Grof contends that human consciousness transcends the physical brain and is part of cosmic consciousness and that consciousness is the fundamental element of reality. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) is credited for his influence in the recognition of the transpersonal as another step in our understanding of ourselves. It is interesting to know how Maslowphenomenologically developed his description of the last level in his hierarchy of needs: the need to actualize the self. He considered this the level of Being-needs, growth motivated in contrast to the preceding levels which were D-needs: motivated by deficits. Maslow began by picking out a group of people, some historical figures, some people he knew, whom he felt clearly met the standard of self-actualization. Included in this august group were people like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, William James, Benedict Spinoza, and others. He then looked at their biographies, writings, the acts and words of those he knew personally, and so on. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of these people, as opposed to the great mass of us.[9] His self-actualizers were for instance reality-centered (able to differentiate between fake and real), problem-centered (treating life’s difficulties as problems demanding solutions, not as personal dramas), and they had a different perspective of means and ends (means could be ends themselves, and in that way more important than the ends..). In this context Maslow found that these people tended to have more “peak experiences” (what he calls “acute identity-experiences”) than the average person. He senses that people in peak-experiences are most their identities, losest to their real selves, most idiosyncratic. He concludes that these experiences are therefore “an especially important source of clean and uncontaminated data…”.[10] Toward the end of his life, Maslow inaugurated what he called the fourth force in psychology: Freudian and other depth psychologies constituted the first force; Behaviorism was the second; his own Humanism the third force. The fourth force was the Transpersonal psychologies which, taking their cue from Eastern philosophies, investigated such things as meditation, higher levels of consciousness and parapsychological phenomena. John Rowan identifies an experience as “transpersonal” if it increases the awareness of the unconscious and if it applies to growth in the spiritual areas. He mentions practices of communication with the unconscious like active imaginations, the use of the imaginal world and myth making. In his view all practices which enhance a dialogue between conscious and unconscious, used as means to develop a greater awareness, are transpersonal. “Meditation is part of the therapeutic practice and in a way it is not”, he says, ”it can be used as preparation, as an adjunct or as a follow-up for therapy”. Claudio Naranjo and Robert Ornstein[11] introduced the triangle model in which Naranjo describes three basic approaches to meditation: “The three types of meditation may be represented as the three points of a triangle . . . . at one end of the base line is represented meditation upon externally given symbolic objects, and at the other end is the contrasting alternative of meditation upon spontaneously arising contents of the mind .... “ In contrast with these two orientations in the task of meditation - on outer-directed and the other inner-directed - the third point in our triangle stands for a pure negative approach: not a reaching out or a reaching in but a self-emptying. In this approach the effort is to attain a stillness of the mind's conceptualizing activity. As one of Fritz Perls’s “successors” Claudio Naranjo wrote essays and a book on Gestalt Therapy and advocates that “the most distinctive features of Gestalt therapy are, properly speaking, transpersonal.”[12] He says: “the fact, however, is that awareness is transpersonal. Awareness, like the well-known hen of the golden eggs, is the ultimate transpersonal treasure…. I think that a shift in emphasis from mental contents to awareness itself may well be the most significant feature of today’s humanistic and transpersonal therapies… ” Naranjo’s introduction of " Naranjo also contributed to Oscar Ichazo’senneagrams of personality descriptions and correlated Freudian defense mechanisms to each of the nine types, after which he taught the Enneagram at Esalen in 1970. Ken Wilber (1949 - ) is often mentioned as the foremost theorist of the transpersonal psychology movement (although he quit referring to himself as a transpersonal psychologist in 1983. In 2000 he resigned from the movement and founded the Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying issues of science and society in an integral way). In his book “Up From Eden” (1977) he describes that every person, every separate-self, in his search for his true Nature (Atman), is faced with two major drives: the perpetuation of its own existence (Eros) and the avoidance of all that threatens its dissolution (Thanatos). He and John Southgate described the “Facilitative way” of meditation, which focuses awareness on what is (with what Deepak Chopra calls “witnessing awareness”). Rowan considers meditation when practiced in this facilitative fashion adjunctive to therapy. It is interesting to see that this facilitative way is not only a way of meditating, but much more a way of approaching life in general, of approaching consciousness. [13] “Growth fundamentally means an enlarging and expanding of one’s horizons, a growth of one’s boundaries, outwardly in perspective, inwardly in depth.”[14] The role of the therapist is to help the client to extend the horizons of self, and to bring awareness brought by the inner (transpersonal) self into the life of the person. Rowan presents the map Ken Wilber made of consciousness [15], picturing human development from unconscious Heaven - one with the dynamic Ground of Being – (or as he later corrects: unconscious Hell) to conscious Hell -the world of egoic alienation, repression, terror and tragedy - to conscious Heaven - transcending the separate self, re-united with the Ground of Being, only now fully conscious. Again the self is growing in awareness and thus consciousness. Transpersonal therapy, according to Rowan, affirms the existence of the step beyond self-actualization: the step of self-transcendence. Wilber’s 'spectrum' later evolved into the 'Four Quadrants' model, which includes an embrace of the interior and exterior realties of both the individual and the collective, enabling antagonistic arenas like science (exterior) and spirituality (interior) to holistically come together. Wilber’s Integral Appraoch tries to be more inclusive than any of the traditional schools of Transpersonal Psychology (basically four major factions fighting each other…). He doesn’t refer to it as a “psychology” anymore because it reaches beyond any form of psychology (Psychology, as a discipline, seems to be on its last legs, according to Wilber). [16] 2. Psychotherapy and meditation John Welwood[17] assembled essays of notable writers to show that meditative practice can assist and promote the healing relationship between patient and psychotherapist. How far can psychotherapy go in awakening the heart and liberating oneself from the distortions of the confused mind? Jacob Needleman compares western psychotherapy with eastern teachings and concludes that western psychology fails to answer the more serious existential questions (meaning, man’s true nature…). Self-realization is more than self-esteem, more than ego development etc.; it is the integration and harmonization of the whole: body, psyche, and spirit. Soul-therapy is a never ending process: it is life itself. Robin Skynner continues, listing similarities and dissimilarities between the spiritual and scientific paths. Whereas psychology attempts to balance ordinary living, the intention of spirituality is to transcend the ordinary. Jack Kornfield remarks that psychology does not possess the ability to introduce nor explain human experience that takes place within the mystical. Ram Dass claims that the Western psychology has embraced only those aspects of spiritual practice which reinforce the individuality of the ego. These writers agree that Western psychology needs a step beyond the care for the individual aspects of our psyche. John Welwood says: “Psychotherapy is primarily concerned with “shoring up” the individual sense of I (ego)…. but meditation goes one step further; it seeks to “qualify” this I-ness.” In other words; the meditative practice reveals what lies behind, beyond, the ego. Meditation becomes the bridge from the personal to the transpersonal. Meditation is not directed by doing, but rather by being. “Being” rather than “doing”, is a central theme for the other writers too as they explore working with oneself as the ground for working with others. Eric Fromm writes that well-being (living in accord with man’s nature), is possible only to the degree that one has transcended his own ego, developing an expansive awareness and an appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. “Well-being becomes the experience of being rather than doing; surrendering to the processes of life rather than attempting to manipulate life”. I feel he points here to the essence of the difference between the Eastern and Western approach. Fromm claims that the average person is only partially aware of the nature of reality. Psychically man needs a lifetime to give full birth to himself. He has to make a constant effort that becomes pleasurable in itself, but it is not “driven” like in instinctively motivated behavior[18]. Being is, according to Fromm, an art. Karl Serber says it again: “…, when all the aspects of doing are silenced, it is the “being” which brings clarity.” Joshu Sasaki Roshi, an influential Zen Master in In short: Individual self versus absolute self, separateness versus interrelatedness, duality versus wholeness and imprisonment versus liberation… Meditation is a way (according to these writers) to change our perspective from the first to the second position. Now Welwood explores how the openness of heart that arises out of meditative practice can influence working with others. It sounds paradoxal that meditation would open our hearts: “it is in the connecting with the emotions which allows one to truly live”, yet in meditation one does not attempt at assigning meaning to emotional content but remains “unmoved” (emoted) and simply observes and accepts. Welwooddescribes the act of transmutation as the experience of emotional turbulence as it is, with the intention to embrace it for the energy it brings to, or reflects of, life and living. Again a broader interpretation, a shift in consciousness to allow a perspective beyond the personal: a transpersonal perspective. As such, emotions become vehicles of growth rather than impediments. True compassion and appreciation of life then emerges from the pure experience of what it means to be human, a being, a participant in the drama of life, interdependent and connected to all things. Openness of heart through meditative experience. Last but not least Roger Walsh speaks of the practical use of meditation as a tool for expansive thinking. While therapy attempts to change the nature of the experience (emotion), meditation will modify the cognitive process by which the psyche creates such an emotion in the first place. To me it seems that in meditation, by only observing thoughts and emotions drifting by (aspects of the absolute..), instead of being sucked into them, we suddenly have “free” awareness-space (much like a computer has free memory). Within this space we are able to loose our selves (literally) and experience dimensions of our consciousness that lie beyond our “blocked” scope. When we bypass our cognitive/conceptual resistance circuits we can actually experience our ground in being beyond; the transpersonal realm where our individual self finds itself in a much wider context, experiencing a deeper connection with all other humans and things. The term “transpersonal perspective” feels right, since it signifies that we are indeed talking about a perspective, a “new” way of looking at reality, beyond ànd across the personal. The term transpersonal is thought of in terms of what is beyond personal but the definition of trans as across also applies. The transpersonal perspective moves across the personal realm in its endeavor to place this personal realm in a larger framework. “The self is still very much the focus of psychotherapy, but by moving across traditional and conventional parameters of the self, it is brought to the larger spiritual context. The individual self moves out of its existential vacuum and into a wider dimension to which the world’s spiritual traditions point”.[19] 3. Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Mark Epstein Mark Epstein (Freudian trained psychiatrist) attempts to integrate Western psychotherapy and the teachings of Buddhism, employing Buddhist techniques in a therapeutic context. In his writings he makes out to present the insights of the Buddha in the language of Western psychology, introducing the Buddhist perspective in terms of Freudian theory and explaining how a meditative approach can be applied in a psychodynamic context. Epstein states that the Buddhist approach requires that all of the psyche be subject to meditative awareness: “..a single state of mind, a poised and balanced state of bare, or evenly suspended, attention, can encompass both non-verbal and rational or intellectual thought.”[20] A transpersonal approach in the holistic sense, integrating heart, soul ànd mind, but at the same time practical and in-relation with human experience. Meditation is used in service of closer examination of our day-to-day mind, and per definition psychological. Its object is to question the true nature of self and (thus) to end the production of self-created mental suffering. Buddhist psychology takes the core sense of identity frustration (the narcissistic dilemma) as is starting point and offers a method to expose the metaphorical nature of self and so to remove the underpinnings of the forces that circle in the center of the Wheel of Life. There is no attainment of a higher Self in Buddhist theory; instead, only an exposure of what has already been true but unacknowledged: that self is fiction. Self, it turns out, is a metaphor for a process that we do not understand, a metaphor for that which knows. What I like about Epstein’s book is that it shows meditation in a wider perspective. It puzzled me that meditation seemed a very “separate” way to accomplish “connected to life” transformations. Good for recluses but not realistic for “normal” people (especially mothers, housekeepers, providers etc., etc.). But I recognize bare attention and mindfulness from my awareness-training (Gestalt), I know sunyata, or emptiness as “creative void” and of course I continuously try to question the metaphors my clients and I unconsciously use to describe ourselves… 4. The Diamond Approach. A.H. Almaas (A. Hameed Ali) developed the Diamond Approach and founded the The human essence is the part of us that is innate and real, and which can participate in the real world. Our human potential can be actualized by the realization and development of this human essence. In his view a human is born is pretty much all essence, or pure being. By living however essence is replaced with various identifications and a personality develops. However, the essence was there to begin with, and still is there. The cover is the personality: if you take the personality to be who you truly are, then you are distorting reality, because you are not your personality. In other words: what exists, exists, but the way the world is seen is different. It is a matter of orientation, of perspective: a person who is “in the world, but not of it” is oriented toward the essence instead of toward personality. This means that this person understands that the “I” we perceive is only a reflection of the deeper essence and that he/she actualizes this part of him/herself. A person who lives in this way has a different motivation: his/her purpose is to find the precious pearl, his/her personal essence. Almaassays: “… because your personality is a distortion of the real thing, it can point to the real thing. By understanding it, you can begin to see what the reflection is really a reflection of”.[21] Almaas says we need to develop awareness and disidentification as means to do the work of understanding yourself. Another point of view sees the process as liberation[22]: “the concept of self is what you need to get rid of.” As one of the seven factors of liberation compassionate kindness is mentioned as a vehicle that dissolves fixations or boundaries and frees you from self-centeredness. Interesting is also “the capacity to be absorbed in something” (becoming one with the experience or “loosing one’s self”) and “the capacity to be awake in your experience” (bare attention again). The seven factors of liberation ultimately make an eight factor, which is all the seven in one, making an octagon: the Lataif. “Liberation: the personality loosens it grip and “hangs loose”. 5. Psychotherapy and mysticism. Artur J. Deikman speaks of the split between the sacred and the rational (characteristic for Western science) which has left modern psychotherapy inadequately equipped to deal with certain sources of suffering. “We are faced with major problems that call for broadening our perspective and extending our science”.[23] Mysticism differs from science in its subject matter and the means it deploys. Mystics make personal experience, personal data, a major part of their work. Where Western science has turned its attention outward, to the world, mysticism has turned it inward, to themselves, even to that which asks the questions. Deikman relates in his book how mystical tradition can enable Western psychology to come to terms with essential problems of meaning, self and human progress. The goal of mysticism is self-development (this it has in common with psychotherapy) and ultimately the experience of the Real Self, which is seen as sacred. Human beings need meaning, our psychological health depends on a sense of purpose. The religious framework that formerly defined meaning has been replaced by a scientific world view in which meaning does not exist. “The greatest problem Western psychotherapists face may be the absence of a theoretical framework to provide meaning for patients and therapists alike”. Deikman describes the human “uneasiness” William James was already talking about almost a century earlier: the dissonance between the scientific view and the one we intuit of a larger reality, our subtle perception pointing to a better, meaningful existence. In the mystical tradition, meaning is a perceptual issue. Widening and deepening consciousness is again a important, essential piece of the puzzle that is missing in Western psychotherapy. Deikman introduces “the observing self” (the center of human experience, located in awareness itself, not in its content) and proposes to use meditation techniques to heighten it. Again awareness as means to see life from a wider, transpersonal perspective, to attain access to dimensions of Self beyond the limited conceptual Ego-self. [1] The Transpersonal Perspective, Franklin Takei [2]Angels and demons, Dan Brown, 2001 – just for fun... [3] The Transpersonal: Psychotherapy and Counseling, John Rowan 1993 [4] I add information from my studies of the work of these authors and what I found on the internet [5] The varieties of religious experience, William James, lectures given in [6]Dr. C. George Boeree, 1997 (http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/) [7] Transpersonal Development, Roberto Assagioli, revised in 1991 [8] Psychology of the Future, StanislavGrof, 2000 [9] C. George Boeree, 1998 [10] Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham H. Maslow, 1968 [11]Psychology of Meditation, Claudio Naranjo and Robert Ornstein, 1971 [12] Gestalt Therapy, Claudio Naranjo, 1995 [13] “In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.” Ken Wilber, 2002 (Foreword to Frank Visser’s book on him) [14] No Boundary, Ken Wilber 1979 [15] The Atman Project, Ken Wilber, 1980 [16] Interview with Shambhalla “On Critics” and www.integralnaked.org [17] Awakening the Heart, East/West approaches to psychotherapy and the healing relationship, 1983 [18] The Essential Fromm, Eric Fromm, 1998 [19]The Transpersonal Perspective, Frank Takei [20]Thougths without a Thinker, Mark Epstein, 1995 [21] Diamond Heart, Book One: Elements of the Real in Man, A.H. Almaas, 1987 [22] Diamond Heart, Book Two: The Freedom to Be, A.H. Almaas, 1989 [23] The Observing Self, Arthur Deikman, 1988 |