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DEFINITION OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Association of Transpersonal Psychology was founded in 1969 by Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Stanislav Grof, June Singer and others.

Transpersonal psychology is based on the insight that those experiences transcending our usual identification with who we think we are, have ontological status and are a valid field of scientific research. These non-ordinary states of consciousness, accessed via ancient, and also new disciplines and techniques, represent a dimension greater than ourselves which, at the same time, is our origin and destination. Transpersonal experiences open us up to this dimension, and they have a deeply transforming effect on the individual, often leading to an enhanced spiritual understanding of human existence. The multiple areas informing transpersonal research, e.g. cross-cultural anthropology, indigenous sciences, research into "entheogens" (sacred plants and substances), spiritual disciplines, mystical experiences etc., prompt transpersonal psychology - complementary to conventional presuppositions of science - to regard subjective experience as containing valid scientific data. Therefore, transpersonal psychology seeks to integrate and foster experiential methods of accessing various states of consciousness. In the impressive and pioneering words which were written roughly 30 years ago by Anthony Sutich, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, it's purpose is to integrate: "those ultimate human capacities and potentialities that have no systematic place in positivistic or behavioristic theory ('first force'), classical psychoanalytic theory ('second force'), or humanistic psychology ('third force').

"The emerging Transpersonal Psychology ('fourth force') is concerned specifically with the empirical, scientific study of, and responsible implementation of the findings relevant to, becoming, individual and species-wide meta-needs, ultimate values, unitive consciousness, peak experiences, B-values, ecstasy, mystical experience, awe, being, self- actualization, essence, bliss, wonder, ultimate meaning, transcendence of the self, spirit, oneness, cosmic awareness, individual and species-wide synergy, maximal interpersonal encounter, sacralization of everyday life, transcendental phenomena, cosmic self-humor and playfulness; maximal sensory awareness, responsiveness and expression; and related concepts, experiences and activities".

(Quote taken from the first issue, first volume, of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Spring 1969, p.15,16).

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ABSTRACT:
The interview with Professor Walsh was conducted on February 27th and 28th, 1996, in his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. It addresses basic questions of Transpersonal Psychology and consciousness research. It is discussed whether experiential programs could and/or should be a part of modern academic programs. Institutions on the West Coast of the United States are mentioned where such programs are being offered. It is described why students can profit from such programs in a way which seems to be adequate to contemporary challenges such as the 'global crisis', alienation in modern industrial societies, multi-ethnic population etc. Additionally Dr. Walsh explains how and why he himself was, and is still motivated to undergo experiential practice. Beyond our usual sense of who we are, which has been coined as 'consensus trance' by Charles Tart, the ontological status of non-ordinary states of consciousness is asserted as a transpersonal potential of human existence.

KEYWORDS:
Transpersonal Psychology, consciousness research, meditation, experiential academic programs, ontological status of transpersonal experiences, non-ordinary states of consciousness, spirituality, religion.

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TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW:

[1]
MS: Dr. Walsh, you are one of the leading representatives of what we might consider a new scientific approach to the understanding of human consciousness called transpersonal psychology. Why do you think a field like transpersonal psychology evolved?

RW: I think that, like so many other fields, transpersonal psychology emerged in response to the recognition that there were significant areas of nature and human nature which were being overlooked by traditional areas of psychology. In particular there was a concern that while the earlier fields of Western psychology - particularly psychoanalysis and behaviorism - had given us a great deal and offered a lot of new insights they had largely overlooked areas of central concern to human nature and wellbeing: areas such as love, compassion, consciousness and particularly spirituality. There was also a concern that with rare exceptions such as with Carl Jung most attention had been given to early childhood and adolescent development and very little to adult development.

[2]
Likewise more attention had been given to psychopathology than to health or exceptional wellbeing, so that there was a concern among a growing number of thinkers that we had focussed almost exclusively on the shadow side of human nature and had not adequately addressed the potentials and possibilities for further development. In particular there had been a lack of appreciation of the varieties of states of consciousness that are available to us and their importance for understanding spirituality and religion.

[3]
Part of that understanding came from the recognition that our culture is what anthropologists call 'monophasic'. Monophasic means that our Western worldview is largely derived from a single state of consciousness: the usual ordinary waking state. That is in contrast to many other world cultures which are described as 'polyphasic'. Polyphasic means that their worldview is derived from multiple states of consciousness such as dreams, trance, yogic, contemplative and meditative states. These cultures recognize that these other states of consciousness offer valid, valuable and complementary modes of knowing and types of knowledge that are not so adequately addressed in our usual waking state alone.

[4]
There was also a concern that Western psychology and the culture at large had been dominated to a detrimental degree by the remarkable and in many ways wonderful progress of science and technology. Consequently scientism was widespread in our culture. Scientism is the belief that science is the best, or even the only means for acquiring valid knowledge. But, of course, if you ask the person who believes in scientism for their specific proof that science is the only valid means for acquiring knowledge then you get a stunned silence. Of course there is no scientific proof for scientism.

[5]
So one of transpersonal psychology's aim, best articulated by Ken Wilber, has been to attempt to expand the valid epistemologies from purely empirical or rational, as in Western culture and science, or purely rational and contemplative, as in the contemplative traditions, and to try to integrate all three modes of knowledge. The goal has been to integrate empirical, rational and contemplative epistemologies in the hope that this would give us a more comprehensive, integrative and adequate vision of human nature, consciousness and reality.

[6]
MS: What you just said largely implies the answer to my next question which would have been about the challenges that transpersonal psychology presents to the predominant anthropological understanding in humanistic sciences, so we might as well go on to the next question. In the schools of transpersonal psychology here in California - for example the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco or the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto - students are encouraged to move into personal experience of several somatic, psychotherapeutic and spiritual disciplines of their choice. Why is this being done, and what value would you put on this kind of educational frame?


RW:
Our culture and in particular our educational institutions have been predominantly intellectual and there has been a concern that concepts and theories have been increasingly distanced from direct meaningful human experience. In some ways this is not a new idea. If we think back to Immanuel Kant we can recall his discussion of the necessity of the integration of experience and concepts. He said experience without concepts is blind experience and that concepts without adequate experience are empty concepts. So one of the aims of these schools has been to integrate conceptual and experiential knowledge. The idea is that this will be not only intellectually enriching but also personally enriching and that a person who has explored a variety of somatic, intellectual, psychotherapeutic and contemplative disciplines will be a more mature, integrated person who can integrate their intellectual understanding with their direct experience from the context of a more mature integrated personality. This is the hope. Whether or not it is true we need to demonstrate more clearly but certainly that is the hope and I think there is some evidence for it.

[7]
But this concern becomes increasingly apparent and important when one starts to deal with transpersonal experiences, transcendent experiences, whatever one wants to call them, peak experiences to use Maslow's term, cosmic consciousness to use Bucke's term, samadhi states in yogic language. Because these are essentially altered states of consciousness and when stabilized they seem to be associated with transconventional, transpersonal developmental stages. That is, developmental stages beyond what has been thought of as the norm of convention or even the ceiling of human developmental possibilities. Because these experiences are altered state experiences then, to a significant degree, our capacity to understand them is limited by what is called state specific learning, state specific communication and state specific understanding. Only to the extent to which we ourselves have had some direct experiences of these contemplative states can we truly hope to understand them.

[8]
I know for myself that when I was getting into this field that a lot of the claims made by the contemplative and meditative traditions just seemed ridiculous and made no sense to me whatsoever. And it was fascinating to find that I would read something and think: 'that is ridiculous', and then six months later would have an experience and think: 'oh, that's what they mean'. Then six months later I would have another experience and I would think: 'oh, this a deeper concept than I had understood'. In other words, I would have an experience of what philosophers call increasing grades of significance. That is, appreciating more and more depths to the concepts as my own experiential base and range and depth increased. So that I have come to appreciate that my own limited experiences place very significant limitations on my conceptual understanding. I think that recognition has become widespread and more and more people in our culture have taken up meditative and contemplative traditions and found that this is so in their own experience. Hence these schools are the first schools to attempt to make use of the three epistemological modes that we dicussed before: empirical, rational and contemplative and attempt to integrate them into a coherent epistemology and worldview.

[9]
MS: Dr. Walsh, if you will allow me to ask you a personal question ...:you have personally engaged in, or maybe I should say submitted yourself to the practice of meditation in forms of retreat settings and the like over many years. Why do you fit these things into the tight schedule of a university professor?

RW: I think that my motivation has changed over time and with continued meditative practice. At first I was intensely curious and so curiosity pulled me into these practices and in my first meditation retreat I was stunned at what I learned about the nature of mind. I found that in my first ten day retreat I felt as if I had learned more about the nature of mind and depths of mind than I had learned in medical school and three years of psychiatric training. So it was a very humbling experience to find out that there were tools which provided so much more insight and understanding into the mind than the training I had invested so much time and energy in. And it was also humbling to realize there were people who knew much more about the mind than I did even though I had been to the university and they hadn't. And so my initial motivation of curiosity changed to fascination and awe and that led to do more intensive practice. As my practice began to deepen then again the motivation began to shift and I began to appreciate the values that underlie the meditative traditions. Therefore I wanted to cultivate qualities such as love, compassion and understanding that these practices seem to be able to help develop. That led me to appreciate that there are developmental possibilities beyond what we have thought of as the norm. So of course I wanted, even if I couldn't fully develop into these stages, to see if I could at least taste them.

[10]
Then I began to appreciate the meditative traditions' claims that there are human possibilities of a truly transcendent nature, called for example liberation, enlightenment, salvation, moksha, fana or wu, and that these liberated states are potentially available to all of us if we do the practice. So I was drawn to the practices in the hope that I might move towards these goals. There was also a further shift as the value of the practice worked their way even deeper into my mind and soul and I realized that working for one's own betterment and understanding was only a partial goal. The meditative traditions aim for something deeper than that and that is to develop oneself so as to be an optimal instrument of service so that one could bring one's learning back into the world. So that desire started to power my meditation.

[11]
I think there was a further stage in which some of these desires started to dissolve. For I gradually became able to be more present in the moment, enjoying and appreciating this moment of experience, rather than trying to create a better moment and to change myself. Then there was more of a motive just to do the practice with less and less concern about achievement and more appreciation of the trustworthiness of the inherent spontaneity of motivation. I think perhaps at this stage possibly all those motives play a part but there has definitely been an evolution in the motivation.

[12]
MS: Well, thank you very much for this personal answer. You once said that you see a profound contemplative core to all the world's great religions; something like the philosophia perennis which provides a cartography for transcendent states of consciousness. How would you comment on the degree of realization and acknowledgement of this core by traditional science, particularly comparative religion, where from the Western understanding we take to comparing our tradition with, let's say, Buddhist, Hindu and other Far East traditions?


RW: It is important to keep in mind two qualifiers. One is that there is enormous variation within each religious tradition. And secondly until very recently most Western religious practitioners have given very little attention to non-Western traditions. My guess, and it would be an interesting study to test this, is that to the degree a person has undertaken a contemplative practice - whether it be for example Christian, Jewish or Islamic, Buddhist or Taoist - to that extent I suspect they will recognize commonalities. In other words they may recognize what Shuon called the transcendent unity of religions. And to that extent they will be more inclined to recognize the perennial philosophy and perhaps also to acknowledge the Great Chain of Being as a kind of ontological structure that may underlie the perennial philosophy.

[13]
MS: In your book titled 'Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision', you describe the ego as being one
of the obstacles to transpersonal experience. How would you comment on the assertion being made by major psychological schools that the ego has to be maintained and strengthened to fully orient oneself in the world?
































RW: The term ego is probably one of the most overused terms in the English language and has multiple meanings. There is not even a great deal of agreement within psychology as to what it means and even less when you start comparing contemplative traditions and psychology.

[14]
I think if we recognize the different ways in which the term ego is being used, then there is not necessarily a conflict. Within psychology the term ego usually refers to the self sense, self image or self concept. In psychoanalytic terms it refers to the organizing, rational, reality oriented component of the psyche as opposed to, for example, the id and super ego. Certainly I think we would all agree that development of a mature, healthy self concept and psychodynamic ego is crucial for maturation and functioning as an average adult.

[15]
Where I think there is a problem is that most Western psychologies assume that this average adult ego or self sense is all that is possible. In point of fact there is increasing evidence that ego development can mature beyond conventional stages. The work of Loevinger has shown, for example, that beyond the conventional egoic stages there are further stages such as the integrated egoic sense.

[16]
But what is also clear is that in te contemplative traditions the term ego is used more in the sense of the separate self sense. That is, it is used more to point to the fact that in development up to the usual adult stages we experience ourselves as separate entities, what Alan Watts called 'skin encapsulated egos'. Yet it is apparent from centuries of contemplative study across many cultures that there are further developmental stages in which the sense of identity expands beyond the skin encapsulated ego, beyond the body, beyond the purely personal, beyond the personality to transpersonal stages in which the sense of identity expands to include larger aspects of life, the planet and ultimately the entire universe. In these higher stages, which merge into the classical mystical experiences, the sense of being a separate self dissolves, at least temporarily and in rare cases permanently. So the ego, or separate self sense, as defined by these contemplative traditions thereby is transcended or dissolves in unity consciousness. If we can see the different ways in which the term is being used then we can see that there is actually little conflict between psychodynamic claims and the contemplative claims and in point of fact they are complementary.

[17]
One of the things becoming apparent is that contemplative psychologies such as the Asian psychologies of Buddhism and Yoga are to a large extent complementary to Western psychology. Western psychology has dealt with pathology and early development. However, they really don't have a great deal of understanding about early development or psychodynamics. So when you put the two together you get a comprehensive and integrated vision of human development and capacities.

[18]
MS: Picking up the term psychopathology we can go into the next question. This is that modern consciousness research, during the last decades, has exposed the predominant understanding of neurotic and psychotic disorders as being based on fairly narrow-minded presuppositions. How does transpersonal psychology encounter a phenomenon like psychosis?

RW: Inasmuch as transpersonal psychology deliberately attempts to integrate conventional psychology and our understanding of conventional development and development of pathology with contemplative understanding and the understanding of transpersonal states and stages, then many forms of psychosis can be interpreted in ways which don't differ all that much from the conventional interpretations. For example, one can still interpret schizophrenic disorders which appear to have an organic aetiology in ways which do not necessarily differ much from conventional interpretations.

[19]
On the other hand, transpersonal psychology has recognized that there can be developmental crises in which the psyche, because of an inherent dynamic urge towards further growth, will destabilize the current psychological structures, even to the point of precipitating an acute psychosis. And yet that psychotic state can be seen in retrospect as part of a developmental process, and if adequately perceived and explained and treated - that is perceived and explained and treated as a developmental crisis rather than a purely pathological process - then there is the possibility of real growth and psychological and even spiritual maturation coming out of the psychotic process. And of course we have crosscultural examples of that, as for instance in some of the shamanic initiation crises in which a number of shamans go through a spontaneous period of severe psychological distress, agitation, and even psychosis, but are recognized in the culture as displaying disorders which are capable of resolution and of allowing a person to assume the valued role of a shaman and a healer.

[20]
So that is one additional perspective that the transpersonal offers to the understanding of psychoses. Another perspective that the transpersonal can offer is the recognition that during psychosis there may be transpersonal elements or experiences that can be part of the psychotic experience, so that a person may have a psychotic experience for any number of reasons, and during the psychosis may have some genuinely transcendent experiences and understandings. These have been called psychoses with mystical features or mystical experiences with psychotic features, depending on which predominates. The psychologist Lukoff has written in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology on these mixed syndromes which as yet are not very well understood.

[21]
I think the general process is that as the organizing structures of the psyche break down there is probably an influx of materials from both the lower and higher unconscious, producing these mixed syndroms, and I think one of the real challenges for us is to begin to educate mental health professionals to the existance of these unusual types of psychoses and the potential for growth and the necessity for treating them with understanding and respect, and even for possibly allowing them to evolve spontaneously rather than aborting them with psychoactive drugs of one kind or another.

[22]
Then there is one final perspective which transpersonal psychology offers to an understanding of psychosis, and that is the possibility that our usual ordinary, culturally valued waking state could itself be viewed as a collective psychosis. Charles Tart, for example, has spoken of it as a 'consensus trance'. Willis Harman has called it a 'cultural hypnosis'. Other people have spoken of it as a shared illusion. In the East it is described as 'Maya', or a dream, the idea being that our consensus reality or our consensus state of consciousness offers us a distorted, illusory perception and understanding of the world and of ourselves which we do not see as distorted and illusory.

[23]
That is the definition of psychosis. Psychosis is a state of consciousness in which there is a distorted perception of reality, but that distortion is not appreciated. So from the higher developmental stages and states of consciousness, our usual stage and state could be regarded as psychotic to the degree that a person is capable of evolving beyond it, and certainly it seems that our usual state and stage are necessary states and stages in our developmental and evolutionary process. But when they become the endpoint, then they may be regarded as a form of arbitrary, culturally determined, developmental arrest, and in some perspectives even psychosis.

[24]
MS: You were mentioning the shamanic experiences in this comment, and you have written about these experiences in your book titled 'The Spirit of Shamanism'. Now, shamanism is one of the fields that people have taken interest in, and for the last twenty or thirty years we can observe a rapidly increasing fascination by meditation and altered states of consciousness. How would you comment on this development considering a vaster global perspective of the evolution of human consciousness?

RW: I think there are multiple dimensions or ways in which the new interest in contemplative and shamanic and other med tative traditions is related to both, global consciousness and the evolution of consciousness. For the first time we now have an increasingly global culture, what McClewan called the 'global village', in which we are aware of, and to some extent knowledgeable of other cultures, and in which the ethnocentrism which was taken as natural and normal has been challenged by our exposure to other cultures and values. So as part of this broader exposure and global culture and reduced ethnocentricity we in the West, and others from other cultures, have begun to appreciate the value and validity of other cultures and perspectives and of their spiritual technologies. So we have gone through what some psychologists call 'detribalization', in which we have moved beyond the values of our own tribe and begun to move towards a more encompassing, interconnected, global consciousness.

[25]
Now, this itself is presumably a part of the evolution of consciousness. But it is also interesting to look at the way in which these various spiritual traditions have played a part themselves, and are still playing a part in the evolution of consciousness. If we look back at human evolution we find that hominides have been on the planet for probably some four million years, and for almost all of that time the evolution of consciousness and mental capacities was determined by physical evolution, by gradual growth in brainsize and complexity and integration. But brain development has not evolved appreciably within the last 50,000 years since the advent of cromagnon humans. And since that time the evolution of consciousness has primarily been a cultural evolution in which the acquisition of knowledge and understanding and shifts in consciousness have been transmitted culturally across generations rather than through neurological change. And if we look at the various spiritual technologies we can see that what they have done is to foster the development of consciousness within individual practitioners which seems to have fed back into the culture so that the spiritual technologies have probably played a major part in the evolution of human consciousness itself.

[26]
Moreover it is apparent that the spiritual technologies and the resultant states and stages of consciousness that have been available to human beings have themselves evolved. So, for example, we find that some tens of thousands of years ago shamanism appeared, and with shamanism there was for the first time that we know of the possibility of humans to directly experience that they are not necessarily their bodies, that the self sense can expand beyond the somatic boundaries and that individuals can experience themselves as souls or spirits.

[27]
Then some 4,000 years or so ago, with the appearance of meditation and Yoga, there was a breakthrough into the so called subtle realms in which individuals began to experience pure consciousness, and there was a breakthrough particularly around the axial age of some 2,500 years ago, and in a number of traditions there was a breakthrough into the causal realm where individuals were able to break through into direct experiences of consciousness itself. Each of these new technologies seems to have furthered individual development and thereby left an imprint on the collective consciousness and fostered the evolution of the collective consciousness, even though the collective consciousness lagged somewhat behind the leading edge consciousness of the most advanced spiritual practitioners. So it seems all in all that there has been an intimate linkage across the last tens of thousands of years between the spiritual technologies that humans have discovered and the evolution of cultural consciousness. And at the present time there is the possibility that if large enough numbers of people take up contemplative practices that this could play a role in the further evolution of the collective consciousness, possibly into transpersonal stages but we have a long way to go, and I think the first challenge is simply to stabilize development in the vast majority of the population at the Piagetian stage of formal operational thought.

[28]
MS: If we consider what you said about the importance of contemplative practices, and if we try to bring that down to the academic level again, how do you think it would be possible to create a balance between an attitude which appreciates and integrates a dimension beyond the ego on the one hand, but on the other hand simultaneously maintains the capacity of perceiving, analyzing and communicating that which happens beyond the ego, a process that would obviously again be largely an ego function?

RW: The challenge how best to communicate the nature and value and validity of transpersonal experiences has been a challenge through recorded history. It is clear that transpersonal maturation involves at least ideally not only an opening to, and tasting of transpersonal experience but a bringing back of what has been gained and learned to the world for the benefit of others, and each tradition has its own metaphor for this process.

[29]
In the West perhaps the archetypal example is given in Plato's Republic where he speaks of the cave in which he describes people living in the dark, mistaking shadows for reality. He describes the person who breaks free of their chains managing to climb out of the cave and seeing the sunlight which is a symbol of the good, or of transcendent realization, and then voluntarily returning into the cave in order to try to bring help and understanding to those still entrapped in it. Now Plato ooints out that the task is not an easy one because the people in the cave have known nothing except shadows, and moreover, the person who has broken free into the overwhelming light of the good is to some extent blinded by it, and in some ways less able to see the shadows than people who have never escaped from them, so that communicating about the good or transpersonal experiences in general is a very challenging task.

[30]
Other traditions use different metaphors. In Christianity one speaks of the developmental process of first divine marriage in which the soul joins with the divine in ecstatic union, and then separates in order to bring the benefits of that union back into the world, and this is called the fruitfulness of the soul. In Judaeism there is first the phase of divestment of corporal reality which is followed by worship through corporal reality. In Zen there are the ox-herding pictures, and in the eighth picture the sage dissolves into the void or the Dharmakaya symbolized by the circle. But then, subsequently, the tenth ox-herding picture shows what is called 'entering the marketplace with help-bestowing hands', that is, the sage returns into the marketplace in order to fulfill the function of the realized being which is to help or to heal or to teach.

[31]
Joseph Campbell has described this whole process as the hero's return. Or Arnold Toynbee, the historian has, in his investigation of those people who have contributed most to cultural wellbeing, described what he has called the 'cycle of withdrawal and return', saying that the truly great contributors to human wellbeing display in their lives a common pattern of withdrawal from the usual culture to go into themselves, to wrestle with the existential questions of meaning in life and purpose, and then having found answers, they return to the world to share those answers with the people in the world.

[32]
But the challenge of communication and help and healing is not an easy one, particularly in an academic setting where these experiences are not valued or validated by the majority of academics. And the challenge at this stage is one of what the Mahayana Buddhists call 'skillful means'. Skillful means is the talent or capacity for helping others to understand and to, themselves, attain transpersonal experiences and ultimately liberation. And skillful means is something which is to be developed over lifetime. It's a challenge for anyone who's had transpersonal experiences, and it requires developing special skills. It requires becoming what Carl Jung called a 'gnostic intermediary', and Jung described a gnostic intermediary as someone who imbibes a wisdom into themselves so deeply that they are able to transmit it directly out from their own experience in another language and culture, so that the challenge of the gnostic intermediary, at least as far as transpersonal experiences and communication is concerned, is first to have the experiences themselves, that is to undertake a practice so as to move into transpersonal states of consciousness and stages, then to learn the language and belief systems and worldview of the people they are trying to communicate with, and then to translate their experiences into that linguistic and cultural and worldview framework in such a way that the person who is hearing is able to understand. And that, of course, is quite a challenge, but that's the challenge that all of us face who are trying to understand and cultivate the transpersonal within us and to bring its benefits to the world.

[33]
MS: Considering the 'outcome' of meditation, if we can call it such, we could say that the goal strived for by those enaged in meditation would be some sort of alteration in personality. What would you consider to be the main part of this alteration, and is it really a change in the common understanding of the word 'change'?

RW: People meditate for a variety of reasons and in the West there has been a major emphasis on psychological and psychosomatic benefits. And it is clear from several hundred research studies that there are indeed a significant number of psychological and psychosomatic benefits. We have studies showing changes in everything from blood pressure to pain management through to heightened perceptual acuity and greater self- actualization and general personality factors.

[34]
But this is not the classical goal of meditation. The classical goal of meditation is the condition variously known as enlightenment or liberation or moksha or salvation, and it's an interesting question as to exactly what that is and whether in fact, or to what extent, it is related to personality change. Probably one of the easiest and most encompassing ways of understanding meditative effects is that mediation acts as a developmental catalyst, and it takes people where they are and, to varying degrees, helps heal any unresolved issues at their current level and move them beyond their current developmental level.

[35]
Now, traditionally meditative practices were aimed at transpersonal developmental stages. There is always a challenge in understanding stages beyond one's own, but that's the dilemma we are faced with in trying to understand enlightenment or liberation. I think there are four ways we can think of enlightenment, or analogies or metaphors that we can use, which may help us get some sense of it. The first is developmental, the second is a matter of identity shift, then we have the ontological and the metaphorical sense. Developmentally we can think of enlightenment as the farther reaches of transpersonal, transconventional development. In terms of the shift in identity we can think of it as a continuation of the shifts that occur in infancy and childhood. The child comes into the world unable to differentiate self and other, their own body from the environment, and only after a period of months do they go through what Margret Mahler calls "hatching and the psychological birth of the infant", in which they are able to now identify first with their own body rather than being unable to differentiate body and environment. And then subsequently to these phases they develop an ego in the sense of a self-concept, that is, they identify with mental or cognitive functions and processes.

[36]
In enlightenment it seems that identity shifts so as to move from identity with mental, cognitive processes to identity with pure consciousness. And finally there may be a stage, the so called 'sahaj-samadhi', in which all phenomena are recognized as projections or manifestations or objectifications of consciousness. And as the Chandyoga Upanishad says in its summary of its teachings: 'the great discovery is that you are that', whatever is seen: you are that. There is no separation. So that enlightenment then can be seen as this culmination of the maturation of identity, first from undifferentiated identity to identification of the body, to identification of the mental or cognitive processes, to identification of pure consciousness, and finally to identification with both, the absolute and the relative, both, the unmanifest and the manifest, both, pure consciousness and the phenomenal world.

[37]
So that's the second way at looking of what enlightenment is. The third would be ontological in the sense that development can be thought of as the movement of identity up the great chain of being, and enlightenment can be seen as identification with either the higher reaches of the great chain of being, or finally with all levels of the great chain. Then finally the metaphoric understanding of the nature of enlightenment is sometimes described in the classic form of a lake. Classically one could think of a person who goes to a lake on which there is a wind blowing, and they look into the lake and they see these waves moving across the lake and they see reflected in the waves these shimmering, constantly changing, kaleidoscopic images with rapidly changing, meaningless movements.

[38]
But yet, as one studies the lake one can learn a lot. One can learn about the velocity and direction of the waves, one can look at the patterns of the reflections, and this lake is said to represent the untrained mind. But then imagine that the same person comes back another day and the wind has died down, the mind has been quietened, and now the surface of the lake is flat and clear and transparent. The person can see into the depth of the lake and find there a whole world underneath the surface they didn't know existed, with creatures and sand and rocks that they had not suspected would be there. At the same time they can see the entire world reflected in the lake-mind, and now that world is recognized as a meaningful, coherent, stable unity. And they see themselves also reflected in the lake-mind as part of that unity. So that would be the classic metaphor of enlightenment.

[39]
Now, one of the interesting questions, and I think it's going to be one of the major research questions in the next century, is to what extent is personality transformed by transpersonal experiences and enlightenment experiences and even by stable realization or stable enlightenment, and I need to add that it's clear that realization goes through stages itself. First there are the initial glimpses, but after the initial glimpses of states of consciousness then there is a further challenge of stabilizing those states into enduring stages. Huston Smith, in his book 'Forgotten Truth', talks of the challenge of changing flashes of illumination into abiding light, which is a wonderful phrase. But to what extent the capacity to have transpersonal experiences or even enlightenment experiences or even enduring enlightenment depends on prior personality change, and to what extent these experiences produce personality changes is as yet not clear. I think it's likely that they do induce personality changes but the question is what parts of personality are transformed and what parts are left untouched. Ideally there will be shifts such as emotional changes from less fear and anger to more love and compassion for example. There is probably greater perceptual sensitivity and empathy. But these are research questions that we need to look at because it may be that people can have these experiences and disidentify from the mind without necessarily transforming personality to a great degree. It's an interesting paradox but a really important research question.

[40]
MS: In one of your recent publications called 'Developmental and Evolutionary Synthesis in the Recent Writings of Ken Wilber', you have quoted Talmudic wisdom saying that 'we do not see things as they are, but as we are'. How would you relate this saying to the mainstream understanding of what science itself is?

RW: We are currently undergoing a major intellectual and cultural shift from what has been called "modernity" to post-modernity. One of the defining characteristics of that cultural and intellectual shift is the recognition that there are no completely objective facts or data but rather that all 'facts' are necessarily theory- and value-laden. It's becoming increasingly clear that the shift from modernity to post-modernity involves or includes an increasing appreciation of the extent to which the background of the perceiver determines what is perceived and how it is interpreted, that an individual's cultural, historical, gender, educational, psychodynamic, techno-economic background or horizon, all of these play a role in modulating perception, creating values and determining worldviews.

[41]
One of the implications of this is that we have had to change our understanding of the nature of science. Science was long held to be the exempla of objective knowledge, uncontaminated by individual or cultural or psychodynamic factors. Yet it is increasingly clear that science is not different from other intellectual enterprises, in that it too is influenced by all of these factors. This is not to say that science cannot give us extremely valuable information, but it is to say that it is not as wholly objective as we had once believed. One of the implications of this is that the worldview which science generates can vary. At one time there was considerable agreement among scientists that, for example, a materialist worldview necessarily followed from science. But there is a further, very important implication for science, and that is that not only does the background of the experiencer modify the perception, but the epistemology, the mode of knowing which is used, will to a significant extent determine one's worldview.

[42]
Now, science is oriented around a particular epistemological method, a method of observation, induction and testing of implications. So it combines the empirical observation with rational, logical deduction and induction. But from a transpersonal perspective which acknowledges not only the epistemological modes of empiricism and rationality, but also the epistemological mode of contemplation, it is clear that science by itself cannot hope to give us a comprehensive picture of the universe or of human nature. It can give us an enormous amount of valuable information, but by itself it will not give us the whole picture, and to the extent that it assumes that it alone is the only valid epistemological mode, it will do us grave disservice by not only overlooking realms of experience and phenomena, particularly transcendental phenomena, but by also making the tragic error of denying their existence and validity. And at this stage science has become scientism.

[43]
MS: Do You believe that currently there is something like a general step in human consciousness evolution happening, and if so, what would be its major factors considering a global perspective?

RW: There have traditionally been three major views about the direction and evolution of consciousness. One is that there is evolutionary progress, the other is that there has been a regression, and the third is a kind of a no- change-view. For the no-change-view we can think of people like Eliade and perhaps Jung who have more or less implied that the spiritual experiences of early shamanic and yogic practitioners were much the same as the experiences of later contemplatives. For the devolutionary view we have a small number of people but some noted scholars have at least flirted with the idea such as Huston Smith, that there has actually been a degradation of human consciousness over the last tens of thousands of years.

[44]
But I think most scholars and researchers believe that there has indeed been an evolution of human consciousness. Within the evolutionary school there have been several different viewpoints. One is that progress may continue or we could reach a cataclysm in which progress comes to a halt or even reverses, and at the other extreme are people such as Teilhard de Chardin and Peter Russel who believe that evolution can accelerate.

[45]
For myself, I find it very hard to predict the future, particularly at this time when there are so many powerful social, political, military and ecological forces at work. But I think we are at a time of great opportunity and of great risk. Clearly, one of the major determining factors of whether we make advances or some form of retreat or even collapse of consciousness, will be the extent to which we maintain the integrity of the planet and its ecological life system. And that will in large part determine the nature and sophistication of the techno- economic base for civilization. If we fail to meet the current global challenges of, for example, population explosion, ecological degradation, resource depletion or massive warfare, then I think it's quite possible that we could have a major collapse of large parts of civilization.

[46]
Our cultures and societies are so complex and interconnected and dependent on a steady supply of raw materials, resources and energy, that the disruption of these supplies could precipitate a dramatic degradation of the economic-industrial system and the capacity to sustain society and culture as we know it. So I think at the one extreme it's quite possible that we could do grave damage to our environment and our sources of societal support to the extent that we would be reduced to warring bands much as happened for example in Somalia. And I personally find Somalia a terrifying example of what humankind could be reduced to.

[47]
On the other hand, if we are adequate to the many challenges that we now face, then it is possible that we could maintain the integrity of the planet and our ecological support-system. We could set in place a techno-economic infrastructure based on advanced technology and computers which would free human creativity and energies much as in the way that the industrial age freed human energy and spurred intellectual and social and cultural evolution.

[48]
So perhaps the first factor which will determine the direction and nature and speed of the evolution of consciousness is the extent to which we are able to maintain and stabilize, and even optimize our ecological, technological, economic, political and social structures; because that is the foundation on which complex societies depend. If we do manage to do this, then it's possible that we might indeed accelerate individual and collective development. But even here there are many other factors at play - many social, economic, political, military factors which will set the limits to the extent to which human consciousness is able to develop, evolve and mature beyond its current levels.

[49]
I think the first challenge will simply be to bring the majority of the population up to rationality or formal- operational thinking. Much of our culture, both Western and other cultures, is still balanced between what Ken WIlber calls 'mythic-rational thinking' and the more mature rational stage. While a few people - a relatively very small number - have begun to develop into what he calls 'vision-logic' and even psychic and subtle stages.

[50]
It's not at all clear to me, and I don't think anyone can know, and so I remain an agnostic as to what will happen, but there seems to be nothing to do but to work as hard as we can, both individually and collectively, to attempt to further our social and global and ecological wellbeing, so that each of us is called to be an evolutionary catalyst at this time. What that will require of us is that we do our own inner contemplative work in order to foster our own maturation so that we can then also cultivate skillful means, become gnostic intermediaries, and help and heal and teach as effectively as we are able.

[51]
So the challenge for each of us then is to do our inner work as fully and intensely as we can and then offer, whatever we can learn, back to society. I think we are clearly in a race between consciousness and catastrophe, and which way we go no one knows, but again there seems to be nothing to do but work as hard as we can to help.

[52]
MS: Now, one of the reasons why the development of consciousness might not work as easy as it should, possibly lies in religious traditions or in our religious tradition. In the above mentioned publication you comment on a statement by Ken Wilber; Wilber says that Jesus has been ontologically separated from man because theological tradition has said that the realizations Jesus had are not a natural development of consciousness. Now if I as a psychologist and theologian were to say that I consider predominant theological views as having betrayed the original meaning of Jesus as a master and teacher of self-realization, how would You comment on such an allegation?

RW: If we look at the world's religious traditions we can see that there is a widespread tendency among people to deify spiritual teachers. If we think for example of the Budhha, there are Sutras in which he makes very clear time and time again that he is simply an ordinary human being who has realized potential which is latent within all of us. In one Sutra he is questioned by a group of people who ask him: 'Are you a god ?'; 'No!', he replies; 'Are you a Deva ?' (like an angel), they ask; 'No!', he replies; 'Then what are you?'; 'I am awake!', he replies.

[53]
So the Buddha himself was very clear that he was a human being, and that the capacities he had realized could be realized by the rest of us if we undertook the necessary contemplative training. However, when one moves into Buddha's cultures one finds that a significant number of people regard him as a divine figure or even a god. So even in the case of someone who argued strenuously and repeatedly against his uniqueness, one finds that people have tended to deify him.

[54]
In the Western Christian tradition there have also been diverse interpretations of the nature of Jesus. As you pointed out in your question, the traditional church-theological position holds that Jesus was both god and man, a unique entity, forever set apart and different from the rest of us, even though he himself said: 'Do not your own scriptures say that you are all children of god ?'. However, this is clearly not the only interpretation of the nature of Jesus.

[55]
In the gnostic gospels or the so called Nag-Hammadi-Library which was discovered in the Egyptian desert in 1947, and which includes a large number of formerly lost gnostic texts, we find a very different picture of Jesus. We find a Jesus who speaks not of sin and guilt, but rather of illusion and awakening. We find a Jesus who says that we can become as he is, and that 'If you drink from my mouth, you can become as I '.

[56]
From a contemporary transpersonal, psychological or anthropological perspective it is increasingly clear that there are transpersonal developmental stages, and experiences of enlightenment or realization or salvation, and from this perspective one can interpret Jesus' realization as not unique to him alone but rather a realization which has also been enjoyed by a number of other very great sages and spiritual teachers across centuries and cultures.

[57]
From this perspective then the conventional mainstream view of Jesus as unique and having a realization forever unavailable to the rest of us, could be seen as constituting a barrier to our understanding and realization of our true nature and of our own awakening. This standard theological position has been particularly problematic in Christianity in the West because the church was so institutionalized and enjoyed so much secular power that it was able to enforce its own mythic level-literal interpretation of Jesus on society, and severely punish or even kill people who offered alternative explanations.

[58]
Moreover, it even executed people who claimed to have significant transcendental realization themselves, so that genuine mystics have always been somewhat of a challenge to conventional christian theology, but also to conventional Jewish and Islamic theology as well. And a number of apparently realized people such as the Sufi Al-Hallaj or some of the Hassidic masters have been imprisoned or even killed.

[59]
Perhaps the optimal situation would be one in which a variety of interpretations, and levels of interpretations were available to people, so that people could choose and work with the interpretation which was most beneficial to them. Such a type of situation can be found in, for example, some of the Indian traditions where there is a wide range of types and levels of interpretation. At one extreme there are religious myths which are taken literally by a significant part of the population, and from which they derive psychological and spiritual nurturance.

[60]
On the other hand there are also very sophisticated transpersonal philosophies such as Advaita-Vedanta or Mahayana-Buddhism which offer a far more austere, yet probably also far more sophisticated interpretation of the religious tradition. And ideally these philosophies are coupled with authentic contemplative practices which allow their practitioners to realize for themselves the enlightenment and states of consciousness first discovered by the founders of the religious traditions.

[61]
The challenge for each of us then is to find and commit ourselves to those practices which will facilitate our development beyond our current level of adaptation, so that we can ourselves move in the direction of deeper understanding, more mature interpretations of the lives of Jesus and other great sages, and work to taste for ourselves the realizations that they enjoyed. But probably the crucial thing that is necessary here is to recognize that there are many types and levels of interpretation of the lives of great realizers including Jesus, and that the official institutional dogma or theology is only one of many possible interpretations.

[62]
MS: Now, much of what you just said partly answers the next question, which is also going to be the second last one, but maybe there is more to be added. The question is: If we were to say that mainstream Western religious thought is onesided because it lacks an ontological conceptualization of god, and rather claims something like a projected and personal external entity, then we could agree with Freud's criticism of religion. What would have to change to gain a more balanced perspective between an ontological concept of god and one that is a personal concept?

RW: The world views we hold reflect our level of development, and as we mature so do our world views. We can see this both in the development of individuals as children grow through their childhood and adolescence and into adulthood; and we can also see it across history. Our understanding of god is a part of our world view, so that our understanding of god is a reflection of our own maturity.

[63]
What this means of course is that a more mature understanding of the divine requires that we mature. For this, what is required is an authentic spiritual tradition, and a supportive spiritual community or sangha. There is an old saying that god created man, and then man returned the favor. Perhaps we can do a better favor by maturing as best we can.

[64]
MS: In the beginning we had spoken about the reasons for the emerging of a new science called Transpersonal Psychology. If now towards the end we would agree upon the necessity of adding experiential approaches to the study of humanistic sciences, what would be your proposal for an educational format if we go into fields like comparative religion, philosophy and theology?

RW: I think the most important requirement is that intellectual knowledge and contemplative understanding need to be joined. In the West it's long been considered that all one needs in order to become a competent philosopher or theologian is to have a certain degree of intelligence and acquire the relevant intellectual facts. There is no requirement that the philosopher or theologian have direct spiritual experience. Yet this contrasts dramatically with the ideas and definitions of philosophers in other cultures.

[65]
For example in India a philosopher is called 'paramatha vid', which is translated as 'one who has seen the highest truth'. So in India a true philosopher is assumed to necessarily have had direct transpersonal experiences, because it is understood that without adequate experience the concepts and philosophies will be, as Immanuel Kant said, empty. What these Indian philosopher-sages have created are transpersonal philosophies which are only truly understandable to the degree that the person attempting to understand them has the requisite of transpersonal experience, so that the Indian philosopher or theologian is required not only to have an intellectual knowledge but an experiential understanding, and to live and demonstrate that understanding through an ethical, mature lifestyle.

[66]
How then are we to bring about this joining of intellectual knowledge and transpersonal experience among Western philosophers and theologians? I think one of the first challenges is to construct or to create compelling logical arguments for the necessity of such experiences, and I think these arguments can be made in several ways. The approach I found most useful to me, and which I've tried to write about, is based on Charles Tart's description of state-specific learning, state-specific understanding and state-specific communication. The key idea is that we can only understand the experiences and philosophies that emerge from transpersonal states of consciousness to the extent that we ourselves have experienced these states.

[67]
I think another approach is to continue research on the effects of contemplative practices such as meditation and Yoga. There are now several hundred studies on the effects of meditation, and it clearly produces beneficial effects, and some of these effects are consistent with ancient claims for it.

[68]
Then also we can construct transpersonal theories which point to the importance of transpersonal practices and experiences in diverse professions but particularly for philosophers and theologians who want to truly understand the higher grades of significance, the deepest truths, the greatest wisdom embedded in the great religious philosophies and psychologies.

MS: Doctor Walsh, thank you very much for this conversation.

RW: Thank you, it's been fun.

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CONCLUSIONS
by Mark Seelig

Transpersonal Psychology is one of the most promising fields of modern consciousness research. 30 initial years of this young science have brought forth interdisciplinary results which not only are a challenge to the humanities in general, but also present a specific and paradigm-changing amplification to particular fields such as psychopathology, consciousness studies, indigenous science, anthropology and the like. Furthermore, Transpersonal Psychology follows through with the insight that a twofold approach is indispensable if any science attempts to make an alleviating contribution to a condition generally coined as 'global crisis': the twofold approach is the combination of experiential and theoretical work, or, in other words: the combining of first-person and third-person approaches to science. This approach must be integrated into academic programs and facilities of higher education. It will eventually serve to overcome predominant scientism and intellectualism, and will complement contemporary epistemology with a perspective that honors cross-cultural and trans-historical insights into consciousness.
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AFTERWORD:
Naturally, there are no exact references given in the text of the interview. However, authors, quotes and publications are being addressed. I have therefore added a list of references below, containing a selection of publications on transpersonal psychology and related areas by several authors mentioned in the interview. In case of interest in additional material, and/or further information about transpersonal psychology and related fields, readers are welcome to contact me (preferably via e-mail).

Mark Seelig, Ph.D.
- Transpersonal Psychotherapy -
2050 32nd Ave. Feldbergring 15
San Francisco, CA 94116 37249 Neu-Eichenberg
Ph.: (415) 273-1513 Germany
Fax: (415) 681-6485 Ph. + Fax: ++49-5504-1956
web: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/amaresh
e-mail: amaresh@compuserve.com

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REFERENCES:

Campbell, J. 1959-1968. The masks of god. Vols.1-4. New York: Viking.
___________. 1968. The hero with a thousand faces. New York: World.
Harman, W. 1988. Global mind change. New York: Warner.
Smith, H. 1976. Forgotten truth. New York: Harper.
________. 1991. The world's religions. San Francisco: Harper.
Tart, C.T. 1975. States of consciousness. New York: Dutton.
_________. 1986. Waking up. Boston: Shambala.
_________. 1989. Open mind, discriminating mind. San Francisco: Harper.
_________, ed. 1992. Transpersonal psychologies. New York: Harper Collins.
Walsh, R. 1984. Staying alive: The psychology of human survival. Boston: Shambhala.
________. 1990. The spirit of shamanism. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
________. 1995a. The spirit of evolution: A review of Ken Wilber's 'Sex, Ecology, Spirituality'.
Noetics Sciences Review, Summer 1995.
________. 1995b. Phenomenological mapping: A method for describing and comparing states of
consciousness. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 27(1): 25-56.
Walsh, R., and F. Vaughan, eds.1993. Paths Beyond Ego. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Watts, A. 1968. Myth and Ritual in Christianity. Boston: Beacon.
________. 1972. The supreme identity. New York: Vintage.
________. 1975. Tao: The watercourse way. New York: Pantheon.
Wilber, K. 1995. An informal overview of transpersonal studies.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 27(2): 107-130.
_________. 1996. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality - The Spirit of Evolution. Boston: Shambhala.
_________. 1997. The Eye of Spirit - An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad.
Boston: Shambhala.