Transpersonal psychology is theologically neutral. For Christians “God” is the natural appellation for the supreme reality or Dynamic Ground, whereas for others it may be seen simply as a source of healing. The terms “soul” and “spirit” and “God” as the terms are used in transpersonal psychology refer to strictly human psychic realities and have no necessary theistic connotations or inherent reference to “religious” faith or practice. Transpersonal psychology does not make the transpersonal self into God or God into the transpersonal self. It seeks psychological truths, not theological ones. Transpersonal psychology is theologically neutral and neither builds up nor tears down any particular formal religion or practice. Transpersonal psychology tries to let each spiritual psychology “speak for itself” without explaining it away in conventional psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, or neurological terms alone (see, for example, Tart, 1992a). The term “spiritual” is used in its widest sense to include:
Not only specifically religious experiences, but all states of consciousness, and all those functions and activities which have to do with values above the norm: ethical, aesthetic, heroic, humanitarian and altruistic values. (Assagioli, 1991, p. 16)
A participatory vision of spirituality. If we regard religions as spiritual psychologies, then the images, concepts, and symbols of what William James (1936) called “the higher part of the universe” (p. 507) are to be regarded as constructs and interpretations of experience of the sacred, and cannot be understood to be simply objective representations of an already out there now real “God” totally separate and isolated from Its/His/Her creations.
The “critical realist principle.” When approaching religions as “spiritual psychologies,” transpersonal psychologists keep in mind what philosopher-theologian John Hick (1999) calls the “critical realist principle.”
The critical realism principle – that there are realities external to us, but that we are never aware of them as they are in themselves, but always as they appear to us with our particular cognitive machinery and conceptual resources – is…a vital clue to understanding what is happening in the different forms of religious experience. (Hick, 1999, p. 41)
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Critical realism and external realities. Critical realism acknowledges the existence of external realities but only as they appear to us within the context of the conditioned human perceptual-conceptual system of the experiencer (or in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas “Cognita sunt in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis” – “Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower” Summa Theologiae, II/III, 1, 2; p. 1057).
Non-realism, naïve realism, and critical realism compared. Using as an example Julian of Norwich’s visions of Christ, philosopher-theologian John Hick (1999) in his book The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm clarifies the difference between a non-realist, naïve realist, and critical realist interpretation of the visions.
If we take as an example…Julian of Norwich’s visions of Christ and her hearing him speak of the limitless divine love, the non-realist interpretation is that the entire experience was a self-induced hallucination – not in any sense a revelation, not an expression of the ‘impact’ of the Transcendent upon her. The naïve realist interpretation -- which was probably her own understanding of her experiences – is that the living Christ was personally present to her, producing the visions that she saw, and uttering in Middle English the words that she heard. But the critical realist interpretation, which I believe to be correct, is that she has become so open to the transcendent, within her and beyond her, that it flooded into her consciousness in the particular form provided by her Christian faith. …Her experience was thus a genuine contact with the Transcendent, but clothed in her case in a Christian rather than a Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic or other form. In these and many other ways, the impact of the transcendent reality upon us receives different “faces” and voices as it is processed by our different religious mentalities. Religious experiences, then, occurs in many different forms, and the critical realist interpretation enables us to see how they may nevertheless be different authentic responses to the Real. (p. 42)
Conventional psychology would likely take a non-realist approach to Julian’s visions. Transpersonal psychology would favor the critical realist interpretation when approaching religions as spiritual psychologies.
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God concepts as transmitters for impulses of development. Transpersonal psychology assumes that our species’ constructed images of God not only reflect the state of our consciousness as it “is” but also point toward the its desired future state, operating as a spiritual blueprint just like an architect’s plan, only at a different level. The various ideas of God that our species create are thought to be intuitive projections intended to give conscious direction to the species and to act as stimulators of development and evolution (Assagioli, 1991; Roberts, 1977a, 1979b, 1981b). There is an important dynamism and vitality to our God concepts that goes beyond being simple intellectual containers for “religious sentiments” (Allport’s phrase). They act as transpersonal symbols of intuitive insight and transmitters for impulses toward “higher” stages of development that arise from the deeper dimensions of our species’ nature (Jung, 1964). Seemingly outside of the self, our God images, symbols, and concepts are meant to lead the species into its greatest areas of fulfillment.
Religions have played a role in species evolution. Transpersonal psychologists who examine world religions as spiritual psychologies recognize that all wisdom traditions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism – have played an important role in the collective psychological evolution of our species (contributing to and drawing from what Jung termed the “collective unconscious”). Christianity, in particular, set forth the initial precepts upon which Western Civilization was built. From the perspective of transpersonal psychology, the historical progression of religion, philosophy, and science gives us a perfect picture of the development of human consciousness.
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Changing concepts of God as a reflection of the evolution of human consciousness. Transpersonal writer and mystic Jane Roberts (1977a, 1979b) provides a provocative transpersonal account of how concepts of God have provided psychic blueprints for the evolution of human consciousness generally, and the ego in particular. On this view, the emergent ego, needing to feel its dominance and control, imagined a dominant, powerful, male God apart from nature. Whenever a tribe, group, or nation decided to embark upon a war, it always used the concept of its god to lead it on. The god concept, then, was an aid, and an important one to humanity’s emerging ego. God images changed as consciousness did. Changing concepts of God – from the Old Testament concept of Jehovah the Righteous to the New Testament concept of God the loving Father – have gone hand-in-hand with the development of our consciousness as a species. Study of the psychology of God as it appears in our histories, myths, and Scripture can help us discover much about our own psychology (perhaps more than we are ready to know). Religions in general, and Christianity in particular, have followed the development of human consciousness. Evolutionarily speaking, our constructions of God, sometimes in distorted form, reflect those greater inner realities of our being.
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