Thich Nhat Hanh (1975), poet, Zen master, chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation during the Vietnam war, who was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize, has written many books on Eastern meditation providing Westerners a method of learning the skills of mindfulness.
Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert and doctoral student under Timothy Leary) shaped the awakening consciousness of a generation with his books Be Here Now (Dass, 1971) and The Only Dance There Is (Dass, 1974).
These are only a few of the many Asian-influenced spiritual teachers who have gained a following in American folk culture, and whose work had a visible influence on the theorizing of modern transpersonal theorists (e.g, Ken Wilber, Roger Walsh, Jack Kornfield).
The rise of a spiritualized version of the unconscious. This unprecedented cross-cultural exchange of ideas between East and West, coupled with the Americanization of Jungian and Freudian ideas about the psychodynamic nature of the human psyche, gave rise to transpersonal psychology and a spiritualized version of the unconscious that has proved productive for understanding altered states of consciousness, transcendent experience, and non-Western views of reality and human personality functioning, as well as providing some direction for the modern transpersonal psychologies to come.
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The Counterculture Movement (1960-1980)
The cultural revolution and transpersonal psychology. The social and political upheavals of the 1960’s drew psychology into the social movement that was popularly referred to as the “Counterculture” which changed American society, culture, and academic psychology forever. According to historian of psychology Eugene Taylor (1999), the counterculture movement of the 1960’s launched the cultural revolution in consciousness, transformed Humanistic psychology, and was a benchmark in the larger alternative-reality tradition in the West that was to become called Transpersonal Psychology and related movements (e.g., the New Age movement, new paradigms of science movement in the physics of consciousness, holistic health and energy medicine, feminist psychology, animal rights movement, ecology movement).
Transpersonal psychology as a bridge connecting science and religion. The spiritual awakening that occurred in modern popular consciousness that began in the 1960’s and developed into “New Religions” (Needleman & Baker, 1981), the “Aquarian Conspiracy” (Ferguson, 1980), and “New Age” movement (Lewis & Melton, 1992) of the 1980s represented a “turning point” in science, society and culture (Capra, 1982) that continues to influence American society today. Transpersonal psychology, as an outgrowth of that era, continues to refine the interface between science and religion (Wilber, 1998) and integrating innovative and cross-cultural forms of spirituality and psychotherapy into its theory and practice (Walsh, 1999).
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The 1940s and 1950s laid the groundwork for the 1960s. In the late 1940s the world had just been released from the repressive, dictatorial, authoritarian fascism of Hitler and in the early 1950s entered the uncertain future of the atomic bomb and the advent of new technologies that the world had never seen before. Television replaced radio and the computer revolution was born. As Marshall McLuhan (1964) predicted in his influential book, Understanding Media, the concept of a “global village” was to increasingly become a reality where physical borders and boundaries became permeable, despite the building of Walls.
Cultural revolution. A spirit of optimism and a bright and hopeful future characterized the American and European Zeitgeist in those countries where democracy reigned free. The population exploded, as did technological and medical inventions and advances. Americans became more aware of non-Western Eastern and Asian philosophies, esoteric religion, and pre-modern, indigenous cultural traditions. Conventional social, religious, cultural traditions were challenged as change and novelty became the order of the day. Critiques of the dominant positivist, technocratic models of science and society proliferated as books such as Herbert Marcuse’s (1964) One-Dimensional Man and Herman Kahn’s (1962) Thinking About the Unthinkable became assigned reading on many college campuses.
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Opportunity to turn attention toward inner realities of mind. During this time of relative economic prosperity, people in the 1960’s and early 1970’s had the luxury of turning attention inward toward subjective realities of mind. Drug experimentation with marijuana, peyote, LSD, and mescaline was widespread in American society, opening up doors of consciousness to reveal alternate realities that were perceived to be as valid, significant, legitimate, and real as the outer realities of everyday life. Large portions of the population were reading such books as Aldous Huxley’s (1963) Doors of Perception, Alan Watts’s (1962) Joyous Cosmology, Carlos Castaneda’s (1968) The Teachings of Don Juan, Joseph Chilton Pearce’s (1971) Crack in the Cosmic Egg, and C. T. Tart’s (1969) Altered States of Consciousness. According to historiographer Eugene Taylor (1999),
In the 1960’s, existentialism and psychoanalysis gave way to humanistic psychology, Jungian thought, and Asian ideas about consciousness. A large segment of an entire generation began to experiment with mind-altering drugs, to read Alan Watts, Abraham Maslow, and Timothy Leary, and to join the counterculture. (Taylor, 1999, p. 280)
Non-drug alterations of consciousness explored. The creative impulse of the counterculture generation eventually led to subsequent interest in non-drug means of entering non-ordinary states of consciousness, and wide-spread popularity of books such as De Ropp’s (1968)The Master Game: Beyond the Drug Experience, Masters & Huston’s (1972) book Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space, Andersen & Savary’s (1973) book Passages: A Guide for Pilgrims of the Mind, and Edward Rosenfeld’s (1973) The Book of Highs: 250 Methods for Altering Your Consciousness Without Drugs.
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A time of great social, cultural, religious and political change in America. The 1960’s and 1970’s was a time of great social, cultural, religious, and political change in the American inner landscape that brought great tragedy as well as great hope. On the one hand, our scientific and technological advancements landed us on the moon in 1969, improved medicines, and brought knowledge of the genetic structure.
The good, the bad, and the ugly. On the other hand, under the umbrella of possible nuclear conflict and the Cold War, people were “thinking about the unthinkable:” the likelihood of thermonuclear war. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy and the war in Vietnam all within a single decade showed how violent a people that we as Americans could be. Eldridge Cleaver in his popular book Soul on Ice declared: “Violence is as American as apple pie.” Civil disobedience inspired by such individuals as the Berrigan brothers and others who followed in the footsteps of Gandhi were met by uncompromising punishment by government authorities. The mayor of Chicago mercilessly crushed demonstrators during the national Democratic Convention; student protesters at Kent State were shot and killed by members of the state National Guard. Student organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were being established on college campuses across the country. Marches on Washington in protest against the Vietnam War were a common occurrence. Sons and daughters were rebelling against the wishes and commands of their parents. To many people of the World War II generation, it seemed that American society was coming apart at the seams. Discipline and authority, law and order seemed to be breaking down everywhere they looked. All these events too were a part of the Zeitgeist out of which the transpersonal movement was born. Robert Pirsig’s 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance became the modern tale of America’s search for its soul.
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“The times, they were a’changin.” Revolution was the watchword of the times. It was a time that gave birth to rock n’ roll music and its subculture as the “British Invasion” in the guise of The Beatles changed the way youth wore their hair and the clothes they wore. It was a time of the sexual revolution, as “freelove,” swinging, and alternative life styles came into prominence. The Civil Rights movement, the Anti-War movement, and Social Justice movement were in full swing. Caesar Chavez and others protested the social injustices of the migrant farm worker as scores of young people picketed outside of supermarkets to boycott the sale of non-union lettuce and grapes. The ecology movement was born with the publication of Rachel Carson’s (1962) book Silent Spring and the animal rights movement 13 years later with the publication of Peter Singer’s (1975) book Animal Liberation. To quote Bob Dylan, poet, songwriter and a voice of the 1960’s generation, “The times, they were a’changin’.” The change in American society and culture was so deep and so widespread that some individuals believed that a “conspiracy” must be involved. Indeed, one of the best summary chronicles of that time period can be found in Marilyn Ferguson’s (1980), The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980’s.
Changes in American higher culture. The institutions of American higher culture (e.g., education, business organizations, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, religion) were also in a state of change and transition.
In higher education, Paul Goodman’s (1962) assessment of colleges and universities in the United States in his book Compulsory Mis-Education and The Community of Scholars and Ivan Illich’s (1970) call for Deschooling Society presented a challenging critique of the structure of American education.
Gregory Bateson’s (1972) book Steps to an Ecology of Mind promoted systems theory and ecology and introduced a new way of thinking about the nature of order and organization in living systems.
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