Figure 1-2. Varieties of Transpersonal Phenomena
I. The Psychology of Consciousness (Altered States of Consciousness, Subliminal Consciousness)
Meditation, attention training
Dreams (lucid dreaming), active imagination, symbols of transformation, Jungian/Archetypal phenomena, collective unconscious, ancestral and phylogenetic experiences
Inner guides, inner voice phenomena, ego states and egolessness
Biofeedback training and the voluntary control of internal states
Sensory isolation and overload, sleep deprivation
Psychedelic experiences, state-dependent learning, synthesia
Hypnosis and related trance states, automatic writing and speaking
II. The Psychology of Religious Experience (Impulses Toward Higher States of Being / The Spiritual Quest)
Peak experiences, unity consciousness, cosmic consciousness, enlightenment, liberation, higher jhanas, satori or samadhi, mystical experience, Being cognition
Self-transcendence, state of grace
Cross-cultural comparisons of religious experiences, spiritual development, psychological concepts (Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, African-American, Western, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, creation spirituality, and contemplative practices and traditions)
Shamanic experiences and practices, drumming, extraordinary capacities of religious adepts
Glossolalia
III. The Psychology of Psychic Phenomena (Parapsychology and Psychic Research)
Mediumship (channeling, possession, poltergeists, hauntings)
Transformations of space and time (out-of-body experience, materializations, apports, bilocation, teleportation, levitation, invisibility)
Endothermic and extothermic reactions (firewalking, psychic heat, spontaneous human combustion)
Reincarnation-type memories, drama, relationships, transpersonal memory
Near-death experience, death and dying
Psi functioning (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, retrocognition, psychokinesis, dowsing, siddhis)
IV. The Psychology of Spiritual Development (Exceptional Human Abilities & Transformative Capacities)
Models of exceptional health and well-being, self-actualization and beyond
Transpersonal development (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age)
Spiritual direction, education for transcendence, role of myth and ritual, storytelling, fairy tales.
Creativity and “flow,” excellence, genius, precocity, accelerated learning
Altruism, empathy, service, intuition, loving-kindness, compassion, ahimsa, sacred unions, Eros
Transpersonal psychotherapies (yoga, ritual, dreamwork, breathing, psychosynthesis, primal therapy, rebirthing, holotropic breathwork, body work, meditation)
Psychospiritual crises, addictions, psychopathologies with mystical features
V. Mind-Body Healing
Psychic diagnosis, distant healing, spiritual healing, laying on of hands (etheric body, prana, auras)
Effects of attitudes and imagery in self-healing (placebo effects)
Psychosomatic changes in abnormal functioning (hysterical stigmata, multiple personality)
Spontaneous remissions, miraculous cures, charisms of Catholic saints and mystics
Alternative therapies, somatic disciplines, martial arts, art and music and dance therapy
Kundalini, charkas, subtle energy systems, mind-body communication, spirituality of the body
VI. Emerging Paradigms in Science and Society Transpersonal disciplines, new metaphysical foundations of science, chaos theory, modern physics Brain, mind, and consciousness interrelationship, role of consciousness in creation of physical reality Gaia hypothesis, morphogenic fields, deep ecology, spirit of evolution, transpersonal nature of animals
Global peace, global mind change, Green politics, reconciliation of religion and science
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Figure 1-3. Exceptional Human Experiences
(Palmer & Braud, 2002, pp. 60-61)
Listing of approximately 100 exceptional human experiences (EHE), categorized according to five major classes
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MYSTICAL/UNITIVE EXPERIENCES
Anesthetic-induced experience
Conversion
Gaia or Earth experience
Glossolalia (speaking in tongues)
Human/animal communication
Kundalini
Mystical experience
Numinous dream
Peak experience
Revelation
Species consciousness
Stigmata
Transcendental odors (odor of sanctity)
Transcendental music (of the spheres; celestial music)
Transformative experience
Unitive experience
Wilderness experience (desert, forest)
ENCOUNTER-TYPE EXPERIENCES
Ancestors encounter
Angel encounter
Apparition (of the living)
Apparition (of the dead)
Demonic encounter
Divine encounter
Folk entity encounter
ET encounter
Ghost encounter
Guardian angel encounter
Helper encounter
Haunt encounter
Imaginary playmate encounter
Incubus/succubus encounter
Interspecies encounter
Mediumistic materialization encounter
Multiple personality encounter
Night terrors encounter
Poltergeist encounter
Possession encounter
Sense of presence encounter
UFO encounter
UFO abduction encounter
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PSYCHIC/PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE
Apports
Automatism (e.g., automatic writing)
Bilocation
Clairaudience
Clairsentience
Clairvoyance
Elusivity/Invisibility
Extrasensory perception (ESP)
Intuition
Levitation (of object)
Levitation (of person, of self)
Mediumship/channeling
Out-of-body experience
Paranormal diagnosis
Paranormal touch
Precognition
Prenatal experience
Psychic imprint
Psychokinesis (PK)
Psychometry (object reading)
Retrocognition
Scrying (crystal gazing)
Sense of presence
Shared EHE
Synchronicity
Telepathy
Unorthodox healing (laying on of hands; faith healing; spirit healing; divine healing; psychic surgery)
Xenoglossy (speaking an actual foreign language you don’t know)
UNUSUAL DEATH-RELATED EXPERIENCES
Apparition (at moment of death)
Apparition (after death)
Deathbed experience
Death-related PK (at moment of death
Death-related PK (after death)
Incorruptibility
Life between life (interim experience)
Life review
Mediumistic communications
Near-death-experience
Past-life recall
Phantom phone calls (at time of or after death)
Post-death experience
Sense of immortality
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Figure 1-3. Exceptional Human Experiences (continued)
(Palmer & Braud, 2002, pp. 60-61)
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EXCEPTIONAL NORMAL EXPERIENCES
Aesthetic experience
Aha experience
Altered spatial perception
Altered time perception
Being at the right place at the right time to receive something wonderful and needed
Coma experience
Creativity
Déjà vu
Mutual déjà vu
Dream
Effortlessness
Empathy
Encountering or receiving something you need just when you need it
Exceptional performance
Experience of the new
Flow experience
Hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences
Hypnoidal state
Immunity/invulnerability
Inner movement
Inspiration
Limerance (falling in love)
Literary experience
Lucid dream
Microscopic vision
Nostalgia
Orgasm
Orientation
Peak performance
Performing/witnessing noble acts
Special dreams
Synesthesia
Tears of “wonder joy”
Thrills/goose-flesh/tingling
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PARAPSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALITY
Why Psi Phenomena is a Transpersonal Concern
The world beyond the five senses. Transpersonal psychology studies those experiences and behaviors in which personality functioning extends beyond (or “trans”) ordinary ego-directed consciousness to bring into awareness aspects of reality that exist beyond yet within the world of the five senses. As such parapsychological phenomena, collectively referred to as psi, are examples of transpersonal experiences and behaviors that reveal the existence of what may be called “inner senses” which allow for perception without sensation and permit actions at a distance. Near death experiences is only one example of a psi phenomenon “that suggests that humans can ‘see’ and ‘hear’ things happening around them even when there is no active brain to process sensory information (impossible under the materialist philosophical model of reality” (Schmicker, 2002, p. 196).
Psi phenomena. Transpersonal psychology is interested in understanding and helping to facilitate experiences, behaviors, and bodily functioning that are trans – beyond our ordinary egotistical and bodily self. Parapsychology investigates those characteristics of mind and body in which mind seems to operate and at least partially exist independently of the body and has access to nonphysical sources of information beyond the five senses Parapsychological phenomena or psi can be classified into three categories (Griffin, 1997, p. 11; Radin, 1997, pp. 14-15).
ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition)
PK (psychokinesis, materialization, dematerialization, psychic photography, psychic healing)
Psi-related phenomena suggestive of survival of bodily death (out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, reincarnation, channeling, apparitions, poltergeists, and hauntings).
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Psi and the reality of our spiritual nature. According to transpersonal psychologist Charles T. Tart (1997) in his book, Body, Mind, Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality,
[The] strong scientific evidence in parapsychology… gives general support to some kind of reality to a spiritual world and a spiritual life… The primary implication is that, using the best kind of scientific methodology, the human mind has occasional abilities to transcend space and time that are totally inexplicable in terms of the material world. (Tart, 1997, pp. 25, 46)
Parapsychology and spirituality. Psychologist and parapsychologist William Braud, after reviewing his extensive laboratory research of psi influences on mental and physical experience writes:
Parapsychological findings can be useful to those on spiritual paths as they can provide a certain degree of confidence and trust that at least some of the processes and concepts encountered are ‘real’ in a more traditional sense and are not delusions, projections, or misinterpretations. They can also serve to remind us that we are not alone in having exceptional experiences; such experiences are normal, natural, and remarkably widespread. (Braud, 1997, p. 150)
The parapsychology of religion. Transpersonal psychology actively investigates religious experiences, especially mystical experiences and higher states of consciousness, and those methods or set of practices that takes us beyond the normal states of awareness to achieve a special relationship those inner forces that give rise to psychological and physical life. Religion and parapsychology, in certain terms, shares these same goals. According to parapsychologist K. Ramakrishna Rao (1997):
Parapsychological phenomena provide essential grounds for believing in and validating religious experience and in so doing we find in parapsychology the necessary interface between science and religion. (Rao, 1997, p. 70)
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