We can remain aware of the distinction between what is subjective and what is objective, between subject and object, epistemology and ontology, while assuring that the whole is not broken into two pieces. The boundaries between what is objective and subjective are not clearly demarcated. We are always a part of any reality that we perceive. The physical world rises up before our eyes, while being a part of the world they perceive. “Subjective continuity never fails in that it is always a part of the world that it perceives, so that you and the world create each other, in those terms” (Butts, 1997a, p. 33). We are earth come alive, to view itself through conscious eyes, alive with a light from which the very fires of life are lit.
Not only can what is subjective become objective (e.g., psychodynamic accounts of projection, “witness” accounts in mindfulness meditation practices, accounts of psychosynthesis dis-identification with the body), but also what is objective can become subjective (e.g., psychodynamic accounts of identification, cosmic consciousness) (Ferrer, 2002, p. 30).
There are no closed systems. Yes, there is an independent reality but not pre-given. It is plastic, creative, and participatory.
If reality is not merely discovered but enacted through co-creative participation, and if what we bring to our inquiries affects in important ways the disclosure of reality, then the fundamental interrelationship and even identity, between phenomenology and ontology…becomes a natural necessity. (Ferrer, 2002, p. 177)
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Transpersonal psychologist Richard Tarnas (1991) states:
All human knowledge of the world is in some sense determined by subjective principles [meditating factors]; but instead of considering these principles as belonging ultimately to the separate human subject, and therefore not grounded in the world independently of human cognition, this participatory conception held that these subjective principles are in fact an expression of the world’s own being, and that the human mind is ultimately the organ of the world’s own process of self-revelation. (pp. 433-434)
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The need for new epistemological nets. The scientific materialism of modern psychological science as it stands today constitutes a metaphysical net, so to speak, that captures metaphysical fish of only a certain size. This notion is illustrated in the following parable attributed to physicist Sir Arthur Eddington.
In a seaside village, a fisherman with a rather scientific bent proposed as a law of the sea that all fish are longer than one inch. But he failed to realize that the nets used in the village were all of a one-inch mesh. Are we filtering physical reality? Can we catch consciousness with the nets we are using? (quoted in N. Friedman, 1994, p. 27)
“Science must change, as it discovers its net of evidence is equipped only to catch certain kinds of fish, and that it is constructed of webs of assumptions that can only hold certain varieties of reality, while others escape its net entirely” (Roberts, 1981a, p. 137). Transpersonal psychology encourages us to take a more generous view of the nature of reality as a way of making sense of the broadest spectrum of human experience and behavior.
Section Summary
1. The question of whether transpersonal psychology is an empirical science is an important one. The original intent of its founders was that the transpersonal vision be stated in empirical and scientific terms. The answer depends in large part on how “science,” “empirical,” and “scientific method.”
2. Because transpersonal psychology seeks “knowledge through causes” (scientia), it is a science. Because it includes “direct experience” (empiricus), it is empirical. Because it utilizes problem identification; literature reviews; hypothesis construction; operational definitions;
research designs; methodologies for observation,
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control, manipulation, and measurement of variables; data analysis; public communication and evaluation of results, transpersonal psychology applies the scientific method.
3. Transpersonal psychology does not limit research to a particular method. Conventional quantitative and qualitative research methods usually applied to the study of everyday human experience and behavior are equally applicable to the study of exceptional human experience and creative transformative capacities.
4. Transpersonal studies introduce new methods of human inquiry that are appropriate to the idiographic, personal, creative, and expansive nature of transpersonal experiences and behaviors (e.g., Being-cognition, vision logic, dream and imagery work, meditation, creative expression, altered states of consciousness, empathy, storytelling, intuition, integral inquiry).
5. Conventional quantitative and qualitative research methods have been used to study many different transpersonal phenomena including: spontaneous remissions using historical/archival approaches; transpersonal structures of consciousness using deep structural analysis; miraculous cures at Lourdes, birthmarks suggestive of reincarnation, paranormal phenomena of Sai Baba, and continuous consciousness in advanced meditators using case study approaches; spiritual and transpersonal constructs using interviews, questionnaires, and survey measures; meditation and imagery health-effects using behavioral and physiological assessments.; direct mental interactions with living systems using true experimental designs; precognitive and psychokinetic functioning using meta-analysis.
6. Non-experimental evidence remains an extremely valuable source of confirmation concerning the nature, limits, and reality of transpersonal phenomena. The main obstacle to the study of spiritual experiences is not the scientific method, but traditional psychology’s commitment to scientism and a narrow, limiting materialistic and mechanistic philosophy of nature.
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