The First “Great Awakening.” The “alternative realities tradition” and American visionary tradition from which modern transpersonal psychology eventually emerged can trace its roots to the Puritans and early visionary communities (the religious revivals of the Quakers and the Shakers) that initiated what Taylor appropriately calls the “American Visionary Tradition” and the “First Great Awakening” that shaped American culture from 1720-1750.
The essence of the First Great Awakening was that it elevated emotional experience and mystical revelation to the level of public consciousness, the liberalization of religious expression and the permission to dissent, which contributed significantly to the emergence of the ideals that led to the American Revolution. (Taylor, 1999, p. 18)
Swedenborgism and the New England transcendentalist movement. The American visionary tradition eventually gave rise to Swedenborgianism and the transcendentalist inituitve psychology of character formation given voice in New England Transcendentalism (Frothingham, 1959). Especially important to the growth of the American visionary tradition during this time were the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, and environmentalist John Muir in the early nineteenth century, that re-affirmed the spiritual nature of the mind and the idea that God speaks to humanity through nature (Taylor, 1999, Chapter 4).
The Second “Great Awakening.” A second “Great Awakening” was occurred during the mid-nineteenth century as a new generation of utopian communities appeared in American (Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists). With the rise of these Utopian communities a link was formed between the American visionary tradition and the recognition of the importance of community, service, and social justice in evolving a rich inward spiritual life in contemporary America.
|
Spiritualism, Theosophy, “New Thought,” and Christian Science movements.” The roots of transpersonal psychology in the history of the American visionary tradition also can be traced to the spiritualism movements at the turn of the century and the birth of psychic research. Spiritualism, theosophy, “New Thought,” and Christian Science movements in the mid-to-late nineteenth century gave rise to an entire era of mental healing, and organized therapeutic and religious movements that remain an integral part of American folk culture and are topics of study for transpersonal psychologists today. Ralph Waldo Trine’s 1897 book In Tune with the Infinite is still in print after more than 100 years.
In just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the Infinite Life…[and] make it possible for the higher powers to play, to work, to manifest through us. (Trine, 1897, pp. 16-17)
The “mental healing” and “mind-cure” movements of nineteenth-century America prefigured the modern new awakening to “transpersonal medicine” - integration of mind and body and spirit, the connection between physical and mental health, and the turning to “alternative” medicines that is evident today (Achterberg, 1985; Dossey, 1982, 1999; Gerber, 2001; Lawlis, 1996; Schlitz & Amorok, 2004).
Hidden Tradition of Psychic Research in Modern Psychology
Psychical research, scientific psychotherapy, spiritualism and the psychology of religion were burgeoning fields of inquiry in late nineteenth century America (Taylor, 1999, Chapter 8). Psychic research is very much a part of the spiritual roots of modern psychology, even though remarkably little attention has been given to it in general survey textbooks in the history of psychology.
|
