AHP Perspective

This an outstanding book, which has to be read by anyone seriously interested in transpersonal psychology. Each chapter is a real addition to the literature, and the whole thing adds up to a state-of-the-art contribution. This does not mean that it is without flaws.

The first one comes in the initial chapter by Kaisa Puhakka. She adopts what I have called the "one, two, three, infinity" method of counting, where the body is one, the emotions are two, the intellect is three, and everything else is just one vast mishmash called "the spiritual" or "the transpersonal." This represents a refusal, it seems to me, to make the distinction between the Subtle and the Causal, between the soul and the spirit. Both of these are beyond the intellect and the ego, yet they are quite different from each other.

The soul level is full of symbols, myths, gods, goddesses, tales, legends, archetypal forms, the heart, and so forth. It is all about multiplicity and richness. The level of spirit, on the other hand, is shorn of all these excrescences, and goes for the pure spirituality which has no symbols, no representations to mar its unsullied unity. This is the deep water of spirituality, where we are quite out of our depth. But Kaisa Puhakka talks of the transpersonal vision, the transpersonal outlook, and so forth. She speaks of moving from thinking to awareness, and this for her seems to be one single step. Ken Wilber (who is quoted by Puhakka) in all his books has been insistent that the transpersonal is a complex realm with several levels, not to be reduced to a sort of sacred soup.

The next chapter is by Tobin Hart, on "Inspiration as Transpersonal Knowing," and I liked it very much. He quotes a saying,"Sing the song that sings in you",which spoke to me. He does not make quite enough distinction, I thought, between different kinds or levels of inspiration, but it is a good first attempt at something both hard and worthwhile.

Peter Nelson's contribution is entitled "Mystical Experience and Radical Deconstruction: Through the Ontological Looking Glass," which is a bit of a mouthful. But it has some good discussions of mystical experiences, and he comes up with some nice definitions: failed mystics are those who have entered the tunnel of transition and never come out again, often getting diagnosed as schizophrenic; narcissistically wounded mystics are those who imagine that they have now become gurus; the denied mystic is the one who is shocked into not believing any of the conventional stories, but is unable to find an alternative story that is viable for him.

John Welwood's essay, called "Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening," is a very good discussion of transformational change in the person. He makes a valuable distinction between "horizontal" felt shifts where we discover more about ourselves, and the more potent "vertical" shift "where one moves from personality into a deeper quality of being." This selection is very persuasive and well written.

"Dissolving the Center: Stream-lining the Mind and Dissolving the Self" by Fred Hanna gives us an extraordinarily detailed and complete history of his own spiritual development, including its circlings and cul-de-sacs, and turns this into a chart of possible positions in development. It is a wonderful demonstration of the importance of doing your therapy as part of the process of working on yourself. It was not until late in the process that he discovered subpersonalities, and found he had to work with them for seven years. This was after he had discovered centered-ness! This is a fascinating chapter.

"Illuminative Presence" by Zia Inayat Khan, is a brief rundown on the Sufi approach.

Then comes the chapter by Donald Rothberg on "Spiritual Inquiry," which is good because it does recognize that there is an important place for the Subtle in the process of psychospiritual development.

The chapter by Michael Washburn is entitled "Transpersonal Cognition in Developmental Perspective," and it gives quite a detailed and sensitive account of personal development of the infant and toddler, moving into childhood proper. It then moves on into mystical experience, and devotes some space to the Catholic approach of St. Theresa of Avila.

There follows a challenging chapter by Jorge Ferrer, called "Transpersonal Knowledge: A Participatory Approach to Transpersonal Phenomena," where he seems to think he is offering a conceptual challenge to the accepted view that transpersonal experiences are private and personal and, as he says, experiential. I did not find his argument particularly difficult or threatening, and at times he seemed to be exaggerating quite minimal differences of interpretation. However, this chapter does reward close reading.

A second chapter by Tobin Hart follows, which I thought was much better than his chapter on inspiration, which itself was high-quality stuff. It is on what he calls "Deep Empathy," and he distinguishes actually between three levels of empathy. At the first level empathy is just a skill one has to learn; at the second level it is about a genuine meeting person to person; and at the third level it is about what I have called linking,that is, a kind of merging or melding with the other person. I found this very good, and it chimes in with my recent work with Michael Jacobs.

A truly fascinating contributon follows by Jenny Wade entitled "The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name." It is about sex as a spiritual path, and she speaks of "the transformative quality of the knowledge gained during transcendent sex." This is stirring stuff, and it brings in her own personal experience.

And finally there is a fine essay by Arthur Deikman on "Service as a Way of Knowing," which relates transpersonal experience to the everyday world in a highly constructive fashion.

I found this book quite inspiring, and shall use it and refer to it often. Anyone interested in "the transpersonal" should find something valuable in it.

JOHN ROWAN, an AHP member since 1970, works in London as a psychotherapist, teaches at the Minister Centre, and co-edited The Plural Self: Multiplicity in Everyday Life with Mike Cooper.