The Future of Transpersonal Psychology

4
Criticisms of Transpersonal
Psychology and Beyond—The
Future of Transpersonal
Psychology
A Science and Culture of Consciousness
Harald Walach
After nearly half a decade of transpersonal psychology, to be precise 43 years after the
foundation of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology that gave the nascent movement
an academic and scholarly appearance, it seems about time to pause and ask: What
has the movement of transpersonal psychology really achieved? What is the impact, if
any, it has made on the academic purveyance of psychology, its teaching and research,
its application in clinical work, counseling, and education? What are the structural
changes or improvements, if any? One can easily see that many of these questions
seem to be rhetorical and have to be answered rather disappointingly in the negative. Although transpersonal psychology has tried to install itself as a new force with
the remit to reform academic psychology, so far it has not really succeeded. Apart
from three or so dedicated private graduate schools and training centers in the USA
and one of originally two postgraduate courses in the UK, to my knowledge there
is no structural impact that can be perceived. Traditional psychology has proceeded
on its trajectory, and chairs for transpersonal psychology, funded by public funds of
large schools or endowed chairs that radiate out are largely missing. Although new
disciplines such as educational or organizational psychology have now succeeded in
establishing themselves through new chairs and departments, the same is not true
for transpersonal psychology. Why is that so? Curricula of psychology courses have
changed over the past decades. New courses have been added, new topics and subjects have been taken in, honoring their importance. Transpersonal psychology, as a
rule, and exceptions confirm this rule, is not one of them. New scientific disciplines
within psychology have succeeded to make themselves visible, through scholarly outlets, conferences, and meetings, establishing their intellectual footprint. Transpersonal
The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, First Edition.
Edited by Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius.
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 63
psychology has not been nearly as successful as other disciplines within psychology.
Although transpersonal psychology conferences exist, you will rarely find reports and
headlines about findings presented there. What is wrong here?
Although transpersonal psychology and—to frame it in a broader context—spiritual
approaches and techniques within the clinical counseling fields are popular among
practitioners and seem to receive a warm welcome from many, this has not been
at all reflected in academic representation. Let us take two examples, both from
Germany. Thirteen years ago the German language journal, Transpersonal Psychology
and Psychotherapy (now the Journal for Consciousness Science) was founded and has
had a comparatively good circulation of roughly 1500 subscriptions—more than a lot
of the professional journals in, say, psychosomatics or clinical psychology. This testifies
to the interest of clinicians. But the university courses representing at least some aspect
of transpersonal psychology are extremely rare. Currently in Germany there are only
three university teachers with the necessary credentials to supervise PhD theses, who
have some track record in publishing in this field, and enough interest to take on new
students.
We recently did a representative survey among 909 German psychotherapists who
are working under the statutory reimbursement system (Hofmann & Walach, 2011).
Of their patients, 22% mentioned some sort of spiritual problem or topic and 66% of
the therapists said that university or postgraduate training should give more attention
to these issues. Two thirds of our respondents said that they have had a spiritual
experience themselves, at least once, and 36% said they have had such experiences very
often or repeatedly. This clearly shows that there is interest in spiritual issues on the
practical level, because the topics are germane for patients and therapists alike, but this
reality of life has not found its way into academic structures of teaching and research.
Has transpersonal psychology succeeded in becoming an scholarly voice for all these
practitioners?
Seen from a distance and with sober eyes, one has to admit that the success of
transpersonal psychology as a discipline is indeed meager, to put it benevolently.
A critic of the field would surely say: “Transpersonal psychology has failed as an
academic-scientific discipline. It has not proven its worth or and hence should just
vanish.” If some future for the academic study of transpersonal and spiritual phenomena is to be established, opening an inroad for spirituality into academic circles and
allowing for the broadening of psychology as a field, it is necessary to assess critically
the history of the transpersonal enterprise, its shortcomings and failures, listen to criticisms leveled against it, and understand the largely unspoken critique of mainstream
science in order to determine the potential chance for transpersonal psychology.
In this chapter I wish to critique transpersonal psychology constructively. I will go
briefly through the history of psychology as a discipline and through the history and
sources of transpersonal psychology as a subdomain in order to understand the frictions
and possible points of departure. I will then point out some criticisms and unsolved
problems and develop a future perspective. My recommendation will be to reinvent the
transpersonal enterprise along the lines originally intended by the founding fathers
of psychology, William James and Franz Brentano: a psychology, a science—and
culture—of consciousness, in order to get rid of some of the problems besetting
transpersonal psychology. I do this from the vantage point of an academic teacher
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64 Harald Walach
and researcher with a clinical training and experience in a transpersonal discipline,
psychosynthesis, a long-standing spiritual practice in Zen meditation, the experience
of being one of the founding members of the German Association of Transpersonal
Psychology and Psychotherapy, and a former professor and course leader in one of
the universities in the UK that is offering a postgraduate degree in transpersonal
psychology and consciousness studies. I do this also with a firm commitment to the
scientific enterprise, because I passionately believe that it is the only true international
forum and joint venture of humankind that is comparatively successful and peaceful.
At the same time I also believe that if science is to remain successful and helpful in the
resolution of the problems on our agenda today then it will have to broaden its scope
and paradigmatic stance by taking seriously some of the issues that led to the rise of
transpersonal psychology.
A Historical Approach
In order to understand a current situation, historical analysis is normally useful. So
it is appropriate to revisit briefly the history of psychology in general and that of
transpersonal psychology in particular. At variance with most textbooks of psychology,
I date the beginning of psychology as a scientific discipline to 1866. This is the year
when the young professor of philosophy, the theologian and priest Franz Brentano
(1838-1917), defended his position at the University of Wurzburg in Germany. One ¨
of the famous theses was worded: “The true method of philosophy can only be the
method of natural science” (Wehrle, 1989, p. 45). By that Brentano meant that
philosophy had to become empirical and experimental. In 1871 he was to take up the
philosophy chair at the University of Vienna. He made it clear that his interpretation
of an empirical philosophy would be the new science and study of psychology. He
also proposed that this method would have to proceed through thorough and careful
introspection so as to understand the laws of the psyche. At the same time the vagaries
of his private life were difficult. He was the priest responsible for drafting in 1869 the
paper of the German bishops’ council against Papal Infallibility, which was proclaimed
in 1870. The German bishops’ opposition against this move remained unheard. This
led to Brentano’s leaving the church. On top of this, he fell in love with a Jewish heiress
of a big banking business in Vienna and he wanted to marry her. An apostatic priest,
marrying a Jewess in Catholic Vienna was a terrible scandal. Bretano was forced to
resign, emigrate to Saxonia, marry there, come back and attempt to reclaim his chair.
He was unable to do so, because the Austrian emperor refused to countersign the
university’s appointment documents. So Brentano was unable to resume his academic
position, and his work remained undone. He was never able to write his important
work, and what remained of his influence was indirect. Freud heard his lectures and
put Brentano’s teachings into the practice of inner hermeneutics so as to understand
psychological content and derive laws from it (Merlan, 1945, 1949). Edmund Husserl
was inspired by Brentano to develop his phenomenology (Husserl, 1919). Similarly,
Carl Stumpf (1919) developed Gestalt psychology (Stumpf, 1919), and even Rudolf
Steiner (1921), the founder of anthroposophy, studied with him (Steiner, 1921).
Brentano himself was a deeply spiritual person, dedicated to daily contemplation, as
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 65
he called it in the Catholic tradition, and was always looking for a way to reconcile the
spiritual and the academic world, without a tangible success that he might have been
able to pass on (Stumpf, 1919; Tiefensee, 1998).
The date often quoted as the year psychology was born is 1879 (Luck, 2002). This ¨
is the year when Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) opened his psychology laboratory at
the University of Leipzig. It soon became the strange attractor for psychologists from
around the world: William James and Stanley Hall were only some of those who visited
(Brent, 1993). What is not well known is a very important episode in Wundt’s life that
has an important bearing on the topic (Kohls & Benedikter, 2010). Roughly at that
time, in 1877, the professor of physics in Leipzig, Johann Karl Zollner, became inter- ¨
ested in studying mediumistic performances, because he thought they would prove his
theory of a fourth, spiritual dimension that could be incorporated into physics. The
American medium Henry Slade was traveling through Europe and performing interesting feats: tables flew around, chairs hovered in the air, it was impossible to know
information was given, and so forth. Hermann Ulrici, a professor of logic in Halle,
wrote about those sessions, concluding that spiritism was of utmost scientific importance. To bolster his claim, he mentioned various renowned professors, among them
Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt became furious (Wundt, 1879). He quickly came to understand that associating the nascent discipline of psychology with potentially fraudulent,
but surely scientifically questionable performances of mediums was very dangerous,
because it might threaten the new discipline’s ability to be established within the
academic system. In the attempt to join the established sciences, contact with and
proximity to unscientific parapsychological phenomena had to be avoided at all costs.
So Wundt included a clear warning about and prohibition against, such studies in
his book on hypnosis and in the foreword of the second edition of his psychology
textbook and all further works (Kohls & Benedikter, 2010).
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is often misquoted as someone who had no interest in
the occult and transpersonal phenomena (Simmonds, 2006). Although this is surely
true on the outside, he was in fact quite interested in precognitive dreams, even in
the immediate perception of his clients’ states of mind in a phenomenon he called
transference, which he recognized as having some similarity to clairvoyance (Freud,
1922, 1925). Freud’s description of an open, receptive attentive state without content
is very much akin to the phenomenological consciousness that Husserl would later
advocate. Both Husserl and Freud were stimulated by Brentano’s teaching. But Freud
was also fighting for scientific recognition, and he knew that being associated with
quackery and esotericism would be the death of psychoanalysis. So he made a scientific
vow: no dealings with spiritual issues, please, in order to not endanger the still fragile
flower of psychoanalysis. And psychoanalysis, true to its master’s heritage, steered clear
from the muddy waters of religion and transpersonal experiences.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) cannot be understood without his own spiritual
experiences (Shamdasani, 1994, 1995, 1998a, 1998b, 2003, 2005). Already in 1913
he had his famous visions of floods of blood over Europe which inspired him to
develop the process of active imagination in which he entered these visions, explored
them, and came out again and described them. The results of these explorations were
described and painted by him in The Red Book, which was edited only recently (Jung,
2009). Only later would Jung come to understand that his visions had been very
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66 Harald Walach
powerful precognitive intuitions of what would happen a few years later during the
Great War (1914-1919). He actually stated that he was happy when the war broke
out, because this proved his visions correct and helped him to believe that he was not
psychotic, but clairvoyant (Jung, 1967). All his later developments—the concept of
a collective unconscious, of dynamic archetypes that structure individual psychic life,
and the striving of developmental lines towards an emerging whole—can be seen as
an unfolding of his original visions. It would be difficult to find any component in
Jung’s psychology that is not spiritual. But apart from creating an influential school
of psychotherapy, what has Jungian psychology achieved? The academic mainstream
has largely ignored it.
William James (1842-1910) is renowned as the founder of American psychology
(James, 1981, 1984, 1985). His stance of radical empiricism is akin to Brentano’s
“scientific method” which he prescribed for psychology. His pragmatic, undogmatic
approach, that was not predicated on any one of the prominent philosophical systems
of his time, was flexible enough to accommodate fields as different as the study of
religious experiences, clinical phenomena, and the stream of consciousness. In fact,
one of the best and, in my view, still valid definitions of psychology stems from William
James (1984) quoting George Trumbull Ladd, professor of philosophy at Yale: “The
definition of Psychology may be best given in the words of Professor Ladd, as the
description and explanation of states of consciousness as such” (p. 9).
Brentano, Wundt, James, Freud, and Jung—the five most important founding
figures of psychology—were all open to transpersonal experiences, at least initially.
Wundt and Freud later turned away and proclaimed a ban on the study of such
phenomena. Jung was openly supportive of spiritual topics. Brentano was implicitly
supportive, but failed for personal reasons to make his impact. William James was soon
to be superseded by the behaviorist movement.
In Vienna the work that had been begun by Brentano was continued in philosophy by Ernst Mach, who succeeded Brentano in the philosophy chair, and Mach’s
colleagues Neurath, Schlick, and Carnap, who later formed the Vienna Circle, delineating the neopositivist movement that became so influential (Smith, 1994). Apart
from some quite innovative ideas—to stick to sentences that were clear, logically analyzable and empirically supportable, to make science useful to humankind, to drop
anything that was not really open to scrutiny and consensus—the neopositivists spoke
out a clear-cut ban against what they saw as “metaphysics.” By that term they meant
a type of philosophy that was indulging in speculations, based on presuppositions
that were outside empirical evidence. They banned religion and spiritual topics as
unscientific and associated with an old type of thinking.
Positivists thought that old school philosophy was part of the past, and all studies
of spirituality and religion with it. Such topics simply did not belong in the realm of
science. Raimund Popper, although also trained and educated in Vienna, broke with
the neopositivists and inaugurated his own model, critical rationalism, advocating
empirical disproving of hypotheses. But in one thing he is in accord with his philosophical rivals; metaphysics was a no-go area, simply because there are no sentences
derivable from metaphysics or religion that can be empirically invalidated—actually,
to be a bit more accurate: metaphysics might be a good source of ideas that can later
be tested empirically, Popper thought, but metaphysics itself is unscientific, because
not testable.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 67
In England, Bertrand Russell had formulated a philosophy that had some parallels
with the neopositivist movement. At roughly the same time in the USA the behaviorist movement started to flourish. The common thread running through all these
movements is the reliance on what can be directly observed, simple analysis of complex
phenomena, denial of any “underlying” or “deep” structure to reality, and a refusal to
take anything beyond, “higher,” or “transcendent” into the purview of the scientific
enterprise.
I ask forgiveness of specialists of the history of ideas for this rough-hewn picture of
what is a very complex history reduced to a few pages. I do this to make understandable
the historical macrotrend against which transpersonal psychology was emerging and
has to confront. This macrotrend can be reduced to the following tenets:
1 Embracing the scientific-experimental method as the best way to knowledge.
2 Using the analysis of outer relations to understand complex inner phenomena,
i.e., analysis of forces as material interactions.
3 Sticking to an observation from the outside, a third-person-singular view, as the
best and only perspective that can generate intersubjectively consensual knowledge.
4 Avoiding reference to entities that cannot be seen, analyzed, or otherwise empirically assessed.
5 Avoiding reference to occult, esoteric, and religious concepts and teachings, as
they are perceived to be contrary and irreconcilable with science.
If one looks at this historical sketch it is possible to formulate one grand criticism
of transpersonal psychology, and if I am not mistaken there is not one writer in the
field to which this would not apply.
No one has really taken this historical heritage and legacy seriously. Transpersonal
psychology has not really understood the deep, deep cleavage that has to be bridged
between scientific approaches in psychology—itself still a very young discipline in
the making—and traditional or modern concepts of spirituality, spiritual experience,
let alone a viable concept of the transcendent. Instead of historically understanding
the nascent field of psychology, transpersonalists chided psychology for being too
positivistic, scientific, and reductionist and not taking into consideration important
human experiences. Although this is surely true, any criticism can and will only be
heard after the person who wishes to criticize has arrived at a thorough understanding
of what it is he or she is actually evaluating. No one seems to have really tried to
achieve such a historical understanding (my emphasis here is on historical; for without
a historical understanding, any systematic understanding is only half-baked).
This is my first prediction: Unless the field is able to live up to this legacy and offer
ways by which spiritual and transpersonal experiences and topics can be integrated
and researched, and at the same time stay true to the historical heritage of psychology
as a discipline, it will not find a listening ear.
I believe the first truly deep and paradigmatic problem is the following: By choosing
the trajectory it has, psychology has formed a certain type of world model for itself.
Pepper (1942) called such implicit, tacit presuppositions world hypotheses. Collingwood (1940/1998) called them absolute presuppositions. They are presuppositions,
because the system of science does not work without them. They are absolute because
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68 Harald Walach
they are pervasive and are basic for all branches. More importantly, they are implicit
and without open and rational debate or discourse. They form a coherent system
and inform scientific disciplines, but the reflection upon those presuppositions is not
part of the discipline itself. More importantly, such presuppositions, Collingwood
stated, are actually not rationally debated and adopted. Rather, they stem from the
cultural backdrop of a particular time. In the case of psychology, they stem from
the movements and cultural preconditions I have tried to sketch. That is also the
difficulty: It makes these presuppositions comparatively immune against attacks and
criticisms, unless those attacks and criticisms also supply a better framework for the
implicit or absolute presuppositions. Thomas Kuhn, in the wake of Collingwood and
using his ideas, coined the term “paradigm” for such a set of preconditions, rules, and
assumptions that form a discipline (Kuhn, 1955).
If a dispute arises within a paradigm about some issues, then there is a set methodology that is provided by the paradigm to resolve the conflict. This recipe does not work
for disputes that are inter-paradigmatic, in which two sets of implicit presuppositions
fight for priority. Transpersonal psychology belongs in both camps. A large part of the
field, and I read some of the founding fathers’ assertion as such, has wanted to simply
be part of the huge game of science, just adding the odd rule, as it were, leaving the
game as it is. But there is also a strong group of people who seem to be “anti-scientific,”
or against “reductionism,” or against the way science is done, and would like some
other approach. Implicitly what they do is challenge the paradigmatic assumptions of
mainstream science and psychology, but without being really clear about what they are
doing, it seems. This is surely always the case when someone says that transpersonal
experiences of a transcendent reality have something to do with reality as such, to give
an example. This is not simply a matter of “Is it true or not?” because the methods
supplied by the current paradigm to make such decisions about truth or falsehood,
the experimental method for instance, do not apply to cases like this.
Hence, at least part of the transpersonal enterprise is in fact an implicit or explicit
challenge to the entire history and set of methodologies by which science and scientific
psychology is done. The point is: you do not challenge a 800-pound gorilla with
a thin stick. He either laughs at you or simply breaks your stick. If you want to
challenge the whole history, tradition, and academic self-understanding of modern day
psychology, you had better beef up your arsenal and know what you are doing. Rarely
do transpersonal psychologists seem to understand what they are doing. In order to
challenge the mainstream view what needs to happen is a thorough understanding of
the presuppositions that the mainstream operates on, a profound critiquing of these
presuppositions, and the provision of very, very good data indeed that could actually
give adherents to the mainstream view enough reason to think twice about what they
are doing.
None of this has happened. The critique of the mainstream from transpersonal quarters has been mild and not very profound. The data that have been offered as a reason
to embrace a transpersonal rather than a materialistic-reductionist paradigm have been
anecdotal at best, and the alternative philosophical framework accompanying transpersonal approaches has often been muddled. Thus, the critical impact of transpersonal
psychology on the paradigmatic foundations of mainstream science has been “interesting” at best—in a British sense—which means, nothing to be bothered by.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 69
What about the empirical base transpersonal psychologists have contributed using
the methods of mainstream psychology to impact the discourse within the discipline,
without challenging its foundations? Can you think of a set of experimental, empirical data, preferentially replicable, published in one of the major outlets of the field
that has impacted the way psychologists think and work? If one is honest, there
is not much to be gleaned from more than 40 years of activity. To be sure, parapsychologists have produced a wealth of anomalistic data, testifying that sometimes
precognition can occur, sometimes telekinesis, sometimes remote viewing (Walach &
Schmidt, 2005). But there is no theoretical consensus about how this could happen,
let alone a really replicable set of data that can also convince critics (Alcock, 2003).
The only coherent field is the field of meditation research, which has recently seen
an upsurge (Ott, Holzel, & Vaitl, 2011). The clinical implications of the manualized ¨
system of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction have produced a host of publications
that has led to these methods being widely offered (Grossman, Schmidt, Niemann, &
Walach, 2004). Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for depression relapse prevention (Williams, Teasdale, Segal, & Kabat-Zinn, 2007) has even made it into the British
National Health Service. But this is hardly an achievement of transpersonalists. However, it is the only really perceptible impact that at least some spiritually inspired activity
and research has made. Grofian Holotropic Breathwork has been around roughly for
about the same length of time (Grof, 1988, 2008). Although widely advocated with
a colorful portfolio of benefits and transformative power, with many people going
through trainings, one can observe a cruel law coming into play: unless you follow
the rules of the game of science, use its methods to prove your worth, you will not
become visible. The scientific studies of Holotropic Breathwork can be counted on
one hand, at least those published in the peer-reviewed literature (Holmes, Morris,
Clance, & Putney, 1996; Spivak, Kropotov, Spival, & Sevostyanov, 1994). None of
these is a serious trial showing that Holotropic Breathwork is clinically superior to not
doing anything, listening to loud music only, or lying together with friends for days
on end and telling stories. One may be of the opinion that the experiences that can be
had during such work are not amenable to scientific investigation, and perhaps this is
true. But the clinical effects, if there are any, would be. Demonstrating those would
be quite beneficial for the acceptability of the concept as a whole. It is this unwillingness to play the game of science—even when it would be easy to play without
giving up anything of substance—that is one of the greatest obstacles for integration
and change.
Thus, so far, transpersonal psychology has failed in a double sense: it has failed to
really challenge the implicit foundations, the absolute presuppositions or paradigmatic
assumptions of mainstream science and thus has not really proven its point; and
it has also failed to provide solid empirical evidence that transpersonal experiences,
transpersonal approaches, or transpersonal methods are in any way more worthwhile
than traditional ones. The emphasis here is on “solid.” There are surely a lot of
data and studies around. But these are mostly pilot studies, are small, solitary, and
not published in widely read journals. They surely do not disturb the sleep of the
righteous.
In order to understand why the newly inaugurated transpersonal psychology has not
convinced others that its approach is truly innovative and is helping to transform people
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70 Harald Walach
to access their higher potential, it is important to now turn to what has been termed
the spiritual positivism of transpersonal psychology, and also to the epistemological
questions involved.
Spiritual Positivism of Transpersonal Psychology and the
Problem of Epistemology
Some earlier concepts of transpersonal psychology assumed that there is a spiritual
realm, transcendent but accessible through inner experience and spiritual practice
or meditative discipline (Fontana, 2003; Soudkova, 2002; Walsh, 1999; Welwood, ´
2002). Implicitly most seem to have been modeled along the lines of Buddhist injunctions: you go and sit down on your meditation cushion, recite the proper sutras, do
your devotion, stick to the practice, and you will see for yourself. So it seemed clear.
Similar to science, there is this prescription for what to do and out will come an experience or an insight about the nature of reality. Some earlier texts of Wilber (1997,
1998) and Walsh (1999) and others have suggested such a view. This has been dubbed
spiritual positivism by Ferrer (1998, 2000, 2002). Thereby he means a fallacy that is
similar to the fallacy of classical positivism: it is the assumption that there is a reality
“out there,” which is completely independent of the observer and indifferent to the
instruments that are used to observe it. It was a painful process for science to understand that reality can only be accessed from certain perspectives, that reality gives itself
up only from certain perspectives, and that a consensus about what this reality truly
is, is quite difficult to reach. This is even more so for any transcendent and spiritual
reality. To state that transcendent and spiritual realities are the same for, and accessible
to, everybody is at best extremely na¨ıve and probably simply wrong. Why is this so?
The Problem of Objectivism
Within the meta-reflection of scientific theory, it is meanwhile pretty clear that the
innocent objective reality concept that can simply be observed is a dangerous simplification. How this reality appears to observers is dependent on the instruments used,
the theoretical perspective employed, and the purpose under which observation is
made. To someone looking at the night sky there are myriads of stars, but only if he
or she is not observing from an area where light pollution is fogging visibility. To
someone using a strong telescope this night sky looks quite different. To someone
using radio or X-ray telescopes it looks different again. Someone without a theory will
not even be able to use these instruments to any benefit at all and more than likely
will not see much. The same is true for nearly all “realities.” Bacteria, it is thought,
cause some diseases and hence at least some of them seem clearly to be pathogens.
Yet as humans, our skin, our gut, our orifices are home to myriads of them. In one
cubic centimeter of our feces we have billions of bacteria. From the point of view of
bacteria we are a rich soil to germ upon just as the ‘real’ soil is, for us, a substrate
on which to grow crops. Only if some of our finely tuned immune processes become
deranged will we suffer from the bacteria that we normally host. Why is something
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 71
that is not even noticeable to us under normal circumstances suddenly a pathogen? It
surely is the same “thing,” is it not? Well, yes, and no. It carries all the same descriptors
one can use to characterize it from the outside—genetic coding, surface receptors and
antigenetic potential. But in the context of one reality, for instance a healthy organism,
it is something else than in another context of say, an immune-compromised organism. Here it suddenly becomes something that it is not under other circumstances. So
whether something is or is not, and what it is, depends on the context. It is not only
the Buddhist philosophical tradition that has pointed to the doctrine of codependent
arising or becoming. This is also something that has been prevalent in the West every
now and then, one of the most prominent voices on the topic being the philosopher
Leibniz.
Over the past 50 years, a complex debate has led to a refutation of the simple positivism that accepts a static reality out there that “only” has to be observed, described,
and mapped. Philosophers of science have come to accept that every observation is
“theory laden,” to use Hanson’s term (Suppe, 1977). Popper’s criticism of positivism
came exactly through the insight that one cannot observe even the simplest thing
without a background theory. If one had no theory, one would have no clue what to
look for, how to organize all the perceptions in the perceptual field into meaningful
wholes, or how to interpret their relationships. Meaning is distilled out of what is
perceived, because it is first imbued with meaning. As humans, we construct the reality we think is out there to a large degree. Modern neuroscience has brought up an
interesting new term, the brain’s dark energy (Raichle, 2006). By that is meant the fact
that about 95% of the activities of the brain seem to concern traffic between neurons,
and only 2% to 5% is traffic from the periphery—that is, sense organs—to the brain.
To put it simply, input is the smallest amount of activity the brain is dealing with. Its
main task seems to be to generate a representational image of what to expect from
the world. Sensory input seems to be used to scan this representation for necessary
corrections. That is to say, we do not perceive the world as it is, instead we construct
the world as we expect it to behave and then we correct this expectation to a stronger
or lesser degree depending on how we deal with incoming information.
What is true for individuals is also true for science as a joint human enterprise.
A coherent picture of the world is constructed according to the scientific theories
available. Empirical information is either used to elaborate this picture, or, if the
information is too much at odds with our expectation, correct it. If too much information has amassed that cannot be reconciled with the current world view, some start
to construct a new image of the world. If they are successful it will be possible to use
the new model. This would then amount to a paradigm shift.
Now, if this is true for our everyday reconstruction of the world, and if this is true
for scientific construction of the material world, what does this mean for a spiritual
science?
Inner Experience and the Problem of Epistemology
Surely, any transpersonal “knowledge” would have to refer to some inner state or
perception as its source and to something that cannot be directly perceived as a
referent, “the Transcendent,” “the Whole,” “the Spiritual,” “the Tao,” “the
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72 Harald Walach
Dharma,” whatever the names are that are then used. If one can analyze what happens
here then it is indeed possible to construct a process analogous to perception. That
was exactly how Brentano and James had seen it: inner perception of conscious experience. But what is it that is perceived? Can one simply apply the positivist formula
that “whatever is perceived is there?” How does one go about the fact that some, in
their transpersonal musings, perceive “spirits,” “fairies,” or “demons,” some say they
perceive “God,” some say it is some divine intuitions, some call it emptiness, others
say it is not really emptiness but something else, and so on? You can see the problem
here. It is analogous to perception of the outside world, only even more complicated.
In the outside world humans share a comparatively stable consensual domain where,
most of the time, it is possible to agree upon such simple facts as, “the door is closed,
you need to open it, if you want to go through it.” In more complicated instances
there is a scientific method to use to achieve consensus, a method that has had more
than 500 years to mature and to develop.
However, in the inner realm of psychological inner experience there is no comparable thing. The referent of this experience is invisible by definition, only “experientially”
accessible, if at all, and the access to this reality is surely not a simple one that normally does not occur outside some cultural consensus. So, when Buddhists meditate,
they are likely to experience “dharma” or “emptiness,” or if they are from a certain
Zen lineage, “true self.” When Carmelite nuns meditate and have inner experiences
they normally experience Christ, or Mary, or some other religiously framed reality
out of their own tradition. It may be possible to parallel such experiences which, for
instance, Saint Theresa of Avila, a Carmelite, has put down in her Inner Castle, with
those described in the Abidhamma. But does that mean that Theresa has actually had
experiences of the Abidhamma, or does that mean that all the Buddhas and monks
having had those experiences have in fact experienced what Theresa called the Inner
Christ? There is no criterion to say which one is better, or truer, than the other. It
has been observed frequently that transpersonal psychology has had some Eastern bias
(Friedman, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010). It is quite obvious that there is no criterion
that could identify what the referent of the experience actually is, and how it is to be
described and named and talked about, if at all.
Put differently, inner experience is no innocent and simple access route to an unambiguous reality. On the contrary, inner experience is highly ambiguous, opaque, and
dependent on assumptions. One can, of course, claim that there is such a thing as preconceptual experience where concepts do not enter. Some have called this, following
Gebser’s philosophy, “a-categorial” types of knowing (Atmanspacher & Fach, 2005;
Hinterberger, 2011). While this is certainly true, it is also true that in order to enter
into a discourse about this reality and its nature it is necessary to use categories and
language, and these are dependent on culture, history, and language. So the spiritual
experience of a religious seeker of the time around 20 CE in Palestine was likely
influenced by the Jewish background of the culture, the expectations, the political
situation, and so forth (Douglas-Klotz, 1999, 2002; Katz, 1983) and cannot easily be
compared with the Indian Brahmanic culture of around 700 BCE, when the historical
Gautama Buddha likely had his experience in Northern India. Also, the spiritual experience of the historical Jesus, a Jewish Rabbi, was likely different from the experience
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 73
of Theresa of Avila, who was a Christian nun living within a nunnery in a thoroughly
Christian culture in the Spain of the 16th century. A dissatisfied Christian going to
a Zen Buddhist retreat but with all his or her Western roots and culture implanted
not only in the mind but likely also in genes, will have a still different experience,
if any.
That is not to say that there is no referent to such experiences. There may be such
a thing as an a-categoreal core spiritual experience, which, however, needs reference
to a cultural framework to be understood and expressed (Forman, 1998, 1999). But
even if there is, there is no simple and easy access, and, most importantly, it is utterly
na¨ıve to think that just to “describe” the experience will be a description without
reference to the “reality” that has been experienced.
The scientific injunction “take x, and do y, and you will find z” is complicated
even for skilled scientists. A host of failed replications and debates are testimony to
this, and only through huge struggles and debates does science succeed to create a
consensual understanding of the shared material world (Schmidt, 2009). The spiritual
injunction “sit down, do y, and you will experience z” is even more complicated.
This is so because the spiritual reality is more complicated to access, it seems, and
because the discourse about the “true” nature of this reality is historically, culturally,
and geographically much more fragmented than the scientific one. More importantly,
there is not the critical methodology that science has had 500 years to establish. There
is only one proposition that is fairly sure here: that a na¨ıve spiritual positivism is likely
the worst theoretical background one can have. Yet this is exactly the background
transpersonal psychology has brought to the topic for the first four decades of its
existence. It seems that only a minority of people in the field have understood, let
alone come to grips with the challenge here.
But there is another, even deeper challenge that needs to be looked in the eye
here. This is the ontological challenge of what consciousness actually is, vis-a-vis, a `
mainstream science that is thoroughly materialistic. The problem is the following: if
the ultimate reality in the world is “only” matter, and consciousness is derived from
the intricate ordering of matter, then consciousness is a secondary phenomenon. How
could it then have any direct access to reality? How can an inner experience then be
anything else than just an idling game of a system on standby? What conceptual, philosophical, and epistemological reasons can there be to assume that a spiritual experience
is really an experience of reality and not of some whimsical, ephemeral mental farting?
Transpersonal psychology has simply assumed that inner experiences have some epistemological validity, without any understanding of the extremely difficult ontological
ground upon which it is marching. I am not suggesting that the mainstream of science
is right. But I am suggesting that it is unprofessional not to take into account the good
arguments that a majority of scientists have, and produce a thorough refutation of this
mainstream stance first, before indulging in one’s own ontology and epistemology.
In other words, one cannot talk about epistemology and how it is possible to glean
knowledge from inner experience, without discussing ontology and the question of
under which circumstances can this be possible in the first place. As far as I can see only
a few people have tackled this issue, and very few with the requisite understanding of
the problems.
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74 Harald Walach
Let me therefore sketch the problem of ontology a bit more clearly, then provide
some arguments and potential solutions, and then discuss how transpersonal psychology has not met, but perhaps could meet, these challenges in the future.
The Problem of Ontology
The scientific worldview, shorthand for the set of assumptions underlying the way
natural science operates and has been operating since Newton, is predicated on
the assumption that matter is the more important, perhaps the only “real,” stuff in
the universe.
The French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) has prepared the field for it, ´
unwittingly one has to say. In his book Traite de l’ homme ´ (Treatise of Man) (Descartes,
1664/2003), he proposed two revolutionary ideas. One idea was to separate the
material from the mental realm describing matter as extended, solid, but also devoid
of any vital principle of its own, and to assert that the mind has no extension, but is
active as the principle of life. Thereby he only systematically described what Aristotle
already had mentioned. What was new was the fact that Descartes conceived, unlike
Aristotle, of two separable realms. This laid the groundwork for the later separation of
the humanities and natural sciences, the latter being mainly dedicated to solving the
puzzles around matter. The second revolutionary thought of Descartes was that he
described all living beings, animals and human bodies alike, as mechanical automatons.
Using the metaphors of the mechanical clockworks and toys of his time, he turned
the idea around; if human craft could create clockworks of machinery that moved so
elegantly as to imitate physiological movements, why not conceive of physiological
bodies as machinery? This thought was extremely alien to a mind of the 17th century,
but gradually gripped the imagination of scientists and laid the foundation for a
mechanistic treatment of the physiological body. This move of Descartes also had an
important consequence, which is only now seeing its fulfillment: Once the idea of
the mechanization of nature had been consequently thought through and put into
paradigmatic framings, there was no way of stopping this movement. On the contrary,
it was only logical to extend it to the mind itself as well. Although Descartes carved
out the mind from this mechanistic treatment of physiology, his successors extended
the mechanistic metaphor to the mind.
What has been witnessed over the past decades is the consequence of the extension
of the Cartesian program to the philosophy of consciousness and of mind. The mind is
also seen as mechanical machinery. Modern brain science operates on the assumption
that what can be seen in the brain is in fact operation of the mind. Some say the mind
can emerge and become a separate kind of entity that has some causal influence on
the material substrate, the brain. Some equate the operations of the mind with the
operations of the brain. Some study mainly the functional relationships between neuronal entities assuming that the material substrate is irrelevant and only the function
that is implemented by neurons is relevant. In fact what is relevant is that mainstream
science is following this paradigmatic pull, conceptualizing the mind as machinery
that is, ultimately, somehow identical with or causally dependent on its physiological
substrate, the neuronal system in general and the brain in particular.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 75
Such a view makes consciousness a secondary entity. If such a view is true, then
consciousness is always late—and this is exactly the argument that is being used in
modern discussions about the causal relevance of consciousness. A consciously experienced impulse to act is only experienced as such after all the neuronal antecedents
have long before decided on the action (Burns, 1999; Libet, 1999; Wegner &
Wheatley, 1999). Ultimately, the conscious self is a fiction created by extremely
intricate neuronal machinery whose whole purpose is to secure survival of the system. For this survival it is useful to have a representation of the environment, as
well as a representation of the system as an agent within this environment. But ultimately, the self is vacuous and appears as such, because the representational character
is itself “opaque” to the system that is represented. Were it not opaque, an infinite
regress would ensue that would again hamper the effectiveness of the representation
(Metzinger, 2003).
Surely, in this view there is no such thing as “inner experience,” except in a secondary and epistemologically irrelevant sense. This “inner experience” can only refer to
states of the neuronal machinery and such states will have no relevance for knowledge
of the world at large. What spiritual traditions claim—that inner experience arising
from spiritual practice can tell us something about the world, only from another,
namely inner perspective—is nonsensical from a modern, scientific point of view.
Such a modern view will always counter that, whatever is experienced, when someone has a nice inner experience—a near-death experience, an experience of heavenly
bliss, an experience of a transcendent reality, you name it—that will always be a
reflection of the state of the neuronal system, nothing else. If the neuronal system
is under strain, as in a situation close to death, then it will create some soothing
experience to make the demise of the system palatable to itself (Marsh, 2010). If
the neuronal system is under some deprivation, as in most spiritual practices, or in
another way in exceptional circumstances, as in a continually hyperventilated and
excited state that Holotropic BreathworkR induces, then it will create strange representations. To relate these strange representations to any reality is a scientific fallacy.
Such experiences might be adaptive; they may help the system to restructure itself after
some psychological stress, say after a crisis of meaning and purpose, or after a lifethreatening or psychologically threatening situation. But to assume that these experiences have something to do with reality is silly at best and scientifically outrageous
at worst.
To put it bluntly, unless transpersonal psychologists can also provide a solid theory
of how consciousness as such can have its own epistemological relationship with reality, they will always be seen as those guys who have missed out on the problem and
hence provide solutions that no one will cherish. In order to provide such a theory,
some serious thinking about ontology needs to happen. This is nothing short of an
enterprise of providing the scientific basis with a new paradigmatic option that can
serve as a new platform apart from the mechanistic one that has followed from the
Cartesian view. Make no mistake here, simple reference to some anomalistic and outlandish data—from Shamanic journeying, near-death studies, Holotropic Breathwork,
parapsychological experiments—will not do. It will not do, because a paradigm and
a theory is always stronger than data. As pointed out above, humans are predictive,
theoretical animals. We form a theory about the world and replicate it until we are
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76 Harald Walach
forced to change track. The same is true for science. A bunch of anomalistic data here
and there will not bother anyone, except for those who wish to write the odd paper
about how this bunch of data can also be interpreted without reference to any strange
model of consciousness.
The Transpersonal Answer to the Challenge So Far
To me it seems as if no one has really understood the problem in its gravity. Transpersonalists have simply continued asserting that consciousness has some privileged status,
without saying how this privileged status could be unified with the mainstream scientific effort. Some have simply tried to turn the wheel, or have not understood that a
turning of the wheel would have to be involved if anyone were to take the proposal
seriously, and tried to revert the discussion back to where it stood in about 1850,
when the writings of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were still much debated and the
idea of a mental activity as a prime source of everything, and hence “consciousness”
in modern parlance, was a scientific option. One may dislike a historical point of
view, but one thing about history is quite clear, it is next to impossible to turn the
wheel back. The principle of “Wirkungsgeschichte”—the history of effects that ideas
have created—introduced by the German philosopher and founder of philosophical
hermeneutics Hans Georg Gadamer (1975) is important here; there is always some
sense in what has happened. Put otherwise, there was a reason why the idealistic stance
of “consciousness is primary, matter secondary” was given up by natural scientists in
the middle of the 19th century. My personal interpretation is that this reason can be
found in the fact that an idealistic philosophy in the sense of Schelling, Hegel, Fichte,
and Plotinos for that matter, including probably most Vedanta styles of philosophy,
does not allow for a fruitful notion of matter. One can of course lament and deplore
this situation, but that does not undo it. The point to start from is the acceptance
that the scientific community—scientists among whom are the most respected, most
intelligent, and most powerful individuals—has at some point decided that it is more
important and more fruitful to follow a paradigmatic model that allows for a solid
analysis of matter and put the question of consciousness on hold.
This hold has now transformed into a busy kind of research along the very same line.
Academic psychology has taken up that challenge and is moving along using the same
paradigmatic assumptions as science does. This is where transpersonal psychology
could come in. But it surely cannot come in stating that transpersonal psychology is
possibly better for humankind, for psychology, and for integrating human experience
by using implicitly—without open discussion and without really good arguments—a
completely different set of assumptions than mainstream science. This is exactly what
has happened, however, at least with a major part of the transpersonal movement.
It was assumed that a psychology starting from an idealist assumption—that is, consciousness is primary, matter is secondary—is possible the same way as a psychology
starting from a materialist assumption of matter as primary is possible, as most behaviorist, cognitivist, and neuroscientific approaches assume. Possible it is, to be sure, but
ineffective, and this is what has been seen: ineffectiveness on a grand scale, despite a
flood of publications, despite a host of assertions to the contrary.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 77
The reason for this ineffectiveness, I argue, is that no one has really tackled the issue
of ontology and argued a concise case, why in the first place and how in particular,
could a different view be produced. Simple dualistic assertion will not do. That Cartesian conundrum as to how a separate substance, the mind—or consciousness—should
affect a completely different one, namely matter, has never been solved. Science has
just set aside the problem by cutting the Gordian knot with Ockham’s razor, in effect
stating “Forget the mind, it is only matter anyway or some sort of consequence of
matter’s organization.”
A Brief Sketch of a Viable Alternative
I can only briefly sketch how a viable alternative would work and have to point the
interested reader to our primary articles (Atmanspacher, Romer, & Walach, 2002; ¨
Romer & Walach, 2011; Walach, 2005; Walach & R ¨ omer, 2000, 2011). I think ¨
a minimal meeting ground between any spiritual claim—thus also of transpersonal
psychology—mainstream science would be what I call the complementarist model of
body-mind interaction. It starts from the assumption that complementarity, as originally introduced by Nils Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, is
a basic principle of nature, ontology, and epistemology alike (Bohr, 1937). Complementarity refers to the fact that an entity, a situation, or even a complex reality, can
only be described by applying two seemingly contradictory statements at the same time
(Atmanspacher & Primas, 2006). This is what the early theorists of quantum mechanics have discovered about the nature of the quantum. You can, for instance, describe
its momentum and measure it exactly. But then you lose the knowledge of its position.
You can measure its position, but then you lose all information about its momentum.
Yet both, position and momentum, are necessary to characterize a particle. Although
in classical, Newtonian physics, it is possible to measure position and momentum
independent of each other at the same entity, say of a bullet shot from a gun, and
thus predict trajectory and impact, this is no longer possible in quantum mechanics.
Position and momentum of a quantum particle, say a photon, are both necessary to
characterize the particle. Yet in quantum mechanics they are complementary, because
they require measurement set-ups that are mutually exclusive. Technically speaking,
so called canonical or complementary variables—position and momentum, time and
energy, to name the best known ones—and complementarity are at the foundational
basis of quantum mechanics (Kim & Mahler, 2000). They are irreducible, at least in
the common conceptual framework that is currently most widely held. They are the
source of the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship and they characterize the strange
behavior of quantum systems. Two of them are worth mentioning here:
1 In quantum mechanics measurements impact the measured entity. Once position
is measured, it is also changed. Only Newtonian physics knows a measurement
without any impact on the measured, or rather, the impact of the measurement
can be ignored.
2 In quantum mechanics complementary variables also define entanglement (Nadeau
& Kafatos, 1999). Or put differently, entanglement is a special case of complementarity, namely the complementarity between the global variable, that is, the
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78 Harald Walach
description of a whole system, and the local variables, or descriptors of elements
within the system. For instance, in a two photon system, where through downconversion in a beam-splitting crystal two correlated photons have been produced
from one single photon, the two photons form two elements of one system. The
joint polarization of the system—the plane in which a wave is propagating—is
the global variable. Individual photon polarizations are local variables. They are
complementary to the global one—that is, their description is mutually exclusive. In mathematical terms: the polarizations are orthogonal. The system has
to be described both by the global variable—spin 0—and the local variables—
orthogonal polarizations—and both, the local and the global descriptions, are
clearly incompatible or mutually exclusive within a classical logical framework.
In quantum mechanics this is the reason why the two photons belonging to the
one system described by one equation are “entangled,” non-locally correlated. If
you measure one particle and find as a result spin up, you know instantaneously
that the other particle will be measured as down. This is true even if you could
separate the two photons so far and measure at exactly the same time so that
no messenger particle could travel between the two and convey the result of one
of the measurements to the other particle. This is why this correlation is often
called non-local, a technical term derived from the special theory of relativity, in
which light is the maximum speed in the universe and hence all parts of the universe that are connected by light beams are called locally connected. The particles
in such a quantum entanglement experiment are not locally connected, because
light particles could not travel the distance between the measurement apparatuses,
and hence the correlation is called non-local (Cushing, 1989; Mermin, 1989;
Wessels, 1989).
This theoretically predicted behavior of quantum systems has been empirically tested
repeatedly and such entanglement has been observed, even at distances and with setups that make sure the correlation is really non-local (Salart, Baas, Branciard, Gisin,
& Zbinden, 2008).
Now, it is well known, and also very important for a proper understanding, that
some quantum properties only pertain to quantum systems as such (Tegmark, 2000).
Entanglement, as a quantum property, disappears very quickly with the interaction
of particles and the environment (Yu & Eberly, 2009). This also defines why human
observers see a world that behaves in a largely classical way (Romer, 2011). ¨
Nevertheless, it might still make sense to use the conceptual structures and framework of quantum mechanics. This is what we have done in forming a more general
theory, Generalized Quantum Theory, which we stipulate is applicable to all sorts
of systems and to systems of all make-ups (Atmanspacher, Filk, & Romer, 2006; ¨
Atmanspacher et al., 2002; Romer & Walach, 2011). Whether it is true and viable ¨
remains open to debate at this point, and I am claiming no more than general rational
plausibility and some a priori reason. This a priori reason is the structural similarity
and analogy between the make-up of systems (Baianu & Poli, 2011; Gernert, 1989;
Zeleny, 1981). Ultimately this is an idea that is very old, but was again brought into
the discussion by systems theory, claiming that some abstract principles of how systems
are formed can be seen at all systemic levels, from atoms to molecules to organisms to
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 79
the Milky Way. In the same sense, our generalization of quantum theory claims that
some principles of systemic similarity may perhaps be observed on every systemic level.
Complementarity was already suspected by Nils Bohr to play a role in epistemology
and in other areas, when he, for instance, thought that ultimately the whole world
might be governed by the principle of complementarity (Bohr, 1997; Rosenfeld,
1963). We have taken up this idea, which in its essence dates back to Heraclitus,
but surely to Spinoza in the 17th century and, in another form, was taken up by
Leibniz, his contemporaneous fellow philosopher who gave the idea another, more
physical twist. And we have claimed that it is fruitful to conceptualize mind and
matter, consciousness and brain, as two complementary descriptions of one entity,
the human being (Walach & Romer, 2011). They are complementary in that they ¨
cannot be reduced to one another. Both are needed for a full description. And they
are ultimate—that is, there is no other known entity that can serve as an explanation
of both, except in a very speculative sense. We could, for instance, claim that there
is still an underlying reality, the unified whole, Jung called it unus mundus—one
world—that generates both mental and material ways of being (Atmanspacher, 2003;
Atmanspacher & Primas, 2006). But that would be quite speculative and is not
necessary at this level of conceptualization. What is necessary is the acknowledgement
that both are ultimately of equal ontological dignity, that neither is “primary” or
“superior” to the other. Rather they seem to co-arise and seem to be necessary to
understand the human being.
Recently, some rather strong logical elements have been raised that are still not
heard well enough (Hoche, 2008). They clearly show that to transition from mental
concepts to material concepts or back is trespassing on categories and making severe
category mistakes. Thus, I claim, a complementarist solution of the mind-body or
consciousness-brain problem seems to be a rational proposal, plausible on the ground
that it uses well-known principles of physics and extrapolates them, and it is nonreductionist. It allows consciousness actually its own status and thus also potentially
its own epistemological role. If consciousness is co-primary with matter, one might
not only have a route through the senses to understand the world, outer experience,
but also the route through consciousness, inner experience. In other words, inner and
outer experience are then also two complementary modes of relating to the world.
We have also generalized entanglement in our model. This follows naturally from
the general description used above. We have produced a host of arguments and specifications elsewhere (Romer & Walach, 2011; Walach & R ¨ omer, 2011), hence I will ¨
keep it brief here. The mind actually fulfils some requirements known from quantum
mechanics as being typical for quantum systems. For instance, if one “measures” a
psychological state, say by introspection, that state is at the same time changed. This
is a clear hint that we have some entity at hand that fulfils some requirements of a
quantum description. We can conceive of mental and physical states as complementary
to each other, but also as instances of descriptions that are complementary to a global
systemic description, namely that of the whole person. In other words, we would
assume that there holds also a generalized type of entanglement between appropriate
mental and physical states. Thus, generalized entanglement would provide the “mechanism,” albeit of a non-local kind, with no signaling happening, that co-ordinates the
mental and the physical system. It then also becomes clear why mental states can
Friedman, H. L., & Hartelius, G. (Eds.). (2013). The wiley-blackwell handbook of transpersonal psychology. ProQuest Ebook Central <a
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80 Harald Walach
be causal for physical states. It may also be rationally conceivable how human units,
single persons, can form systems that again are non-locally coordinated into a kind of
synergism that works without classical signals. A good example can be the extremely
fine tuned coordination of artistic groups like ballet dancers, orchestras or choirs in
exceptionally harmonious performances.
This, then, could foster the field of transpersonal psychology with a basis to stand
on, and a minimal consensus with the mainstream: Consciousness as complementary
to matter allows for epistemological access of consciousness to reality in its own right.
Although the step to generalized entanglement is by no means dependent on, or
consequent of that stipulation, it is a naturally occurring one, once one has accepted
that the principles—I repeat, the principles, not the physics—of quantum mechanics
may have relevance for the world at large. But I would like to leave it here, as we are
clearly entering a highly contentious area. I have sketched this to demonstrate one
thing: It is possible to use the theoretical structures offered by mainstream science
and extend them to incorporate phenomena dealt with in the spiritual domain or in
transpersonal psychology (Walach, 2011).
Four Roads into the Future
From here, there are several options to move forward, and all have been tried with
more or less success:
1 Oppose the development of the mainstream, claiming that transpersonal psychology has so much more to offer, and that one should just abandon the Titanic that
is sinking anyway and move about in little rafts. Only the Titanic is not sinking
and the rafts have not gotten anywhere.
2 Try to offer a completely different ontology, for instance one of the older idealistic systems, or one of the Eastern ones, claiming that they are better suited to
accommodate spiritual experiences. Only few people believe that there is anything
worthwhile of which to take note.
3 Try to leave the paradigmatic foundations of science unchallenged accepting the
course and route it has taken and say, “Well folks, like it or not, unless you go
scientific, you will not be able to produce an impact and you will not be taken
seriously.”
4 Try to offer new paradigmatic foundations to science, accepting the route it has
taken so far, but extending its scope by using the armament, the conceptual
foundations, and the theoretical instruments science has in store. This is what I
have tried to sketch above, and it goes without saying this is what I believe is the
most fruitful and potentially the most powerful and also unifying approach.
The first route is what many Transpersonalists have done. They have created their
little universes and their own rafts, some of them quite comfortable. In that category I would place a lot of the work done around altered states of consciousness,
through Holotropic Breathwork or drugs (Griffiths, Richards, Johnson, McCann, &
Jesse, 2008; Krippner & Sulla, 2000; Shanon, 2002). Some of this work is seeking
Friedman, H. L., & Hartelius, G. (Eds.). (2013). The wiley-blackwell handbook of transpersonal psychology. ProQuest Ebook Central <a
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 81
relationship with the mainstream by using scientific methodology. This may be a first
important step, but it may not be sufficient, because it is still happening in a context
that is a bit like an isolated island or raft.
The second route is what some grand approaches to transpersonal psychology have
tried. I would class Wilber’s attempt here. If the conceptual foundations were more
historically conscious of the problems in the history of science one could avoid the
pitfalls. But as I see it at the moment, this attempt is not really working, because it
neglects both the historical preconditions and the actual and current types of theorizing. The parallels between spiritual disciplines and science are too na¨ıvely accepted at
face value and the understanding of what science is and how it operates is coming too
much from an outdated understanding of scientific background theory. Ultimately,
it will be publication of ideas in peer-reviewed, mainstream journals, tapping into
mainstream debates that will be the only means of influencing the discussion.
The first two approaches are also often associated with the founding of subcultures
and special universes of discourse that are unconnected with the rest of the world and
derive their own definitions and understanding from the fact that they are supposedly
so much better than what the rest of the crowd is doing. This is a narcissistic motive
and, in my view, a big problem of the whole field (Walach, 2008). In it, founders
and leaders can feel important, collecting followers who support this interpretation,
ultimately keeping both restricted in a narcissistic collusion that neither helps solve
problems, nor moves our insight forward. A clear sign that this is happening, in my
view, is whenever special circles of in-groups separate themselves from the “others,”
who are seen as not understanding as deeply. The history and presence of transpersonal
psychology is full of this.
The third route comes in two flavors. One flavor relies on the mainstream scientific ground of the natural sciences and categorizes psychology as a natural science.
Within such an approach, one can surely use the methods of science to study such
transpersonal aspects, specific interventions, say, or construct questionnaires to capture
transpersonal constructs as expansion or transpersonal trust (Friedman, 1983, 2002,
2009; Friedman & MacDonald, 2002; Kohls & Walach, 2008; MacDonald, LeClair,
Holland, Alter, & Friedman, 2002). The other flavor uses a humanities approach and
relies more on the discussion that has been produced within the cultural studies area.
This has been dubbed Transpersonal Studies (Friedman, 2002). This is surely a viable
route and some of the authors working within academic institutions use it (Lancaster,
2000, 2004, 2011).
The fourth route is what we have started and which I would naturally advocate as
the best. It is, admittedly, likely also a bit more strenuous and difficult, but is the only
one that I see as a viable, forward route that has a chance of creating impact.
So how could it work? I think the key would be the Science and the Culture of
Consciousness.
Towards a Science and a Culture of Consciousness
The natural partners for transpersonal psychology are all those people who are trying
to build a science of consciousness. Here, at present, a mainstream view that starts
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82 Harald Walach
from materialist assumptions dominates. But this is so, because most other people have
moved out. I think this mainstream view needs challenging. So far the challenging has
happened so far from behind the hedge. It needs to happen in the open. That means
writing and publishing in and for mainstream outlets, thus discussing the pertinent
issues. For, after all, there are common topics: how to understand consciousness, what
concepts are helpful, and where the common ground is.
From a practical point of view the common ground is the culture of consciousness
(Metzinger, 2006). In a modern world with an exponential growth of information
technology, cognitive capacities are taxed to the limit. Soon there will be an epidemic
growth of incapacitated individuals who cannot handle any more the amount of incoming information and whose cognitive capacities are crippled by information overload.
Only some way of cultivating consciousness through practices that have naturally
been the domain of transpersonal psychology and spiritual traditions—meditation,
techniques to relax and collect the mind—will likely be reliable measures of relief
here. This is where theory will meet practice and the notion of transformative practice
will come into effect (Hartelius, Caplan, & Rardin, 2007). Thus there is common
practical ground.
These issues will also let the areas of dissonance—the conceptual and philosophical
issues—move towards the background in order for some practical solutions to
come into focus. This may give a wholly different twist to the discussion. What
transpersonal psychology does might even be defined as the study and culture of
consciousness. Interestingly enough, the researchers studying the neuroscientific
basis of consciousness and the neurocognitive models of consciousness, even though
coming from a strictly materialist point of view have realized one thing: The brain,
substrate to the elusive phenomenon of consciousness, is itself being remodeled and
changed by consciousness in action. Just learning how to juggle will have changed
the thickness of the respective brain areas within a week (Driemeyer, Boyke, Gaser,
Buchel, & May, 2008). In the same sense, all activities will have an effect feeding back ¨
on the brain, the substrate of our consciousness itself. In other words: consciousness
and how it is directed will change the material basis of its own subsistence. This
has also been shown for meditation: meditators have different brain structures than
people who do not meditate (Ott et al., 2011).
If it is possible to show, empirically and with accepted methodology, that following
a spiritual discipline will have an impact on people’s lives, on their experience of
difficulties and suffering, of illness and disease, then transpersonal psychology will
have made a difference. If one replaces the terminology of “spirituality,” “spiritual,”
“religion,” and “religiosity,” which all have a denominational ring to them, by the term
“culture of consciousness” then the enterprise is aligned with the thrust of science. By
harnessing the insights and the power of science, it becomes possible to move away
from a separatist position. That will still allow people to hold on to their own private
creeds and belief systems. It will not abolish religion and it will not negate spirituality.
But it will move them out of the domain of science and will move those elements
that can be aligned with science closer to it. Once this has happened, the vision of
the founding fathers and mothers of transpersonal psychology will have become true.
Psychology will then have become more inclusive and will have introduced the idea
of growth beyond what can be perceived at the moment.
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Criticisms of Transpersonal Psychology and Beyond 83
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Friedman, H. L., & Hartelius, G. (Eds.). (2013). The wiley-blackwell handbook of transpersonal psychology. ProQuest Ebook Central <a
onclick=window.open(‘http://ebookcentral.proquest.com’,’_blank’) href=’http://ebookcentral.proquest.com’ target=’_blank’ style=’cursor: pointer;’>http://ebookcentral.proquest.Created from sofia on 2020-11-28 21:10:50. Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.