The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
October 31, 2022
Charles Hamilton
Ram Dass, the iconic, countercultural, spiritual seeker, brought the wisdom of the East to those of us in the West through his many books and frequent, charismatic dharma talks. This view of his spiritual journey describes the transformation of Richard Alpert, clinical psychologist and product of the Western milieu’s often-shackling conventional expectations, into Ram Dass, the free, embodied...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
October 31, 2022
Tadas Stumbrys
Lucid dreams, in which the dreamers are aware that they are dreaming, can be a source of spiritual and mystical experiences. This empirical study aimed to explore the relationship between lucid dreaming and spirituality, taking into account the role of mystical lucid dream experience, in an online sample of 471 respondents, 95% of whom had lucid dream experience and 65% were frequent lucid...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
October 31, 2022
Glenn Hartelius
A number of scholars well known within transpersonal psychology appear to be converging on open scientific naturalism as a philosophically and methodologically fruitful framework for transpersonal and related fields. This builds on the nascent open naturalism evidenced in the early years of transpersonal psychology, before it entered its metaphysical phase (ca. 1975 to 2000). Since it is...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
August 5, 2022
Glenn Hartelius
Prior research on the role of empirical research in transpersonal psychology is updated, along with trends in gender diversity and geographical distribution of authorships. Data was compiled from a review of articles published in the two main journals of the field, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, over the first five decades of the...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
August 5, 2022
Hessel Engelbregt, Hugo F. Alderse Bass, Sietske De Grauw et al.
Objective: In this study, we evaluated brain electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in healthy participants during the performance of paired and individual mindfulness meditation (MM). We hypothesized that EEG activity is differentially affected by meditation in pairs compared to individual meditation. Methods: A total of 20 healthy female university students (mean age 19.54 years, SD =1.53)...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
March 18, 2022
K. O. St. Arnaud
Although existential suffering is amongst the most devastating forms of distress experienced by many patients nearing the end-of-life, it is often unsatisfactorily addressed due to a paucity of effective interventions. However, both historic and recent studies of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy have reported marked alleviation of this suffering. As such, this article seeks to advance the...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
March 18, 2022
H. L. Walker
In original research on empowering adult North Americans who aspire to address the ecological crisis (N = 21), heuristic inquiry, participatory action research, and thematic analysis were applied to examining the challenges and inspirations to coresearchers' broadly defined activism. The following themes emerged: Entheogenic and nature-oriented transpersonal and awe-evoking experiences;...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
March 18, 2022
N. Yiangou
The Sufi tradition that arose within Islam describes a compelling and varied map of the self and its transformations. Over the span of a millennium of practice and discourse, Sufis have explored and detailed the stages of the journey of self-transformation towards their ultimate aim of union with the One. Their models of the spiritual journey and of the emergent transpersonal self, extensively...
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
February 17, 2022
Glenn Hartelius
Research on definitions of the field of psychology and themes in the literature of the field over a period of 20 years inform this description: Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person embedded within a diverse, interconnected, and evolving world that pays particular attention to states of consciousness and developmental models reflecting expansion beyond...