Beyond Mind III: Further Steps to a Metatranspersonal Philosophy and Psychology (Continuation of the Discussion on the Three Best Known Transpersonal Paradigms, with a Focus on Washburn and Grof )

Abstract

This paper gives continuity to the criticism, undertaken in two papers previously published in this journal, of transpersonal systems that fail to discriminate between nirvanic, samsaric, and neithernirvanic- nor-samsaric transpersonal states, and which present the absolute sanity of Awakening as a dualistic, conceptually-tainted condition. It also gives continuity to the denunciation of the false disjunction between ontogenically ascending and descending paths, while showing the truly significant disjunction to be between existentially ascending and metaexistentially descending paths. However, whereas in the preceding paper the focus was on Wilber’s so-called integral system, in this paper the focus of the main body is on the systems of Washburn and Grof. It features an appendix discussing psychedelics and the use of the term entheogens in their regard, and another appendix showing Wilber’s system to give continuity to the Orphic dualism of Pythagoreans, Eleatics, and Plato, and the covert Orphic dualism of Neo-Platonics.