Spiritual Emergency: The Understanding and Treatment of Transpersonal Crises

There exists increasing evidence that many individuals experiencing episodes of nonordinary states of consciousness accompanied by various emotional, perceptual, and psychosomatic manifestations are undergoing an evolutionary crisis rather than suffering from a mental disease (Grof, 1985). The recognition of this fact has important practical and theoretical consequences. If properly understood and treated as difficult stages in a natural developmental process, these experiences—spiritual emergencies or transpersonal crises—can result in emotional and psychosomatic healing, creative problem-solving, personality transformation, and consciousness evolution. is fact is reflected in the term “spiritual emergency,” which suggests a crisis, but also suggests the potential for rising to a higher state of being

Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology

The International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring global conferences for the international transpersonal community. The association was subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalized. As background for this development, this paper reviews the history of ITA including its international conferences and noteworthy presenters, the organization’s definition, strategies, and specific goals, and details of its contemporary revival

The Past and Future of the International Transpersonal Association

The International Transpersonal Association (ITA) was formed in 1978 for the purposes of promoting education and research in transpersonal subjects, as well as sponsoring global conferences for the international transpersonal community. The association was subsequently dissolved in 2004, but is now in the process of being reactivated and revitalized. As background for this development, this paper reviews the history of ITA including its international conferences and noteworthy presenters, the organization’s definition, strategies, and specific goals, and details of its contemporary revival

Healing in the Sámi North

There is a special emphasis today on integrating traditional healing within health services. However, most areas in which there is a system of traditional healing have undergone colonization and a number of pressures suppressing tradition for hundreds of years. The question arises as to how one can understand today’s tradition in light of earlier traditions. This article is based on material collected in Sámi areas of Finnmark and Nord-Troms Norway; it compares local healing traditions with what is known of earlier shamanic traditions in the area. The study is based on 27 interviews among healers and their patients. The findings suggest that although local healing traditions among the Sámi in northern Norway have undergone major transformations during the last several hundred years, they may be considered an extension of a long-standing tradition with deep roots in the region. Of special interest are also the new forms tradition may take in today’s changing global society

Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research

The objective of this paper is to summarize my experiences and observations concerning the nature of the human psyche in health and disease that I have amassed during more than fifty years of research of non-ordinary states of consciousness. I will focus specifically on those findings that represent a serious theoretical challenge for academic psychology and psychiatry and suggest the revisions of our current understanding of consciousness and the human psyche that would be necessary to come to terms with the new data, understand them, and explain them

Revision and Re-enchantment of the Legacy of Psychology from a Half Century of Consciousness Research

Drawing on observations from more than fifty years of research into an important subgroup of non-ordinary states of consciousness that he calls holotropic, the author suggests a revision of some basic assumptions of modern psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. The proposed changes involve the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter, dimensions of the human psyche, the roots of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, and therapeutic strategy. In the light of the new observations, spirituality appears to be an essential attribute of the human psyche and of existence in general. An important and controversial subject that could be only tangentially addressed in the context of this paper is the importance of archetypal psychology and astrology for consciousness research

Ken Wilber’s Spectrum Psychology: Observations from Clinical Consciousness Research

In his article Stanislav Grof evaluates the pioneering spectrum of consciousness theory of Ken Wilber and discusses its impact on the development of transpersonal psychology

The Experience of Death and Dying: Psychological, Philosophical and Spiritual Aspects

The article discusses some psychological, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of the research on death and dying. The author challenges materialistic understanding of death, based on metaphysical assumption inherited from the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm that had became one of the leading myths of the Western science, according to which consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, a product of the physiological processes in the brain, and thus critically dependent on the body. By reviewing the existing data and observations from various fields of research he points out to the fact that there is no proof for such a reductive claim. The research of the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of death and dying discussed in this paper offers considerable theoretical and practical implications, enabling the refusal of materialistic interpretation of death as the final end of human existence and conscious activity of any kind