The Evolution of Transpersonal Psychology with Jorge Ferrer

Jorge Ferrer, PhD, is former chair of the department of east-west psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is currently a core faculty member there. He is author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, and Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion. He is the coeditor of an anthology titled, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies. He is known as a leading proponent of the “second wave” of transpersonal theorists.

Here he describes the origins of transpersonal psychology, focusing on the work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof. He notes that the “first wave” of thinkers in this field embraced the notion of a “perennial philosophy” or, in other words, an underlying unity to the world’s mystical and spiritual traditions. As a second wave theorist, he points out many of the problems associated with such a unity and argues, instead, that mystical traditions are pluralistic and not unitary. He then describes many other features of contemporary transpersonal thought.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.

(Recorded on September 19, 2018)

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