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Existential Analysis 23.1: January 2012

Existentialism and the Transpersonal

John Rowan

Abstract

An attempt to comment on the low level of attention to the transpersonal in

the journalExistential Analysis. In view of the eminent existentialists who

have expressed a personal interest in the spiritual realms, this seems odd.

Some possible lines of enquiry are pursued.

Key words

Existentialists, transpersonal, meditation

Transpersonal psychology has been developing since the 1960s, and is now

well established, through learned journals like the Journal of

Transpersonal Psychology and the BPS Transpersonal Psychology Review.

It was named by Maslow and Sutich as an alternative to the word

spirituality, which had become too wide and general and used in a variety

of ways, some respectable, some less so. The great advantage of using the

term transpersonal is that it is quite clear and explicit, referring to a stageof psychospiritual development that is not to be confused with the pre-

personal (pre-rational, pre-conventional, etc.) and the personal (everyday

life, the consensus trance, the they, the mental ego, or whatever label

we find useful). It includes the authentic (Wade, 1996), and also the further

stages postulated in various systems, such as the Soul Path of many

mystics and the Impersonal Divine described by others (Cortright, 1997).

In recent years it has been subjected to the critiques of Ferrer (2002) and

others, but this gets very academic and wordy, and we need not follow all

these controversies in what follows.

Looking through back issues ofExistential Analysis, I find there are very

few references to the transpersonal. Just to remind everyone, the

transpersonal is the more acceptable name for spirituality, because it makes

it clear that while spirituality can take pre-personal (fundamentalist),

personal (conventional) and transpersonal forms, the transpersonal has

only one meaning. It is clearly transconventional, transrational (in the

sense of going beyond formal logic), transintellectual and so forth.

Similarly, we do not use the word God because, as with spirituality, therecan be all sorts of limited or undesirable definitions of God, sometimes

l di i

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John Rowan

It is true that, even in the more restricted, and in some sense scientific,

realm of the transpersonal, there are conflicting voices. Perhaps the best-

known division is between Wilber and Washburn (see Rothberg & Kelly

(1998) for a good account of several of these controversies), although here

I think Washburn lost this particular battle (Thomas et al, 1993). In the

light of all this, it seems simpler for the purposes of this essay to take for

the moment the map provided by Ken Wilber, which is at least clear and

unambiguous.

What Wilber says is that within the transpersonal realm, there are two

great divisions; the Subtle and the Causal (Wilber, 2000). The former is the

realm of symbols and images, of archetypes and other concrete

representations of the divine. It is basically polytheistic (Miller, 1981). The

latter is the realm of the infinite, of ultimate concerns (Tillich, 1958), of the

Absolute, or the One, the All, or the None.

Sometimes, reading article after article about Heidegger (who, after all,was quite religious [Letunovsky, 2006]), I miss the names of all those who

were firmly existential but also fully aware of the transpersonal path of

personal development. Keirkegaard was one of the pioneers of the

existential outlook, but he always spoke in terms of a transpersonal

dimension to life. Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Rudolph

Bultmann, Nicholas Berdyaev, Miguel de Unamuno, Rollo May all of

these had a place for the transpersonal within and because of their

existentialism.

In more recent times, Kirk Schneider has contributed some very valuablethoughts in this area (Schneider, 2008; Schneider & Krug, 2010), which

very carefully outline both the advantages and the possible pitfalls

involved in a transpersonal approach.

What difference does it make whether an existentialist writer and thinker

accepts the transpersonal argument or not? Either way, he or she may

experience being thrown into a world which can be confusing or

problematical. But the difference is that the transpersonalist feels wonder

at all this, while the person who steers clear of the transpersonal is more

likely to feel despair, absurdity or futility. Neither of these responses is true

or false they are just different. And I know which I prefer.

There was an old prejudice against existentialism that it was atheistic

and narrow. This may have come from a set of images, which include

Sartre, the Left Bank, students dressed in black in smoky cafes, and so

forth, but if we look at the names above we see very clearly that there is a

very wide range of existentialists, with a broad variety of opinions about

the transpersonal. So why is the transpersonal so seldom mentioned in the

Journal? I am puzzled.

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Existentialism and the Transpersonal

Emmy van Deurzen

Someone who has addressed this problem is Emmy van Deurzen. She has

postulated a fourth region of experience beyond the Umwelt, the Mitwelt

and the Eigenwelt, which she calls the Uberwelt. However, having

introduced the possibility of talking about the transpersonal, she has done

very little with it. Even in her book on the pursuit of happiness it gets aquite fulsome mention, but nothing much in the way of content. It is more

like a place set for a guest who never actually appears.

For example, she says elsewhere: Existential exploration addresses a

more spiritual dimension of insecurity as it is directly about the finding of

meaning. It provides a focus on life issues, with which many people these

days have difficulties. It addresses moral issues head on and it allows

people to come to grips with meaning (van Deurzen, 1997: p124). But

there is no attempt to explore this spiritual dimension for its own sake, and

so the opportunity to go somewhere with this insight is missed.

Where might she go? One example would be the direction taken by

Martin Buber: A life that does not seek to realise what the living person,

in the ground of his self-awareness, understands or glimpses as the right is

not merely unworthy of the spirit: it is also unworthy of life (Buber, 1958:

p40). Here is someone who has fully embraced the life of spirit, instead of

touching it gingerly, as if with tongs.

Jyoti NandaA frequent contributor to the journal Existential Analysis is Jyoti Nanda,

who definitely embraces the transpersonal in what she writes. She has

written very well, for example, on mindfulness. Mindfulness is a form of

meditation, and as such may lead the practitioner into the realm of the

transpersonal very readily. Of course, coming mainly from a Buddhist

orientation, Nanda emphasises the Causal and says very little about the

Subtle. The Buddhists do have a word for the Subtle they call it the

Sambhogakaya to distinguish it from theDharmakaya, which is the Causal

realm in terms of the distinctions made above. But to recognise the Causal

and have a way to talk about it is much better than leaving the

transpersonal alone altogether.

What she understands, for example in her research study on mindfulness

(Nanda, 2005), is that there are states of consciousness other than our

everyday level. One of her co-researchers says: When I go into a

meditative state, I go into the small, clear state of quiet awareness. I just

come from a much stiller place; less influenced by my personal agendas.

So I tend to be much calmer, much more understanding, much lessreactive. This is a level of consciousness which I would label as the

C l I th h thi d t t l l (A &

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John Rowan

a way that would enable such material to emerge. But at this level of

consciousness participants really get the existential message, allowing the

co-researcher to think of change, impermanence, and death, though

terrifying, as a given of existence, which cannot be got rid of, and allowing

the co-researcher to stay with the clients suffering with compassion

(Nanda, 2005: p331).

What I think is important, however, is that the compassion we are

referring to here is a very particular form of compassion. Everyday

compassion, as we often hear, can suffer from fatigue. But this kind of

compassion, which I would label as some form of spiritual compassion,

does not suffer from fatigue. Whether it is existential compassion, or

Subtle compassion, or Causal compassion, it goes beyond the everyday

level of Das Man, which can be so slippery or shaky. Once we get the

concept of levels firmly held in our minds, all sorts of issues look very

different. As I said in an essay on meaning and meaninglessness (2004),we get away from the awful dominance of saying We think this, or We

do that. There is no We, in the sense of uniform unreconstructed

individuals who all think the same.

And psychotherapy is one place where many of us experience that sense

of moving from one level to another. As Les Todres said:

Even deeper than this sense of personal agency, is the achievement of

a more complex experience of their own personal identity, and this

complexity constitutes the sense of freedom that they were referringto when responding to the research question. The sense of freedom is

an experience of being more than Being more than what I had

previously thought and felt; Being more than what I had said up till

now; Being more than any premature judgment of myself good or

bad; Being more than any thing or self-enclosed entity that reacts

to forces and causes.

(Todres 2002, p.103)This is well said, and my own experience of meditating every morning

since 1982 certainly chimes in with this way of putting it.

Todres goes on to say: So the study revealed that, paradoxically, in

returning clients to the concrete details of their lives, psychotherapy is a

work of un-specialisation, or de-role-ing, a sense of complexity of

personal identity that is more than any definition can capture. (Todres,

2002; p104). This clearly moves into the transpersonal realm, and reminds

us that therapy is not just about fixing problems.

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Existentialism and the Transpersonal

Jan Sheppard

Which brings us to Jan Sheppard, who contributed a sparkling essay on

Gelassenheit, no-mind and psychotherapy. He explains that the term

Gelassenheit, as used by Heidegger, means releasement, but also

calmness, detachment, serenity, composure or concern or, more crudely,

letting-be (Sheppard, 2003: p253). He argues that Heidegger appears tobe using the term Gelassenheit as a synonym for meditative thinking,

contrasted with the calculative thinking that is generally encouraged in our

culture. By characterising releasement as a kind of waiting which simply

waits, Heidegger conveys a sense of holding oneself open without having

anything in mind, with an alertness to each moment Releasement means

becoming aware of our openness (ibid: p255). This is a good description

of the kind of meditation that is cultivated in mindfulness, as described in

the quotations above. Sheppard argues that this is the same as the Zen

doctrine of no-mind. As in releasement, when defeated, the [Zen] initiate

sees that he, the agent, does not act, there is just acting or just thinking. It is

happening, but neither to anyone nor from anyone, as for Heidegger it is

let in (ibid: p256). What is being described here is what in the

transpersonal field is called the Causal level of consciousness. As outlined

at the beginning of this essay, the Causal level is the level where the

meditator lets go of ordinary consciousness and even of Subtle

consciousness, and basks in the great openness, the being without limits.

We do not need to speak of the heiteres Gelassenheit to understand this,but it is important to make the link with Heidegger, and so to show that

such notions are no stranger to existential thinking. In cultivating

mindfulness in psychotherapy we are doing something profoundly

existential, in my opinion. The fact that such methods are also embraced by

the behaviourists is neither here nor there.

Conclusion

This is not the place to go much further. We can indeed tease out the

distinction between the Causal and the Nondual, and I have done this

elsewhere (Rowan, 2007), but for the present purpose this is not necessary.

I simply wanted to register that the existential approach is by no means

hostile to the transpersonal, and has indeed made contributions to it.

Of course, in this brief essay I have not dealt with all the ramifications of

the mystical realm, which itself has an enormous literature (e.g. Harmless,

2008), and in recent years Jorge Ferrer has contributed some stirring

arguments critiquing the whole idea of the perennial philosophy which is

so prevalent in this field. Enough for now.

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John Rowan

John Rowan is author of The Transpersonal: Spirituality in

Psychotherapy and Counselling and is on the editorial board of the BPS

Transpersonal Psychology Review.

Contact: 70 Kings Head Hill, London E4 7LY.

Email:johnrowan@aol.com

References

Aggs, C. & Bambling, M. (2010). Teaching mindfulness to

psychotherapists in clinical practice: The Mindful Therapy Programme.

Counselling & Psychotherapy Research, 10(4): 278-286.

Buber, M. (1958).Hasidism and Modern Man. New York: Horizon Press.

Cortright, B. (1997). Psythotherapy and Spirit: Theory and Practice in

Transpersonal Psychotherapy. Albany: SUNY Press.

Ferrer, J. N. (2002). Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A participatory

Vision of Human Spirituality. Albany: SUNY Press.Harmless, W. (2008).Mystics. USA: Oxford University Press.

Letunovsky, S. (2006). Was Heidegger a religious man? Existential

Analysis, (17)2:

312-319.

Miller, D. L. (1981). The New Polytheism. Dallas: Spring Publications.

Nanda, J. (2005). A phenomenological enquiry into the effect of

meditation on therapeutic practice.Existential Analysis, 16(2): 322-335.

Rothberg, D. & Kelly, S. (eds) (1998). Ken Wilber in Dialogue:Conversations With Leading Transpersonal Thinkers. Wheaton: Quest.

Rowan, J. (2004). Meaning and meaninglessness. BPS Psychotherapy

Section Newsletter, 36: 2232.

Rowan, J (2007) The Mental Ego is not the Centaur: The Causal is not the

Nondual.BPS Transpersonal Psychology Review, 11(1): 19-28.

Schneider, K. J. (ed), (2008). Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy:

Guideposts to the Core of Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.

Schneider, K. J. and Krug, O. T. (2010). Existential-Humanistic Therapy.

Washington: APA.Sheppard, J. (2003). Gelassenheit, no-mind and psychotherapy.Existential Analysis 14(2): 251-264.

Thomas, L.E., Brewer, S.J., Kraus, P.A., & Rosen, B.L. (1993). Two

Patterns of Transcendence: An Empirical Examination of Wilber's and

Washburn's Theories.Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 33(3): pp66-81.

Tillich, P. (1958).Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Todres, L. (2002). Globalization and the complexity of self: The relevance

of psychotherapy.Existential Analysis 13(1): 98-105.

van Deurzen, E. (1997). Everyday Mysteries: Existential Dimensions of

Psychotherapy London: Routledge

mailto:johnrowan@aol.commailto:johnrowan@aol.commailto:johnrowan@aol.commailto:johnrowan@aol.com

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Wade, J. (1996). Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution

of Consciousness. Albany: SUNY Press.

Wilber, K (2000).Integral Psychology. Boston: Shambhala.

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