Ferrer - Participation and the mystery transpersonal essays in psychology, education, and religion

PARTICIPATION AND THE MYSTERY

Transpersonal Essays in Psychology,
Education, and Religion

JORGE N. FERRER

S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

Cover image courtesy of NASA.

Published by

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Albany

2017 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact

State University of New York Press

www.sunypress.edu

Production, Laurie D. Searl

Marketing, Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Ferrer, Jorge N. (Jorge Noguera), 1968 author.

Title: Participation and the mystery : transpersonal essays in psychology, education, and religion / by Jorge N. Ferrer.

Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031415| ISBN 9781438464879 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438464886 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Transpersonal psychology. | SpiritualityPsychology. | Psychology, Religious.

Classification: LCC BF204.7 .F47 2017 | DDC 150.19/87dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031415

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

PART ONE
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

PART TWO
INTEGRAL EDUCATION

(with Marina T. Romero and Ramn V. Albareda)

PART THREE
SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the product of more than a decade of thinking deeply about the implications of a participatory worldview for contemporary psychology, education, and religion. As usual with any book of this kind, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the countless individuals who generously offered me their critical input after reading earlier versions of these chapters. I am also grateful to those who took the time to write reviews of my previous books or engage my work through various personal or scholarly exchanges. These contributions not only helped to improve the presentation of my ideas, but also saved this work from many conceptual imprecisions and oversights.

In particular, I want to thank the following friends, scholars, and colleagues (in alphabetical order): John Abramson, George Adams, Ramn V. Albareda, Bruce Alderman, A. H. Almaas, Rosemarie Anderson, Masoud Arez, Christopher Bache, Natalia Barahona Noseda, Father Bruno Barnhart, William B. Barnard, Michael Bauwens, Duane R. Bidwell, Nicholas G. Boeving, Andrew F. Burninston, Elias Capriles, Craig Chalquist, William C. Chittick, Christopher Clarke, Brendan Collins, Randy Conner, Andrew Cooper, Paul F. Cunningham, Edward J. Dale, Marylin C. J. Daniels, Michael Daniels, Douglas Duckworth, Sean Esbjrn-Hargens, Roland Faber, Gabriel Fernandez, Charles Flores, Robert K. C. Forman, Anthony Freeman, Paul D. Freinkel, Harris Friedman, Octavio Garca, Ann L. Gleig, Gerry Goddard, Ellen Goldberg, Stanislav Grof, M. S. Haar Farris, Glenn Hartelius, John Heron, Michael Hollick, Pablo Ianiszewski, Lee Irwin, Karen Jaenke, Don Hanlon Johnson, Stephen Kaplan, Sean Kelly, Michael King, Jrgen Kremer, Jeffrey J. Kripal, Gregg Lahood, Brian L. Lancaster, Beverly Lanzetta, Michael Lerner, Agustn Lpez Tobajas, David Lorimer, David Loy, Sinesio Madrona, Juan Antonio Martinez de la Fe, Robert McDermott, Douglas McDonald, Vicente Merlo, Alfonso Montuori, Michael Murphy, David Nicol, Jos Antonio Noguera, Jay Ogilvy, Raimon Panikkar, Agustn Pniker, William Parsons, Jordi Piguem, Daryl S. Paulson, Iker Puente, Kaisa Puhakka, Peter Reason, Kenneth Ring, Oliver Robinson, Marina T. Romero, Donald Rothberg, John Rowan, Matthew D. Segal, Jacob H. Sherman, Bahman A. K. Shirazi, Larry Spiro, Olga R. Sohmer, Joseph Subbiondo, Nahuel Sugobono, Becca Tarnas, Richard Tarnas, Steve Taylor, Jenny Wade, Harald Walach, Michael Washburn, and Ken Wilber.

Special gratitude goes to my coauthors of , Marina T. Romero and Ramn V. Albareda, for permission to reproduce their work in this anthology.

Inspiring dialogues with my students at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco have significantly enriched the contents of this book. At CIIS, I also learned a great deal from chairing the doctoral research of Zayin Cabot, Samuel A. Malkemus, and Alex Rachel, who in their own unique ways are taking participatory thinking in new and exciting directions.

I would like to particularly thank Anna F. Doherty, whose editorial magic blessed many of the chapters of this book and makes the English prose of this Spaniard more elegant and idiomatic. I am also grateful to my research assistants, Elisabeth Teklinski and Jennifer Spesia, whose generous and meticulous help with numerous editorial and formatting tasks allowed me to complete this book at its proper time. Special kudos go to Elisabeth for her thorough consolidation and revision of the books references, as well as the arduous labor of cross-checking the texts citations against the reference list.

While most of the contents of this book derive from work previously published, all have been thoroughly revised and updated. In addition to numerous new references, endnotes, and minor changes, all the chapters include original materials; the book also incorporates an entire new chapter (), an important Postscript clarifying the evolution of my thinking, and two Appendices respectively discussing A. H. Almaass (2014) Diamond Approach and S. Taylors (2017) soft perennialism from the perspective of the participatory approach. Redundancies between chapters have been eliminated, except for a few cases in which the same passage was essential for the argumentative line of more than one chapter.

Lastly, special thanks to the late Nancy Ellegate, Senior Acquisition Editor of the State University of New York (SUNY) Press, as well as to her assistant Jessica Kirschner, Senior Production Editor Laurie Searl, and the SUNY Press creative and administrative team, for their steadfast support in the publication of this work.

Permission to use material from the following publications has been granted:

Chapter 1. Ferrer, J. N. (2011). Participatory spirituality and transpersonal theory: A 10-year retrospective. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 43 (1), 134.

Chapter 2. Ferrer, J. N. (2014). Transpersonal psychology, science, and the supernatural. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 46 (2), 152186.

Chapter 3. Ferrer, J. N. (2008). What does it mean to live a fully embodied spiritual life? International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27, 111.

Chapter 4. Ferrer, J. N. (2003). Integral transformative practice: A participatory perspective. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 35 (1), 2142.

Chapter 5. Ferrer, J. N., M. T. Romero, and R. V. Albareda. (2005). Integral transformative education: A participatory proposal. Journal of Transformative Education, 3 (4), 306330.

Chapter 6. Ferrer, J. N. (2011). Teaching the graduate seminar in comparative mysticism: A participatory integral approach. In W. Parsons (ed.), Teaching mysticism (173192). American Academy of Religion Series. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8. Ferrer, J. N. (2002). Revisioning transpersonal theory: A participatory vision of human spirituality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.