California Institute of Integral Studies
California Institute of Integral Studies librariesNot a member yet
1665 research outputs found
Sort by
The Varieties of Afterlife Experience: Epistemological and Cultural Implications
Full text linkWhen parapsychologists talk about survival, they are usually implying personal survival, that is, a process in which memories, motivations, and personality characteristics of a given person somehow persist after bodily death. Are there other conceptions of survival (and of personal identity) that deserve further scientific examination? My purpose with this brief commentary is to expand on Rock et al’s approach by urging survivalists to discuss and investigate further the many different conceptions of (and explanations for) survival. I propose we critically reflect on our theoretical assumptions and their epistemological and cultural consequences
Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach to Commentaries on the Drake-S Equation for Survival
Full text linkWe used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators’ input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that none immediately upend our previous conclusion that the published effect sizes for various Known Confounds (including hypothetical living agent psi ) do not fully account for the published prevalence rates of Anomalous Experiences traditionally interpretated as survival. However, the commentators proposed several good recommendations for new studies that could eventually alter this calculus. Accordingly, we outline the architecture of a proposed cross-disciplinary research program that extends the present MTS approach and its collected insights and focuses strictly on empiricism over rhetoric in this domain. The results of this coordinated effort should likewise help to clarify a range of psychological and biomedical phenomena that speak to the nature and limits of human consciousness
Review of: The Myth of Normal-Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté
Full text linkN/
Transpersonal Approaches to Clinical Supervision
Full text linkTranspersonal psychology can provide unique approaches to clinical supervision by offering an interconnected self-expansive view of the self across time and space, as well as can provide a secular avenue to consider the importance of spirituality without relying on supernatural assumptions. Transpersonal supervisors can challenge conventional notions about what and how supervisees know, and even the nature of being a knower, through providing a more inclusive, perhaps even holistic, vantage that is both critical of mainstream approaches and surpasses their ability to provide a coherent “super” (i.e., going beyond the usual more-myopic understandings) vision. Background on transpersonal psychology related to the supervisor role is provided, and discussion on how to conduct transpersonal clinical supervision is offered, along with cautions regarding potential pitfalls in adopting this perspective
Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, and the Psychology of Metaphor in Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices
Full text linkA classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on how to settle totally at ease. To complement each volume in his trilogy, Longchenpa composed auxiliary contemplative guidance instructions on their meaning (don khrid). This article contextualizes Longchenpa’s meditation manual on Being at Ease with Illusion, a translation of which is included in the appendix. Special attention is given to Dzogchen practices of lucid dreaming and working with cognitive illusions to spotlight underlying contemplative dynamics and correlative psychological effects. To analogically map these Tibetan language instructions in translation, this article interprets Buddhist psychological understandings of cognitive and perceptual processes in dialogue with current theories in the cognitive sciences
Mandala: On the Logos of Place
Full text linkSuddenly, during the night, one awakens while dreaming – aware that this is a dream. The “rules” of action, reaction, and of form itself are not that of the waking state – one might leap in the air and fly, transform one’s body into any number of forms, reach up in the sky and grab the sun and clouds, pulling them to the side, bringing forth a canopy of moon and stars. The entire scene, in the lucid dream, has a heightened sense of radiance and joy, vitality and freedom.
Imagine this sense of lucid dreaming is occurring right here and now, dream-like imagery co-arising with sensory nature: especially subtle sight, sound, and feeling-sensations. That there is co-arising -- right here and now -- a sensory environment with luminous imagery as the very opening or clearing for sense of place
Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing the Drake-S Equation for Postmortem Survival of Consciousness
Full text linkThis participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the Drake equation to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., anomalous effects ) or refutes (i.e., known confounds ) the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of living agent psi via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found that putative psi was a meaningful variable, although it along with other known confounds still did not account for 30.3% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing after physical (biological) death. Thus, the popular conventional variables that we measured here are seemingly insufficient to account for a sizable portion of the purported empirical data that has been interpreted as evidence of survival. Our conclusion is nonetheless tempered by several assumptions and limitations of our speculative exercise, which ultimately does not affirm the existence of an ‘afterlife’ but rather highlights the need for measurements with greater precision and/ or a more comprehensive set of quantifiable variables. Therefore, we discuss how our probabilistic approach provides important heuristics to guide future research in this highly controversial domain that touches both parapsychology and transpersonal psychology
Psychology or Religion? Bridge-Building in the Translation History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Full text linkThe Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the most popular Eastern scriptures in the West, in part because it has been framed outside of religion, as a kind of psychology. And yet its translators have also used it to stake claims in the debate about the relationship between psychology and religion, generally Buddhism, but also Theosophy, a religious and philosophical system founded in 1875, which tried to unify all religions. The first major English translation of the Book of the Dead was published in 1927, by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, who was a Theosophist, with the assistance of Kazi Dawa-Samdup. Evans-Wentz framed the text as supporting the existence of a universal religion grounded in science, altered terms to support Theosophical beliefs, and also opened the way to psychologized interpretations. Carl Jung’s 1937 introduction to the Evans-Wentz- Samdup translation solidified a psychologized reading. In 1975, Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa produced a more accurate translation, which continued the psychologizing trend. The 2005 translation by Gyurme Dorje, with Graham Coleman and Thupten Junpa, is the most traditional and technically accurate, yet also shades meaning towards universal appeal. My evaluation of the orientation of these three translations—Theosophical (Evans-Wentz, 1927), psychological (Fremantle-Trungpa, 1975) and traditional (Dorje, 2005)—highlights the difficulty of translating religious terms. The translation history also sheds light on the ongoing debate about the compatibility of the aims of psychology (self-development) and Buddhism (self-eradication) and provides a foundation for my argument that psychologized renderings are simply a part of theological drift, a process that is continual and ongoing in religious traditions
