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The Filipino Experience of Kutob: Understanding Culturally-Informed Hyper-Intuition
Full text linkKutob is a Filipino concept that usually refers to a sense of what may happen. It is often experienced as an omen of negative events. Despite its apparent ubiquity in everyday conversations, there is a lack of sincere academic reflection surrounding the topic of kutob. Relying on foreign (that is, western) approaches and frameworks to understand this concept may only limit it to certain categories of psychological thought. In this paper, I use the lens of indigenous psychology—in particular, Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology)—to identify the nuances and contexts of kutob. I show how kutob is a function of the dynamic between the interconnected elements of self, others, and the world
BOOK REVIEW Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics and Sobriety, by John H. Buchanan
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A Thought Paper for Allan Leslie Combs
No full textThis personal reflection honors Allan Leslie Combs through an intimate process letter written while the author studied under Combs in a doctoral course on consciousness studies. Exploring themes of spiritual authenticity, the nature of reality, and the pursuit of unity consciousness, the author grapples with integrating mystical experience with academic inquiry. The piece reveals the transformative influence of Combs’s teaching and embodies the vulnerable, introspective scholarship he championed, ultimately exploring the author’s own emerging vision of unity consciousness as a path toward creating collective human unity.
Keywords: consciousness studies, unity consciousness, spiritual integration, transformative education, contemplative practice, creative writing, Allan Leslie Comb
Consciousness and Magic: A Tribute to Allan Leslie Combs
No full textThis article discusses the originating and continuing ideas associated with the Society for Consciousness Studies (SCS). More than a historical account, the evolution of the SCS mirrors the revelatory and unifying experiences of members as they pursue the understanding of non-local and non-ordinary consciousness through lenses such as synchronicity and the imaginal realm. This tribute encompasses parapsychological emphases interwoven with mythological, shamanic, spiritual, and literary art, drawing parallels between Parmenides’s journey to the underworld and the exploration of “magic” in science. Primarily, the essay focuses on the contributions of Allan Leslie Combs and his capacity for uniting various contributions and contributors, as well as his advocacy for gender equity, to the study of consciousness.
Keywords: Allan Leslie Combs, Society for Consciousness Studies, non-local consciousness, imaginal realm, magi
Seeing Through Solid Words: Using Gebser’s Concept of Transparency to Understand a Gnostic Poem Expressing Integral Consciousness
Full text linkIt is difficult to express integral consciousness using ordinary language because of the inherent tendency of language to separate and distinguish. Jean Gebser, in The Ever-Present Origin, suggested concepts such as transparency and diaphaneity as ways to access integral consciousness, and the Gnostic text The Thunder, Perfect Mind (TPM) is written from the perspective of a being with integral consciousness. I use Jean Gebser’s concepts of transparency and diaphaneity to explicate TPM, an enigmatic, paradoxical poem in the Nag Hammadi Library. Because TPM is written from the perspective of an integral being, one who is All-of-It (i.e., paradoxical completeness rather than a consistent but incomplete persona), the poem calls the reader to embody such a perspective of being All-of-It, thereby enabling one to get beyond the limitations of either/or languaging and thinking by apperceiving the transparency of experience in space and through time
Waldorf Education: New Perspectives on a Holistic Approach
No full textThis article outlines some of the core ideas underlying the practices of Waldorf education as re-envisioned by an experienced practitioner, as a contribution to the discussion about the educational implications of transpersonal psychology. It outlines a pedagogical anthropology that takes the spiritual dimension into account. It distinguishes between the lived body, the emergent psyche and the agentic Self as the spiritual core of being in the person. Learning is explained as a transformative process that involves the changing relationships to one’s own body, to others and to the world through which potentialities become abilities. The aim of the transformative education is the emergence of subjects capable of life-long learning and the ability to act ethically out of insight
Peak Teaching: Exploring and Fostering Sacred Experiences in University Classrooms
No full textSupporting the spiritual growth of college and university students with diverse backgrounds and orientations is both important and challenging. It is important not only because spirituality is a crucial dimension of human life but also because the majority of students at both private and public schools want their teachers to address spiritual issues in the classroom. A powerful way to address spirituality is to explore and foster sacred experiences in university classrooms. Sacred experiences include religious, spiritual, mystical, transcendent, numinous, and peak experiences as well as many other nonordinary experiences. The author offers guidance to educators on how to: 1) discern their own motivation, commitment, and preparedness for teaching sacred experiences; 2) support the diverse spiritual lives of their students as well as the inner lives of students who deny or are uncertain about the reality of spirituality and the sacred; 3) maintain the separation of church and state by developing an educational approach that is pluralistic, transformative, integrative, comparative, impartial, noncoercive, and dogma-free; 4) welcome multiple definitions, terminologies, descriptions, and perspectives on spirituality and the sacred, including those that doubt or deny its existence; 5) skillfully interweave holistic and conventional pedagogies that activate and integrate multiple modes of consciousness and being; 6) create a supportive learning environment for pluralistic discussions of the sacred; 7) cultivate epistemological humility; 8) pursue personal development, professional training, and lifelong learning; and 9) develop, experiment with, and conduct research on new pedagogies and combinations of pedagogies
Measuring Human Ability to Detect Emotional Energies in Transpersonal Fields of Consciousness
No full textThis research presents original data from an online research survey with 111 respondents regarding their ability to detect emotional energies in transpersonal fields of consciousness in crowds and dyads. The data show that a majority of respondents, from 90% to 96.4%, reported experiencing different emotions “in the air,” such as excitement, tension, anxiety, anger, and love. Personal data responses include age, gender or gender identity, and worldview. Examples of possible worldviews include: “scientific, not religious, not spiritual”; “spiritual and scientific”; “religious”; and “religious and scientific.” Respondents were given two free-answer essay options: one in which they could describe their personal experiences of the phenomena, and one in which they could describe their sense of self and their worldview in their own words. The author discusses various possible philosophical and scientific approaches to these phenomena, in part drawing on respondent’s free-answer essays. In addition, the author presents implications of the reality of transpersonal fields of consciousness for possible theories of consciousness. The author also discusses implications of the human ability to perceive emotional energies subjectively, including in regard to possible psychological effects. Finally, the author outlines a conceptual framework that enables a comprehensive understanding of these phenomenal experiences of transpersonal fields of consciousness.
Keywords: consciousness, theories of consciousness, transpersonal psychology, transpersonal fields, philosophy of consciousness, integral philosophy, consciousness researc
Martial Arts Studies: A Commentary on the Exploration of Consciousness in Modern Martial Arts
No full textThe rapid globalization of martial arts has reconditioned how the beliefs, customs, and philosophies of traditionally based systems are interpreted and applied in modern practice. As contemporary scholarship struggles to accommodate the cultural histories, myths, and traditions that permeate the perception of martial arts in modern contexts, the focus of inquiry has shifted towards explaining cultural variations in practice rather than understanding the nature of self-awareness derived from self-practice. Consequently, the deeper meanings of martial arts as pathways to personal and transpersonal awareness are often invalidated in favor of objective and verifiable explications. In short, the role of consciousness is frequently marginalized in the exploration of modern martial arts. This commentary challenges this scholarly trend, suggesting a reconsideration of the ways in which modern martial arts serve as outlets for self-awareness that preserve, readdress, and synthesize traditional philosophies in creative ways. Using Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do as a primary example, I argue that the role of consciousness as a key attribute in training has not been lost; it has merely been reconstituted in ways that are less distinguishable than in traditional Eastern systems but nevertheless remains a focus of martial arts practice.
Keywords: Bruce Lee, consciousness, martial arts, martial arts studies, modern martial arts, self-awarenes
A Return to the Real: Elder Wisdom, Story, and the Great Mystery of Consciousness
No full textThis essay honors the life and legacy of consciousness scholar Allan Leslie Combs by exploring elder wisdom as an epistemic, ethical, and spiritual stance grounded in openness to the great mystery of consciousness. Drawing on Combs’s writings, Charlene Spretnak’s articulation of the Real, and Malidoma Somé’s teachings on elderhood, the essay contrasts elder understanding with contemporary psychiatric approaches that impose epistemic certainty upon the vastness and lived complexity of human consciousness. Portions of this essay are adapted from the author’s 2023 doctoral dissertation, Separation from the Real: The Power of Story at the Heart of the Civil Commitment Process, which examined how dominant institutional narratives can sever individuals from meaning, agency, truth, and the Real itself. Through story, reflection, and tribute, the essay invites a return to elder ways of knowing that honor the creative cosmos, the knowing body, and the irreducible and mysterious universe of human life.
Keywords: Allan Leslie Combs, consciousness, elder wisdom, the Rea