Participation and the Mystery

Jorge N. Ferrer

Description

Participation and the Mystery is both an introduction to and expansion of Jorge N. Ferrer's groundbreaking work on participatory spirituality, which holds that human beings are active cocreators of spiritual phenomena, worlds, and even ultimates. After examining the impact of his work since the publication of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, Ferrer discusses the relationship between science and transpersonal psychology, the nature of a fully embodied spirituality, and the features of integral spiritual practice. The book also introduces a participatory philosophy of education and applies it to the academic teaching of mysticism and a novel approach to embodied spiritual inquiry. Critically engaging the influential work of Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber, and A. H. Almaas, Ferrer concludes with an original solution to the problem of religious pluralism that affirms the ontological richness of religious worlds while avoiding the extremes of perennialism and contextualism, offering a hopeful vision for the future of world religion. Participation and the Mystery is an invaluable resource to anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of participatory approaches to transpersonal psychology, integral and contemplative education, contemporary spirituality, and religious studies.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Transpersonal Psychology

1. Participatory Spirituality and Transpersonal Theory

2. Transpersonal Psychology, Science, and the Supernatural

3. Toward a Fully Embodied Spiritual Life

4. A New Look at Integral Growth

Part II. Integral Education

5. The Four Seasons of Integral Education (with Marina T. Romero and Ramon V. Albareda)

6. Teaching Mysticism from a Participatory Perspective

7. Embodied Spiritual Inquiry: A Radical Approach to Contemplative Education

Part III. Spirituality and Religion

8. Stanislav Grof’s Consciousness Research and the Modern Study of Mysticism

9. Participation, Metaphysics, and Enlightenment: Reflections on Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory

10. Religious Pluralism and the Future of Religion

Postscript
Coda: A Secret Poem For You
Appendix One: Participatory Spirituality And A. H. Almaas’s New Diamond Approach
Appendix Two: The Soft Perennialism of S. Taylor
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• System
• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 12 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438464886
• Langue: English

Extrait

PARTICIPATION AND THE MYSTERY
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.
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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. | Spirituality—Psychology. | Psychology, Religious.
Classification: LCC BF204.7 .F47 2017 | DDC 150.19/87—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031415
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER ONE
Participatory Spirituality and Transpersonal Theory
CHAPTER TWO
Transpersonal Psychology, Science, and the Supernatural
CHAPTER THREE
Toward a Fully Embodied Spiritual Life
CHAPTER FOUR
A New Look at Integral Growth
PART TWO INTEGRAL EDUCATION
CHAPTER FIVE
The Four Seasons of Integral Education
(with Marina T. Romero and Ramón V. Albareda)
CHAPTER SIX
Teaching Mysticism from a Participatory Perspective
CHAPTER SEVEN
Embodied Spiritual Inquiry: A Radical Approach to Contemplative Education
PART THREE SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stanislav Grof’s Consciousness Research and the Modern Study of Mysticism
CHAPTER NINE
Participation, Metaphysics, and Enlightenment: Reflections on Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory
CHAPTER TEN
Religious Pluralism and the Future of Religion
POSTSCRIPT
CODA
A Secret Poem for You
APPENDIX ONE
Participatory Spirituality and A. H. Almaas’s New Diamond Approach
APPENDIX TWO
The Soft Perennialism of S. Taylor
NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX
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, Ramón 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 Esbjörn-Hargens, Roland Faber, Gabriel Fernandez, Charles Flores, Robert K. C. Forman, Anthony Freeman, Paul D. Freinkel, Harris Friedman, Octavio García, 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, Jürgen Kremer, Jeffrey J. Kripal, Gregg Lahood, Brian L. Lancaster, Beverly Lanzetta, Michael Lerner, Agustín López 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, José Antonio Noguera, Jay Ogilvy, Raimon Panikkar, Agustín Pániker, 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 chapter 5 , Marina T. Romero and Ramón 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 book’s references, as well as the arduous labor of cross-checking the text’s 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 ( chapter 7 ), an important Postscript clarifying the evolution of my thinking, and two Appendices respectively discussing A. H. Almaas’s (2014) Diamond Approach and S. Taylor’s (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), 1–34.
Chapter 2. Ferrer, J. N. (2014). Transpersonal psychology, science, and the supernatural. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 46 (2), 152–186.
Chapter 3. Ferrer, J. N. (2008). What does it mean to live a fully embodied spiritual life? International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27, 1–11.
Chapter 4. Ferrer, J. N. (2003). Integral transformative practice: A participatory perspective. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 35 (1), 21–42.
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), 306–330.
Chapter 6. Ferrer, J. N. (2011). Teaching the graduate seminar in comparative mysticism: A participatory integral approach. In W. Parsons (ed.), Teaching mysticism (173–192). 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.
Chapter 9. Ferrer, J. N. (2011). Participation, metaphysics, and enlightenment: Reflections on Ken Wilber’s recent work. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 14 (20), 3–24.
Chapter 10. Ferrer, J. N. (2010). The plurality of religions and the spirit of pluralism: A participatory vision of the future of religion. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 28 (1), 139–151.
Ferrer, J. N. (2012). The future of world religion: Four scenarios, one dream. Tikkun : Culture, Spirituality, Politics, 27 (1), 14–16, 63–64.
Coda. Ferrer, J. N. (2004). A secret poem for you. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 23, 91–93.
INTRODUCTION

This book largely derives from various articles and book chapters (published 2003–2014) applying participatory thinking to questions central to the fields of transpersonal psychology, integral and contemplative education, contemporary spirituality, and reli