Persona, a.k.a. Personality, is like a suit worn by a human’s Soul: sometimes it protects, sometimes it prevents the feeling of the world, sometimes it squeezes. Some psychologists realized this, and began to look for a way to take off the suit and go directly to the Soul, or at least thinning the suit. To widen or tighten it somewhere … so that the Soul would be comfortable. Those psychologists who discovered this possibility, either with the help of psychedelics, or with the help of deep meditations, gradually created their own field – Transpersonal Psychology.
Transpersonal Psychology is the 4th wave of psychology, initiated in the late sixties by Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Groff and Anthony Sutich.
My Californian epic began with a Transpersonal Psychology conference in 2010 when I first came to California. There I made a talk on Deism (Yes-ism – our basic world view) and it made a starting point.
Therefore, the 2019 conference was a landmark event for me. All these 10 years, I have been actively involved in the movement for human development.
In 2019, the American Transpersonal Association celebrated its 50th anniversary. And the 50th anniversary was not only for the association, it was also the 50th anniversary of all Transpersonal psychology. The conference took place in April 2019, in Asilomar, California.
There were around 500 attendees, including the presidium of the association, and founding elders like David Lukoff, Harris Friedman, James Fadiman, Miles Vich, Les Lancaster …
I proposed and made a talk on the topic: “From fragmentary psychology to Psychology of Completeness”, reflecting on the complexity of the object of research of transpersonal psychology. That object I understand as a whole infinity of the human soul, and suggest the possibility of integrating the psyche, even if it is infinite. I see this integration as a purpose for transpersonal psychology, but unfortunately very few colleagues share the same point of view.
A similar topic was raised at the conference by Glenn Hartelius, .—..,…———, during his talk about Whole-person-psychology.
But most of the speakers talked about specific aspects, for example,
the use of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD. As for the founders, the
main thing on my opinion, was the rejection of transpersonal psychology by the psychological mainstream of the United States, ;;•–
the APA. This is what James Fadimen’s lecture was devoted to.
At the end of the conference, during an open microphone, delivered a speech on how disappointed I was about that. With my criticism, I was risking not getting an extension of my visa which I received based on the recommendation of the Association of the Association for T ranspersonal Psychology, signed by the President of the Association, Steven Schmitz. I wanted to tell this publicly, but didn’t dare. In fact, it turned out that my worst expectations came true, Steven didn’t sign the following recommendation for my visa extension.
Nevertheless, I was able to get my visa, and Russian House# 1 still exists and pleases those who participate in it.
As for transpersonal psychology, and especially the American Association (ATP}, in my opinion, it has almost completely lost its moving-forward spirit and degenerated into boring formal procedures. The fate of formalization is a threat to any alive teaching, if the process of knowledge translation is not adjusted with qualities sharing.
As for the conference, there were still several active people there. I interviewed Fred Luskin about Positive Psychology and Forgiveness
I also talked several times with Diana Slattery, the creator of Zeno-linguistics, about her personal experience of Scientology and her lecture in Russian House
Alexander Enskat gave a lecture on peak states of consciousness, illustrating it with the frequency scale described by John Lily who learned it from Oscar lchazo, who found it from Georgy Gurdjieff. I invited Alexander to lecture in the Russian House, where he shared more interesting details.
One of the possible attempts to develop the transpersonal idea was suggested by Jeffrey Martin, whom we visited with my colleague Vladimir Maikov right after the conference. Jeffrey conducted a detailed study of Enlightenment, interviewing several dozen Enlightened people. Based on his study, he created the concept of the state of Enlightenment, and developed a methodology for achieving it. Jeffrey widely includes a device and technology part in his methodology of ,——.,-Enlightenment. You can find his explanation in my video interview here:
https://enlightenment.expert/en/pandit/jeffrey-a-martin/
I see Enlightenment in a slightly different way than Jeffrey. For me it is more as a holistic state of a human being, that manifests itself not only in his mood, but also in his actions. Enlightened person has full freedom to act according his will and realizes this power. I designate this position as Radical Spirituality and follow it in my present work.
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