Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Transpersonal Psychology
A World of Energy

The blossoming field of energy psychology is an aspect of bioenergetics as well as that of transpersonal psychology. The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology defines this discipline as “the extension of psychological studies into consciousness studies, spiritual inquiry, body-mind relationships, and transformation.” It deals with the breadth and depth of perception and behavior. It is the fourth force of psychology, with behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanism being the others. The first three are often associated with B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Abraham Maslow, respectively. Yet Maslow would later become dissatisfied with just a humanistic approach. As signaled by the first publication of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1969, a group of psychologists including Maslow, Anthony Sutich, and Charles T. Tart brought forth the fourth force.²²

Traditional psychologies, such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, certain denominations of Christianity, and the Toltec Way, are integral to transpersonal psychology. Each of these systems also offers practices of meditation, personal growth, and ways to consciously evolve beyond the mortal plane. When you add the various works of those like nineteenth-century theosophists C. W. Leadbeater and Madame Helena Blavatsky to the more modern writings of Barbara Brennan, Valerie V. Hunt, and Fritjof Capra, the literature on aspects of the energy body, including psychological applications, continues to grow.

To date, religion and metaphysics have carried the banner of researching and explaining such things as the mystical experience where a person’s consciousness expands well beyond normal limits and a profound oneness with all creation is directly experienced. The advent of a new division of psychology allows for the secularization of this study and is already providing common cross-cultural perspectives to further define it.

In addition, there is currently a strong movement to develop a science of consciousness. There are several quality books on this field, which is using rigorous scientific skills to examine what has been in the province of what some consider the soft sciences. Some of the most significant work has come from MIT Press, which has published a series appropriately titled Toward a Science of Consciousness. This series stems from discussions and debates sponsored by The University of Arizona that have brought together experts in fields such as cognitive science, physiology, psychology, and physics. Revealing the interest and depth of this research, Cambridge University Press followed with The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.²³

From a wide-angle perspective, transpersonal psychology may be especially noteworthy, as it provides meaning for experiences beyond the currently accepted norms of daily human consciousness, including those of social consensus reality. In other words, it provides a telescope to examine the entire human experience and thereby enable us to look at how things are shaping up from an entirely different vantage point. It also reflects positive psychology, an area that Maslow has referred to as the psychology of the future, which deals with healthy, fully functioning people. In contrast to abnormal psychology—the study of dysfunctions—which has received the preponderance of attention, positive psychology examines the brighter side of human behavior including hope, happiness, and healing.²⁴

While transpersonal psychology brings academic and scientific rigor to investigations of consciousness, the greater body of it currently presents intellectual perspectives, which help set the stage for new navigational charts. This may change. These charts, for instance, are yielding models of psychotherapy and an orientation to psychological health. The combination of bioenergetic perspectives with a branch of psychology that examines consciousness may enable us to develop a sophisticated model of states of pathology and their remedy. A practical effect of this work will be that the entire field of healing will change if not explode into new directions.