Transpersonal Manifesto
This Transpersonal Manifesto was introduced to the scientific community during the 11 EUROTAS Conference in Milan in October 2009 and published here for the first time in its full version.
The first draft of this document was written Pier Luigi Lattuada and presented in 1999 in Milan during the Integral Conference “The legacy of the Tribe”.
This full version includes contributions sent on the EUROTAS website during 2009 or sent by email to the author of the first draft, by: Regina Beller, Dan Winter, Marie Noelle Urech, Marco Avena, Rosemarie Anderson, Edmunds Jakovels, Ravi Gangadharaiah Nayaka, Juan Jose Diaz, Marion Hubbard, Marco Bertali, Fausto Sergej Sommer, Vitor Rodrigues, Ana Prodanovic, Davide Innocente, Francesco Pivato, Patrizia Rita Pinoli, Ingo Benjamin Jahrsetz.
The intent of this Manifesto is to collect in a simple text the common assumptions shared and shareable by those who work in the transpersonal field. Scientists, artists, intellectuals, spiritual travelers, are invited to approve this document, if they agree with its contents.
Abstract
This Manifesto was introduced to the scientific community during the 11 EUROTAS Conference in Milan in October 2009 and published here for the first time in its full version. The first draft of this document was written by Pier Luigi Lattuada and presented in 1999 in Miano during the Integral Conference “The legacy of the Tribe”.
This full version includes contributions sent on the EUROTAS website during 2009 or sent by email to the author of the first draft, by: Regina Beller, Dan Winter, Marie Noelle Urech, Marco Avena, Rosemarie Anderson, Edmunds Jakovels, Ravi Gangadharaiah Nayaka, Juan Jose Diaz, Marion Hubbard, Marco Bertali, Fausto Sergej Sommer, Vitor Rodrigues, Ana Prodanovic, Davide Innocente, Francesco Pivato, Patrizia Rita Pinoli, Ingo Benjamin Jahrsetz. The intent of this Manifesto is to collect in a simple text the common assumptions shared and shareable by those who work in the transpersonal field. Scientists, artists, intellectuals, spiritual travelers, are invited to approve this document, if they agree with its contents.
Introduction
“There are presuppositions at the basis of any story that can be told. These constitute the founding element of every scientific theory, of every discipline or human action. The problem is that many of these assumptions are implicit, after we have acquired them, we take them for granted. Says the wise: “if you do not know the assumptions on which your action is based, you act on the basis of assumptions that you do not know. In other words, it is the prerequisites that act on your behalf ”.
When we really want to know what we are doing, if we want to develop systems of knowledge that provide guarantees of validity, if we want to increase our degree of freedom and "personal power", we must be well aware of the assumptions on which we are based "
The intent that has guided this work of drafting the Transpersonal Manifesto is to formulate a text that explains the presuppositions shared by those who work in the field of the Transpersonal, presuppositions not invented, but found in listening to Tradition.
This document is to be submitted to the approval and signature of all those who identify with it: scientists, artists, intellectuals, spiritual travelers, women and men of good will, etc.
The Transpersonal Manifesto, in its current draft, consists of the following parts:
1) Meaning of the term Transpersonal;
2) Reference to the history of the Transpersonal Movement;
3) Common assumptions, section divided into a) About the Universe;
b) About Human Nature;
c) About Consciousness
d) About Personality; e) About Corpomente; f) About Civilization;
g) About the Company;
h) About Illness and Healing
i) About the Sacred
j) About contemporary culture
k) About Science
Transpersonal
The term transpersonal is intended to indicate what lies beyond the personality understood as a "mask", such as the level of existence of the human being that veils its essence and highest potential.
The transpersonal approach aims at unveiling these most intimate potentials in the direction of contact with the true nature of the human being, true nature that lives in the integration of the individual's levels of existence: physical, emotional, energetic, mental and spiritual.
In doing this, the transpersonal approach refers to the ancient wisdom and mystical traditions, from which it draws its own wealth of practical and theoretical knowledge, knowledge that can be found in the affirmations of the Perennial Philosophy.
The Transpersonal vision is proposed as a vehicle for mediation between the methods of searching for the certain and the ways of accessing the truth, it invites the recovery and enhancement of intuition through the interior experience of a transcendent order as a tool for investigating reality.
Brief history of the Transpersonal Movement
“We are living in an era of transition: a very special era. An era in which the mechanistic paradigm that has so far characterized the path of science is giving way to the new holistic paradigm. And what matters most, for the first time in history, a vision capable of unifying, transcending them, polarities that have crossed the millennia, contrasting themselves with conflicting and often violent dynamics is emerging ”.
The Transpersonal perspective embodies the presuppositions of the holistic paradigm and “aims at the development of wise and mature people, awakened to solidarity towards humanity and reverence towards nature, who contribute to the well-being of human life”.
The Transpersonal movement sees its birth in the United States around the 60s. This movement, which is part of the psychological disciplines, developed thanks to the work of some psychologists who, recognizing the limits of the analytical approaches most used in those years, the Freudian approach and behaviorism, gave an evolution to psychology recently conceived humanities, recognizing the fact that even the latter was lacking as it left the spiritual dimension outside the observational spectrum.
Transpersonal psychology was intended to be a discipline that honored the full range of human experience, including non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Thanks to the contribution of scholars who had come into contact with wisdom traditions outside the dominant Western culture, the need was recognized to dilute and correct the predominance of the rationalistic mentality, inaugurated by the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm: traditional psychiatry has always considered as pathological the experiences of the transpersonal order not recognizing the need for the right consideration and the right respect due, on the one hand, to the transpersonal experiences that reveal ontologically real plans of existence, and on the other hand to the ancient rituals with which Spirituality (understood as a special type of relationship between the individual and the cosmos, other than religion) manifested itself in the course of the evolutionary day of the human being.
Despite the suspicion and accusations with which Transpersonal Psychology was accepted in the academic field in the first years of its life, accusations that accused it of "irrationalism" and "unscientificity", the new concepts and new revolutionary discoveries in various scientific disciplines have joined the assertions of Transpersonal psychology, contributing to undermine the dominant Newtonian-Cartesian materialistic paradigm.
The Transpersonal vision arises as an element of reconciliation between science and experience-based spirituality, as a synthesis between modern science and ancient wisdom.
About the universe
* We are all brothers and sisters. The universe is an interconnected flow of events through consciousness which is an incessant and unlimited flow. Limits exist only in the mind of man.
The mineral, vegetable, animal and human world, the subtle worlds of the spirit exist within each other and for each other.
* The universe is not only the physical one known by materialistic science and the five senses. There are different universes and different types of consciousness.
There are spiritual events that transcend sensory perception but are just as real as measurable physical events.
* What we see with the senses and know with materialistic science is nothing but an emanation, an effect of transcendent and spiritual energies.
* The Universe does not belong to any particular individual, but everything belongs to everyone.
* There are, in addition to the physical energy that we introduce into the body with food and breath, other sources of energy that can be tapped.
Think of the force that pushes the trees upwards, the fervor of spring, the freshness of a young girl in bloom, the strength of faith or spiritual longing, maternal love, a night in the forest or a dawn. in the Himalayas.
* Love is the source of life that nourishes and sustains all levels of being.
About human nature
* Each of us possesses an "intimate nature", essential, biologically based, natural, innate.
This nature is "inherently good". It contains basic needs, basic human emotions and abilities, potentials, talents, physiological and temperamental balances, anatomical equipment and so on.
* The existence of each individual is a process of self-realization of one's "true nature" or spiritual essence.
* The process of self-realization does not stop at the use of the faculties of reason but proceeds towards higher qualities such as: love, wisdom, humility, compassion, trust, awareness, patience, sharing, solidarity, respect, etc.
* The individual is not exhausted in the physical parts that compose him, but as a bio-psycho-spiritual unit, he presents a series of interconnected levels ranging from the physical to the emotional, to the mental.
* The life of the individual does not begin with birth and does not end with biological death, but represents a moment in the evolutionary day of the "universal consciousness".
The sperm and egg that generated me were alive before I was born and the memory of me will continue to act in the world even after I am dead. When do I start? When I finish? Establishing this is an arbitrary decision.
* Through the inner experience the individual can gradually free himself from his personal history and from his psycho-physical attachments, develop his most genuinely human qualities, realize his "true nature" and rejoin the eternal and sacred dimension of the spiritual world ..
The inner experience is like the sculptor's chisel who, day after day, shapes the rough marble and, removing the superfluous, gives shape to the beauty of the work of art that was hidden in the block of stone.
* The creative process is the result of an archetypal flow that accesses the field of consciousness of the individual who creates.
* Art is an archetypal expression, without past or future that is expressed in the immediacy of the act, in the self-presentation where each creation comes from a dimension of which the artist has no memory, an idea, an essence .
* Man is a creature like the others, he is fully integrated and part of the natural mechanisms. Our species, however, plays a unique role in nature that must be fully recognized.
About conscience
* All forms of life, mineral, vegetable, animal, human, spiritual, are traversed by the flow of consciousness and are worthy of love and respect.
* There are forms of consciousness at different levels of evolution and complexity.
There are individual and collective forms of consciousness. There are "superior" forms of consciousness that assist us, orient us. There are "lower" and / or suffering forms of consciousness.
* The evolution of consciousness introduces the possibility for the universe to recognize itself: the human being has the faculty to take part in this process.
* The brain and nervous system are not the seat but an instrument of consciousness which is as real as the brain itself.
No adult in full possession of his psychic faculties would be foolish enough to think that television is the venue for the show it broadcasts. In the same way, it seems a little sensible inference to believe that consciousness is the exclusive product of brain activity.
* There are different states of consciousness, each of which is an expression of a specific level that is taking place in that particular context.
Just as each radio station is on a specific wave frequency and broadcasts a specific program, in the same way each state of consciousness is an expression of a particular vibration and produces certain moods, thoughts, memories, behaviors, etc.
* The mind when it operates in a "dual", rational way is responsible for ordinary states of consciousness. It is possible through inner practice to access an ecstatic “unitive” state of mind, to transcend the ordinary state and to access non-ordinary states of consciousness.
* Rational knowledge is limited, insight or intuitive understanding attainable through the instances of the ecstatic mind allows access to the true nature of things.
* Our understanding of the universe is directly influenced by our way of being and knowing.
My view of the world depends on the position from which I look at it, that is, on my state of consciousness.
* There is a non-ordinary condition of consciousness through which it is possible to access extrasensory realities, connect with the entire universe and draw on truths that have always been present in the depths of our being. One can be trained to experience such truths. This process has important repercussions on the physical and mental well-being of the person.
About personality
* With the term Personality we mean a dynamic and organized set of psychic characteristics and behavioral modalities that define the nucleus of individual differences, in the multiplicity of contexts in which human conduct develops.
* A personality well adapted to the values of one's own culture can be the result of an identification with illusory schemes which, in an evolutionary perspective, must be transcended and included in order to gain access to a true understanding of oneself and of the world.
* The willingness to disidentify oneself from the traits of one's personality is a necessary condition for accessing the spiritual dimension.
Speaking of bodymind
* By Corpomente we mean the integration of the different levels that make up the human being.
* Emotional states are directly related to states of consciousness. The repression or the rigid control of the emotions determines a chronicization of the conscience that hinders the process of realization. Emotions are the manifestation of the biological expressive motion which is the very essence of life.
* Managing emotions is one of the keys that leads from the ordinary plane of consciousness to the higher levels of consciousness.
* Managing your emotions means coming into contact with them, expressing them and transforming them through conscious observation and gradual disidentification.
* Sexuality expresses the very creative force of life. To examine it means to tap into the primary source of our being in the world.
* The lack of understanding of the true nature of sexuality, its repression, denial or deliberate mystification, have been and continue to be among the major culprits of humanity's miseries.
* The imaginary, the world of symbols and inner archetypes, contact with elemental forces and spiritual entities can be a source of profound understanding.
* Faith is not uncritical adherence to dogmas, but the fruit of the interior experience of a spiritual reality.
About Civilization
* Civilization has grown with competition, fueled by individualism. Today, such growth has led to entirely new social, environmental and psychological conditions, which require new ways of thinking. This renewal in the collective consciousness leads to being more inclined to consider values such as solidarity and sharing.
About the Company
* The true nature of the human being consists in the relationship: I exist because you exist.
* In the relationship man can live the unity he comes from and recreate the harmony underlying the phenomenal world.
* Recognizing the relationship as an encounter of brothers and sisters, natural ethics develops, the spontaneous manifestation of the most human qualities: trust, sharing, wisdom, humility, courage, respect, compassion, etc.
* With a spiritual vision behind a new economy, the
mentality of individualism is superseded and integrated by the idea of
common well-being and cooperation.
About Illness and Healing
* Pain, both emotional and social conflicts and illness are not simply enemies to be fought, but allies that contain within themselves a potential creative source of meaning, teaching and strength.
By mastering listening and self-observation we can allow the creative potential of the symptom or conflict to unfold through images, emotions, sensations, needs, desires, memories, sounds, actions, intuitions, etc.
* Preventing access to non-ordinary states of consciousness can hinder the conditions necessary to ensure true healing and spiritual fulfillment.
* Love, compassion, solidarity, patience, humility, sharing, the most genuinely human qualities we are able to offer to the world are the first choice cure for any disease.
About sacred
* In addition to the dimension we access through ordinary consciousness, there is a higher and founding reality of a spiritual nature.
* Each spiritual tradition has lived and therefore described and interpreted this dimension in a particular way. From these experiences the different religious forms are born.
* Beyond the particular ways of experiencing and understanding this dimension, a universal matrix common to the various traditions is recognizable. These common elements, which constitute the truest and most essential part of every form of spirituality, can be identified.
* Every tradition and every spiritual experience is a symbol and index of a universal and particular way at the same time that is beyond the oppositions such as good / evil, true / false, etc.
About contemporary culture
* The identity of the transpersonal movement is based on the awareness of embodying a precise historical trend destined to produce effects in the cultural elaborations of the near future.
* There is a need to become aware of the topicality of the philosophical interpretations developed by traditional cultures by understanding their experiential matrix.
* The millenary experience accumulated by traditional cultures requires that particular attention be paid to them as the spokespersons of a very rich knowledge about the spiritual world.
* The transpersonal movement feels the need to overcome some trends typical of contemporary culture such as relativism, materialism, scientism, reductionism and hedonism.
* Many limits of contemporary culture are to be identified in the unawareness of the concrete possibility of an experience of the spiritual world.
* There is the possibility of treating and studying the spiritual experience respecting its proper characteristics but without entering into considerations of a confessional or theological nature.
About science
* States of consciousness different from ordinary ones broaden the spectrum of possible experiences to such an extent that the classical scientific elaboration which is based exclusively on ordinary experience is outdated.
* The same scientific results are making interpretations that integrate phenomena of the natural world into a spiritual context more and more plausible.
* There is a need to overcome the chasm that has occurred in the last two centuries between scientific culture and spiritual culture and to work in the direction of their integration.
* The limits of the philosophical presuppositions that have guided scientific research since its inception have now been highlighted. We want to work to overcome them.
* Many known phenomena, because they cannot be integrated into the normal categorizations operated by materialistic science, have not been given the right attention. Such phenomena can be adequately understood within a spiritual horizon.