Paths Between Head and Heart by Oliver C. Robinson

Author:Oliver C. Robinson [Robinson, Oliver C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-901-6
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2018-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Another important influence on transpersonal psychology was the scholar of comparative religion Huston Smith, whose philosophy was in the tradition of Neoplatonism. He argued that a tree-tier view of reality is common to all religious traditions. In his book Forgotten Truth he describes this threefold structure as follows: The terrestrial plane (the gross, the material, the sensible, the corporeal, the phenomenal); the intermediate (the realm of archetypes and spirits which governs the terrestrial plane, and can be experienced directly in altered states of consciousness); and the celestial (experienced as God, Unity, the Love beyond opposites, or Primal Light, and can only be experienced indirectly). Around and beyond all these three levels, there is the Infinite – an all-inclusive totality that is beyond and within everything and defies all categorizations and opposites.21

The belief that reality is multilayered and extends beyond the physical has been not only central to the religions that Huston Smith surveyed, but also to indigenous spiritual traditions that predate scriptural religion. Shamanism is the modern name given to spiritual practices and ideas that are thought to have their origins in the Neolithic period (20,000–2000 BC), and which are still practiced in many tribal cultures today. Some shamanic rituals may have been used continuously now for 12,000 years in some parts of the world, which makes them a candidate for the most enduring cultural practices in human history.22

Linked to the rise of transpersonal psychology, techniques from shamanism have seen considerable growth as a form of spirituality in the West since the 1960s, including the use of drumming and dancing as a way of altering consciousness, and the use of plant medicines.23

Shamanic practitioners train in how to enter into a state of expanded consciousness that allows access to transcendental levels of reality. The core shamanism method commences with setting an intention at the beginning of the journey to gain transcendental information to help or heal, and then imagining moving into a higher world, middle world or lower world, while listening to a repetitive drumbeat. As the journey progresses, the practitioner will experience themselves journeying to other dimensions, and interacting with beings or spirit animals that apparently exist there.

Following the ideas of Carl Jung, transpersonal psychology conceives of the unconscious as a parallel universe to waking consciousness that extends beyond the brain and body. While the conscious self is experienced as me and mine, the deeper layers of the unconscious become increasingly other and not-me. This helps to explain why the beings and realms encountered in the shamanic journey are experienced as beyond the self.24 The philosopher Terence McKenna describes this as follows:

I believe that the best map we have of consciousness is the shamanic map. According to this viewpoint, the world has a ‘center,’ and when you go to the center – which is inside yourself – there is a vertical axis that allows you to travel up and down. There are celestial worlds, there are infernal worlds, there are paradisiacal worlds. These are the worlds that open up to

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