Transpersonal Psychology, Science, and The Supernatural

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND THE
SUPERNATURAL
Jorge N. Ferrer, Ph.D.
Berkeley, California
ABSTRACT: This article critically discusses the scientific status of transpersonal psychology and
its relation to so-called supernatural claims. In particular, analysis focuses on Friedmans (2002,
2013a) proposed division of labor between a scientific transpersonal psychology and
nonscientific transpersonal studies. This paper demonstrates that despite Friedmans aim to
detach transpersonal psychology from any particular metaphysical worldview, turning the field into
a modern scientific discipline effectively binds transpersonal psychology to a naturalistic
metaphysical worldview that is hostile to most spiritual knowledge claims. After identifying
several problems with Friedmans account of science and neo-Kantian skepticism about
supernatural factors in spiritual events, this paper introduces the perspective of a participatory
metaphysical pluralism and considers the challenge of shared spiritual visions for scientific
naturalism. Finally, a participatory research program is outlined that bridges the naturalistic/
supernaturalistic split by embracing a more liberal or open naturalismone that is receptive to
both the ontological integrity of spiritual referents and the plausibility of subtle dimensions of
reality.
KEYWORDS: transpersonal psychology, science, naturalism, reductionism, supernatural, participatory, neo-Kantianism.
Should transpersonal psychology be a scientific discipline? Do transpersonal

psychologists need to pledge to the exclusive use of empirical methods in their
research and scholarship? A number of contemporary transpersonal scholars
have so argued (see Daniels, 2001, 2005; Friedman, 2002, 2013a; MacDonald,
2013). Although with different emphases, they propose that transpersonal
psychology should focus on the scientific study of the naturalistic (i.e., physical
and psychological) aspects of transpersonal phenomena, staying away from
not only supernatural or metaphysical considerations, but also nonempirical
approaches such as hermeneutics or contemplative methodologies. Their
explicit aim is to free transpersonal psychology from religious ideologies,
secure the fields metaphysical neutrality, and thus enhance its social and
academic legitimacy as a scientific discipline.
While I argue against the pursuit of these aims in this articleand in particular
against Friedman (2002, 2013a) as their strongest advocateI also recognize
the value of a scientific approach. First, although I have elsewhere critiqued the
empiricist colonization of spirituality (i.e., the import of empiricist standards
such as falsifiability to spiritual inquiry; see Ferrer, 1998, 2002), I also think
The author wishes to thank Glenn Hartelius, Lee Irwin, Sean Kelly, Brian L. Lancaster, Jose Antonio Noguera,
Kenneth Ring, Richard Tarnas, and Michael Washburn for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this
paper.
jferrer@ciis.edu
Copyright 2014 Transpersonal Institute
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The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2014, Vol. 46, No. 2
that transpersonal psychology would benefit from more scientific studies. To

discern the transformative outcomes, neurobiological correlates, and phenomenology of transpersonal events, among other possible empirical findings, is
hugely important; quantitative and qualitative approaches should be regarded
as equally vital for the field (see Anderson & Braud, 2011, 2013).1 Second, I
agree with Friedman (2002, 2013a) that transpersonal psychology should
neither become a religion nor be exclusively tied to any particular spiritual
tradition or metaphysical worldview. With this goal in mind, some of my past
works sought to expel spiritual ideologies underlying transpersonal models
through a participatory framework that does not privilege any spiritual
tradition or orientation over others on objectivist, ontological, or metaphysical
grounds (i.e., saying that theism, monism, or nondualism corresponds to the
nature of ultimate reality). Those writings also offered criteria for making
qualitative distinctions regarding spiritual matters, based on pragmatic and
transformational grounds such as selflessness, embodied integration, and ecosocial-political justice (Ferrer, 2002, 2008a, 2011a, 2011b). Third, although
accounts of the scientific method from the transpersonal defenders of science
more closely resemble what one would find in a science textbook than the
activities of a practicing scientist, these authors are not nave scientists. Rather,
these scholars present a philosophically informed scientific approach that
properly acknowledges science as but one path to knowledge, the provisional
nature of scientific products, and the hermeneutic dimension of science (i.e.,
data are theory laden; Friedman, 2002, 2013a; MacDonald, 2013).
In this article, however, I show that the scientific approach can beand indeed
has beentaken too far. I first argue that these scholars (e.g., Daniels, 2001,
2005; Friedman, 2002, 2013a; MacDonald, 2013) underestimate how the
powerful ways in which modern science is embedded in a naturalistic
metaphysics betray their goal to free the discipline from fidelity to any
metaphysical worldview. Then, after identifying serious problems with these
authors adherence to a neo-Kantian epistemology and associated metaphysical agnosticism, I show the residual scientism afflicting their proposals for a
scientific transpersonal psychology. Next, I present the critical metaphysical
pluralism of the participatory approach and discuss the challenge of shared
spiritual visions for scientific naturalism. Finally, as a possible direction to
relax the fields metaphysical tensions, I offer an example of a participatory
research program that bridges the modern dichotomy between naturalism and
supernaturalism (though I later argue against the need for either term, they are
appropriate when discussing this so-called divide). I conclude by arguing that
although transpersonal psychology should encourage scientific studies, the
field should not be defined or limited by its allegiance to any single inquiry
approach, epistemology, or metaphysical worldview.
SCIENCE, NATURALISM,
AND
METAPHYSICAL AGNOSTICISM
In two important manifestos, Friedman (2002, 2013a) proposed to restrict the

term psychology to refer to the scientific study of transpersonal phenomena and
to use the broader category transpersonal studies for nonempirical approaches.2
Transpersonal Psychology, Science, and the Supernatural
153
Friedmans main motivation appears to be detaching transpersonal psychology

from specific metaphysical worldviews, such as those espoused by religious
traditions. Because metaphysical statements cannot be empirically tested,
Friedman argued, a scientific transpersonal psychology should remain agnostic
about metaphysical and supernatural claims and concentrate instead on the
naturalistic study of the physical and the psychological (cf. McDonald, 2013).
Leaving aside the circularity of this argument, a more serious issue emerges
when considering that, as generally understood and practiced in modern times,3
science entails a naturalistic metaphysics associated with an ontological
materialism and reductionism that is antithetical to supernatural worldviews
(see, e.g., de Caro & MacArthur, 2000, 2004a; Dupre, 1993; Ellis, 2009;
Mahner, 2012). In other words, far from being metaphysically neutral, modern
science endorses the naturalistic view that all that exists is our lawful
spatiotemporal world (Mahner, 2012, p. 1437). Metaphysical naturalism,
Mahner (2012) added, should be considered essentially constitutive of
sciencea tacit metaphysical supposition of science, an ontological postulate (p. 1438) without which science would no longer be science (cf.
Schafersman, 1997).
While Friedman (2002, 2013a) has been silent on this subject, MacDonald
(2013) duly conceded that naturalistic science, like religion, is based on
unverifiable metaphysical assumptions. As Dupre (1993) pointed out, It is
now widely understood that science cannot progress without powerful
assumptions about the world it is trying to investigate, without, that is to
say, a prior metaphysics (p. 1). One of sciences main metaphysical
assumptions, MacDonald continued, is the commitment to an ontological
materialism or naturalism (p. 316) that favors reductionist explanations, for
example, seeking to explain spirituality through neurobiological mechanisms.4
MacDonald understands that this commitment has the same assumptive
epistemological status as what he calls a transcendental reductionism that
views transpersonal phenomena as ontologically real and of a source and
quality that is not reducible to material processes (p. 318). However, he
unwarrantedly concluded that such a predicament, instead of encouraging
metaphysical pluralism or neutrality, renders the criticism of reductionismas holding little value in advancing transpersonal science (p. 318). The
upshot of this move is that any talk about transcendent or supernatural
realities should be viewed in purely experiential terms (p. 321) with
anything that is available to human experience [being] a legitimate focus of
scientific study (p. 321). Although such radical empiricism (after James, 1912/
2002) is salutary, experientialismthe reduction of spiritual phenomena to
human experiencegenerates a plethora of problems for transpersonal
psychology. As I have examined those problems elsewhere (Ferrer, 2002), the
present discussion focuses on other issues.
In The Empirical Stance (2002), the philosopher of science van Fraassen
showed that the common association of scientific empiricism with naturalistic
and materialistic metaphysical theories is not only unwarranted, but also
misleading and ideological. Essentially, van Fraassen argued, whenever
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empiricism is linked to any metaphysical or philosophical position telling what

the world is like, one cannot avoid falling into ideological false consciousness:
There is no factual thesis itself invulnerable to empiricist critique and
simultaneously the basis for the empiricist critique of metaphysics (p. 46). To
be consistent, van Fraassen maintained, empiricism should be regarded as a
methodological stancethat is, an attitude, orientation, or approach free from
necessary specific beliefs or theses about reality and thus potentially open to
both secular and religious worldviews.5 His concluding passage merits
reproduction at length:
Each of the isms I mention here [i.e., materialism, naturalism, secularism]
has at some point appropriated for itself all the credit for the advances of
science, in order to claim its liberating power and moral authority. Each has
at some point intimated that it consists in nothing more than full-fledged
acceptance of what science tells us about the world. Coupled with this, a
little paradoxical, comes the insistence that science would die if it werent for
the scientists conscious or unconscious adherence to this philosophical
position. All of this is false; in fact, it is in philosophy that we see the most
glaring examples of false consciousness and they occur precisely at this
point. (pp. 194195)
Similarly, Dupre (2004) explained how the naturalistic opposition to
supernatural agents or explanations often degenerates into a physicalism
endorsing a monistic metaphysical worldview that is in conflict with empiricism
(i.e., monistic in the sense that everything in existence consists of and can be
explained in terms of a single substance: physical matter).6 Since the
completeness of physics is not empirically warranted, Dupre added, such
monism is a supernatural myth at odds with empiricist standards. The
problems with physicalism and materialism as metaphysical doctrines are
exacerbated by the many failures of reductionism in biology, genetics, ecology,
and psychology (Dupre, 1993). In addition, important contemporary trends in
complexity theory, nonlinear science, and neuroscience not only postulate
diverse forms of downward causation but also challenge the epistemic
superiority of reductionist explanations (e.g., Andersen, Emmeche, Finnemann, & Christiansen, 2000; Beauregard, 2007). In this context, transpersonal
psychologists may be especially interested in Fingelkurts and Fingelkurtss
(2009) thorough rebuttal of the 15 most frequent arguments used to reduce
religious experience to neurobiology. The only conclusion from observed
neuroscientific studies, they summarized, is that religious experience is
reflected in brain activity and that the brain somehow mediates some aspects of
religiosity (p. 312). As the nonlinear scientist Scott (2004) wrote, Reductionism is not a conclusion of science but a belief of many scientists (p. 66).
Other scholars support Dupres (1993, 2004) concerns and highlight the
problems raised by this naturalistic metaphysical worldview for religion.
Habermas (2008), for example, wrote the following: The ontologization of
natural scientific knowledge into a naturalistic worldview reduced to hard
facts is not science but bad metaphysics (p. 207). He added that with its
naturalistic worldview, scientism enters into a genuine relation of competition
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with religious doctrine (p. 245). This naturalism becomes a quasi-religion

(Plantinga, 2011, p. x) in its answering (even if in the negative) questions
concerning the existence of God or the intrinsic meaning of life. Critiquing the
religious temperament of naturalistic empiricism, Irwin (2008) pointed out:
Those who fail to recognize the truth of this empiricism are condemned to
ignorance; salvation lies in embracing the materialist belief that all
religious causality is reducible to biology, evolutionary psychology, and/or
sociocultural conditioning. (pp. 197198)
Metaphysical naturalism further assumes that when religious people claim to
have had supernatural experiences that defy rational explanations they are
mistaken in some way (McCutcheon, 1999, p. 127). The naturalistic
paradigm, in Byrnes (1999) words, far from being a neutral descriptionassumes the falsity and/or irrationality of religious thought and practice (p. 251).
It is also important to consider that, as Bilgrami (2000) explained, sciences
adoption (in the 17th century) of a naturalist metaphysics that voids the
natural world of spiritual or divine presence was not, contra widespread belief,
a scientific necessityrather, it was historically motivated by powerful political
and economic factors (see also Nagel, 2012).7 To be sure, as Tarnas (1991)
pointed out, the disenchantment of the natural world was overdetermined by
a plethora of philosophical, social, political, and psychological factors.
Reflecting this complexity, powerful political alliances between key ideologues
of the Royal Society of London and commercial interests, intersecting with
strictly scientific considerations, seem to have played a key role in the triumph
of a naturalistic worldview (cf. Kubrin, 1980). After all, Bilgrami wrote, from
an anima mundi, one could not simply proceed to take at whim and will (p. 42),
but a disenchanted world devoid of value, purpose, or divinity could be easily
turned into natural resources to be recklessly exploited.
Beyond its ideological underpinnings, the systematic deflationary bracketing of
supernatural claims can have a fatal consequence for transpersonal research,
effectively blinding researchers from the actual presence of supernatural (i.e.,
standing outside of the currently known or accepted natural world) agents or
forces at play in the shaping of spiritual and transpersonal events. After all, as
Mahner (2012) stressed, the no-supernatural principle (p. 1442) is not only a
methodological but also a metaphysical supposition of modern science. Even in
philosophy, all varieties of naturalism are joined in their rejection of supernatural
agents such as gods, angels, or spirits (see de Caro & MacArthur, 2000, 2004a).8
However, as Northcote (2004) persuasively argued, the methodological
suspension of the validity of supernormal claims (e.g., about metaphysical
entities or levels of reality), far from warranting objectivism or scholarly
neutrality in the study of religion, may actually constitute a bias against the
possibility that peoples thinking and behaviour are indeed based on various
supernormal forces a bracketing approach will falsely attribute mundane
sociological [or biological] explanations to behaviour that is in actuality shaped
by supernatural forces (p. 89). Accordingly, Northcote issued a call for
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dialogue between Western naturalistic and alternative perspectives in the

appraisal of supernormal claims. Wallace (2000) made a similar point
regarding scientific materialism: If there are any nonphysical influences on
physical events, unquestioning acceptance of this belief [in the causally closed
nature of the physical world] will ensure that those influences will not be
recognized (p. 25). Thus, I argue that unless one subscribes ideologically to a
naturalistic metaphysics, it may be prudentand heuristically fertilenot to
reject a priori the possibility of effective causation from the various
metaphysical sources and/or subtle psychic influences described by religious
and spiritual practitioners.9
In light of modern sciences metaphysical commitments, it is evident that
Friedmans (2002, 2013a) proposal fails to meet its own standards. Scientific
naturalism is not only thoroughly metaphysical, but also arguably shaped by
economic interests perpetuating an eco-pernicious, disenchanted worldview
that imposes methodological blinders on transpersonal researchers. As the
famous dictum goes, epistemology drives metaphysics, and so, whether in
science or transpersonal psychology, metaphysical skepticism is usually rooted
in an allegiance to neo-Kantian epistemology, to which I now turn.
ON TRANSPERSONAL NEO-KANTIANISM
Both Friedman (2002, 2013a) and MacDonald (2013) advised that transpersonal psychology should remain metaphysically agnostic toward any ontological reality beyond the physical and psychological, and simply focus on the
scientific study of human experience.10 This apparently cautious stance,
however, is dependent on the validity of neo-Kantian frameworks that bracket
the existence of supernatural and metaphysical sources of spiritual and
transpersonal phenomena. Although Kants actual views on this matter are far
from clear (Perovich, 1990), neo-Kantian frameworks assume that innate or
deeply seated epistemic constraints in human cognition render impossible and
therefore illicit any knowledge claim about metaphysical realities. In other
words, metaphysical (noumenal) worlds may exist, but the only thing accessible
is the human situated phenomenal awareness of them.11
Friedman (2002) is explicit about his commitment to neo-Kantian dualism.
After stating that science can directly study phenomena but not underlying
noumena (p. 182), he restricted transpersonal psychology to the scientific
study of transpersonal phenomenaremoving any talk about possible
transcendent noumena from its scope (p. 182).12 A scientific transpersonal
psychology, then, should be skeptical and agnostic about the existence of any
transcendent referent and stick with the study of human experience. By
transcendent, however, Friedman means different things in different essays.
Initially, he reified the transcendent into a single ineffable and transcategorical mystical ultimate: I consider it [the transcendent] to be the ultimate
holistic concept that can only be experienced, if at all, in a direct and
unmediated fashion unhampered by any specific limitation (p. 182). Later he
reformulated this notion as anything that is supernatural and metaphysical
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(e.g., that might be outside of space and time) (2013a, p. 307). In both
accounts, Friedman argued, transpersonal psychology should remain metaphysically agnostic because the transcendent is transconceptual, that is,
beyond categories (2013a, p. 183).
One of the problems with this account is that there is no such thing as the
transcendent in the singular, but instead a rich variety of spiritual ultimates that,
while some are indeed said to be transconceptual, can nonetheless be theorized in
numerous waysas hundreds of religious texts attest. In addition, many allegedly
supernatural spiritual phenomena are thoroughly conceptual and so they escape
Friedmans (2002, 2013) demarcation criterion concerning scientific transpersonal psychologys scope of study. Consider, for example, spiritual visions such as
Ezekiels Divine Chariot, Hildegards visionary experience of the Trinity, or
Black Elks Great Vision, as well as spiritual realms such as Buddha lands, the
Heavenly Halls of Merkavah mysticism, and the many subtle worlds posited by
Western esoteric schools or shamanic traditions. These realms and visionary
referents are far from being formless or beyond categories and are claimed to
exist beyond physical and psychological domains. While Friedmans portrayal of
the transcendent may be consistent with certain apophatic mysticisms (Sells,
1994), it is by no means inclusive of the variety of ways in which supernatural
realities have been enacted, understood, and described.
In addition, scientific transpersonal psychology cannot study the transcendent,
Friedman (2013a) claimed, because any direct, nonmediated knowing would
not be conceptual but another ilk outside of the parameters of science (p. 306).
Direct knowledge, however, can be conceptualized. Right this moment I am
having a direct experience of the hot chocolate I am drinking, but this does not
prevent me from potentially describing it (e.g., as warm, spicy, bittersweet) and
thus study it. To be sure, such experience, like transcendent ones, has mediated
elements (e.g., cultural predispositions), but they are rather insignificant
compared to its direct qualities (i.e., no cultural influence will make my hot
chocolate taste like cold orange juice; cf. King, 1988). As Wilber (1995) put it,
I find myself in immediate experience of mediated worlds (p. 601).
The entire mediated-unmediated dichotomy, however, is ultimately parasitic of
neo-Kantian epistemology: On the one hand, there is an unfathomable
noumenon or thing-in-itself, and, on the other, a variety of mediating factors
or mechanisms through which such reality becomes phenomenally accessible.
These factors (e.g., deep structures, paradigms, conceptual frameworks,
languages, cognitive schemes, and neural-physiological mechanisms), so the
Kantian story goes, not only operate at conscious and unconscious levels of
awareness, but also limit and shape in fundamental ways what can be possibly
known about the world. Central to the notion of mediation is the claim that it
is only through these constructions and mechanisms that human beings can
make intelligible the raw input of an otherwise inscrutable reality.
As discussed elsewhere (Ferrer, 2002), after disposing of the Kantian two-worlds
metaphysical doctrine and related dogmas such as the scheme-content dualism
(Davidson, 1984), these so-called mediating factorsfar from being limiting or
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distortingcan be seen as the vehicles through which reality or being self-manifests

through the human (cf. Schillbrack, 2014). Mediation is thus transformed from an
obstacle into the very means that enable human beings to directly participate in the
self-disclosure of the world. Tarnas (1991) gets to the heart of the matter:
All human knowledge of the world is in some sense determined by subjective
principles [mediating factors]; but instead of considering these principles as
belonging ultimately to the separate human subject, and therefore not
grounded in the world independently of human cognition, this participatory
conception held that these subjective principles are in fact an expression of
the worlds own being, and that the human mind is ultimately the organ of
the worlds own process of self-revelation. (pp. 433434)
Friedman (2002) has also overlooked the religious implications of his
transpersonal neo-Kantianism. After his rightful plea against the use of
transpersonal psychology to promulgate any specific religious or spiritual folks
traditions (p. 176; cf. Friedman, 2009), he wrote that his claim regarding the
unknowability of transcendent noumena is congruent withthe Judaic emphasis
on the essential mystery of Gods unknowability and the Taoist emphasis in the
Tao Te Ching that those who speak about the Tao do not know of what they
speak (p. 182). However, many (arguably most) mystical traditionsfrom
Advaita Vedanta to Raja Yoga to most Buddhist schools to many forms of
Christian mysticismdo defend the possibility of directly knowing such ultimate
referent or reality (cf. King, 1999). Incidentally, Friedmans inclusion of Taoism as
supporting his view is dubious since claims for immediate dynamic attunement to
the Tao in this tradition are well known (e.g., Kohn, 2001).
My aim here is not to argue for any particular epistemic viewpoint but merely
to show the inescapability of metaphysical (and perhaps even religious)
commitments in human inquiry, whether scientific or not. Actually, since the
impossibility of directly knowing God is especially central to Judaism (as Ain
Sof or primordial divinity), Gnosticism, and certain Christian and Muslim
apophatic mysticisms, one could charge Friedmans (2002) proposal with
inadvertently accomplishing exactly what he seeks (and implicitly claims) to
avoid: He confines transpersonal research within the epistemological and
metaphysical strictures of particular Western religious traditions.13
In sum, the legitimacy of metaphysical agnosticism and skepticism is
contingent on the validity of a neo-Kantian dualistic metaphysics, which
further undermines the professed metaphysical neutrality of transpersonal
scientism. In effect, Friedmans (2002) account creates an implicit hierarchy
not only between particular Western traditions (which got it right) and most
other religious traditions (which got it wrong), but also, as the next section
stresses, between Western and non-Western epistemic frameworks.
Western Ethnocentrism and Epistemic Colonialism
Neo-Kantian skepticism is not only empirically unwarranted, but also requires
the ethnocentric dismissal of the cognitive claims of most of the world spiritual
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practitioners. This is evident in the way it explicitly or implicitly dismisses

supernatural claims made by spiritual practitioners as pre-critical, ingenuous,
dogmatic, or even primitive and superstitious. In the context of religious
studies, Irwin (2008) caustically wrote about such an attitude:
Causality attributed to nonempirical sources, neither measurable nor
scientifically testable, must be relegated to the dust bins of history as
quaint misbeliefs held by folk believers, whose poor intuitions have led
them astray into the murky subterranean depths of the unconscious, social
repression, and the denied stirrings of primal needs and desires. (p. 198)
In other words, since the worlds Indigenous and contemplative traditions have
not undergone the Kantian revolution of the modern West, their cognitive
claims should not be taken seriously. Instead, traditional supernatural claims
should be taken symbolically, critically filtered through Western epistemologies, or translated into Western scientific or academic categories.
Consider how Friedmans (2002, 20013a) neo-Kantianism led him to believe
that noumenal or ultimate reality is unavoidably inaccessible to human
cognition. This claim contradicts most contemplative and Indigenous epistemic
frameworks, which explicitly assert such access (e.g., Forman, 1989; King,
1999; Klein, 1986; Irwin, 1994). The problem here is that assuming neoKantianism is right elevates a highly questionable Western epistemology (see
e.g., Davidson, 1984; Schillbrack, 2014; Schrader, 1967; Tarnas, 1991) as
superior to all other non-Western epistemic frameworks.
Of course, the reevaluation of non-Western emic frameworks in contemporary
debates does not settle the contested issues (Ferrer & Sherman, 2008b); rather,
it simply but crucially highlights the fact that Western epistemologies may not
be the last arbiters in the assessment of religious knowledge claims, and in
particular of those emerging from long-term spiritual practice or ritual. As
King (1999) stated:
My point is not that Western scholars should necessarily accept the emic
[epistemological] perspectives over which they are claiming the authority to
speak, but rather that they at least entertain the possibility that such
perspectives are a legitimate stance to adopt and engage them in
constructive debate. (p. 183)
This approach entails more than merely taking emic claims as inspirations for
real scientific research (which Friedman accepts)one must also consider
the relevance of emic epistemic frameworks to alternatively understand ways of
knowing and assess knowledge claims.
Friedman (2013a) sees value in adopting emic perspectives in cross-cultural
encounters but only to a point. Since such perspectives are based on
supernatural assumptions, he considered such an approach potentially
dangerous for those who desire to maintain their so-called scientific objectivity
through keeping an etic perspective. However, having an emic perspective can
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be useful, if the etic perspective can also be kept intact (p. 303). In other
words, non-Western standpoints are to be appreciated insofar as they do not
challenge Western frameworks and their supposedly objective standards.14
Friedmans (2013a) account of transpersonal psychologys mission gives the
show away. He stated: Transpersonal psychology can be seen as an attempt to
replace traditional spiritual and folk psychological worldviews with perspectives
congruent with those of modern science, that can develop scientifically through
empirical research (p. 310; emphasis added). Emic perspectives and
categories, that is, should be not only translated but also ultimately replaced
by Western scientific ones.15
In counterpoint to Friedmans (2013a) suggestion, an increasing number of
anthropologists, scholars of religion, and transpersonal thinkers refuse the
translation of religious terms into Western scientific concepts. In addition to
Stollers (Stoller & Olkes, 1987) participatory rejection of ethnographic realism
in anthropology, many contemporary scholars endorse the application of emic
categories in the study of religion and spirituality. For example, Saler (2000)
suggested that scholarship could benefit from the use of folk categories (e.g.,
the Hindu concept of dharma) as tools of anthropological analysis (cf.
Lancaster, 2013). Transpersonal scholar Rothberg (2000) made an even
stronger case in the context of spiritual inquiry:
To interpret spiritual approaches through categories like data, evidence, verification, method, confirmation, and intersubjectivity
may be to enthrone these categories as somehow the hallmarks of
knowledge But might not a profound encounter with practices of spiritual
inquiry lead to considering carefully the meaning of other comparable
categories (e.g., dhyana, vichara, theoria, gnosis, or contemplatio) and
perhaps to developing understandings of inquiry in which such spiritual
categories are primary or central when we speak of knowledge? To assume
that the categories of current western [sic] epistemology are adequate for
interpreting spiritual approaches is to prejudge the results of such an
encounter, which might well lead to significant changes in these categories.
(pp. 175176)
These and others scholars are persuasively arguing that importing Western
epistemic categories to analyze and account for the validity of knowledge
claims from all cultures, ways of knowing, and domains of reality is highly
questionable (cf. Roth, 2008). Most religious and spiritual endeavors, I should
add, are aimed not so much at describing or explaining human nature and the
world, but at engaging and transforming them in creative and participatory
ways (see, e.g., Apffel-Marglin, 2011; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008a; Hollenback,
1996), and may therefore call for different validity standards than those
emerging from the rationalistic study of the natural world.
In closing this section, a number of questions arise: Might not the very goals
and assumptions of Western research programs be revised in the encounter
with non-Western understandings? Should not a truly postcolonial scholarship
be open to be transformed at depth by transcultural methodological
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interactions? Can scholars dance between etic and emic, insider and outsider
stances, in their approach to spiritual phenomena, particularly those involving
supernatural or metaphysical claims? Paraphrasing Kripal (2006), I propose
that it is as important to let go of the pride of the insider and embrace the
gnosis of the outsider as it is to let go of the pride of the outsider and
embrace the gnosis of the insider. To this end, transpersonal scholarship
may need to navigate successfully between the Scylla of uncritical acceptance
of all emic claims (romanticism and going native) and the Charybdis
of assuming Western epistemological superiority (colonialism and epistemic
violence).
I suggest that transpersonal psychology will be fully free from epistemic
colonialism only when it stops taking for granted Western frameworks such as
neo-Kantianism or scientific empiricism as absolutely privileged in the study of
the worlds traditions (even if science can be considered a superior approach to
study particular empirical aspects of religion, e.g., brain activity and cognitive
capacities functioning; see Lancaster, 2004, 2013). Postcolonial transpersonal
approaches should not be motivated by politically or spiritually correct
attitudes (often rooted in cultural guilt) but by a blend of epistemological
boldness and humility that embraces the potential value of different epistemic
frameworks, while concurrently acknowledging the limits of the analytic
rationality cultivated in the modern West. The next section elaborates on this
critical point.
Neo-Kantianism, Disembodiment, and Existential Alienation

Thinkers as diverse as Bordo (1987), Leder (1990), Nagatomo (1992), Varela,
Thompson, and Rosch (1991), and Yasuo (1987) have suggested that the
process of increasing dissociation between mental and somatic worlds, which
characterized important strains of the modern Western trajectory, was an
important source of both the postulation and the success of the Cartesian
mind-body doctrine. The overcoming of Cartesian dualism, therefore, may not
be so much a philosophical but a practical, existential, and transformative task.
In a similar vein, I propose that the Kantian two-worlds doctrine (and its
associated epistemic skepticism) is largely dependent on the estrangement of the
human mind from an embodied apprehension of reality. As contemporary
cognitive science shows, Our sense of what is real begins with and depends
crucially upon our bodies. As embodied, imaginative creatures, we never were
separated or divorced from reality in the first place (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999,
p. 17, p. 93).16 If this is correct, then it becomes entirely understandable that the
decline of embodied participation in human inquiry, arguably precipitated by
the disconnection between mind and body, may have undermined the sense of
being in touch with the real, engendering the Kantian mentalist dualism of a
merely phenomenal world and an always inaccessible noumenal reality.17
As Tarnas (1991) suggested, this epistemic dualism contributes in fundamental
ways to the existential estrangement of the modern self. By placing the
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individual inexorably out of touch with the real world, the alienating
Cartesian gap between subject and object is epistemologically affirmed and
secured: Thus the cosmological estrangement of modern consciousness
initiated by Copernicus and the ontological estrangement initiated by
Descartes were completed by the epistemological estrangement initiated by
Kant: a threefold mutually enforced prison of modern alienation (p. 419).
Tarnass analysis brings to the foreground the pernicious implications of this
dualism for human participation in spiritual knowledge:
The Cartesian-Kantian paradigm both expresses and ratifies a state of
consciousness in which experience of the unitive numinous depths of reality
has been systematically extinguished, leaving the world disenchanted and
the human ego isolated. Such a world view is, as it were, a kind of
metaphysical and epistemological box. (p. 431)
One of the central issues at stake in this discussion is whether some kind of
personal engagement and even transformationsuch as body-mind integration, triumph over mental pride, or the development of contemplative
competencesare needed for the enactment, apprehension, and assessment of
certain truth claims (see Evans, 1993; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008b; Kasulis,
2002; Kripal, 2006; Taber, 1983). After all, most contemplative traditions
hold that in order to ascertain their most fundamental insights, practitioners
need to develop cognitive competences beyond the structures of linguistic
rationality. In the end, as Kripal (2006) reminded us, Rationalism and
reductionismare also state-specific truths (that is, they are specific to highly
trained egoic forms of awareness), but their states of mind are more easily
reproduced and communicated, at least within our present Western cultures
(pp. 141142).
Indeed, modern Western education emphasizes the development of the minds
rational and intellectual powers, paying little attention to the maturation of
other ways of knowing. A common outcome is that most individuals in the
Western culture reach adulthood with a conventionally mature mental
functioning but with poorly or irregularly developed somatic, emotional,
aesthetic, intuitive, and spiritual intelligences (Ferrer, 2003; Ferrer, Romero, &
Albareda, 2005; Gardner, 1983/1993). But then, can the modern mind admit
that its mastered epistemic competencies may not be the final or necessarily
superior cognitive plateau, and yet maintain and even sharpen its critical look
toward oppressive, repressive, and untenable religious beliefs and ideologies?
These issues are central for assessing contemporary proposals for a scientific
transpersonal psychology, which, following the mandates of modern science,
posit the replicability and public nature of observation to be paramount. If
specific types of personal transformation are necessary to enact or access
particular spiritual referents, such replicable public nature is then naturally
limited to those who have transformed themselves in those specific ways.
Although conventional science makes cognitive demands to its practitioners
(e.g., years of study, practical lab trainings, etc.), the demands of a personally
transformative inquiry are obviously greater and rather unconventional from
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mainstream scientific or philosophical perspectives (for notable exceptions, see

Kasulis, 2002; Taber, 1983; Wallace, 2004).
Although Friedman (2002, 2013a) supported Tarts (1972) proposal for statespecific sciences, in which researchers may be required to undergo meditative
training to study transpersonal phenomena, he restricted those phenomena to
human experiences and remarked that such training is not dissimilar to the
years of mastery required by researchers in areas of conventional science
(Friedman, 2002, p. 185). These statements suggest that Friedman is discussing
meditative skills training aimed at mapping states of mind, not the personal,
existential, and even ontological transformation most traditions consider
necessary to apprehend what have traditionally been understood as supernatural or metaphysical referents (see, e.g., Dupre, 1996; Hollenback, 1996;
Lanzetta, 2008). In the next section, I turn to a closer examination of
Friedmans account of science.
TRANSPERSONAL SCIENCE OR SCIENTISM?

Avoiding the hardest form of scientism, Friedman (2013a) repeatedly stated that
the nonscientific approaches he seeks to expurgate from transpersonal psychology
are neither intrinsically more or less valuable than science (p. 308). However, a
strong scientism and positivism animate Friedmans assumptions that (a) modern
science is less metaphysically biased and more progressive than other inquiry
traditions, (b) a definite boundary can be drawn between science and nonscience,
and (c) there is unity in the scientific method (for a lucid account of scientism, see
Sorell [1991]). Each of these assumptions is problematic.
First, Friedmans (2002, 2013a) claim that scientific approaches are free (or
freer) from the metaphysical baggage that in his view afflicts philosophical and
religious traditions reveals his faith in the positivist dream of science as the
unproblematic path to nondogmatic knowledge. After all, as Sorell (1991)
concluded in his study, The new scientism in philosophy is a kind of
naturalism (p. 177). In the same spirit, Friedmans insistence that scientific
research into the transcendent is implausible closely follows the understanding
in classical logical positivism that metaphysical claims or statements alluding
to some transcendental reality [are] meaningless, since they could not be
verified (Tauber, 2009, p. 92). In addition, Friedman (2013a) characterized
science as distinctively progressive: Scientific strategy facilitates progress,
rather than stagnation, and differentiates transpersonal psychology as a science
from traditional worldviews and religions, as well as philosophy (p. 304). This
statement suggests that Friedman wants to have it both ways: On the one hand,
he wants to avoid the charge of scientism by stating that he does not regard
science as superior to religion or philosophy; on the other, he claims that
epistemic progress is exclusive of science (but then, why would not science be
cognitively superior?). As history shows, however, many scientific disciplines
from anatomy to astronomy to acousticsdo not show any substantial
progress for decades whereas many nonscientific ones (e.g., literary criticism or
military strategy) arguably do (Laudan, 1996). Thus, progress as specific to
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science (and missing from nonscience) will not do. Although the case for
progress is a thorny one in all inquiry traditions, one might argue that not
only philosophical but also spiritual traditions show signs of epistemic
progress, for example, in their understanding of liberation, response to new
historical demands, or invention of novel methods to more effectively achieve
their ends. In any event, it is important to remember, faith in progress as a
distinguishing feature of science was another canon of the positivist doctrine
that Friedman resuscitates (see, e.g., Tauber, 2009, p. 50).
Second, Friedmans (2002, 2013a) division between scientific transpersonal
psychology and nonscientific transpersonal studies is questionable because no
definite demarcation criterion between science and nonscience (or pseudoscience) has ever been successfully established. After a thorough review of
proposed demarcation criteria (including method, verifiability, and falsifiability), Laudan (1996) wrote, no demarcation line between science and
nonscience, or between science and pseudo-science, would win assent from
a majority of philosophers (p. 211). The demarcation problem, Laudan
concluded, is an ideological pseudoproblem:
If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop
terms like pseudo-science and unscientific from our vocabulary; they
are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. As such, they are
more suited to the rhetoric of politicians and Scottish sociologists of
knowledge than to that of empirical researchers. (p. 222).
Furthermore, although relocating psychology within the science camp,18
Friedman (2002, 2013a) perpetuates the classical Two Cultures split (Snow,
1959/1964) between the sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) and the
humanities (sociology, psychology, and anthropology) that contemporary
sociology of knowledge and science studies have so effectively dismantled:
Science no longer resides outside the humanities as some distant colony of
academic inquiry (Tauber, 2009, p. 11). Even though the positivist picture of
science still dominates popular conceptions of science (p. 12), Tauber (2009)
continued, science has been dethroned from its special positivist pedestal, and
a One Culture mentality has emerged to challenge the Two Culture picture of
science and society (p. 12). Once scientism is fully exorcised from science,
Tauber argued, science can be re-integrated within the larger tradition of
humanistic inquiry from which it originated.
Third, Friedmans (2002, 2013a) portrayal of science as possessing a singular
method with invariant qualities that can be set against nonscientific
approaches resurrects another long-gone positivist dream. The very failure to
demarcate between science and nonscience was largely due to, and intensified
by, the vast diversity of so-called scientific practices. For Laudan (1996), the
lack of agreement about the features of the scientific method means that the
unity of method thesis should be regarded as refuted. As Duhem (1908)
showed, accounts of the scientific method bore little resemblance to the
methods actually used by working scientists (Laudan, 1996, p. 214)a
conclusion extensively corroborated today by research into actual scientific
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practice (e.g., Shapin, 2010; for a balanced review of science studies, see
Tauber, 2009). Despite the exaggerations of some postmodern constructionists,
Tauber (2009) concluded, Historical and sociological studies have demonstrated beyond the reasonable doubt that the working practices of scientific
disciplines are both incompletely and inaccurately portrayed by the methodologies to which scientists officially subscribe (p. 130).
What is more, Dupre (1993, 2004) pointed out that scholars typically use the
rhetoric of sciences methodological unity to ideologically dismiss (perhaps
with good reasons) disciplines whose knowledge claims they consider to be farfetched, unreliable, or dogmatic. As Dupre (2004) wrote, however, If one
thinks of the daily practice of a theoretical physicist, a field taxonomist, a
biochemist, or a neurophysiologist, it is hard to believe that there is anything
fundamentally common to their activities that constitutes them all as
practitioners of the Scientific Method (p. 42). Furthermore, Dupre (1993)
argued, such a disunity of science is not a temporary state of affairs to be
overcome in the future by superior cognitive or technological achievements,
but rather reflects accurately the underlying ontological complexity of the
world (p. 7).19 Summing up the issues with both the demarcation project and
the unity of science, de Caro and MacArthur (2004b) wrote:
science has no essence and the very idea of a sharp division between
what is scientific and what is not is highly questionable. Indeed, the ideal of
the unity of sciences is an unrealized and unrealizable dream. The point is
not just that there is no single method or set of methods that is properly
called the scientific method, but, more than this, that there is no clear,
uncontroversial, and useful definition of science to do the substantial work
scientific naturalists require of it. (p. 15)
Taken together, these assumptions about science disclose a positivist scientism
in Friedmans (2002, 2013a) proposal that I find counterproductive for the
integrity and appropriate epistemological legitimation of transpersonal
psychology. In the end, as Walach (2013) pointed out, at least part of the
transpersonal enterprise is in fact an implicit or explicit challenge to the entire
history and set of methodologies by which science and scientific psychology is
done (p. 68). Before exploring alternatives to Friedmans project, I briefly
consider its implications for transpersonal research.
SCIENTIFIC TRANSPERSONAL RESEARCH PROGRAMS

In a section suitably titled, What is left for transpersonal psychology to
study, Friedman (2013a) reiterated that transpersonal psychology should
exclusively research the physical and psychological aspects of transpersonal
phenomena. Arguably controverting his earlier support of qualitative methods,
Friedman (2013a) further claimed that transpersonal psychology should not
research lived transpersonal experiences and instead study the expansion of
ones self-concept or mental-linguistic understanding of ones identity (e.g.,
using his Self-Expansiveness Level Form; Friedman, 1983). Since Friedmans
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(2013a) overriding goal is to conceptualize and operationalize a transpersonal

approach devoid of metaphysical assumptions (p. 204), this focus on the selfconcept is justified because he believes that the notion of self as experienced
can be equated to consciousness itself, and is a metaphysical notion every bit as
obscure as transcendence (p. 205).
To be sure, researching the self-concept is a legitimate endeavor, but as a
transpersonal scholar I am mostly interested not in what people think about
their identity but how they actually experience it. In my view, the self-concept
is a construct whose value to measure or assess transpersonal states or growth is
dubious. While the self-concept can change after a lived expansion of
consciousness, it can also expand, for example, after reading an evocative
spiritual bookthink of Wattss (1966/1989) The Book: On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Areor after becoming intellectually familiar with transpersonal psychology, the notion of the ecological self, and so forth. Transpersonal
psychologists should seek to assess transpersonal states through the study of
changes in felt-sensed self-identity, not of mental views about such identity.
Friedmans belief that only the self-concept can be researched is mistaken
changes in lived self-identity can be identified via qualitative methods, for
example, longitudinal phenomenological studies of meditation practice. Friedman
might respond that phenomenological reports necessarily refer to the self-concept,
but it is one thing to report ones views on self-identity, and quite another to report
ones lived experience of such identity (see, e.g., van Manen, 1990)
Interestingly, Friedman (2013a) claimed to embrace not only Jamess (1912/
2002) radical empiricism but also Tarts (1972) state-specific sciences
approaches that consider data from both outer and inner (or introceptive)
senses. Contra mystical claims, however, Friedman quickly added that
nonduality and other spiritual states are terms without empirical referents and
therefore they lie beyond the scope of scientific transpersonal psychology. The
issue at stake here is what Friedman considers to be inner data. After
including phenomenological and electroencephalographic data, he qualified the
kind of empirical data that in his view a community of meditators can produce:
Insofar as some in such community might have what could be described as
transcendent experiences, those would be outside the realm of science to study
directly (i.e., I would see these direct experiences as noumenal, not phenomenal)
(p. 309). Once again, Friedmans neo-Kantianism traps him in an epistemic box
that is hermetically sealed by its own critical presuppositionsthis time, one that
Jamess radical empiricist openness to direct nonlinguistic experience actually
overcomes (Blum, 2014; Taylor & Wozniak, 1996). All the above suggests the
need to explore transpersonal epistemologies and research programs free from
neo-Kantian assumptions and exclusive allegiance to a naturalistic metaphysicsa task for the rest of this essay.
A PARTICIPATORY METAPHYSICAL PLURALISM

Integrating the work of Davidson (1984), Tarnas (1991), and Varela,
Thompson, and Rosch (1991), among others, participatory approaches eschew
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the Kantian two-worlds dualism by regarding human beings as vehicles for the
creative self-unfolding of reality and the enaction (or bringing forth) of
directly knowable spiritual worlds, realms, or domains of distinctions (e.g.,
Ferrer, 2002, 2008a; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008a; Hartelius & Ferrer, 2013; Irwin,
1996, 2008). Whereas perennialism (and confessional and theological stances)
posits a single or primary transcendent reality (see Ferrer, 2000, 2002) and
modern science subscribes to a naturalistic worldview that brackets, denies, or
reduces supernatural referents (e.g., de Caro & MacArthur, 2000, 2004a),
participatory pluralism allows for a plurality of enacted spiritual worlds that
can in principle be accounted for in both naturalistic and supernaturalistic
fashions:
to embrace a participatory understanding of religious knowledge is not
necessarily linked to confessional, religionist, or supernaturalist premises or
standpoints. virtually all the same participatory implications for the study
of religion can be practically drawn if we were to conceive, or translate the
term, spirit in a naturalistic fashion as an emergent creative potential of life,
nature, or reality. Whether such creative source is a transcendent spirit or
immanent life will likely be always a contested issue, but one, we believe,
that does not damage the general claims of the participatory turn. (Ferrer &
Sherman, 2008b, p. 72)
Thus, whereas both perennialism and scientism commit transpersonal
psychology to a single metaphysical worldviewtranscendentalist and
naturalistic, respectivelyparticipatory frameworks free the field from such
univocal vows and invite researchers to remain open to multiple metaphysical
possibilities. As Daniels (2005) pointed out, It is vital that we remain
pluralistic at this time and do not fall into the trap of committing the discipline
as a whole to any particular ontology (p. 231).
While dispensing with dubious equations among spiritual ultimates (e.g., the
Tao is God or Buddhist emptiness is structurally equivalent to the Hindu
Brahman), participatory pluralism affirms an undetermined mystery or creative
power as the generative source of all spiritual enactions (Ferrer, 2002, 2008b).20
This shared spiritual dynamism, however, should be sharply distinguished from
any Kantian-like noumenon or thing-in-itself endowed with inscrutable
qualities in which all spiritual ultimates are always incomplete, culturally
conditioned, or cognitively constrained phenomenal manifestations (e.g., Hick,
1992). In contrast, an enactive participatory epistemology (Ferrer, 2002, 2008a;
Malkemus, 2012) does away with the Kantian dualism by not only refusing to
conceive of the mystery as having objectifiable pregiven attributes (e.g., personal,
impersonal, dual, or nondual), but also affirming the radical identity of the
manifold spiritual ultimates and the mysteryeven if the former do not exhaust
the generative ontological possibilities of the latter. Put simply, the mystery
cocreatively unfolds in multiple ontological directions (Ferrer, 2011b).
The question rightfully arises: Would not such a participatory account be
another metaphysical worldview competing for supremacy? After all, no
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spiritual vision or conceptual framework is metaphysically neutral, and the

undetermined nature of the mystery espoused by the participatory approach
can be seen as especially consistent with Buddhisms emptiness and apophatic
mystical accounts (see Duckworth, 2014; Ferrer, 2002). My use of the term
undetermined, however, is eminently performativethat is, it seeks to evoke the
sense of not-knowing and intellectual humility that I find most fruitful in
approaching the creative power that is the source of our being (Ferrer, 2008a).
Rather than affirming negatively (as the term indeterminate does), undetermined leaves open the possibility of both determinacy and indeterminacy
within the mystery, as well as the paradoxical confluence or even identity of
these two apparently polar accounts. As Duckworth (2014) observed regarding
this proposal, metaphysical biases are thus neutralized for the most part; such
undetermined ultimate precludes emptiness from being the final word on
reality because, being undetermined, ultimate reality can also be disclosed as
theistic in a personal God. And importantly, this God is not a lower reality
than emptiness (pp. 346347). Irwin (2008) concurs: The participatory model
is not based on preconceptions about the validity of (or relationship to) any
particular metaphysical view, but seeks to elucidate this view as yet another
example of authentic spiritual encounter (p. 200).
The problem of doctrinal ranking is further minimized by both the
participatory grounding of qualitative distinctions on pragmatic values (e.g.,
integration, embodiment, selflessness), and its equiplurality principle, according
to which there can potentially be multiple spiritual enactions that are
nonetheless equally holistic and emancipatory (Ferrer, 2011b, p. 4). I stand by
these valuesnot because I think they are universal, objective, or ahistorical
(they are not), but because I firmly believe that their cultivation can effectively
reduce todays personal, relational, social, and planetary suffering. To be sure,
the specificities of the various spiritual, transformational goals often derive
from ontological views about the nature of reality or the divine, but, as the
equiplurality principle maintains, the participatory ranking is not itself
precipitated by the privileging of a single spiritual goal, but rather explodes
into a plurality of potentially holistic spiritual realizations that can occur
within and outside traditions. This principle is founded on the double rejection
of an objectivist account of the mystery and a representational paradigm of
cognition, according to which there can be only one most accurate
representation of an original template with pregiven features (for nonrepresentational epistemologies, see Frisina, 2002). Taken together, these features
release participatory spirituality from the dogmatic commitment to any single
spiritual system and pave the way for a metaphysically and pragmatically
grounded spiritual pluralism (cf. Irwin, 1996).
In addition, this participatory approach bridges the epistemic gap between
human experience and reality that is intrinsic to neo-Kantianism. This
alienating gap is not only problematized by the aforesaid disembodied origins
of Kantian dualism, but also bridged by Davidsons (1984) dismantling of the
scheme-content dualism, Tarnass (1991) participatory epistemology, elements
of Bhaskars (1989) critical realism and Jamess (1912/2002) radical empiricism,
as well as modern embodied cognitive science (e.g., Chemero, 2009; Clark,
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1997; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). Many of these approaches,

Schillbrack (2014) argued, restore metaphysics as a viable form of contemporary cognitive inquiry.21
At this juncture, it is important to distinguish between two different meanings
of the term metaphysics. On the one hand, the notion of metaphysics in
Western philosophy is generally based on the distinction between appearance
and reality, with a metaphysical statement being one claiming to portray the
Reality presumably lying behind the realm of appearances (van Inwagen,
1998). In addition to this use, on the other hand, many religious traditions talk
about metaphysical worlds to refer to levels, realms, or dimensions of reality
existing beyond the sensible world or within the subtle ontological depths
of human consciousness (see Ferrer, 2011a; Schillbrack, 2014). Whereas
Schillbrack (2014) cogently argued that dropping Kantian assumptions renders
religious metaphysical claims cognitively viable in the first sense (superempirical, in his terms), I propose that it also allows entertaining the
plausibility of a deep and ample multidimensional cosmos in which the sensible
world (as narrowly conceived by modern naturalism) does not exhaust the
possibilities of the Real.
The consequences of this move for transpersonal research are arguably
profound: Stripping the supernatural of its monolithic and transcategorical
clothes allows a re-consideration of the existence of diverse subtle realms of
energy/consciousness. Intersubjective agreement about these realms can then
be pursued in special states of consciousness (after all, ordinary consciousness
was evolutionarily shaped to optimize survival in the natural world). The
import of not ruling a priori the existence, or the possibility to apprehend, such
realms is exemplified by the phenomenon of shared visions discussed in the
next section.
THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL CHALLENGE OF SHARED VISIONS

In 1998, I spent one month in a Shipibo vegetalista center in the jungle nearby
Iquitos, Peru, drinking the entheogenic brew called ayahuasca every other day
(for ayahuasca studies, see Metzner, 2014; Shanon, 2002). At one of my first
ayahuasca sessions, I was struck by the vision of a number of nonphysical
entities (animal, human, and other-than-human) wandering in the maloca
(traditional ceremony shed). Perhaps the most striking vision concerned certain
entities well known in Indigenous medicine circles.
The vision began with my perception of a thick energetic thread of white light
clearly emerging from the healers mouth during the singing of an icaro
(ayahuasca healing song). When I visually followed the thread to the farther
corners of the maloca, I realized that it was attached to several nonphysical
entities entering into the ceremonial shed. Although of humanoid shape (i.e.,
they had a head, body, arms, and legs), the entities were appreciably taller than
humans and apparently made of a fuzzy white light that concealed any
identifiable traits beyond their general form.
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The astral doctors, as I later learned these entities are called,22 moved with
apparent volitional precision around a room, for example, situating themselves
in front of the ceremonys participants and extending their arms to make
contact with specific areas of participants bodies, specially the heart and the
vital center. When my turn arrived, their contact resulted in dramatically
tangible energetic adjustments of incredible finesse in those centers, accompanied by the feelings of deeply healing, profound gratitude, and instinctive trust
in the benevolent nature of the entities. This experience led to a new
understanding of the healing power of (at least that particular) ayahuasca
ceremony as emerging from the complex interplay of the medicine, the healer,
the icaro, and the astral doctors.
The next morning, when I asked the healer about my visions, he nodded his
head and verbally corroborated the presence of astral doctors at the
ceremony. Fascinated by the intersubjective agreement about such open-eye
visions, I decided to interview the center director and Shipibo elder Guillermo
Arevalo (see Ferrer, 2013). During the interview, after distinguishing between
ayahuasca visions emerging from personal imagination and those of a more
transpersonal or shared nature, Arevalo stated that he and other healers often
contrasted their perceptions searching for intersubjective agreement:
We can plan to discuss these perceptions before a ceremony and then talk
about it afterwards. In many cases, I ask another shaman sitting in the same
ceremony what he saw in order to gain certainty through such agreement. If
there is no clear agreement, we can try to achieve it at the following
ceremony. (as cited in Ferrer, 2013, p. 17)
Overall, this procedure struck me as remarkably similar to the scientific
emphasis on public observation and replicability with one (arguably huge)
differencethese healers were discussing entities that scientific naturalism
would consider fictitiously supernatural.
The most astonishing shared visionary event I participated in, however,
occurred some years earlier at a San Pedro (wachuma) ceremony in Urubamba,
Peru (for studies on the Peruvian cactus San Pedro, see Heaven, 2012; Sharon,
1990). Several hours into the ceremony, and totally unexpectedly, I began
seeing in front of my open eyes what looked like red, energetic spiderwebs of
great complexity that elastically responded to my physical contact. I was so
taken by the clarity and interactive nature of the vision that I approached the
only other participanta young U.S. woman who was drinking San Pedro for
first timeand, pointing in the direction of the webs, asked her (without
describing what I was seeing) whether she could see anything there. To my
shock, she described the red, energetic spiderwebs exactly in the ways I was
seeing them. When I asked Victoria (the healer), she not only corroborated she
was seeing them, but also stated that such energetic visions were a common
occurrence in San Pedro ceremonies. The red spiderwebs marked the beginning
of nearly two hours of breathtaking external visionary experiences (I later titled
the entire episode Harry Potter Meets the Matrix)blue and green energies
curatively entering my body, contact with benevolent Indigenous spirits, and
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perceptions of energy vortices of diverse colors in the room, some of which

stemmed from Victorias power objects.
Because San Pedro preserves ones critical capabilities intact (at least in my
eight-year experience with this plant), I had my researcher hat on during
most of the visionary journey. In disbelief about the shared nature of the
visions, I repeatedly asked both the other participant and the healer to describe
the specificities of their visions in order to verify whether they matched my
perceptions. Invariably, when pointed in the direction of my vision and asked
what do you see there?, they accurately described the color, shape, and
directional movements of the various energetic fields I was seeing. This event
strongly suggested to me that San Pedro allowed human sight to perceive or
enact subtle energetic dimensions of reality; actually, one can often feel San
Pedro organically re-training human sight, for example, re-focusing it on the
space in-between objects or forms. From this space, in my experience, subtle
visions emerge.
The literature is not entirely silent on this type of experience. Indigenous people
widely claim that their medicines allow access to an enhanced sensory faculty
granting direct perception of subtle energies and spiritual entitiescalled, for
example, true seeing by the Matsigenka of Southern Peru (Sheppard, 2014),
second sight by the Thonga of Mozambique or stargazing by the Navajo
(Turner, 1992). Elements of the phenomena I experienced have been also
documented in the scholarly literature on entheogenic and healing visions. In
addition to Shanons (2002, pp. 6985) reports of a variety of ayahuasca
open-eye visualizations, one of the most powerful examples of shared vision
I am familiar with is described in Edith Tuners (1992) research into ihamba, a
Zambian Ndembu healing ceremony in which the healer extracts an invisible
spirit (supposedly visible as an ivory tooth) from the patients body. Whereas
thirty years earlier her husband the anthropologist Victor Turners (1967)
scientific ethnographic account famously portrayed Ndembu healers as
therapeutically skilled sleight-of-hand magicians and denied ontological status
to the extracted invisible spirit, E. Turners (1992) participation in the ritual
(which included ingestion of a nonhallucinogenic leaf medicine called nsompu)
reportedly opened her to the reality of the Ndembu spiritual world. Central to
this discussion, she saw the following and later reported that three healers and
the patient shared the same vision:
Suddenly Meru [the patient] raised her arm, stretched it in liberation. And I
saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back.
The thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque
thing emerging as a sphereThe gray thing was actually out there, visible,
and you could see [the healer] Singletons hands working and scrabbling on
the backand then the thing was there no more. Singleton has it in his
pouch, pressing it with his other hand as well. (p. 149)
Intriguingly, only the five people ingesting the nonhallucinogenic medicine saw
the giant thing; the rest of the group saw only the tooth, which, E. Turner
(1992) concluded, should be considered the physical manifestation (vs. a mere
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symbol) of the immaterial spirit. She stressed: I repeat that I did not merely
intuit the spirit emerging from Meras back but saw it, saw it with my open
eyes (pp. 189190). This fascinating account powerfully shows how socialscientific reports shaped by naturalistic assumptions can be problematized
through participatory research open to Indigenous cosmologies, emic
epistemologies, and ostensibly supernatural factors (see also Irwin, 1994).
What to make of these phenomena? Naturalistic scholars can easily dismiss
inner and/or individual visions of this kind as private, subjective, or brain
hallucinations.23 But what about intersubjectively shared outer visions such as the
ones described above? In general, as Sacks (2012) indicated, the shareable
(p. ix) nature of sensory claims is what distinguishes successful perception from
hallucination. In their discussion of hallucinations, for example, Aleman and
Lari (2008) asked: What happens in the brain when people see things others do
not see? (p. 147). Moreover, whether in science or philosophy intersubjective
agreement or consensual validation is considered the final mark of objectivity
or reality, so what to make of shared visual perceptions of supernatural
phenomena such as nonphysical entities or spirits? The naturalistic mind may
understandably appeal to the notion of collective or public hallucinations,
such as rainbows, mirages, reflections in the water, and the like (see van
Fraassen, 2008).24 Unlike the ayahuasca astral doctors, however, rainbows do
not autonomously move, intentionally touch people, and palpably alter a
persons embodied experience. Unlike the wachuma visions of energetic webs and
vortices, mirages neither respond pliantly to physical contact nor do they persist
when viewed from different angles. In addition, unlike Turners (1992) vision of
the ihamba spirit, water (or mirrored) reflections do not emerge from a human
body at the climax of an extraction healing ritual.
BEYOND NATURALISM AND SUPERNATURALISM:

TOWARD A PARTICIPATORY RADICAL EMPIRICISM AND RESEARCH PROGRAM
The failure of public hallucinations models to account naturalistically for
these phenomena leads me to conclude that the above participant-observation
reports not only present a powerful challenge to scientific naturalism (and
materialism), but also suggest the existence of subtle energetic dimensions of
reality coexisting with our own. Equally important, these phenomena raise the
possibility of intersubjective testing of so-called supernatural claims through a
radical empiricist epistemology (after James, 1912/2002) that challenges the
scientist attachment of empirical validity to naturalistic sensory evidence.
After all, spiritual practitioners following similar contemplative and ritual
techniques generally reach intersubjective agreement about spiritual insights
and realities, even if the falsification of those claims is not possible (Ferrer,
2002, pp. 6265).
Even if one were to endorse a naturalistic metaphysics, Stroud (2004) names
the appropriate question in his 1996 APA (American Philosophical
Association) presidential address: What is and what is not to be included
in ones conception of nature? (p. 22). Although not fond of supernatural
173
claims, Stroud recommended an open naturalism that is not committed

in advance to any determinate and therefore potentially restrictive
conception of what is so (p. 35). Such open naturalism simply says that
we must accept as true everything we find we have to accept in order to
make sense of everything that we think is part of the world (p. 35). It may
be important to remember here that the rational plausibility of so-called
supernatural forces or entities is contingent on ones conscious or
unconscious metaphysical commitments. As Ellis (2009) indicated, there is
an inescapable logical circle here: A postulated existent is ontologically
plausible if and only if it fits into an adequate metaphysical theory. And a
metaphysical theory is adequate if and only if it accommodates all of the
things that we truly believe in (p. 19).
In this light, I propose that transpersonal psychology should overcome the
naturalistic/supernaturalistic divide, retire both terms, and endorse a more
liberal or open naturalismone that not only studies the physical and
psychological dimensions of transpersonal phenomena, but also is free from
materialism and reductionism, thus being open to both the ontological
integrity of spiritual referents and the plausibility of subtle dimensions of
reality. Once free from a priori allegiance to any particular metaphysical
worldview (whether scientist or religionist), researchers can consider multiple
methodological standpoints (emic and etic, insider and outsider), epistemologies (objectivist, constructivist, participatory), and metaphysical frameworks
(scientific naturalism, perennialism, participatory pluralism) in the discernment
of the most cogent account of the perceived phenomena.
Openness to the heuristic value and potential validity of alternate epistemic and
metaphysical frameworks does not snare a researcher in relativistic dilemmas.
The attempt to rise above the inevitable biases of Western frameworks should
not degenerate into a vulgar relativism incapable of offering grounds for
qualitative distinctions or cross-cultural criticism. This unfortunate outcome
can be avoided by dialogically evaluating all knowledge claimsetic and emic,
insider and outsider, naturalistic and supernaturalisticthrough validity
standards of both dominant and marginal Western and non-Western
epistemologies in whatever measure may be appropriate according to the
context of the inquiry and the type of knowledge claims. In this scenario, the
dividing line between sound and weak scholarship should not be traced
between Western and non-Western epistemologiesor naturalistic and
supernaturalistic claimsbut between methodologies that lead to radically
empirical intersubjectively testable outcomes and/or discernible pragmatic
consequences and those which do not.25
In light of the discussion so far, questions arise for further research to
consider. Can transpersonal research programs be open to all accounts,
naturalistic and supernaturalistic? Might such a dialogical approach
eventually deconstruct the binary opposition and disclose different ways to
think the world beyond the naturalistic/supernaturalistic divide? What is
lost and what is gained if transpersonal psychologists employ such an
174
epistemologically and metaphysically pluralistic approach? Might this

approach lead to a more flexible, expansive, or liberal open naturalism free
from materialismone that takes seriously the plausibility of subtle
dimensions of reality?26 Could this open naturalism be capable of disrupting
Western epistemic violence and fostering a more symmetrical dialogue
perhaps even collaborative inquirybetween transpersonal researchers and
the worlds spiritual practitioners? For now, my provisional stance is that
each case (knowledge claim) needs to be assessed independently. No a priori
or generic hierarchical relationship between so-called naturalist and supernaturalist accountsand related etic and emic, outsider and insider, Western
and non-Western accountscan be legitimately established to ascertain the
most accurate account of what truly transpires in a spiritual or transpersonal
event (e.g., a Kalua tantric ritual or a Shipibo ayahuasca ceremony).
There is no methodological reason why transpersonal psychologists cannot
research shared external visions. Such a research program could entail the
intake of a visionary medicinesuch as San Pedro or ayahuascaby a team of
researchers focusing their attention on the possible occurrence of external
visions.27 This type of research could be also developed in collaboration
with traditional practitioners such as shamans or healers. At a first stage
(preparation), coresearchers would agree to contrast their perceptions both
during and after ceremonies while being mindful of peer-pressure influences,
unconscious group collusion, and other potential methodological pitfalls (see
Heron, 1998). The second stage (journey) would consist of the actual intake of
the medicine and ensuing group visionary journey. At a third stage (internal
comparison and interpretation), coresearchers would contrast their experiences
and search for intersubjective agreement in their visions. Were shared visions
identified, coresearchers would discuss their ontological nature from a
pluralistic epistemological perspective that would not impose a priori
metaphysical limits to the nature of the inquiry outcomes. Multiple
methodological standpoints, epistemologies, and metaphysical frameworks
could be considered to discern the more appropriate account of the perceived
phenomena. At a final stage (external comparison and re-interpretation),
coresearchers could look for contrasts between the groups inquiry outcomes
and available Western and non-Western literature about the meaning and
ontological nature of the shared visions.
To be sure, actual research is necessary to assess the epistemic fertility and
methodological soundness of such a research program. Contra Friedmans
(2002, 2013a) proposal, however, I suggest that transpersonal psychologists
should be able to carry out these types of research and still rightfully call
themselves psychologists.
CONCLUSION
Transpersonal psychology should indeed encourage scientific studies, but
Friedmans (2002, 2013a) division of labor between a scientific transpersonal
175
psychology and nonscientific transpersonal studies is neither cogent nor

salutary. To turn transpersonal psychology into a modern scientific discipline
achieves precisely what Friedman seeks to avoid, that is, binding transpersonal
psychology to a singular naturalistic worldview with a metaphysical status
equivalent to religious supernaturalism. Although transpersonal psychologists
should definitively remain vigilant against the infiltration of metaphysical or
religious ideologies in the field, scientific naturalism as an alternate ideology
should not be the exception. Whereas it might be impossible to carry out
scholarship without metaphysical assumptions, it is important to be explicitly
self-critical about them and avoid presenting naturalistic science as less
metaphysically biased or as the only path to progressive knowledge. The
alternative, I propose, is to work with a larger naturalistic-inquiry framework
that is open to the viability of a deep and multidimensional cosmos in which
modern sciences narrow naturalistic world does not necessarily exhaust the
possibilities of the real.
Transpersonal scholars should also scrutinize the neo-Kantian assumptions
lying beneath skepticism and agnosticism toward the ontological status of
certain spiritual realities. It is fundamental to be aware that such a stance, far
from warranting neutrality or impartiality, is the fruit of a Western, dualistic,
and arguably disembodied epistemological ethos that automatically renders
suspect many spiritual claims about the nature of knowledge and reality. In
their attempts to promote the scientific legitimacy of the field, some
transpersonal psychologists have prematurely committed to a neo-Kantian
dualistic epistemology that is in fact ideologically tied to a naturalistic, and
often materialistic, metaphysics. Whether such a narrowly conceived naturalistic worldview will ultimately be cogent is unknown (I strongly suspect that it
will not), but transpersonal scholars should note the metaphysical presuppositions of such methodological agnosticism; in this way, they can avoid
assuming or defending its purportedly metaphysically neutral status and
thereby falling prey to one of sciences most prevalent ideologies (van Fraassen,
2002).
As a possible way forward, I have suggested the following steps:
1. recognizing the inevitability of metaphysics in both science and religion;
2. minimizing parochialism via working with inquiry frameworks that are
open to both naturalistic and supernaturalistic accounts of
spiritual phenomena even if this approach may ultimately lead to the
overcoming of such a binary opposition (e.g., in the form of an open
naturalism);
3. developing methodological approaches that dialogically engage emic
and etic claims, as well as Western and non-Western epistemologies, in
the understanding and assessment of spiritual knowledge claims;
4. approaching religious traditions in the spirit of a participatory pluralism
that is open to the ontological richness of religious worlds without
reducing them to any single transcendentalist or naturalistic worldview;
and
176
5. critiquing oppressive and repressive inner and outer systems of

domination, selfishness, dissociation, and violence within, between,
and among human beings, other sentient beings, and the world.
Methodologically, I firmly believe that such an approach calls for transpersonal psychology to embrace empirical (quantitative and qualitative),
theoretical (e.g., hermeneutic, comparative, integrative, critical, feminist,
postcolonial), and contemplative/visionary methods. As Lancaster (2013)
argued, The defining feature of transpersonal psychology is that it integrates
across all the levels [neuroscientific, cognitive and neuropsychological,
psychodynamic, and spiritual/mystical] in its approach to understanding the
mind and processes of transformation (p. 225). Following Lancasters
suggestion, it is time to work towards a metaphysically, epistemologically,
and methodologically plural transpersonal psychology that, bridging previously polarized camps (e.g., science and religion, modern and postmodern, or
empiricism and hermeneutics), may well become one of the first truly holistic
disciplines of the 21st century.
NOTES
1
While strongly advocating for quantitative (e.g., psychometric) studies, transpersonal scientists regard most
qualitative approaches as scientific (e.g., Friedman, 2013a; MacDonald & Friedman, 2013). I therefore use the
terms scientific and empirical interchangeably to include both quantitative and qualitative research.
2
This is in itself a rather peculiar claim: to wit, are not theoretical physicists physicists? Are not the publishing
authors in the Journal of Theoretical Biology biologists? Note also that accepting Friedmans (2002, 2013a)
proposal would forbid use of the term psychologies for (a) the many schools of the depth psychological tradition
(e.g., classical, contemporary, and intersubjective psychoanalysis; Jungian, analytic, and archetypal psychologies;
object-relations theory and self-psychology); (b) the robust nonempirical subfields of contemporary psychology
(e.g., theoretical psychology, critical psychology, liberation psychology, or psychology of science); and (c) central
elements of evolutionary psychology, ecological psychology, cultural psychology, comparative and cross-cultural
psychology, indigenous psychologies, and phenomenological, existential, and hermeneutic psychologies. In this
regard, Slife and Williams (1997) listed more than a dozen of academic psychological journals devoted entirely,
or in part, to theoretical work (p. 125). Finally, it is unclear how Friedmans scientific transpersonal psychology
would be different from disciplines such as the psychology of religion or the scientific study of religion. Despite
Friedmans (2002) de jure pronouncement against such a possibility, his proposal seems inevitably to lead to the
gradual dissolution of the field into these mainstream fieldsperhaps becoming a kind of fringe subfield dealing
with those particular spiritual experiences called transpersonal.
3
Although naturalism is widely regarded today as essential to the modern scientific worldview (e.g., Mahner,
2012; Schafersman, 1997), the association of naturalism and science was largely historically contingent (Bilgrami,
2000; Kubrin, 1980). Science has the potential to operate with supernaturalistic assumptions as evidenced by the
many past scientific explanations (even Newtons) appealing to supernaturalistic factors (Clarke, 2009). For a
defense of sciences potential openness to both naturalistic and supernaturalistic worldviews, see Fishman (2007).
4
Although usually hand-in-hand, naturalism and materialism are not synonymous. Whereas all materialists are
naturalists of some sort, one can be a naturalist without committing to materialism or to the view that all which
truly exists is made of matter. Expanded or liberal forms of naturalism embrace the reality of nonmaterial entities
such as numbers, psychological states, and perceptions (see De Caro & MacArthur, 2000, 2004; Nagel, 2012;
Schafersman, 1997).
5
My endorsement of van Fraassens (2002) account of the ideological status of naturalism and materialism does
not mean that I subscribe to his constructive empiricism (2002, 2008), which results in the rejection of all
metaphysical considerations about nature and reality. For a cogent rebuttal to van Fraassens critique of
metaphysics, see Chakravartty (2007, pp. 2026).
6
Physicalism is a narrower stance than materialism: The latter is the view that only matter exits, and the former
holds that the micro-entities studied by physics are ontologically or explanatorily primary (see Dupre, 1993).
7
Nagel (2012) agrees: Such a world view [reductionist and materialist naturalism] is not a necessary condition of
the practice of any of those sciences [biology, chemistry, and physics], and its acceptance or non-acceptance
177
would have no effect on most scientific research (p. 4). The failure of psychophysical reductionism, Nagel
continued, shows that materialist naturalism is ripe for displacement (p. 12). For Nagel, the most cogent
alternative is to conceive that mind is a basic aspect of nature (p. 16).
8
Naturalism can also be religious in the sense that nature can be understood religiously and evoke religious
feelingsfor contemporary articulations of religious naturalism, see Crosby (2002), Hague (2010), and Stone
(2009). Religious traditions, such as certain Zen schools, that do not posit metaphysical or supernatural referents
could also be included within this category. For the medieval origins of the Western distinction between the
natural and the supernatural, see Bartlett (2008).
Discussing the scientific dismissal of paranormal evidence, Friedman and Hartelius (2013) made a strikingly
similar point: If a modern metaphysics is imposed on research (cf. Mahner, 2012), then those very aspects of the
phenomena will necessarily be discounted a priori, and the knowledge that might be generated from them will be
lost. Evidence challenging the de facto metaphysical assumptions that tend to accompany science is disallowed on
the grounds that it challenges those assumptionsrather like a judge who refuses to consider a motion to recuse
him- or herself (p. xxv).
10
This proposal is not new. Daniels (2005) wrote: As transpersonal psychologists, we should aim to bracket as
far as possible ALL metaphysical assumptions in what should essentially become a phenomenological
examination of experiences of transformation (p. 203; see also Daniels, 2001). Similarly, adopting Jungs neoKantianism (Nagy, 1996), Washburn (1995) pointed out: we simply cannot know whether the power of the
Ground, in addition to being an intrapsychic phenomenon, is also an extrapsychic (metaphysical, cosmic)
noumenon (p. 130). For a transpersonal critique of this position, see Lancaster (2002).
11
For critical discussions of neo-Kantianism in transpersonal and religious studies, see Adam (2002), Blum
(2014), Ferrer (2000, 2002), Ferrer and Sherman (2008b), Forgie (1985), Forman (1999), King (1999), and
Schillbrack (2014).
12
After a balanced discussion of the philosophical foundations of scientific transpersonal psychology,

MacDonald (2013) also assumed a neo-Kantian epistemology. This is evident in his accepting the Western
dualism between the world or appearances (human perception) and reality (the world as-it-really-is; p. 313), as
well as the derived dualism of map and territory. Although the reality-and-appearances dualism is not strictly
equivalent to the Kantian two-world doctrine (Schillbrack, 2014; van Fraaseen, 2008), identical skeptical
consequences emerge when such reality behind appearances is considered to be cognitively inaccessible.
13
Friedmans views are strongly reminiscent of Katzian constructivism, whose Jewish leanings have been exposed
by religious studies scholars (see Evans, 1989; King, 1999; Smith, 1987). In addition, metaphysical agnosticism
has been denounced as cryptotheological, or inadvertently perpetuating theological agendas in its implicitly
positing a single transcendental referent about which scholars need to remain agnostic (Fitgerald, 2000).
14
For critiques of objectivism, see Bernstein (1985), Bordo (1987), and Megill (1994).
15
But then, why not to go all the way and replace folk psychological language with scientific brain jargon, as
Churchland (1986) famously proposed (i.e., talk about neural dynamics instead of beliefs or feelings)? I suspect
that Friedman would reject such an eliminative materialist project, but his proposal is congruent with it
especially considering modern sciences allegiance to ontological materialism and reductionism (MacDonald,
2013; Mahner, 2012).
16
For a thorough account of how Lakoff and Johnsons (1999) embodied realism paves a middle way between
objectivism and postmodern relativism in both the sciences and the humanities, see Slingerland (2008). On
embodied cognitive science in general, see Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991), Chemero (2009), and Shapiro
(2014).
17
Cf. Schillbrack (2014): Kants distinction does not challenge the alleged metaphysical desire to describe a
noumenal reality but rather invents it (p. 173n5). The patriarchal foundations of the Cartesian-Kantian legacy
could also be explored (cf. Tarnas, 1991). Discussing the modern conceptualization of mysticism, for example,
Jantzen (1995) denounced the androcentricism of this existential stance: Feministshave demonstrated the
extent to which the Cartesian/Kantian man of reason is indeed male (pp. 343344). On the masculinized
origins of Cartesian thinking, see also Bordo (1987).
18
Supporting the ongoing (and arguably highly political) scientification and biologizing of psychology (e.g.,
see Slife & Williams, 1997; Teo, 2005; Ward, 2002) that is characteristic, for example, of the American
Psychological Association (APA), Friedman (2002, 2013a) sees psychology more as a natural science (like
biology, chemistry, and physics) than a social or human science (like anthropology or sociology). In my view,
psychologys focus on socially situated, biologically mediated, and arguably spiritually informed behavior and
experience makes the discipline a natural, human, social, and spiritual sciencea highly integrative field calling
for a plurality of epistemic frameworks and methodological approaches beyond the exclusive scientific
empiricism of the natural sciences (cf. Giorgi, 1970; Heron, 1998; Polkinghorne, 1983; Slife & Williams, 1997).
19
For Dupre (1993, 2004), there are not two or one grand cultures but a multiplicity of overlapping subcultures
of inquiryor epistemic cultures, in Knorr Cettinas (1999) termsthat may (or may not) share epistemic
virtues (e.g., coherence, empirical accountability, elegance, simplicity) and normative virtues (e.g., critique of
androcentric and ethnocentric biases). The debunking of the myth of the unity of science brought forth by this
178
conception of shared epistemic virtues paradoxically delivers a kind of unity of knowledge (Dupre, 1993,
p. 243).
20
Incidentally, Friedman (2013a) misapprehended the nature of my participatory proposal as building silos that
separate, abnegating the possibility of finding useful connections (p. 303) among spiritual traditions that lead to
considering all transpersonal systems as incommensurate (p. 303). In my work, however, I not only criticized
constructivisms myth of the framework, which might lead to such undesirable outcomes (Ferrer, 2000, 2002),
but also argued that participatory pluralism allows and even encourages doctrinal, practical, and even
ontological hybridizations among traditions (Ferrer, 2010, 2012). Specifically arguing against the radical
separateness of spiritual cosmologies that Friedman attributed to my work, I wrote:
My defense of many viable spiritual paths and goals does not preclude the possibility of equivalent or common
elements among them. In other words, although the different mystical traditions enact and disclose different
spiritual universes, two or more traditions may share certain elements in their paths and/or goals. (Ferrer,
2002, p. 148)
In addition, contra Friedmans (2013a) suggestion that my proposal leads to the uncritical appraisal of local
understandings, a participatory epistemology provides ample resources for the criticism of religious traditions
(e.g., Ferrer, 2002, 2008a, 2008b, 2011a; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008b). The participatory endorsement of the
diversity of all spiritual traditions as seen on their own terms (Friedman, 2013a, p. 303) should be understood
not as eschewing criticism, but rather as both avoiding reductionist distortions of such diversity (e.g., by
perennialism) and affirming a potential plurality of equally holistic forms of spiritual enactions of self,
relationships, and world (Ferrer, 2011b).
21
In this context, Wilbers (1996) postmetaphysical reduction of spiritual realms to the individuals interiors fails
to bridge the gap (see Ferrer, 2011a; Hartelius & Ferrer, 2014).
22
Although its origins are uncertain, astral doctor is demonstrably an etic term and Indigenous peoples use
different local terms to refer to such reportedly nonphysical entities. The Matsigenka of Southern Peru, for
example, call their spirit allies Sangariitethose elusive, luminous beings that can be seen under the influence
of hallucinogens plants (Shepard, 2014, p. 23).
23
However, Grofs (1988) reported transcultural access, in nonordinary states of consciousness, to both the
imagery and the (esoteric, at times) meaning of spiritual symbols, rituals, and cosmologies belonging to specific
religious worlds without participants previous exposure to those symbols arguably challenges such naturalistic
reading (see Ferrer, 2002; Ferrer & Sherman, 2008b).
24
For an historical account of the naturalization of hallucinations, see Berrios (2005). As Aleman and Lari
(2008) explained, Increasingly, mystical visions and similar experiences were no longer seen as the
communication of supernatural origin. Instead, natural explanations were advanced (p. 14).
25
The and/or of this sentence is crucial, particularly in the context of spiritual inquiry. On the one hand, it may
be plausible to consider intersubjective consensus as a central epistemic standard in the context of what I call,
paraphrasing Kuhn (1970), a single traditions normal spiritual inquiry. In other words, when spiritual practice
is managed by a prevailing spiritual paradigm and something akin to a correspondence theory of truth is
operative (e.g., between practitioners insights and the traditions mapped stages of the path). On the other
hand, it should be obvious that intersubjective agreement is probably an inappropriate test not only among
traditions (which bring forth different and often incompatible spiritual insights), but also in periods of
revolutionary spiritual inquiry within one tradition, in which anomalies in relation to accepted doctrines arise
and new paradigms of spiritual understanding are developed (e.g., it is likely that neither the Buddhas
enlightenment nor the claims of the more radical Christian mystics could have been intersubjectively
corroborated in their respective times and contexts). In the latter case, the search for more pragmatic avenues
to legitimize spiritual knowledge claims becomes imperative (see Ferrer, 2002, 2011a, 2011b).
26
Similarly, Kripal (2014) recommended the following to students of comparative religion: We also need to
beware of projecting the western categories of the natural and the supernatural onto religious worldviews in
which such divisions are simply not operable. We have suggested instead that you employ the category of the
super natural (p. 172).
27
The use of entheogens as inquiry tools is justified by modern cognitive psychological studies (Shanon, 2002),
transpersonal research proposals (Friedman, 2006; Roberts & Hruby, 2002), and Indigenous accounts of the
power of entheogens to make subtle entities or phenomena visible (e.g., see Harner, 1973; Sheppard, 2014;
Turner, 1992). Interestingly, despite receiving enthusiastic support from transpersonal psychologists for decades,
Tarts (1972) state-specific scientific research program never took off. I strongly suspect that the problem was
that accessing deep meditative states in a stable manner, let alone the various visionary realms mapped by
religious traditions, can take an entire life of practice. Put bluntly, we have the maps and the vehicle but not the
fuel. Given the widely documented access to spiritual states and realms entheogens provide (see, e.g., Grof, 1985;
Merkur 1998; Shanon, 2002; Strassman, 2001), I suggest that Tarts program could be revitalized by the cautious
but systematic use of entheogens as inquiry tools. Despite the current revival of governmentally sanctioned
psychedelic research (Friedman, 2006; Roberts & Winkelman, 2013), the use of most entheogens in the United
States is still illegal, so this proposal should be seen as strictly epistemological and by no means recommending
unlawful research.
179
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The Author
Jorge N. Ferrer, Ph.D., is core faculty of the department of East-West
Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San
Francisco. He is the award-winning author of Revisioning Transpersonal
Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2002) and Participation and Spirit: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology,
Education, and Religion (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, forthcoming), as well as
the coeditor (with Jacob H. Sherman) of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality,
Mysticism, Religious Studies (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008). In 2009, he
became an advisor to the organization Religions for Peace at the United
Nations on a research project aimed at solving global interreligious conflict. He
was born in Barcelona, Spain. Correspondence concerning this article should
be addressed to the author at jferrer@ciis.edu.
186

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