Why are religious and mystical experiences important to our sense of meaning and purpose in life? What is a spiritual emergency and how can it actually help us in the long run? Are transpersonal experiences illusions of the mind or can they tell us anything about the nature of reality?

In this episode, we have the extraordinary topic of Transpersonal Psychology to learn about. With the steady rise in popularity of western secular spirituality, meditation, psychedelic research, altered states of consciousness and embodied practices in general, during the 60’s some psychologists felt there was a part of psychology missing from the old humanist and behaviourist models. It was as if the overwhelmingly materialist scientific view of humans, that sees our bodies and brains as fundamentally separate from other beings, the natural world and any hypothetically transcendent reality, was missing out a huge source of data about the way our minds work. So a bunch of them coined a new term, Transpersonal psychology, and with it came a new field of study and practice. 

It’s a really wide field and at its cusps starts to get into areas that science can’t actually study using the method; some of which we’re going to touch on towards the end of this episode. But above all it makes a place for the importance of the transpersonal that crosses those boundaries between our bodies and brains and everything else out there, both known and unknown. So fortunately today’s guest has over 25 years of experience both as a psychologist and a workshops leader, David Lukoff.

Dr. Lukoff has published over 80 articles on spirituality and mental health, and is an active workshop presenter internationally on spiritual competency, grief, death, recovery, and spiritual crises. He is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Sofie University, previously known as the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, in CA and previously served on the faculties of Harvard University and UCLA. He is also the co-founder of the Spiritual Competency Academy, that offers mental health professionals courses on the skills and knowledge to become more spiritual competent.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro

05:30 A psychedelic psychotic episode and a spiritual crisis

07:00 Spirituality and religion as resources and practices

07:42 The history of transpersonal psychology 

14:00 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs VS behaviourism

16:45 Spiritual emergencies 

18:00 Jospeh Cambell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ and Jung’s ‘Compensatory psychosis’

22:30 David’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) entry

24:00 The post scientific revolution meaning crisis, and spiritual assessment as a solution

29:45 Ceremonial, shamanic and plant medicine approaches

32:30 Bringing altered states into mainstream psychology

37:00 Holotropic breathing: simulating an LSD-like research after LSD research was banned

40:15 The strength of the mystical experience correlates with positive outcomes

41:15 Stan Grof: NDE, OBE, psi, afterlife and interdimensional communications

45:00 The Spiritual Competency Academy: forgiveness, compassion, mindfulness

References:

Spiritual Competency Academy

Journal of Transpersonal Psychology

Rick Doblin - Founder of MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

‘Spiritual and religious problems’ included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders

Jung’s ‘Compensatory psychosis’

The Spiritual Emergency Network

Johns Hopkins and NYU studies - Intensity of mystical experiences correlation with positive clinical outcomes.