Transpersonal Psychology Research Approaches

Another post from my research project. Paper is done, so I'll probably have one more post like this as I get caught up before gettng back into exploring new research. Transpersonal Psychology Research Approaches © 2025 by Kimberly Israel is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

 Cunningham and State-Specific Research

Like many in the transpersonal field, Cunningham (2023) calls for state-specific research, stating that “if you want to know the ontological reality of the dream world, then you need to go to sleep and have a lucid dream.” Of course, we already know that people have lucid dreams, so the question is more about whether the dream reality exists independently of the dreamer. It would certainly be fascinating to find evidence, as Cunningham suggests, that our waking inability to perceive dream realities is due to our state-specific attentional options rather than the ontological status of dreams. So far, however, no such evidence has been offered. Cunningham goes on to describe Jung’s “objective” and “subjective” methods for interacting with transpersonal phenomena: the objective method treats the phenomena as literal realities, allowing for questioning and observation, while the subjective method treats them as subconscious symbols, allowing for integration. The usefulness of both perspectives for individual meaning-making is clear, but neither seems to address the question of ontological reality.

Cunningham claims that science assumes the ontological reality of its conventional subject matter but not of transpersonal concepts such as souls, spirits, or dream realms. The implication seems to be that scientists are unfair in doing so, but perhaps the question in science isn’t so much “Is the phenomenon ontologically real?” as “Can I probe the phenomenon with the tools and methods available to me?” The transpersonal experiences of other people rarely meet that criterion.

Mathias and Phenomenology

           

Mathias (2023) suggests that researchers in transpersonal psychology and parapsychology could benefit from collaboration in development of theories about potential nonphysical realities in order to generate methodologies for their empirical study. In particular, he recommends phenomenological studies of reported psi experiences, exploring the personal meaning and situational factors surrounding them. Focusing on phenomenological data while bracketing the question of objective reality may allow for development of theories that could then be used to design replicable experiments. Such research would be interesting in itself from the perspective of transpersonal psychology.

 

He also proposes the use of nonlinguistic methods, perhaps because transpersonal experiences are often nonlinguistic, but it is unclear how such methods would improve the situation. He cites Shewmaker (1962) as an example. Shewmaker (1962) suggests that the categories of language are too abstract and oversimplified to describe psi and that therefore nondiscursive symbolic expressions might be more effective. Any symbolic representation, however, would seem to suffer from the same problems of oversimplification. Nonetheless, nondiscursive symbols in addition to words may be useful, similar to the way line drawings of plants in addition to a botanical key can help with identification.

 

Mathias positions himself in the field in reference to Taylor and Hartelius, suggesting that the two differ as much because of their goals and priorities as because of their epistemologies. He draws an analogy between Taylor and Hartelius on one hand and Ferrer and Friedman on the other, drawing on Hartelius’s separate synthesis of the ideas of Ferrer and Friedman. Mathias cites Hartelius as explaining that Friedman takes “supernatural” to mean “completely inaccessible by any senses”, while Ferrer takes it to refer to phenomena that can only be observed in particular circumstances. Both, however, have similar ideas on how to handle things that are completely inaccessible and how to handle things that can sometimes be observed. Similarly, Mathias goes on to say, Hartelius takes “metaphysical” to mean “not empirically verifiable by definition,” while Taylor take is to refer to a particular Western categorization of concepts. Both would like to see more empirical research, but Hartelius is more interested in making transpersonal psychology practical here and now, while Taylor is more interested in bring about a paradigm shift in science to include metaphysics as he understands it. Mathias aligns himself with Taylor’s priorities while suggesting that the field includes more common ground than one might first suspect.

Image credit: Lorenza Walker

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:REM-s%C3%B8vn.jpg

References

Cunningham, P.F. (2023). An empirically controlled metaphysics in a science of spirituality - is something real happening? Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 43(2), 90-107.

Mathias, J. (2023). Collaborative nonphysical theory in transpersonal psychology and parapsychology. California Institute of Integral Studies.

Shewmaker, K. L., & Berenda, C. W. (1962). Science and the problem of PSI. Philosophy of Science, 29(2), 195–203. [Abstract]