Training and Networking the Next Generation of ...

Training and Networking the Next Generation of Transpersonal Researchers and Scholars: Reflections Rosemarie Anderson, Ph.D. Professor Emerita, Sofia University Author’s Note and Acknowledgements: An earlier version of this article was written in preparation for a video interview with me on the topic of training and networking the next generation of transpersonal researchers and scholars. The video interview was shown at the Alubrat Brazilian Transpersonal Research Colloquium in Salvador, Brazil on September 4, 2015. Canadian broadcaster Mile Linder recorded the video interview via Skype. The video interview is now available on my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/RosemarieandersonVideo. I was interviewed by Canadian transpersonal researcher Jacqui Linder. I wish to thank Mike and Jacqui Linder for offering their skills and time to this endeavor and the Alubrat 2015 Conference organizers for the opportunity to reflect on important developments taking place in the transpersonal research community worldwide. I will first address why Transpersonal Research Networks are needed. Thereafter, I will address who might join these networks, networking initiatives already begun, my whole-person approach to transpersonal research, and briefly discuss the practicalities involved in developing transpersonal research training networks. First question: Why do we need a transpersonal research network and networks? We need transpersonal research networks for current scholars but especially for the next generation of transpersonal researchers and scholars. Put simply, the era of the independent transpersonal researchers and scholars is upon us. I have been surprised at the sudden increase in the number of emails I get from prospective transpersonal researchers from all over the world—India, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States to name only recent solicitations—seeking advice on how to get started on a transpersonal research projects, how to collect data, where to publish studies, and so on. They are without colleagues in their community or at universities nearby with whom to share their transpersonal research interests. They do not know where to get advice. Having co-authored three books on transpersonal research methods, I am a public name in transpersonal research (Anderson & Braud, 2011; Braud & Anderson, 1998). Therefore, they email me. Who are these independent researchers and scholars? They have jobs outside the transpersonal community, make an honest living, have families, and yet dedicate considerable personal time to research and scholarship in transpersonal psychology. Usually, they have doctoral degrees and may teach as adjunct faculty at local universities. Typically, they support their research and travels to conferences from their own resources. They want to study topics, such as group dream work, the spiritual dimensions of chronic pain, memoir writing to reclaim a sense of self, spiritual dimensions of end-of-life care, healing through wilderness long-distance trekking, and mitigating childhood sexual abuse through spiritual-attuned trauma therapy. These researchers are deeply concerned about making a difference. However, they are not finding colleagues or communities of transpersonal researchers locally with whom to converse and seek advice. Not long ago I had the odd experience of connecting two transpersonal researchers in Indiana who lived within an hour’s drive of each other but who had no idea about the other. Second question: What does community bring to the transpersonal researcher? While there will always be solo scholars like Ken Wilber who writes great books from his penthouse apartment in Boulder, Colorado, most of the rest of us need a community of researchers and scholars to help us develop ideas, get feedback, share time, and celebrate together. I am old enough to remember when university departments in psychology and other fields served as the “heartbeats” for specialized research and scholarly interests. Monthly colloquia were scheduled and well attended. Researchers and scholars from

2 within the university and from the community attended. Over time, these attending created groups and networks related to specialized interests. Now, aside from prestigious and well-endowed universities, universities do not prioritize research support or research colloquia and are downsizing core faculty. University courses are increasingly taught by adjunct faculty who are not on campus long enough to gather students or create community. Moreover, those graduate schools with masters and doctoral programs in transpersonal psychology and related interests are now under financial pressure because of escalating infrastructure costs. The fate of these transpersonal degree programs remains uncertain and with limited funds to support research these schools are no longer serve as the place where transpersonal researchers and scholars converge. Now, however, mainstream and transpersonal researchers and scholars connect globally about ideas and publications through a wide array of electronic platforms on the internet. They also can attend conferences focused on specialized interests to interact with like-minded colleagues, such as the Transpersonal Research Colloquium in June 2015 in Milan and the Brazilian Transpersonal Research Colloquium in September 2015. Conferences in specialized fields often attract 200-300, maybe 400 participants, and are increasingly popular and vital to the sharing of ideas and cutting-edge scholarly exchange within specialized fields such as ours. Third question: Why is networking so important to these up and coming scholars? Transpersonal psychology needs (1) more conferences at the professional level at which experts and beginners can converge and engage and (2) professional networks that connect them to each other via online platforms. The next generation of transpersonal researchers and scholars need communities of like-minded colleagues to become the fine researchers and scholars they want to be. The next generation of independent researchers and scholars are also a part of the Facebook generation. They want collaboration and mutual sharing. Open-access to information on the internet have democratized and leveled the professional playing field. Like it or not, the Facebook generation does not privilege the university libraries, journal articles, books, faculty, or even experts as my generation did. They want voice, participation, and mutual exchange between beginners and experts. While there is a place for traditionally organized conferences, the Facebook generation is not especially inspired by conferences and events organized with keynote speakers talking to groups of silent listeners. However, within a collaborative style, experts bring expertise and experience to the young and the young brings fresh ideas, youthful prerogatives, and energy to seasoned researchers and scholars. Listening to each other is key to opening new pathways and perspectives. Fourth question: What initiatives are underway or being planned to create these networks? After a flurry of emails from transpersonal researchers wanting research support in the summer of 2013, I initiated post-doctoral trainings in transpersonal research to meet some of these needs. Soon thereafter, Pier Luigi Lattuada, Giovanna Calabrese, Regina U. Hess and I co-created The First Transpersonal Research Colloquium (TRC). This First TRC was held in June 2015 in Milan and attracted 27 transpersonal researchers from Australia, Europe, North America, and South Africa. A newly launched website, www.transpersonalresearchnetwork.com, will archive the abstracts of the TRCs and allow transpersonal researchers to continue to connect. Our next TRC will be held in the United Kingdom near London in September 2016 organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the Transpersonal Section of the British Psychological Society. The Alubrat Transpersonal Conference in Brazil 2015 opens with a Transpersonal Research Colloquium in kindred spirit with the Milan TRC in June. The Iberoamerican Transpersonal Association, has also added a Research Forum to their website, www.ati-transpersonal.org. Good ideas spread. I am gratified by the success of our common efforts to form worldwide communities among transpersonal researchers and scholars. Other networking initiatives are needed especially on important research topics, such as clinical applications of transpersonal psychology, healing trauma through

3 engagement in the natural world, and in languages other than English and Spanish. I hope the Alubrat TRC and Conference 2015 invites more researchers and scholars to connect personally and in follow-up groups and ongoing research networks. Fifth question: Who Would benefit from Joining a Transpersonal Research Network? While the need for transpersonal research networks is clear, the membership of these networks is not. From my point of view, all professional transpersonal psychologists are researchers and scholars. All professionals need updating and cutting-edge scholarship to revise our practices and procedures. This has always been the standard among professionals. Nothing new. The late William Braud and I understand that all ways of knowing pertinent to a topic are relevant to the study of transpersonal phenomena. Therefore, our approach to transpersonal research methods is inclusive, holistic, and cross-cultural (Anderson & Braud, 2011, Braud & Anderson, 1998). We have consistently advocated for the use of skills inherent to spiritual practice, such as intuition, mindfulness, alternative ways of knowing, and compassion as skills essential to the study of transpersonal topics. Therefore, I hope spiritual, native, and indigenous teachers join these networks. I am delighted that the Alubrat Conference organizers have made special efforts to reach out and include local native and indigenous teachers as conference speakers. In particular native and indigenous teachers have much to teach Westerners about living in response to the natural world, which includes the embodiment of knowledge through embodied resonance with the Sacred. Embodied ways of knowing are dialogic with and within the natural world, not static within the human sphere. Since humans are a part of the natural world, we are inherently participant with the “wild” (add Sheridan & Pineault, Abrams, and Cobb references). We are scarcely the only species on this planet experiencing the sacred world. Westerners tend to privilege cognitive explanations even of the spiritual and transpersonal and this penchant gets in our way of fully understanding the sacred nature of human experience. Sixth Question: What are the characteristics a transpersonal researcher or scholar should have? First, they understand that transpersonal research and scholarship cannot be reduced solely to numbers, text, art, or any form of perceptual data. The Sacred is within us but also beyond our knowing. We are participant within the Sacred but the Sacred is bigger yet Therefore, all ways of knowing are relevant to the study of transpersonal topics—not only those conventional to Western scientific discourse. We need them all. Unfortunately, however honestly in the interests of furthering the field, even transpersonal researchers and scholars can fall off into mentalism and reductionism. There are some in transpersonal (add Friedman and MacDonald references) who wish to privilege experimental and quantitative research and forms of qualitative research, which adhere to positivistic and reductive assumptions (add Freer critique). However, the phenomena explored by transpersonal psychology is inevitably beyond numbers, texts, images, or any other form of perceptual data. There is Mystery afoot in the human animal’s participation in the Sacred. The Sacred is also both constant and ever-changing as spiritual teachers worldwide have told us for centuries. Any privileging of some the research methods and approaches over others will inevitably constrain the spectrum of what transpersonal psychology is and can become. Most of us in transpersonal psychology have been attracted to this field because we have the opportunity to explore these Mysteries. At stake in this discussion is the very definition of transpersonal psychology. While there are inevitably limits to what we as humans can apprehend about the Sacred, let us at least invite a full spectrum of research methods to transpersonal research. In this way, we might follow that ever-changing radical edge that Maslow, Sutich, and Grof initiated so boldly in 1969, now more than 40 years ago. Seventh Question: How did you come to this assessment?

4 William Braud’s and my position on the nature of transpersonal research comes from hard-earned experience. When we joined the Core Faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University, we were prepared to help dissertation students conduct research using the experimental and quantitative research methods we knew and had used ourselves for years. However, once at Sofia University, we were faced with dozens of dissertation students who wanted to study topics, such as profound grief in response to the natural world, the healing presence of a psychotherapist, mystical joy, the embodiment of the Sacred in sexual intimacy, and the spiritual dimensions of chronic pain. In advising them, our conventional training and expertise had not prepared us well to help them study these “farther reaches of human nature” as Maslow (1969) put it so well. Little we suggested to them by way of experimental or quantitative approaches satisfied them—or us—because they reduced the topic to procedures which were too narrow for the topic. Soon, we trained ourselves in phenomenological, heuristic research, and narrative methods of inquiry and taught them to our students. However, over time, even these methods began to feel fall short. They did not tap the researchers ‘and research participants’ engagement with in the Sacred implicit in the topic. As researchers and scholars, William Braud and I needed to expand, too. Therefore, we developed research methods inclusive of skills intrinsic to the field of transpersonal psychology as described above. Over the years, we wrote Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences (Braud & Anderson, 1998) and Transforming Self and Others Through Research (Anderson & Braud, 2011) and otherwise had a rock-and-rolling good time for 20 years with our students and in our “work” sessions together. On November 8, 2013, I wrote a letter to my prospective post-doctoral research scholars describing William’s and my “transition” as below: In the late afternoon of the fall of 1996, William Braud and I sat in his office and set the intention to change the way research was conducted throughout the human sciences. Both trained as experimental psychologists in the late 1960s and 1970s in the heyday of Behaviorism, we knew well the often invasive procedures practiced by research psychologists. Therefore, we promised each other and the world to bring the values of compassion, mindfulness, creativity, and collaboration to the study of transpersonal phenomena and the study of all human experience. Eighth Question: What other characteristics define a transpersonal researcher or scholar? Second, they invite enthusiasm to guide their studies forward. Etymologically from the Greek, enthusiasm means en-theo, in God. There is no better starting point for a transpersonal research project than a topic you love, about which you feel passionate. Usually, such a topic is grounded somehow in the researcher’s own experience. As an experimental psychologist, my training had taught to follow an established line of research published in journals, find the most recent articles, and design a study that logically comes next and test relevant hypotheses. While this traditional strategy works well for some transpersonal researchers, transpersonal researchers are more often keen to study topics that engage their personal experience because transpersonal psychology tends to attract people who are passionate about making a positive difference in the world in arenas that have touched their own lives. Because William Braud and I shared this penchant and wanted our students to be successful, we chose to help them do what they most wanted to do. Countering their enthusiasm made no sense. On the other hand, those budding researchers who wanted to follow an established line of research and do the next best study, great. Both of us continued to teach and supervise experimental and quantitative research studies for over 20 years. As all good researchers know, the research method chosen for a particular study depends on the topic at hand and is not predetermined by either the researcher’s preferences or skills. Ninth Question: In this holistic, broad, and personally-informed approach, how does the researcher guard against ignoring data and interpretations that contradict his or her own ideas and hopes?

5 The third characteristic of a transpersonal researcher or scholar, is their individual willingness to critically examine their own projections, including the nearly inevitable narcissistic projections implicit in all research designs and interpretation of findings. While starting with the researcher’s enthusiasm is a great starting point for research, it is not the end result. In the engaging and studying a research topic, transpersonal researchers must go beyond themselves, scrutinizing their motivations and critiquing all phases of the study. Of course, critiquing one’s study has always been standard in science but is especially relevant when studying a topic with origins in the researcher’s own experience and interests. Over the last two decades, I have actually had dissertation students send me their first draft of their findings, telling me that everything they thought about the topic was confirmed by their research participants. The first time this happened, I almost had to peel myself off the ceiling. Fortunately, I waited until the next day to respond, telling the student that the purpose of research is go beyond the researcher’s original understanding and that I could readily see in her draft of findings that she had excluded data that disagreed with her own experience of the phenomenon under study. Well, I did not hear anything back for about two weeks. To her credit, she “got” it and reanalyzed and rewrote her entire draft. The next draft was fabulous, articulating nuances what agreed and disagreed with her original understanding of the topic. That’s the point of research from my point of view. Yes, there may be those rare occasions for a study that is specific and follows a line of established research that the researcher’s original understanding is affirmed. However, this is not the way science usually progresses and particularly unlikely for dissertation studies. This criterion of examining the limitations of a study and the researcher’s projections applies to all human science research, whether the research approach used is qualitative, qualitative, philosophical, autobiographic, or artistic in nature. Traditionally, in experimental and quantitative research, the terms experimental bias and demand characteristics acknowledge the potential limitations and inclusion of the researcher’s projections in the research design and interpretation of findings. Tenth Question: After 20 some years supervising transpersonal research, do you have any idea why transpersonal researchers may project themselves and their own opinions in the interpretation of findings? Regression, too, may serve transformation and narcissistic regression especially so. In the West, the amount of wounding in our families of origin often seems so severe that there may be no other choice for transpersonal researchers and scholars other than to regress toward narcissism before they can love themselves enough to be wrong even about their research findings. Of course, there are exceptions and I cannot speak to the level of functionality or dysfunctionality in family structures in the East. However, having supervised transpersonal researchers for more than twenty years, leads to me to conclude that self-regard and self-love do not come easily or naturally to those drawn to the field of transpersonal psychology at least in North America. Perhaps healing family-of-origin wounds are precisely the reason for their attraction to the field; I do not know. Whether and I like it or not (and usually I do not), as a supervisor of transpersonal research, I often find myself serving as a make-shift therapist. Unfortunately, I am not trained as a therapist. Therefore, all I can do is be compassionate and tell my students the truth of what I see and intuit, namely that they need to scrutinize their motivations, research designs, and interpretation of finding courageously. When my students do precisely this, their dissertations increase understanding. I have not “lost” a dissertation student yet. Eleventh Question: What are the Practicalities of Creating Transpersonal Research Networks? Practicalities of Creating Transpersonal Research Networks As for the practicalities of creating transpersonal research networks, my suggestions are simple and straightforward. I have taught online in Sofia University’s online hybrid Ph.D. Program in Transpersonal Psychology since 2002 and have formed communities of transpersonal researchers throughout these years. I

6 have also gathered post-doctoral researchers online and co-created the annual Transpersonal Research Colloquia as mentioned earlier. In my experience, research communities or networks are best formed by first inviting researchers and scholars to gather together to get to know each other personally. Thereafter, based on research interests, online communities can be created to encourage ongoing dialogue and exchange of ideas and expertise. Annual gatherings can renew and strengthen exchange and integrate new participants over time. The primarily challenge for these networks is who oversees and monitors these discussions so that they do not get out of hand. In courses in online academic programs, monitoring these discussion, encouraging them forward, establishing online etiquette, and offering expert advice when necessary is handled by the instructors. In open networks, all these functions need to be shared by all participants and not only those monitoring the forums. I suggest that the organizers of these online networking platforms establish clear guidelines and online etiquette norms for all participants to follow. References (Anderson & Braud, 2011, Braud & Anderson, 1998). Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage/Pantheon Books. Anderson, R. (1996). Nine psycho-spiritual characteristics of spontaneous and involuntary weeping. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 28(2), 43-49. Anderson, R. (2006). Defining and measuring body intelligence: Introducing the Body Intelligence Scale (BIS). The Humanistic Psychologist, 34(4), 357-367. [Note that the BIS is now known as the Body Insight Scale and is available at www.mindgarden.com/products/bis.htm.] Anderson, R. (August, 2008). Embodiment and psychospiritual development: Anderson’s axial model of human evolution relayed from the perspective of the body. Paper presentation at the 1st Biennial Integral Theory Conference, Integral Theory in Action: Serving Self, Other, and Kosmos, JFK University, Pleasant Hill, CA. Anderson, R. (August, 2010). Embodiment and human development: Exploring fairy tales and myths as developmental markers. Paper presentation at the 2nd Biennial Integral Theory Conference, JFK University, Pleasant Hill, CA. Anderson, R. and Braud, W. Transforming self and others through research: Transpersonal research methods and skills for the human sciences and humanities (pp. 15-70). Albany: State University of New York Press. Behnke, E. A. (1994). The study project in phenomenology of the body. The Humanistic Psychologist, 22(3), 296-317. Cobb, E. (1977). The ecology of imagination in Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press. Donaldson, F. O. (1993). Playing by heart: The visionary practice of belonging. Nevada City, CA: Touch the Future. Friedman, L, & Moon, S. (1997). Being bodies: Buddhist women on the paradox of embodiment. Boston: Shambhala. Gendlin, E. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam.

7 Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: Body, language, and situations. In B. den Ouden & M. Moen (Eds.), The presence of feeling in thought (pp. 25-151). New York: Peter Lang. Johnson, D. (Ed.). (1995). Bone, breath, and gesture: Practices of embodiment. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Maturana, H. & Varela, F. (1988)). The tree of knowledge. Boston: Shambhala Books. Olsen, A. (2002). Body and earth: An experiential guide. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New