Steve Taylor on Transpersonal Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy

Is There a Common Ground between Spiritual Traditions?:Transpersonal Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy

Steve Taylor

This shift from perennialism to contextualism also took place in my own field of transpersonal psychology. Until about 15 years ago, transpersonal psychology was closely affiliated with spiritual and religious traditions and heavily influenced by the writings of Ken Wilber, who advocated his own nuanced version of the perennial philosophy. But around the turn of the century, there was a movement toward a more pluralist perspective, beginning with Jorge Ferrer’s influential book Revisioning Transpersonal Theory. The book was highly critical of perennialism (and of Wilber).  Ferrer didn't deny that there was some common ground between different traditions, speaking of a "common spiritual dynamism underlying the plurality of religious insights and ultimates." However, he believed that the similarities between traditions had been overstated by perennialists. For example, across the world’s spiritual traditions, there are different concepts of some fundamental spiritual principles, which are seen as the essential reality of the world—the Tao, brahman, dharmakaya, the One, the Godhead, and so on. A perennialist would say these are simply different interpretations of the same spiritual force, which is accessible to all human beings in deep states of meditation, or in higher states of consciousness. However, Ferrer suggested that there are 'a multiplicity of spiritual absolutes' that should be neither conflated nor placed in a hierarchical scale. Other transpersonal psychologists, such as Glenn Hartelius, also turned away perennialism, suggesting not only that the similarities between traditions had been exaggerated, but that any similarities that did exist could be explained in terms of biological and neurological factors. 

However, it seems to me that this is a case of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater.’  I think religious scholars and transpersonal psychologists were right to move away from the naive perennialism of earlier scholars, but that they have moved too far in the other direction. They have become too relativistic and unnecessarily skeptical toward the shared background of spiritual traditions.

Experiences Across Traditions

It’s important to make a distinction between philosophy and experience. It’s true that there are significant differences between the teachings of different spiritual traditions. But when we look at the experiences that are reported in different traditions (and outside them), the similarities are striking. 

Here I'm speaking specifically about what are sometimes called ‘mystical experiences’ or ‘spiritual experiences.’ They might occur in states of deep meditation, when a person’s mind becomes quiet and they experience a sense of inner emptiness, without thoughts or concepts. Or it might be an experience of communion with nature, in which a person’s surroundings seem to become more real and beautiful, as if a new dimension of reality has been added to them. All things may seem interconnected, as if they are expressions of something greater than themselves. The person might feel that they are part of this interconnectedness too, as if they have lost all sense of separateness...