Preface for my essays "Personal Encounter with Paranormal Dreaming" and my "11-Year Reoccurring Dream"

This "Preface" is for a forthcoming book, tentatively titled "Discovering the Transcendent and Transpersonality in Our Lives," that will contain both the essays on "Personal Encounter with Paranormal Dreaming" and my "11-Year Reoccurring Dream." Parts of these essays have been published elsewhere, but this is another story I'll go into at another time. Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D.

Preface When I was an undergraduate a professor of mine pointed out that whatever topic you choose for an essay or a book, it is preferable to ground your thesis on something that you have personally experienced. Staying true to this advice, the essays that became this book originated in my personal experience with parapsychological phenomena. Likewise the developmental process I experienced from childhood to adult seemed reminiscent of a variety of accounts that anthropologists have described as shamanistic practices; and yet this admission necessitates a further statement of clarification. This book is not a training manual that describes the necessary methods we would need to follow to develop psychic abilities or become a shaman; nor does this book offer a chronicle of my own and others fantastic abilities. Instead this book is as an introductory guide for those of us seeking a deeper understanding of the academic disciplines and major concepts associated with our discernment of psi phenomena, shamanism, and optimum levels of psychological growth. Moreover, this book is not only for people that have personally experienced unusual phenomena and states of consciousness; it also serves as a necessary resource for family members, teachers, and therapists attempting to understand psi phenomena, shamanism, and optimum levels of psychological growth. I use the word optimum as I prefer to avoid using words like paranormal or supernatural because these words reflect an anti-scientific worldview. I would therefore hope this book could help anyone attempting to critically assess and distinguish authentic occurrences of psi phenomena, shamanism, and optimum growth from either pretentious charlatans, or people that are truly suffering from aspects of mental illness like schizophrenia. Charles T. Tart refers to this kind of open-minded inquiry as genuine science 1. One of the most comprehensive models of personality that provides us with an ability to understand psi phenomena, shamanism and optimum stages of growth, and the one we will use as a baseline in this book, is the work of Abraham H. Maslow. In support of this choice, James Fadiman and Robert Frager tell us in Personality and Personal Growth that: Maslow believed that an accurate and viable theory of personality must include not only the depths but also the heights that each individual is capable of attaining. He is one of the founders of humanistic psychology and transpersonal psychology, two major new fields that evolved as alternatives to behaviorism and psychoanalysis (Fadiman and Frager: 464, 1994). Maslow’s insight into personality was to see life as a journey through various stages of growth that he referred to as a hierarchy of needs. This journey begins with the struggles of our physical existence. Motivated by our need for safety, love, belonging, and self-esteem, we continue down the road of life. These stages of personality development are referred to by Maslow as deficiency needs, or D-needs (Maslow, 1968), that we can associate with obstacles or hazards to be avoided on the road of life.2 Behavioral psychologists focused their research on these D-needs, selling this knowledge to advertisers. Using the methods of applied behavioral psychology has allowed advertisers to manipulate these D-needs, thereby creating many false deficiency needs. The Optimal Self can therefore be viewed as a road map to assist us in avoiding life’s hazards. Following this roadmap will not only assist us in avoiding the obstacles on our path; it will facilitate our journey to the top of the mountain. It is worth pointing out that Maslow’s focus on optimum health was not only on aspects of our immediate physical environment, adaptable behaviors and character traits, but on aspects of growth that are beyond or that transcend the usual appearances of reality. Maslow referred to these states of growth as transpersonal.3 The way Maslow tried to provide us with a visual image of transpersonal growth is by referring to the top of the mountain as self-actualization, thereby symbolizing reaching all of the goals that we have set for our life. Specifically self-actualization represents 1) An experience of increased self-acceptance; 2) A newfound spontaneity; 3) An increasing awareness of ethics; 4) The emergence of an appreciation for self-effacing humor; 5) An appreciation for extraordinary interpersonal relationships. 6) Feeling independent from the limitations of our physical environment and the desire to maintain a certain inner detachment from the culture in which we are immersed. And 7) Self-actualizers begin to experience a profound connection with all life and a desire to understand the mysteries of the universe. Reaching the end of this long and winding road and experiencing the wonders of self-actualization, a strange thing occurs. We discover that the very essence of who we are as a person: our success, our happiness, our hopes, our dreams, our visions, our love, can no longer be separated from this profound connection with all life and our desire to understand the mysteries of the universe. This is the stage of personality development that Maslow referred to as transcendence.4 But since we have reached the top of the mountain, the obvious question is “Where on this long and winding road is transcendence located?” Unlike the previous stages of personal growth, it is not possible to represent transcendence as a physical place, nor is it a destination to be found. Instead, reaching transcendence is what our journey through life is about; indeed it is the journey itself; thus Discovering the Transcendent and Transpersonality in Our Lives means that we must make the journey back down the mountain and become a guide for others. Notes 1. A definition and a more complete discussion of genuine science are taken up in chapter 4. 2. Some of us may be asking how things like safety, love, belonging, or self-esteem are hazards or aspects of deficiency. More has been said to clarify this point in chapter’s 1 and 4, nevertheless a thorough examination of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and its continuing revisions exceeds the limits of this book. Those of us interested in exploring Maslow’s theory in more detail should refer to these sources (Cleary & Shapiro, 1995; Rowan, 1998; Maslow, 1965, 1987). 3. A more precise definition of the word transpersonal can be found in Chapter 4. 4. Maslow related our personal ability to reach transcendence with anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s concept of synergy that expressed an overall cultural evolution of values; a view Maslow called eupsychian—the good society (Maslow, 1965), which I have called the arete` of living. We shall examine the arete` of living in more detail in chapter 1. Bibliography Cleary, T. S. & Shapiro, S. I. (1995). The plateau experience and the post-mortem life: Abraham H. Maslow’s unfinished theory. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 27 (1), 1-23. Fadiman, J. & Frager, R. (1994). Personality and personal growth. 3rd ed. New York: HarperCollinsCollege Publishers. Rowan, J. (1998). Maslow amended. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 38 (1), 81-92. Maslow, A. H. (1965). Eupsychian management: A journal. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc. and The Dorsey Press. Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. 2nd ed. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. Maslow, A. H. (1987). Motivation and personality. 3rd ed. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.