5) The Problem of Validating Transpersonal Experiences: Further Reflections and Insight

As I complete the revisions on this essay in the early days of 2006, I pause to reflect that 17 years has passed since this conversation first took place in Detroit, Michigan. Writing this essay has provided an opportunity to add some of my additional reflections on the problem of validating transpersonal experiences.

On the one hand, the difficulties involved in validating transpersonal experiences continue to engage the focus of my research on the problem of methodology (Schroll, 2001a, 2003a, 2003b, 2004b, 2005a, 2006, Schroll with Schwartz, 2005). In particular, this focus has encouraged me to ask deeper questions about the philosophy of science and its particular application by the current champions of a "science of consciousness" (Schroll, 2001b, 2002, 2004a). We have already discussed the variety of nuances through which these concerns have a way of manifesting and expressing themselves in chapter’s 1-4, and in this chapter's introduction (most of this discussion is still forthcoming here at Light Workers).

On the other hand, this concern regarding the validity of transpersonal experiences and EuroAmerican science's failure to resolve the problem of their assessment has kept humankind from reaping the benefits of this knowledge. Speaking more personally, this concern regarding validity has consumed an enormous amount of my time, necessitating that I first defend my personal integrity that I was not outright lying about this experience and then proving to myself and school counselors that I was not suffering from some kind of mental illness.

Indeed this doubt regarding the validity of transpersonal experiences has prevented me from asking questions about the experiences themselves. More specifically, proving the validity of transpersonal experiences prevented me from engaging in what most social science professionals take for granted: the ability to earn a degree conducting research on basic questions.

Questions such as, what are the affects of transpersonal experiences on our physical health and psychological well being? What are the affects of transpersonal experiences on aggression? What are the affects of transpersonal experiences on our ability to commune with nature? What are the affects of transpersonal experiences on our habits of consumption?

To this day EuroAmerican science has no definitive answer regarding whether or not transpersonal experience possess any social or psychological benefits. Krippner and others involved in transpersonal psychology have given us some glimpses into the variety of anomalous experiences and their potential benefits. But the jury of scientific inquiry as a whole is still deliberating the "thing-in-itself," which has kept us from achieving the necessary paradigm shift that would enable EuroAmerican science to envision a comprehensive theoretical understanding of transpersonal experience.

In sum, if the worldview of the culture I was born into had been more accepting of transpersonal experiences, it would have already known the necessary methods of diagnosis to access my dream and the question of validity could have been answered immediately. Instead the worldview of EuroAmerican science continues to be in a process of rediscovering these techniques which were known to our ancestors and that are still practiced today by many indigenous cultures. These worldviews in collision were given a clear and personified expression in the repeated concerns that were raised in the 1989 conversation in Detroit by therapists trained to think in terms of EuroAmerican science and those offered by Maria Carrera.
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Jean: But it is pretty hard for a six-year-old to interpret a dream accurately, without some kind of distortion.

Schroll: Sure.

Brad: But this dream did not require an interpretation of itself.

Mary: It found validation later.

Maria Carrera: This is the problem. Nowadays a child tells you a dream like this and you get into trying to interpret it. You do not see it with the eyes with which it needs to be seen. Someone tells you I’m hearing voices and you immediately ignore seeing a way that would reveal that it is possible. That it could be you are. . .

Jean: Sure, people hear voices.

Maria Carrera: . . .really hearing voices.