6) Transpersonal Approaches to Psychotherapy in Puerto Rico: And an Invitation to Anthropologists of Consciousness4

Maria Carrera: I agree with you Mark and feel that the culture that I come from in Puerto Rico does provide a framework where these experiences can be both enhanced and understood from, at least, a subjective stand-point. Earlier Helen raised the question as to how we are to know the difference between psychotic breaks from consensus reality and spiritual emergence. The way that we do it in Puerto Rico is most of the time we do it in-groups. Even though it is possible to do it one to one person, with the understanding that it is working not only with one person, but working with—sometimes we call it like a shaman and sometimes we call it Gia, which means like a guide, and sometimes we call it—well, sometimes there is more than one master. The word master is not a good one in English, because it is understood in the experience that I am trying to describe that there is no real master, the experience is more non-directed. I think in some ways you could use the word guru to describe these leaders. In Spanish, however, we do not use these words.
Even when you are working or experiencing or sharing with one person you understand that that person and yourself are bringing more than just one. So it is understood that it is never just one person’s wisdom, or that the wisdom belongs to that particular person. When it’s done in a group there is a lot of rituals that are involved for cleaning and opening different centers, or Chakras (Dave, 1977; Eckartsberg, 1981; Fadiman & Frager, 1994; and Ornstein, 1977) of our perceptual awareness to facilitate alternate states of consciousness. Let’s say, for example, that I have had this dream and I am confused about it. I do not know what it means; I do not understand it. I do not even know if I am becoming crazy, because that is usually the first reaction of the person having a dream like you described Mark. You believe you are going mad simply because of your own lack of understanding and your own doubts and lack of clarity.
So after having one of these transpersonal or anomalous dream experiences you will go to a Gia or shaman. There you will participate in these rituals, which involve meditation, chanting and discussion, even intellectual discussion sometimes. It all depends on the place where you go; and you will tell them what your dream is; and because the content or meaning of this phenomena is not only your experience as an individual, but where you are getting that content is from a level that is not individual. It is information that does not belong to Maria Carrera. It is a perception that goes beyond who I am, that is why it is called transpersonal, because it goes beyond you as a person.

So in that group there is going to be, if not the same perception, a very similar sensation. A very similar--it is difficult to know what words to use. I do not know if the correct word would be sensation, or perception, or visions, or dreams, or just a very intuitive feeling; which I validate that what you are saying to me somehow sounds like I know it. Or that I have heard about it, or that I have experienced it. It also depends on how the level of functioning of that person is being affected. You do not lose contact with other areas of your reality and other needs--physical needs or even spiritual needs.
What has happened, and what you were saying earlier Mark that is important, is the fact that the person has gone through different developmental stages. Many times what we are able to see is that the person might be experiencing this phenomena at a very early age in the process of developing the psycho-social, physiological, and so on stages of growth, especially if there is not a very healthy environment. Thus many times (because you have a resource or a gift or a power, or whatever you want to call it) the person will not have a good solid base to be able to grasp onto to keep them centered. Consequently they can later face the problem of madness, too. And it is very clearly understood in our Latin culture that a majority of mental illness is related to this, and is kept there and we are unable to channel this knowledge in a proper way. This is not to say that all mental illness is merely of the anomalous, transpersonal, spiritual, or cosmic realm, or whatever you wish to call it.

Helen: You have been talking about going to discuss these kinds of experiences with whom? Who are these people?

Maria Carrera: These people are persons that have a lot of experience, that are themselves. . .

Jean: Psychic?

Maria Carrera: Psychic? Yeah, you could call them psychic. I really do not know what the term psychic means in English. I have a lot of trouble with some English words because what we in Puerto Rico call one thing—even if there is a literal semantic translation—sometimes the word does not have the same meaning in English. It is not the same meaning psychologically, philosophically, physically, and so on.

Edna Earl: Maria, what would happen if this group got together and they could not validate the experience that you have described? Are you saying that they would talk with the person about the phenomena they have experienced and might actually decide that this is not a transpersonal experience, but an experience that is crazy, and that the person is displaying some form of psychosis?

Maria Carrera: What will happen to this person?

Edna Earl: What will happen in the process of diagnosing the symptoms the person in question says they are suffering from?

Maria Carrera: You know immediately if this person is psychotic or displaying the transpersonal. If you have a doubt, you bring this up at the next meeting the following day, the following night, or a few hours later. I have never been—it is always validated. I mean, if the experience is not validated—and I tell you I clearly remember the last time that I was home in Puerto Rico. We were working and this guy comes in and he was really experiencing all this phenomena and immediately everyone knew that he had a lot of material (psychological disturbance) in his body. It is difficult to say if it was an authentic experience or that it was not “natural.” I do not know the proper words.
But almost immediately it comes to the perception of all of us (most of the time there are five or six of us, so it is not only my perception) that the person coming to us has a problem. It also depends on the particular place, also there are people coming from different backgrounds. So you do not only rely on your own experience, perhaps an intuitive kind of knowing or perception is closer to what I am talking about. There is also the physical knowledge or objective knowledge or, I really cannot tell you what to call it.

Helen: Who are these people and what are they called? Who are they?

Maria Carrera: We call them Gia’s, we call them shamans, well we do not actually use the word shaman. We use the word santero sometimes. These are people that know, that are open to the kinds of experiences I have been alluding to and who have experienced these kinds of phenomena for years and years and years. They are people that have been raised—like I have been raised—but I am very young. In fact, I am usually the youngest member in these groups. I also do not do this kind of thing by myself. I am always with someone that has a lot more experience, because sometimes I do not clearly understand what is going on. I think that you get more understanding the more you experience it, the more you are open to it, and the more clear you have your life together. Whereas if I do not attend to other needs in my life, I know how hard it is for me to get in touch with these kinds of transpersonal phenomena we have been discussing. If I do not rest well or if I have some other concerns or some other things—personal, interpersonal problems—these problems get in the way of my ability to work in this way. Psychological health is, therefore, very important toward one’s ability to see clearly. Moreover, these people are really committed to doing good work—promoting psychological health—within themselves and their communities. They live in accordance with certain values and a certain level of consciousness, a vision of the world that is much different than the modern scientific worldview that Mark referred to earlier.

How do you find these people? Usually by asking. Usually in every town there is a person like this and these people know each other. Nowadays with modern methods of communication there are workshops—not workshops—but conferences and lectures that are being done, and this is the place where you can meet these people. And there is another thing; these people do not receive any economic profit from doing this kind of work. Instead you know when you are called to be there. You do not need someone to tell you to do this kind of work. It is sort of like something that Dick mentioned earlier, that the transpersonal comes to you. What was it that you said exactly, Dick? I cannot repeat your words. Something like you were saying that I am interested in it?

Dick: It is calling me.

Maria Carrera: Calling, that was the word. Calling. . .

Brad: No (looking at his notes and interrupting the flow of the conversation), Dick said, “It is interested in me.”

Maria Carrera: Interested. . .

Jean: Or, as Clark Moustakas says if you do not trust the process, the process does not trust you. (Laughter from the
gallery).

Maria Carrera: I think that when I work here in the U.S.A., in Detroit, by myself, I am still very much connected to these people I have been trying to describe (in Puerto Rico) in my dreams. Many of my clients or patients that I have—especially the young ones and this is very sad—but most of the people that I see are so chronically ill, and they have been chemically injected for so many years, that it is really very hard to connect or resonate with them spiritually. So I have to be really selective and then I try to work with those that are younger. Usually there is something—that I cannot tell you—which I have.

Helen: Intuition?

Maria Carrera: The more I know the person, the clearer it comes to me what the person is experiencing. Are we talking about a mental illness? Are we talking about a different way of receiving information or responding to our world? Trust in truth. Trust your intuition.

Schroll: Thank you for sharing that story with us Maria.
Maria Carrera: Actually this is the first time that I have told this story to anyone from The Union Institute or the Center for Humanistic Studies.

Schroll: Sidney Jourard called this kind of story self-disclosure, where when one person discloses something that is deeply personal (thereby removing at least one layer of our persona’s defense mechanism), which then helps to provide a psychological doorway for someone else to disclose something. The act of self-disclosure promotes the tendency for each of us to continually peel back the layers of our persona’s defense mechanisms like an onion, revealing with each layer a deeper level of psychological content that is closer to the real inner self (Jourard, 1971). Moreover, if we had more time, this discussion has brought us to a point where we could seriously begin to inquire into what John Welwood has referred to as “self-knowledge as the basis for an integrative psychology” (Welwood, 1979). But this discussion exceeds the limits of this essay.

Notes
1. One of the many people that has taken issue with Wilber’s strict stage-theory view of psychological development, is Thomas Armstrong Pointing out that:
Wilber (1980b, after Wescott, 1972) has made a very important distinction between “pre-“ and “trans-“ experiences in human development. He was correct to point out the tendency among theorists to confuse the two experiences, either through reduction of transpersonal experiences to pre-personal realms (Freud, 1930/1961, pp. 64-73; Rizzuto, 1979) or the exalting of pre-personal states to transpersonal realms (Groddeck, 1967; Wilber, 1977, 1978, 1981a). However, it is important not to fall into another kind of confusion which fails to differentiate pre-personal unity from authentic transpersonal experience within childhood itself. By failing to make this important distinction, there is a danger that true spiritual experience in childhood will be reduced to pre-personal status, just as transpersonal experience at the adult level frequently has been infantalized by traditional Western psychology (Armstrong: 219, 1984).
2. This question has been taken up in greater detail in (Schroll: 29-36, 1997). I am also continuing to explore these kinds of questions (Schroll, 2004a, 2004b). A more thorough investigation of these questions will be the focus of my book Reconciling the Divorce Between Matter and Spirit (Schroll, forthcoming).
3. See note #1 and Schroll, 2005b; Schroll with Schwartz, 2005.
4. When I first wrote this chapter for my dissertation (Schroll, 1997a), and later began its continuing revision, I was unaware that Maria Carrera’s discussion represented her own experiences with the religious movement known as Santeria. I sent an early draft of this chapter to Theresa, a woman I met on a chat line. Theresa responded to this draft by telling me about her experiences with Santeria in New Orleans, and encouraged me to investigate this movement. I am very grateful to Theresa for her comments on this essay and her suggestions to investigate Santeria. Coincidentally (or perhaps synchronistically), during this same period of time an essay titled “The Healing Path of Santeria,” written by Eric K. Lerner, was published in Shaman’s Drum. This essay supports Carrera’s comments, as well as elaborates on the history and current practice of Santeria.

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Key Concepts
1. Anomalous experiences are uncommon or irregular psychological phenomena that deviate so profoundly from the worldview of EuroAmerican science our first response is to believe they are hoaxes and/or symptoms of mental illness.
2. The cognitive constructs of mainstream psychology requires us to adopt a symptom oriented medical model emphasizing abnormal behavior, deviance, and social control.
3. Telepathy refers to “extrasensory perception of the mental processes of another person.
4. Pre-cognition refers to “extrasensory perception of future events.
5. Shamans are masters of ecstatic states of consciousness and use a variety of methods as part of their practice.
6. Structural adaptation = Piaget’s stage theory of developmental psychology.
7. Catalytic exteriorization phenomena = the physical manifestation of some form of energy that is not now known.
8. Action-at-a-distance = local causation = according to Newtonian physics there is a limit on how far a signal can travel before it is no longer able to affect other physical bodies.
9. Psi-phenomena manifest themselves more frequently the more clear you have your life together.
10. Self-disclosure = the act of continually peeling back the layers of our persona’s defense mechanisms like an onion, revealing with each layer a deeper level of psychological content that is closer to the real inner self (Jourard, 1971).