Transpersonal Efforts 1

Running head: Transpersonal Efforts

Transpersonal Efforts

Circe Santaniello
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Transpersonal Efforts

Generally categorized as a somatic theory of personality and therapy that works well with

other theories such as objects relations theory, Jacob and Zerka Moreno’s psychodrama can be

viewed as transpersonal and can be used as a spiritual practice in conjunction with ritual. In the

same way that Michael Smith, in Jung and Shamanism (1997), views Carl Jung’s depth theory in

relation to the spiritual practice of shamanism, I would like to explore the ritualistic aspects of

psychodrama. In this paper, I will do this by first giving an overview and opinion of

transpersonal psychology before investigating the transpersonal use of psychodrama as ritual, as

John Raven Mosher does with his “shamanic psychodrama” in Cycles of Healing: Creating Our

Paths to Wholeness (2000), I will also present my own vision of using psychodrama and

Goddess religious ritual in combination.

What is commonly called psychology and the resulting practice of psychotherapy relates to

the intrapsychic experience of ego development or “self.” Whether this self or ego is perceived

theoretically from a psychoanalytic (organically intrinsic mechanism of development), cognitive-

emotive (experience as a function of the perception through the body), or behaviorist framework

(merely an organized collection of responses to stimuli), psychology has historically referred to

the individual’s biographical development alone.

Transpersonal psychology on the other hand, attempts to integrate these theories of personal

development with spiritual traditions in order to couch the psychological within the larger

framework of our experience of the spiritual. Consequently, therapeutic modalities growing out

of transpersonal psychology not only include techniques of traditional psychology but also

expand into the transpersonal realms by including spiritual practices.

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The Transpersonal school of psychology, known as the Fourth Force, has grown out of

Humanistic psychology. As a reaction against the previous stress on pathology, the humanistic

concern for identifying the healthy or potentially ideal human self was taken a step further by

Abraham Maslow with his definition of peak experiences, hierarchy of needs and the recognition

that we may have underestimated our capacities and natures as human beings. With Maslow

came those concerned with transpersonal experiences, such as out of body experiences, near

death experiences, as well as altered states of consciousness, many of these experiences being

religious in nature. This included theorists such as Stan Grof, Roger Walsh, and Ken Wilber,

among others who went further than the Humanist movement. Building upon the Humanist

concern that the current cognitive-behavioral schools were reducing our self-concept to a

materialist vision that negated Spirit; the transpersonal psychologists looked for more, stressing

the extraordinary experiences we are capable of having. Historically, the Transpersonal

movement is directly connected to the 1960’s influx of Eastern religious influence and

psychedelic drugs, as much as it was a rebellion against the purely scientific epistemology of

positivism and the limitations of Humanism. Ultimately, Transpersonal psychology is the study

of human consciousness.

Essentially, the Transpersonal school of psychology is based upon a blend of spiritual

traditions and psychology. It rests upon what Aldous Huxely called The Perennial Philosophy

(Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 212), or that at least is where Walsh, Wilber, Grof and others started

with this school of ideas. Huxley notes that throughout history again and again there seems to be

a return to this one philosophical theme that has four parts. This is that there is a Divine Ground

of Being underlying all of manifestation. Further, this divine ground is directly knowable by us

because we are part of it. In fact, it is our “job” to reunite with this divine ground of being
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because we are double natured, spirit and matter. Our true Self is spirit according to The

Perennial Philosophy. The implications here are that the “eyes of the flesh” or science are not

the only valid epistemology. As in Eastern spiritual philosophy, many of the Transpersonal

psychologists value the “eyes of contemplation.” Some would use both pairs of eyes to map,

measure and created state specific sciences as ways of knowing and exploring our ultimate

natures. The argument is also that the “eyes of contemplation” must be trained; consequently,

various meditation practices that create altered states of consciousness are stressed on order to

create a community capable of a participatory epistemology (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 185).

In studying these theorists, I find myself most attracted to Stan Grof, with his earthy and

connected grounding in clinical experience. Like Grof and Jacob Moreno, I have an affinity for

Otto Rank and see our experience of life as one intimately connected to birth and death. On the

other hand, huge abstract systems that would suggest that there is an evolutionary trend in values

including the concept of “moral progress” offend me. I would refer to the story of Indra where a

king who feels he has it all under control, and understands reality so thoroughly, is humbled by

Krishna showing him how many times before this has happened, how many kings there were

who thought they knew, how many kingdoms have risen and fallen (Campbell, 1988). I would

question also the mistaken idea that the concept of “Immanence” is reductive to materialism.

Basically, as a feminist Neo-Pagan, I have just a few problems with Ken Wilbur. I would concur

with Roger Walsh that “one interpretation of the term transpersonal is that the transcendent is

expressed through (trans) the personal” (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 4). I would go further to say

that the transpersonal is interpersonal and intrapersonal, deep within the matrix of creation. The

depth of immanent spirituality cannot be reduced to materialism.

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Robert McDermott reflects upon the historical trends in Western philosophy and the

assumptions transpersonal thought hails back to. He claims that, like Romanticism,

transpersonal schools of thought emphasize the subjective inner revelations of transcendent

reality, as well as, “the intriguing relationship between the ancient and the modern” (Walsh &

Vaughn, 1993, p. 209). Like the Romantics, Transpersonal thinkers emphasize a “participatory

epistemology” valuing the direct, intuitive experience of revelation. This means that we can

know directly, that qualitative inner knowing is valid and can speak to reality at large. One of

the goals of some Transpersonal theorists to create a “science” that can map and measure this

kind of qualitative knowledge. Daniel Goleman, for example, explains that language shapes our

perspective of reality creating culture bound ways of perceiving (p. 18). The states of

consciousness that are validated in any given culture are then considered the norm. If the

perception of reality is culturally relative and based upon linguistic categories then how much of

this perception is ultimately “true?” How plastic is the human conception of reality? What does

it mean for Western science that it is based upon certain cultural assumptions? Is scientific truth

the only valid truth? Charles Tart theorizes a systems approach to studying consciousness.

Acknowledging that states of consciousness other than the normative waking state validated by

Western science indeed have valuable information for us, Tart advocates “state specific

sciences” (1993, p. 37). This would include studying the structure of what he calls “discreet

states of consciousness” finding out how they function together in the brain as a system, perhaps

developing different sciences that work within the different states of consciousness and therefore

measure more than ordinary science can.

Roger Walsh has taken on the task of comparing various features of altered states of

consciousness that are not normally considered valid ways of perceiving reality in our Western
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culture. Specifically he compares Shamanic states of consciousness, the Buddhist experience of

insight meditation, the results of the practice of Yogic samadhis and schizophrenia according to

ten different criteria. Walsh finds that all these altered states of consciousness are different and

echoes William James in concluding that there may not be such a thing as a “core mystical

experience” (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 45). In comparing and contrasting these four altered

states, Walsh finds that “The sense of identity differs drastically among the three practices” (p.

44). He also finds that all three of the spiritual practices differed from schizophrenia in that they

increase rather than decrease self-control and concentration in particular (p. 43).

Ken Wilber has created what he calls Integral Psychology in a grand attempt to map not only

various states of consciousness but also their relationship to historical, psychological, spiritual

and social development. Basing his insights on The Perennial Philosophy, Wilber claims there is

a “spectrum of consciousness” he calls “Psychologia Perennis” or a perennial psychology (Walsh

& Vaughn, 1993, p. 21). Wilber talks about “levels of mind,” that mind being the divine ground

of consciousness. This is the universal nature of human consciousness that he would chart.

Wilber’s mapping of consciousness is based on the concept of holoarchy, a word describing an

organic type of hierarchy wherein each stage of development grows out of, and includes, the

previous (p. 116). The relationship of the perception to “truth” at each level of development in

his holoarchy is analogous to the relationship of Newtonian physics to sub atomic physics; each

are true within their realm of measurement yet seemingly contradict each other applied to the

wrong level of matter. However, the broader theory subsumes the narrower theory, though it

may not be apparent at first glance to the uneducated eye. This seeming contradiction leads to

what Wilber calls “the pre/trans fallacy” that may lead a person at one stage of development to

confuse descriptions of experiences from a “lower” stage of development with those from a
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“higher” stage of development (124). John Engler echoes Wilber’s pre/trans fallacy in his

analysis of Buddhist psychology’s definition of “self.” Engler carefully compares the sense of

“self” psychoanalytic development claims with the concept of “self” Buddhists say must be

transcended. His conclusion is that one cannot disavow what one does not have. A well-

developed sense of self, in the psychoanalytic sense, is required in order to see that this sense of

self is illusory, in the transpersonal sense (p. 120).

Besides the pre/trans fallacy, Wilber calls confusion between using the eyes of the flesh, eyes

of the mine or eyes of contemplation “mistakes of category” (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 185).

In both cases there is either a conceptual and/or linguistic inaccuracy coloring the perception of

“non-personal” stages of development or what one is looking at. However, unlike Tart, Wilber

argues that there cannot be stage specific sciences because our conceptions of “science” will

necessarily commit yet another such mistake in category. “Tart, in his pioneering attempts to

legitimize the existence of higher states of consciousness, has inadvertently applied lower-state–

specific criteria to the higher states in general” and “Transpersonal psychology is a state-specific

enterprise (not a science)” (p. 187).

Wilber also stresses the non-dual nature of reality and charts the origins of our illusory

experience of dualism through his spiritually developmental stages. Because the ultimate nature

of reality is non-dual, this ultimate reality being Mind (that divine ground of being), our

perceptions of space, time, death and being separate, are illusions. Our various experiences of

these dualities are a result of whatever stage of development we happen to be at. Also, different

types of therapy are more applicable to different stages of development and the pathologies

specific to each. Wilber concludes, “For example, transpersonal anxiety, existential anxiety, and

shadow anxiety are different beasts indeed, and simply must not be treated the same” (Walsh &
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Vaughn, 1993, p. 31). This illusion is what creates the pre/trans fallacy, which is evident in two

worldviews depending upon whether reality is viewed stressing involution or evolution of spirit.

However, I would question Wilber’s basic assumption that there is even a need for this kind

of evolution as a species. Wilber is claiming that we are evolving toward more and more

spiritual stages as a species. He claims (as do others historically and in the transpersonal

movement) that there is a teleological impetuous inherent in the universe (which is spirit or that

divine ground of being) toward non-duality in some sort of ultimate blissful reunion. Along with

this comes the idea of “moral progress.” I believe moral progress is possible within individual

development, but this assertion of moral development as a species-wide claim reeks of manifest

destiny to me. Jurgen Kemmer critiques Wilber for ignoring indigenous people’s spirituality and

the oppression it has resulted in, with this kind of thinking. He ultimately asks, “Is somebody

who publishes A Brief History of Everything (Wilber, 1996) under an obligation to struggle with

the non-mediated voices of contemporary indigenous people’s” (Rothberg & Kelly, 1998, p.

253). I must answer with a big “yes” to this one. Kremmer claims there are inherent cultural

biases in Wilber’s vision and quite basically states, “ progress implies insufficiency” (p. 250).

Had not western culture colonized these indigenous cultures there would be no such

“insufficiency” perceived. Kremmer also points out that in Wilber’s hierarchy of cultures he has

used outdated archeological and anthropological material and that he has relied upon the utopian

visions of the 19th century thereby continuing to promote cultural imperialism. In answer to

Wilber’s assertion that the so called magical thinking of indigenous people’s spirituality is

“regressive,” Kremmer reminds us of the “shadow” this kind of ethnocentric “progress” casts,

that has historically and still today leaves such damage in its wake. One very attractive idea

Kremmer promotes is, “a process of an immanently present, visionary, socially constructed

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being, which is sustained without the need to progress or overcome some insufficient state “ (p.

254). He bases this on indigenous people’s ways of knowing via the very rituals Wilber

condemns as un-evolved.

Peggy Wright critiques Wilber in a similar manner, pointing out that Wilber does not

understand or ignores feminist scholarship. What caught my eye immediately in Wilber’s

attempt to “balance” the duality between current patriarchal religions and so called matriarchal

religions of ancient times, thereby supposedly balancing the transcendent and immanent concepts

of the sacred, were the claims that, 1) there were matriarchies and 2) that these matriarchies

performed human sacrifice. Having read much feminist theory and archeological sources, I

wondered how I could have missed this! Peggy Wright confirms that I did not. Wright cites

specific archeological evidence placing human sacrifice within the patriarchal and transitional

periods it occurred (Rothberg & Kelly, 1998, p. 224-225), as well as graciously using the correct

term, “matrifocal,” to describe the ancient cultures Wilber is unsubstantially calling matriarchies.

She also points out a few flaws in Wilber’s arguments, particularly his conflation of heterarchy

and heirarchy in terms of defining the power behind them. If Wilber is going to argue that that

holons interacting horizontally with each other are subsumed by the holarchy that organizes them

ultimately and then go on to transfer this concept from the biological and realms of physics, he

must at least acknowledge the precise agency of human power when transferring this schema to

human social systems. Wright says, “Value hierarchies can become oppressive when the values

of the circumscribed group are use to judge the values of those who are not included in the

defining group” (p. 214). This we have seen over and over again. Wright then goes on to

explain that what may look like “regression in service of the ego” from Wilber’s cultural bias

may indeed be another way of knowing or a healing by reclaiming of a state previous to one of
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Wilber’s more advanced stages in order to correct current alienation (p. 218). In this way

Michael Zimmerman also critiques Wilber’s criticisms of deep ecologists and pagan rituals by

saying Wilber “should not lump all such practitioners into an undifferentiated prepersonal heap”

and that according to the actual practitioners, Wilber may be “depopulating the transpersonal

levels” (p. 199). The question seems to be whether the “noosphere” (sphere of human thought)

rests within the biosphere or Gaia or the other way around. In Wilber’s conception of evolution,

the more complex the more valuable therefore the realm of human consciousness holds the

biosphere. Others would claim they are both heterarchally related and equally valuable.

Stan Grof, one of the leading theorists in the school of transpersonal psychology, was one of

the original people to research non-ordinary states of consciousness created by LSD. He claims

that the altered states created by psychedelics are not qualitatively different than those created by

religious experience and insists they are often of a transpersonal nature. Grof charts the

movement individuals have into four classes. Claiming that is the first stage of non-ordinary

experience one must pass through a “barrier of the senses” that includes brilliant colors, patterns

and geometric shapes and relates to the individual psyche, he goes on to say that the more

experienced the individual is using psychedelics the more likely transpersonal experiences are to

occur. After passing through this first stage the individual may find him or herself working in

biographical material of the unconscious and thus, psychedelics can uncover the complexes of

ego psychology. But after this, often transpersonal experiences ensue. Grof states,

“transpersonal experiences can be defined as experiential expansion or extension of

consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of the body-ego and beyond the limitations of time

and space “ (Grof, 1988, p. 38).

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Grof also connects transpersonal experiences with what he calls Basic Perinatal Birth

Matrixes, the four stages of biological birth. Because birth is such a life threatening experience,

like Otto Rank, he believes it shapes the individual deeply. He also cites evidence from his

clinical experience that specific types of transpersonal experiences as well as pathologies can be

traced to these four stages of birth. Grof believes the fetus is also connected to the divine ground

of being as well. He also criticizes Wilber for leaving this aspect of the transpersonal out of his

evolutionary conception of the transpersonal. Grof claims that the very Tibetan Buddhism that

Wilber bases his theory of evolution (ascent) and involution (decent) upon includes the Bardo

states that the fetus experiences (Rothberg & Kelly, 1998, p. 90).

The Birth Matrixes are connected to what Grof calls COEXs or “systems of condensed

experience.” These are constellations of emotional imprinting wherein systems of experience are

stored in the unconscious. This means that intense memories are not stored individually but are

bound up together and tend to reoccur. These are themes of similar memories and “seem(s) to be

superimposed over and anchored in a particular aspect of the trauma of birth” (Grof, 2000, p.

23). So there is a connection between the birth matrixes, the biographical memories of the

individual and the type of pathologies or non-ordinary transpersonal states they may experience.

The transpersonal experiences may present themselves as a “spiritual emergency” that would be

classified as pathology in ordinary Western psychology. Grof has mapped these transpersonal

crises in detail, as well as, traced various specific types of “spiritual emergencies” to the four

birth matrixes.

What everyone agrees upon is that essential to any spiritual practice, is a direct inner

knowledge, and communion with the sacred. In order for the sacred to be apprehended, altered

states of consciousness are often required as well as a “story” to explain the experience and
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integrate that story into the day to day life of the practitioner. This story must be congruent to

the everyday experience of the individual in order for it to be meaningful and it must also lead to

transformation. The purpose of any spiritual practice is to promote healing and well being in the

individual in relation to the sacred as well as internally. Whether the sacred is perceived as

immanent or transcendent, we must agree that it is the largest containment (and by containment I

mean orientation and meaning) possible for the individual. Any practice that promotes growth

toward ultimate self-knowledge and healing is therefore potentially a spiritual practice. “Indeed,

one interpretation of the term transpersonal is that the transcendent is expressed through (trans)

the personal” (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 4).

Smith says, “Our cognitive maps serve as metaphors or models of reality” (1997, p. 216).

These cognitive maps are based on not only cognitive assumptions that are garnered through the

very structure of language (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 18-19). However, Moreno claims there

are preverbal developmental experiences that shape our reality as well. Unlike Goleman, who

specifically claims language shapes our perceptions, Moreno believed there were “language

resistant portions of the human psyche” (Moreno, 2006, p. 226). This is why he insisted on an

action therapy, to tap into what the body knows.

Of course, Moreno understood that one’s cultural position shapes our experience or “world

map” as Smith would say, but the core of Moreno’s “cosmology” (and I would call it that) is that

the individual emerges from the “cosmic all of the universe;” the child thus first experiences him

or herself as the “matrix of all identity” (Moreno, 2006, p. 192). Moreno “concluded that the

organism of the child is driven by a hunger for action” and that “a deeper reason for all this

activity, [is] a need to re-integrate himself with the cosmos, to become once again united with it”

(p. 191-192). Moreno called this “act hunger.” Moreno seems to precede Ken Wilber’s
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explanation of the duality created by the existential experience of Mind (Mind here is capitalized

as it is Wilber’s term for what others have called the ground of being or the sacred) when he

refers to the “cosmic shock” the child experiences. Wilber is referring to an original duality

created by the existential awareness of the individual. Wilber thinks this dualism is an illusion

but he claims that it creates the concepts of self and other, knower and known, subject and object

and consequently space. In a similar manner, Moreno states, “The child suffers one of the

deepest existential shocks. He becomes aware that he is not the total universe” (p. 192). Like

Otto Rank, Moreno believed the developmental stages of the human being first reflected that

“paradise lost,” that oneness with the cosmos, in the struggle toward differentiation (p. 227).

Just as “Jung recommended turning to one’s own psyche, going within to find a deep

ordering mythic pattern to live by” (Smith, 1997, p. 224), the “ritual” of psychodrama presents a

“technology” to do just this. We can see that Moreno’s cosmology that we are “on loan”

(Moreno, 2006, p. 191) from the cosmos which is infinite creative energy that we must struggle

from to differentiate and then eventually return to (requiring a healing balancing act in the

interim) is akin to Jung’s claim of a religious instinct. The personal “myths’ an individual

develops are a result of the roles he or she have been thrust into as well a that individual’s

perceptions of those roles and ultimately these roles create his or her identity. “Moreno began to

work on the premise that the problems of living are interpersonal and intergroupal” (p. 176). So

psychodrama deals with inter-personal relations and private worlds.

We must ask for this healing as part of a community, as a group. The creation of community

is part of that healing because we heal the same way we develop, socially. Our private worlds

are a personal mythology developed inter-personally. Moreno found that each group member

contributed to the healing by way of what he called ‘tele’. Tele was Moreno’s word that
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described the immediate unconscious attraction, repulsion or neutrality we feel upon meeting

another person.

One of the major foundations that psychodrama is built on is “role theory.” It was Moreno’s

idea that the “ego” or “self” did not develop roles but indeed roles developed the ego or self.

Consequently, he developed a basic developmental role theory that includes three basic types of

roles. These are somatic role (sleeper, eater, etc), socio-cultural roles (mother, sister, police

officer etc) and fantasy or psychodramatic roles that are the specific ways a role is lived in the

individual. This is important because to Moreno, the role was an essential part not only of the

individual but also of how individuals created community. From this he developed his science of

Sociometry, the measurement individuals’ relationships to one another in groups. In

psychodrama we use tele to pinpoint the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of our personal mythology. Jacob

Moreno’s concept of “tele” as the unseen glue that holds us together cannot truly be understood

without this understanding of roles. Tele is that bonding that goes on between people in groups.

It is a two way, almost telepathic (and I would say transpersonal) connection that may manifest

as positive, negative or neutral on either side. The Morenos claimed tele is the basic

phenomenon of group cohesion stating it explained more than transference or empathy, which

are individually, experienced subjective states only and therefore not mutually true (Moreno,

2006, p. 223-236). These concepts are the basis of Moreno’s sociometry, the study of small

groups. Sociometetric laws and tele are why psychodrama works; these are also why healing

transformation must take place within community.

In modernity, therapy has essentially replaced ritual. Therapy has become the ritual of

healing. Spontaneity and creativity, freedom from reactive habitual behavior, are the goals of an

authentically lived life. Historically, Moreno’s first interest was creativity and spontaneity. He
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saw how our roles could become rigid and outlive their usefulness as the individual lost

creativity and spontaneity. Zerka Moreno explains how her husband saw the relationship

between these and our loss of them, as we got older and as a culture in this way:

He conceptualized that what is of essence in human existence is the twin principle

of spontaneity and creativity. The end products of these he called “cultural

conserves,” attempts to freeze creativity and spontaneity of a past moment into a

concrete product” (2006, p. 223).

These roles and specifically the way we perceive and experience our roles create the stories of

our lives. John Mosher has charted specific types of wounding in the developmental process in

his creation of his “healing circle model” (Mosher, 2000) to describe core, mythic stories.

Mosher claims there are four basic mythologies that individuals internalize in an attempt to

compensate for trauma. These stories or themes relate directly to the period of development the

individual was traumatized or derailed in. For example, from birth to six months old

developmentally the child requires deep nurturing that includes being held, mirrored and attuned

too. Mosher claims if the child does not get this, an abandonment story or a “myth of

lovelessness” develops. If a child does not properly differentiate from about six months to two

and a half years old, a betrayal story or “myth of joylessness” develops. Continuing around

Mosher’s picture of the developmental circle, trauma or humiliation from approximately two and

half to three and half years old results in a “mythology of powerlessness” and trauma or

derailment between three and a half and five years old, as well a extreme trauma anytime in the

early years of development, results in a “mythology of mindlessness” or chaos (Mosher, 2000, p.

164 – 165). One might notice that Mosher’s model does reflect an objects-relations theory of
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personality but he also relates his model to the Celtic wheel of the year and the Native American

Medicine Wheel.

The toxic stories, our personal mythology, we tell ourselves come from old injunctions given

to us in our early childhoods. They are not even merely verbal stories but preverbal spiritual,

emotional and physical events. Our brains, our very neural pathways are shaped by these events

that then create how we perceive new information. At two years old our brains have more neural

pathways than at any other time in our lives. Those that are not used finally atrophy. Those that

are used become the habitual neural pathways we use. As we grow older we continue to tell

ourselves toxic stories that we have learned from and though these experiences.

The very stories we create are actually an attempt to heal. For example, if I believe I am not

‘good enough’ perhaps if I try harder I will be ‘good enough”. That, for example, would be an

expression of Mosher’s “myth of lovelessness” and the accompanying belief that one must

“earn” love. When this story is prevalent the people may tend to be workaholic and not know

how to take care of themselves. Or if I believe abuse I received was my fault somehow, perhaps

I prevent more abuse if I am very careful. Stories like this one create hyper vigilance and

distrust, Mosher would say specifically, in the case of the “myth of mindlessness” (the

mindlessness refers to the act of dissociation that occurs with extreme trauma). These are very

simple examples but they explain how and why we create these toxic stories.

When these stories are created there is an accompanying emotional state, an altered state of

consciousness created by our adrenal glands, our fight or flight system. We need to be in another

corresponding altered state, a certain type of emotional arousal, to rewrite these stories we are

unconsciously telling ourselves. We can create the correct healing altered states with various

spiritual and therapeutic techniques. Because psychodrama reflects ritual structure and creates
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the appropriate emotional arousal, we can use psychodrama to rewrite the stories we believe

about ourselves that create our problems in living.

The structures of traditional earth based ritual and psychodrama parallel each other. Ritual

requires the creation of sacred space to separate the participants from ordinary reality. This in

turn, creates the opportunity for an individual to access the non-ordinary states of consciousness

required to commune with the sacred. Psychodrama requires the containment or holding and

witnessing of the group to enable the protagonist to “warm up” to the enactment. The enactment,

with it’s catharses of abreaction and catharsis of integration, can be seen as a communion with

the intrapsychic aspects of the individual’s soul, as well as the interpersonal and sometimes the

sacred as synchronistic events often manifest in the environment. This enactment therefore, is

similar to the transformation that takes place in ritual work. When the protagonist again joins the

circle of the “audience” in a psychodramatic group, sharing reintegrates him or her into the

“community” of participants. And that protagonist returns with meaning comparable to that of

the healing or important information a ritual participant returns with to his or her community.

Beyond this, because the energetic nature of psychodrama makes the protagonists healing

available to the auxiliary players and the audience as well, this has the qualities of shamanic

journeying. Both ritual and psychodrama require intent, a community of participants that share a

cultural story, an intentionally created space and a qualified facilitator whether this is a therapist

or priestess, director or shaman. The boundaries of roles, space and intent are clearly defined in

both instances as well. Traditionally, many earth-based religions use enactment within ritual to

communicate the cultural cosmology and the individual’s relationship to it. I feel that using

psychodrama and ritual in conjunction may enhance the facilitation of integrating the

biographical healing of the psyche with the potentially transpersonal growth. Roger Walsh
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believes that not having transpersonal experiences reflect the soul sickness of not only the

individual, but our society at large (Walsh & Vaughn, 1993, p. 135). So do I.

Mosher also incorporates Stan Grof’s cartography as well as other transpersonal theories into

his form of shamanic psychodrama. It is evident that Grof’s birth matrices and COEX’s (system

of condensed experience) fit Mosher’s personal mythologies as well as Moreno’s classical

format of psychodrama respectively. Beyond this, within the classical formula of a

psychodrama, there are usually three scenes of enactment. In the sense that the protagonist may

begin to enact a drama reflecting a current issue in his or her life, continue on to enact an earlier

event that included similar events and emotions, and then enact a third scene that incorporates

both or is a made up idea event (this is known as Surplus Reality), psychodrama truly reflects

Grof’s theory that each constellation of biographical material is a system of condensed

experience or COEX. In fact, as if Grof was in dialog with Moreno, he states, “In deep

experiential psychotherapy, biographical material is not remembered or reconstructed; it can

actually be fully relived. This involves not only emotions, but also physical sensations, visual

perceptions, as well as vivid data from all the other senses” (Grof, 1988, p. 4).

In fact, Mosher’s Healing Circle model also charts the internal competencies that must be

gained to pass from one stage of development to the next. The personal mythology that is

created by our personal trauma can be healed with ritual because “Rituals manipulate our facility

for altering consciousness” (Mosher, 2000, p. 225). Mosher identifies the specific types of

rituals needed to heal an individual from trauma at each threshold of development as well. Very

concisely, Mosher names these four specific types of rituals necessary for healing development

mental wounds Rites of Continuity, Rites of Separation, Rites of Transformation and Rites of

Incorporation. Mosher says these developmental “crossings” that may have been stymied in the
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early years of life can be enacted with in psychodrama as ritual and “each threshold crossings

generates a different kind of change of catharsis” (p. 232). I envision using Mosher’s system to

create rituals generated by the use of psychodrama that reflect these four crossings.

Earth-based Neo Pagan Goddess ritual is particularly fitted to evoke what Stan Grof classifies

as transpersonal experiences of the psychoidal nature. This is what Michael Harner would call

“middle world” work. It is what Grof calls ceremonial magic, healing and hexing, as well as

what Harner would classify as psycho-pomp work (helping suffering souls of the dead pass

over); which can me seen as a type of mediumistic work. But this type of Pagan ritual can also

evoke shamanic experiences of animal spirits, encounters with spirit guides, and especially

experiences of deities, often as universal archetypes. These latter transpersonal experiences Grof

classifies as “experiential extension beyond consensus reality and space-time (Grof, 1988, p. 43).

I would agree with Grof that the individual’s experience of any of these reflect the Birth Matrix

that effected that individual the most. This is also known as the “sacred wound” and is where

that individuals healing and power both reside. Mosher would point to the specific time of

developmental derailment in the individual’s development in agreement with Grof’s concept of

the COEX connected to the Birth Matrix. Traditional indigenous societies might say that the

individual is under the tutelage or “pulls to” a specific deity of their cultural pantheon. I see all

these explanations as coexisting. What is missing in modernity is a cohesive cosmology to allow

the individual to go past the biographical results of this to the direct transpersonal connection

with these experiences and entities.

In my magical system I have created a cosmology, or more accurately have tuned in to one via

transpersonal experiences of Goddesses, animal spirits and mystical states of the multiplicity in

unity type. What started as startling spontaneous experiences and LSD-induced experiences
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resulted in my research. Continuing practice of ritual that I developed as a result of the research

has resulted in further revelatory experiences directly from animal spirit guides and Goddesses. I

have found this very healing and helpful to others as well. Rather than being “regression,” I

have found this promoting my own personal growth and I have witnessed this in others. Where

Grof sees the reliving of the birth trauma as healing as it gives insight on the biographical level

as well as opens one to the transpersonal level of experience, Mosher sees reenacting the trauma

around derailment, as doing the same. While Mosher ritualizes psychodrama, I would add the

element of formal “ceremonial magic” or earth based ritual in order to integrate the biographical

healing with transpersonal growth on a conscious and intentional level.

Incorporating all of the above, I have developed Goddess rituals that include the techniques of

invoking sacred space, then drumming, rattling, chanting and intentionally invoking various

Goddesses to guide women in their journeys. All of these create non-ordinary states of

consciousness in the participants. The rituals may include magical workings or spells intended to

facilitate specific healing as well. These spells are indeed communion or like a prayer,

communication with the specific Goddess being invoked. Specifically, I have developed rituals

around grief and loss wherein we call the Goddesses Hecate and Persephone (these relate to

Mosher’s mythologies of lovelessness and joylessness), rituals of empowerment when we call

the Goddess Diana (these relate to Mosher’s mythology of powerlessness), and rituals of healing,

that invoke the Goddess Isis, and may include soul retrieval (this type of ritual relates to

Mosher’s mythology of mindlessness). Looking at Mosher’s Healing Circle Model, we can see

that developmentally, these would be called Rites of Apotheosis, Rites of Separation, Rites of

Transformation and Rites of Incorporation, respectively (Mosher, 2000, p. 230-231).

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We take these wounds of our biographical, egoic experience of life to the sacred and in doing

so begin to have experiences that generate a transpersonal understanding of our role in the

cosmos. This kind of understanding, in turn, promotes not only psychological healing, but also

more transpersonal awareness and growth of our spirituality. In this way we reclaim and heal the

ego while experiencing the transpersonal. But using psychodrama to clarify the precise issues

and wound we would take to Goddess, we can integrate more and open to theophanies that ritual

can ingenerate. Because ritual process is connected to the cycles of the earth, it becomes a way

of life that generates even more growth toward consistent spiritual fulfillment in life.

Using psychodrama and ritual together creates both a spiritual practice and a therapeutic

modality. I envision psycho-spiritual educational workshops that revolve around these themes of

personal and mythic stories. Ongoing practice would include groups (traditionally called

covens) meeting on the full and dark moons as well as the solstices and equinoxes and the cross

quarter points between them in a traditional manner. By doing this we connect the personal to

the spiritual within the cosmos, thereby strengthening our healing cosmology, that big story we

are all a part of. In this way, we can reclaim that split that has alienated modern Western culture

and our psyches from the sacred that has resulted in limiting our perceptions of our human

potential.
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References

Cambell, J. (1988). The power of myth: Program two of six, the message of myth. New York,

NY: Mystic Fire Video

Grof, S. (1988). The adventure of self discovery. Albany, NY: State University of New York

Press.

Grof, S. (2000) Psychology of the future: lessons from modern consciousness research. Albany,

NY: State University of New York Press.

Mosher, J. (2000). Cycles of healing: Creating our paths to wholeness. Unpublished manuscript

Moreno, Z. (2006) The quintessential zerka. Horvatin, T. & Schreiber, E. (Eds.). New

York, NY: Routledge.

Rothberg , D. & Kelly, S. (Eds.). (1998). Ken Wilber in dialogue: Conversations with leading

transpersonal thinkers. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House.

Smith, C. Michael (1997). Jung and shamanism in dialogue. New York, NY & Mahwah, N.J.:

Paulist Press

Walsh, R. & F. Vaughn (Eds.). (1993). Paths beyond ego: The transpersonal vision. New York,

NY: Tarcher/Putnam .