#19: Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology with Jorge Ferrer
The central premise of Transpersonal Psychology is that mental health encompasses more than just the physical matter of the brain or the behavioural ailments attached to personality structures. The transpersonal approach addresses issues that arise from beyond the limitations of psychopathology. Before the birth of the field, it was only mystics and sages who grappled with transcendent or spiritual experiences. Transpersonal psychology may be one of the doorways for mainstream psychology to negotiate a more holistic approach towards mental health.
Jorge Ferrer is considered one of the main architects of second-wave transpersonal psychology and is best known for his participatory approach to spiritual knowing and religious pluralism. He is an international lecturer and professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. He teaches courses on transpersonal and integral studies, comparative mysticism, participatory theory, embodied spiritual inquiry, and spiritual perspectives on sexuality and intimate relationships. We explore non-ordinary states of consciousness, embodied spirituality or “body fulness”, plant medicines, and the need for more cross-pollination between spiritual traditions.
Jorge is the author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality and Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion, as well as the co-editor of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies.
Highlights:
- Spiritual Bypass vs Embodied Spirituality
- Participatory Approach to Transpersonal Psychology
- Collaboration Between Indigenous and Modern Communities
Resources:
- Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber
- Stanislov Grof
- Institute of Holistic Transformation
- Reggie Ray’s Dharma Ocean
Listen:
Poem Inspired by This Episode
Full Transcript
Thal:
Welcome to the show, Jorge. Thank you for coming on.
Jorge Ferrer:
Thank you very much it is a pleasure to be here and to be here with you.
Adrian:
Yeah, so Jorge, I think a great place for us to start this is to just hear a bit about your, the spiritual orientation of your childhood. We want to hear some of your early experiences that put you on this path of Transpersonal Psychology.
Jorge Ferrer:
Thank you. I think I can say a few things about that, I was born in Barcelona in 1968. It still is, but it was even more of a Christian Catholic country. I did go to a Catholic school. I think I was lucky enough that the school was run by a brotherhood of educators, Armanos Maristas and the object of devotion was not God the father it was the Virgin Mary. In a way they were much less dogmatic and strict like the Jesuits for example. The education was very good but also there was something about that kind of devotion to Virgin Mary that I think kind of influenced my approach to spirituality from day one, like a more feminine and more organic in many ways. We will talk later about it I am sure but in many ways this participatory spirituality it could be seen as a much more feminine approach than let’s say other more classical Transpersonal paradigms.
In addition to that what I would say I also went through a kind of non-ordinary states of consciousness and experiences when I was a child. I think probably when I was 11 or 10 years old. In the school, several times I would go into what I later learned to identify as a trance state. The Buddhists call it the Jhānas, the first absorption in the Theravada path where everything in the room and everything around me will be completely blank. I would have my eyes open, but I would lose complete contact with the environmental context and I would be in a space of peace and light and just beauty. The teacher would wake me up and then I would start crying.
After a few times they took me to the school psychologist concerned that I could be epileptic, and they run some tests and they didn’t find anything and just let it go. That was one experience and the other was when I was pre-adolescent I started having out of body experiences and at first I was very scared of them and at first I really didn’t know what was going on and was not sure if I will come back to my body so it was pretty scary and later throughout my life, you know, I had them in different places and by then it became something else. At that point I was concerned, those experiences plus my personal of some kind neurotic things that I was experiencing in adolescence and early adulthood took me to the study of psychology and I was trying like many people who go into psychology, I believe they go for personal healing and also understanding those states, of course, mainstream psychology or the university did not provide for either of those. Those states were pathologized by mainstream psychology, as depersonalization or dissociation and all sorts of stuff and of course mainstream psychology could not provide any healing for my neurotic loops. I started a personal search for different paradigms that ultimately led me to find transpersonal psychology first through the books and then also start meditation, like also practicing with some kind of psychedelic substances and many, many other things, and ultimately led me to CIIS, to study my PhD there. I’ve been teaching there for the last 20 years.
Adrian:
I wanted to ask you about the out of body experience, when you said that my body kind of got a reaction to it, so I want to kind of press a little bit, do you mind sharing what that first out of body was like? What was happening phenomenologically?
Jorge Ferrer:
Sure. Basically, all the of out of body experiences that I have had follow a very specific phenomenology to begin with later they can change. They normally happen, at least to me, when you’re in that space, in between a wakefulness and sleep, your mind is completely awake and lucid. You are as awake as the three of us right now and most of our audience, I’m sure. At some point you find your body completely paralyzed. Then you feel some kind of energy, you can hear it in waves. Voom. Voom. Suddenly you find yourself out of the body. At first it can be extremely disorienting because you have not learned, especially when you’re like 12 or 15 years old to navigate those states. It could be scary, you find yourself out there, you see your body in bed? You are in a kind of different body like what is called the astral body, but you don’t know how to make it work so it could be very disorienting. It took me many years and many out of body experiences to actually learn through experience to navigate those worlds much better.
Thal:
I think we’re just going to move to the next question. One of your major contributions to Transpersonal Psychology is the participatory approach, maybe if you can share with us how you arrived to that perspective. Personally and academically.
Jorge Ferrer:
They are intertwined, of course. It was part of my personal process. It was part of my intellectual challenge, and my spiritual unfolding all at the same time. What I would say is that when I first arrived to California in the early nineties, Transpersonal psychology was dominated by the neo-Perennialist approach, authors like Ken Wilber and Stan Grof, people I really admired a lot, and they have contributed tremendously to the field. They were like the fathers of the field and I learned so much from them, and at the same time there were ways in which I felt they were providing this kind of neutral language, like this categories that claimed to be transcultural for all spiritual paths, all spiritual traditions.
But by doing so, inadvertently, in most cases, especially in the case of Stan Grof, in the case of Wilbur it’s a different story. I think they were kind of like situating the spiritual goals of some traditions above all others, either absolute consciousness or non-duality and by doing that they were relegating spiritual goals and spiritual traditions that did not share those goals. For example, most of Christian mysticism does not share non-duality, it is about cultivating the presence of God, a loving God in your life, you know, not to speak about Daoism or indigenous traditions. Theistic traditions, for example, were kind of relegated to a kind of a lower level of a spiritual insight and understanding. That was part of my initial reaction to that and at the same time there was a lot of emphasis in the Transpersonal psychology movement about reaching states of consciousness, right?
The subconscious was the panacea, you know. We need to understand that for many decades spirituality in the States, the Transpersonal movement had been dominated by very problematic forms of Christianity. In the late 50s and mid-60s, the psychedelics came in and Eastern traditions and Eastern gurus came in to the West, you know, and at the same time it was humanistic psychology speaking about peak experiences and farther reaches of human nature. I think the conference of different factors gave birth to the Transpersonal movement with its emphasis on higher states of consciousness.
Most of Transpersonal psychology at that time were busy mapping those states and they still are many of them and it is still a very valuable task. But for me, the participatory movement, is not a substitution of that first wave. It’s kind of an expansion. It’s bringing it all down to earth. It’s about relationship with other human beings, with societies, cultures, diversity, the ecological crisis or political situation and so forth. It’s really about the democratization of spirituality, like really framing a plurality of spiritualities. There is no single sequence or paradigm model that is going to encompass all traditions in a way that is not ideological, especially when you situate them in a evolutionary continuum or developmental continuum as all those Transpersonal psychologists were doing. The participatory movement is like an embodiment, and also it is about relatedness, and creative inquiry in dimensions of spirituality. It’s not so much about rediscovering the tools that were already found by the old sages and teachers, but also it is about co-creating your own spiritual path.
Thal:
I think what you mentioned is very important because I mean, personally, I found when I was going through my own crisis and asking all those questions, and just the complexities of the world felt overwhelming, I found solace in reading Ken Wilber and just, you know, everything hierarchal and organized, and that has its place. But also, like you said, the participatory approach is not to eclipse that, but to enrich that approach. Can you speak more about how it can serve in our current global climate?
Jorge Ferrer:
I feel you are totally right because with those early years (in Transpersonal psychology), there was an influx of all these different spiritual traditions and people were having these psychedelic states. There was this chaos and so maps such as Ken Wilber’s and Stan Grof really put order to some extent. People say, “oh, wow, now at least I have a map that I can make sense of my experience.” But of course, like any human experience, especially when you go beyond your own experience and you start relating to many many other people who have different experiences. It’s much more complex and messy and interesting than any kind of conceptual can encompass.
Anyway, coming back to your question. I think it is important that with our ecological crisis, you can try to persuade people about being pro environmentalist in many different ways, and many people are doing that because they have an intellectual understanding of the problem. There are people who are doing that because of survival reasons, and that’s very important, not only for themselves but for their progeny. They really want to make sure that their grandsons and granddaughters have a world where there are trees and there is air that can be breathed.
There are a variety of reasons. I think with the participatory approach, or the eco-psychological and transpersonal movements what they can bring forth is more important because take for example the emphasis on embodiment. The more embodied you are…which the body is really part of nature in a way that the isolated mind can be more disassociated. The more embodied you are, the more naturally empathic you are to the pain and the joy of nature. Therefore, it becomes something more of an existential imperative is not so much about the survival of your granddaughters or because you know it’s right. It’s because you care in the flesh of your body that that is the right thing to do.
Adrian:
Jorge, I love to ask you personal practices that have helped you become more embodied. I love that we’re bringing this up because I feel that seems to be a very relevant thing within today’s spiritual climate. That word embodiment comes up a lot, but the practices I feel are helpful. If we could go into that a little bit to share with our listeners.
Jorge Ferrer:
Yes, this is a great question and thank you. Well, I spent almost 15 years of my life in the Buddhist tradition meditating and at some point I quit. I value meditation and I incorporate it in many aspects of my life and I still meditate sometimes, but at some point, even some Buddhist teachers today, like Reggie Ray and many others have brought this critiques of meditation as a potentially disembodied practice. It all depends how you meditate, right? There is a way in which people can really spend a lot of time in their minds and consciousness. Of course in many of the traditions like Buddhism, you know, the body was something to leave behind, not to speak about sexuality, and of course cultivating the more subtle dimensions of the heart and essence of consciousness. In India and the Indian Matrix, liberation was understood as something to escape Samsara, to escape the body, to escape this phenomenal natural reality.
But it doesn’t leave you many resources for environmentalism, but that’s a different issue. For me, after many years at that practice I was already experimenting with some sacred plants like Ayahuasca, Mushrooms, and San Pedro that is my main plant teacher and San Pedro in particular brought this very strong dimension of embodiment. San Pedro, in particular, is not a plant that takes you on this kind of inner journey or some different world spaces and subtle worlds that could be very fascinating and important, but it is a plant that teaches you how to be embodied here and now. When you are then embodied here and now you can open the windows and doors of your home, and a such your body without leaving your body sort to speak.
Another important practice for me is interactive embodied meditation it comes from a word called holistic transformation that I used to co-facilitate in Esalen institute, and in another places. It is a basically people coming together and practicing meditation in relationship with each other, and in physical contact with each other where you bring the mindfulness practice into physical contact with the body? I think that’s very powerful. My sense is that there is a lot of work that is very cutting edge. The most work that is cutting edge is the work that integrates somatics (body) with spiritual consciousness mindfulness. In the last couple of years, a few books came out about a bodyfullnes. This is a term that I coined myself in 2006 to speak about not so much the mindfulness of the body but a kind of awareness that emerges from the body itself. It might be like the big cats of the jungle. They are not intentionally trying to be alert but they are extremely alert much more than human beings. I can say a bit more or I can leave it here and go where you guys want me to go.
Thal:
Actually, just comparing the word mindfulness to the word bodyfullnes is interesting because mindfulness can be a way where people become even stuck more in their mind and forget their body. I’m thinking about the term spiritual bypass and how, you know, instead of using spirituality to become more integrated and aware, we can use it to just escape our body, our humanity. If you can speak more about that for sure, that would be…
Jorge Ferrer:
The mindfulness that has become popularized today in the States and in Europe is a some more cognitive approach to mindfulness that is quite mental and that’s not even necessarily the mindfulness that was cultivated in Buddhism and has many differences as many Buddhist scholars have pointed out today. In any case, in terms of spiritual bypass, I will explain the terms for the audience. Spiritual bypass means, in particular, when one goes into a kind of like spiritual practice or teachings in order to avoid facing psychological issues. and to give a couple of examples. Say someone who has a lot of issues about anger, say anger towards their parents or anger towards the world can be very drawn to practice Buddhism. They emphasize the no expression of anger, equanimity, and being super peaceful all the time or someone for example that has like sexual blocks or issues around their sexuality they can become drawn to a tradition that emphasizes celibacy. Is that a solution? I don’t think so. In the best cases, they can transform some of those energies in positive ways and that can help. However, following the path of doing the psychological work, the psychosomatic psychoenergetic work to heal those sexual blocks to really clean the anger within yourself and to forgive your parents and to forgive the world, or whatever you are angry against, and then from that solid foundation build your spiritual practice.
Thal:
Definitely, the psychological growth and the spiritual growth go in tandem. We can’t separate both that’s a mistake that I’ve done in my life so I’m learning slowly.
Jorge Ferrer:
Ideally they should go in tandem, but many times they don’t. We see this all the time, for example, spiritual teachers, you know, they are awake or they have a certain awakening for example in their consciousness or even in their hearts. They get into all sorts of sexual scandals, unethical behavior, and power games, right? So I just want to speak to the fact that while ideally they should go in tandem, very often they do not. I know many Shamans who are masters of the psychic realm and they can be tremendously gifted healers. They are real shamans, now don’t get me wrong. This is very important. They’re real shaman, they are elders in their communities, and at the same time they start doing ceremonies with Western women, but they also have transference towards them. It could be mutual and a two way street energetically, but they then lose it and start sexually harassing them or worst case scenario abusing them and abusing their own power. That is very unfortunate. This is why it is so important that we affirm and we encourage this kind of integrated spiritual growth that includes not only just the heart and consciousness, but the body and sexuality in particular. It is not the same to become mature mentally or emotionally than to become mature somatically and sexually.
Adrian:
I love that. I want to ask you if someone’s earnestly trying to develop spiritually, they’re involving in practices, learning from different people, reading books. What are some helpful signs that they might be on an disintegrated path? Right? So what might that look like? We’re all vulnerable to it. I don’t want to sit here pretending like, you know, that we can just talk about these things as if we’re outside of it. You know, I think we’re the first to admit that we are all susceptible to disintegration or disembodiment. What does that look like? What are some telltale signs?
Thal:
The work never ends really. It’s constant. It’s something that we were talking about, too, before starting the podcast with you. I’m thinking about the Jungian concept of the shadow and it’s like the more you work on your spirituality, your “light”, you still have to be aware of your “shadow” and the dark.
Jorge Ferrer:
I have a qualification around that because as the saying goes, the greater the light the greater the shadow, I don’t totally believe that. This is the case when development has not been integrated. The lack of development happens when there is a lot of spiritual consciousness and a lot of light but there has not been depth psychological work going together, if a person is developing spiritually and also has been doing a lot of depth psychological work: “I don’t think that the greater the light, the greater the shadow,” even though the saying makes a lot of intuitive sense because light and shadow go together.
Thal:
It is a clean box, Jorge, why break it open?
(Laughing)
Jorge Ferrer:
Unfortunately, a lot of times this is the case, I think that is a sign of this kind of a more dissociated forms of spirituality in which people are just developing in some areas and not in others.
Adrian:
I mean this is kind of related. Since we brought up altered states, this is something that we’re experiencing right now in today’s renaissance of psychedelics both in research as well as just exploration, you know, more and more people that are turning towards these tools. What excites you about this renaissance and maybe perhaps also what worries you at the same time with this current trend?
Jorge Ferrer:
Yes, many things are exciting and many things are disturbing or concerning. I think there are two levels to this path, of course, it works on the individual level for people who are experimenting and then more on the cultural level, I think there’s two sides of the question. On an individual level, I am a San Pedresta and I do believe in the transformative power of many of these plant medicines. On the other hand, there is a lot of caution too. To proceed with caution is very important. I think we all know people who have done a lot of psychedelic work and you know their egos are not smaller, they are bigger, you know, and sometimes they have really weird ideas. They become conspiracy theorists. They are not becoming better persons. So what is going on? I think there are several factors. There is someone’s baseline kind of character. If it is someone with a lot of narcissistic wounding and let’s say a borderline personality, in a way doing the psychedelic work without doing the psychological healing work, there are more chances that something can go wrong. There are more chances that you become inflated or messianic or just not a good person as you could be. Another factor is community and integration. When indigenous people do these plants, they do it in the jungle, in nature, around a whole community and rites of passage. There is a whole social matrix that supports integration. Even in those cases, there is no warrant that the shaman is not going to be ethical or he is not going to be a sexual harasser. Things are very delicate. The importance of community of peers and friends who are going to tell you frankly. Jorge, you have been doing San Pedro all these years but don’t see you becoming more available for life. You are even a bit more self-centered than you are before. I think that mirroring is crucial. If it’s just one person telling you, yeah, but if it’s like a community telling you then that’s really powerful.
The power of community is really important. On a cultural level and social level, the renaissance of psychedelic research is important. It is legitimizing and it going to help in a few years when it becomes legal, like the psychotherapeutic use of MDMA and probably psilocybin as well. This is good because it will reach more people instead of doing the work underground and in illegal ways. It will open the doors for people who do not want to go that way. There is immense healing that can take place and a lot of suffering can be eliminated or minimized. There are also a plethora of challenges such as big Pharma.
On the other hand, there are corporate interests that are trying to put their teeth on all this research. They are donating a lot of money to all the research. No one believes that they do not want anything back. People who are in those organizations, especially MAPS are very aware of those things. There is also the cultural dimension, shamans and people from different cultures, like the Mazatec who have been using mushrooms for many years, when they hear that the medical establishment is going to take that sacrament and medicalize it and sell it without credit or without honoring the wisdom behind the tradition then of course they are not going to be happy about it and with some good reasons.
Thal:
I’m thinking when you’re talking about the plant teachers…and bringing the plant teachers over here…can we still have the element of the sacred or are we also appropriating yet another indigenous method of healing? I mean, what are your ideas around that?
Jorge Ferrer:
I do work with the plant medicine, after spending 12 years working in Peru, I do belong to a lineage but I am not a native or am I Peruvian. San Pedro is a bit different since it does not have such an old lineage such as the psilocybin.
Thal:
Sorry, we lost you for a minute. When you said something important about San Pedro. Can you repeat that please? Thank you.
Jorge Ferrer:
With San Pedro in particular the tradition is lost. It’s more disseminated, but with other plant teachers it is different. I think it’s a very delicate thing because on the one hand, I would love for as many people as possible in the world to benefit from those teachers. I believe that the plant teachers themselves, they want also that, they want to give. They don’t care if they are giving it to the natives or to other persons, they are sentient intelligences from earth. They just want to benefit all sentient beings. On the other hand, there is the perpetual issue of colonialism. When a culture has been colonized, when their women have been raped, where their lands have been taken, by Western people and now they are taking their sacred medicine.
That is of course will always be a contested area, but I think in the best case scenario, some kind of a dialogue from those traditions should and could take place, and some kind of compensation. Many of those people are just living in misery. It will be something that will make them happy and they will also be more willing to share their wisdom. Their willingness to share their wisdom is their own right but also I think the plant themselves are for all humankind. I don’t think that some people have a sacrosanct right to them and not others because they happen to be born in that area of the world. That’s my opinion but other people will think differently.
Thal:
That is true. I actually agree with that opinion. I really think it is the fine line. It’s like the middle way of how can we bring these plant teachers and gift from the Earth. How can we bring them but without appropriation, without the colonial baggage? It’s easier said than done. But yes, absolutely.
Jorge Ferrer:
You know as a Spaniard and living in the States for 23 years, I never had any issue when I saw Americans cooking piaya but American people did not come to my country to destroy it or decimate it, and rape the women of my ancestry and take our things. The greater the issue of colonialism, the more delicate the approach. The other issues is money. Who is benefitting from this? When a world famous musical band, who I won’t mention their name, uses music from the indigenous people of Africa and makes million without giving back then that is a problem. Money, the history of colonialism and no dialogue with those people, I think are three factors that are very important.
Adrian:
I’ve heard you use this term and it’s actually a beautiful plant analogy is cross-pollination. You know, perhaps as a more harmonious way of seeing some of these practices and traditions being shared is the idea of cross-pollination. Can you share what that looks like or your vision for that type of spirituality?
Jorge Ferrer:
I think I used that term to explain the cross-pollination of mystical and religious traditions. I think this is what is happening today. I used that word to describe what is already happening with the inter-religious dialogue, different monks, and exchanging different practices and different teachings. At the same time I used that word to show that this is where we should be going. Different traditions are good at cultivating different potentials. Some traditions are good at cultivating meditation mind and consciousness, other traditions are good at cultivating harmoniousness with nature and seeing nature as sacred, and other traditions are good at cultivating charity and social action. I think traditions have too much to learn and to teach.
At the same time this can be applied in conversation with indigenous traditions and Western traditions. I think there is a way in which people from both camps approach the other tradition with certain pride. The Western people go like this is primitive, we can take the wisdom from them and we can use it in this way because they are using it in this limited way, while we can use it in these amazing ways and reach many people. We actually know better what these plants are than they know because we have analyzed them in our laboratories. There is also the pride of the indigenous people. They actually come forward saying that we are better, we are the spiritual people. You people are not spiritual and you don’t know shit with what is going on with the plants.
In part, they know much more than we do about the power of these plants. I think there are possibilities of integration with a more dialogical approach in which doctors, psychologists, neuroscientists come together with shamans, indigenous people having worked with those plants and they come together as equals and they share knowledge. They not only share knowledge but they also inquire together. I think that is the future of research that I would like to see. This is not happening in the big universities. Let us come together, let us journey together, and let us inquire together, and let’s do an experience together and then let’s contrast our viewpoints. How do you understand what happened and listening to our different epistemologies and our different methodologies, and our world-views. A kind of multidimensional and multicultural dialogue and inquiry and science! This has not been happening, and I would like to see that happening in the future.
Thal:
In a way that is the true work of authentic scholarship, really. When you say that the big universities are not doing that then it’s really sad. The true work of academics and scholarship is to exchange and to meet as equals. When you describe the doctor of psychology meeting the shaman both are inquiring about the spirit but they are just coming at it from a different perspective. Speaking of talking about the same thing but from different perspectives, I am thinking about mysticism. I also know that you are a student of mysticism, and the world itself, a lot of modern minds might cringe when they hear that word. What does it mean to you?
Jorge Ferrer:
It is a trick question. For me it means many things. I am a student of mysticism, I have also been teaching comparative mysticism for many years. I know the history of the word. I know the different meanings of the word. I know the different meanings the word took throughout many centuries, coming from the Greek matrix through Christianity. Something that is important to consider as preface, and I will go back to what the word means in a second, is the word mysticism is a Western construct. It is a Western term. It was later exported by Western scholars, Christian scholars to understand other traditions talking about access to spiritual entities of realms. For instance, many Buddhist scholars would not like their traditions to be called a mystical tradition.
D. T. Suzuki, one of the most famous Buddhist scholars who popularized Buddhism in the West was completely against the use of the word mysticism and to qualify Buddhism. Most indigenous people I know they would say, mysticism, what is that? That is not what we do here, what about healing, about balance, and about something else. Nothing mystical here. With that being said, the term mystical has many different meanings and it is a contested category. Generally speaking what mysticism means is about direct contact or direct access to a reality that is beyond our senses or we go down to a deeper dimension of this world that we can see. This is the nature of mysticism like the dimensions of consciousness or contact with the divine God in theistic traditions and so forth.
With that being said, my personal take on mysticism is like an integral experience of life, the cosmos, in all of its multidimensionality. So not only the dimension of the natural world but also the different kinds of the subtle realms as well everything that is encompassed by the word cosmos. Different mystics from different traditions would access different dimensions. It is not only a question of access only but it also a kind of creative enactment. This is also part of the participatory paradigm. It is not only about accessing realities that already exists and they do. It is also about cocreating with the kind of generative mystery.
By the term mystery, I mean that kind of creative force that is behind the unfolding of creation. I think we participate as human beings because we are part of that creation and that creative force. In connection with that creative force we can cocreate spiritual insights and practices and even perhaps new realities. I think this has been happening from the beginning of history of humankind.
Thal Ferrer:
In a way that’s bringing it to the practical, right? Like even when we’re talking about the plant teachers, they do take us into those “mystical experiences.” But really the true work is after the ceremony, like it’s not just to access those different realms as you said, it’s to bring it back to the everyday.
Adrian:
I want to ask you, maybe not so practical question, purely just for my own curiosity. I know you’re not a fan of putting things into hierarchy, so I’m going to preface by asking, this is purely just for my own interest here. Is there a mystical experience that you’re comfortable to share that really stands out as the most confusing thing that doesn’t kind of fit, you know, a lot of rational understanding? Maybe actually there is a practical element that sort of brings humility, you know, it kind of brings you back to a place where like, I don’t know what the heck just happened. Is there something you can kind of share on that note?
Jorge Ferrer:
Yes. My sense is that this is the paradox of knowledge. Genuine scientists talk about this…the more you know the more you realize the little you know. The more mystical experiences you have, the more explorations, the higher consciousness you can access, the more you realize the infinite dimensions that are out there. The more we realize the little that we know or the little that I know, in particular. Many of the experiences have deconstructed certain belief systems that I have had. They also impacted my work and certain theories. I have changed my minds about a few things.
For example, I used to hold that many of the entities that some traditions talk about like angels or sages that people would encounter. I would see it as cocreated by human consciousness until I had my own encounters with sages, astral doctors, and different types of disembodied entities made of energy and consciousness that really persuaded me that they are autonomous. They were so much wiser than I was and they were so much more benign and benevolent than even my deeper self. Most importantly, they had a tangible effect on my experience. I had an encounter with a Daoist sage and I could see him right in front of my face and he was bringing gifts on a purely energetic exchange, a shaktipat.
Therefore, there was this effect on my embodied organism. With ayahuasca it was the same, there were astral doctors moving in the room and healing people by putting their hands on their heart centre. They were performing these energetic spiritual surgeries and aligning the centers. It just makes you want to cry and be so thankful to them. I have had these experiences that helped me reframe my views. It could be some ascended masters or post-mortem scenarios. I do not believe that there is just one post-mortem scenario. I think there are many possibilities.
Some people say that religious pluralism is nice and beautiful but when you die you will see who is true. I don’t think so? I think the post-mortem existence can be much more complex and diverse than this one and different people can go to different places. While some entities could be ascended masters or people who have died, but there could also be independent realms with their independent entities made of energy and consciousness that are probably not connected to humanity.
The thing is that a lot of the entities that are encountered be it angels or others, they are usually very cultural shaped. There are different interpretations, here, where some say is that just an archetypal manifestation that becomes cultural with encounter but the essence is unknowable? The same entity would appear as angel to a Christian or a Buddhist teacher to another. I am not sure that that is how it works because the qualities are different and the energies are very different and the teachings are different, but who knows, the questions are endless, many possibilities and so much mystery. It is very exciting that we are all co-inquiring together into all of these dimensions these days.
Thal:
Amazing! Thank you for sharing that. I was transformed into another realm listening to you. Thank you. Yeah.
Adrian:
Jorge. You mentioned at one point just bringing together a group of people from all the scientists, the Western minded as well as the indigenous and co-journeying. I think that really is sticking as a nice final remark is the idea that perhaps we should all, you know, find opportunities to co-journey with the other, you know, to step out of our comfort zones are familiar tribes and to really connect with the other, to find maybe not common ground, but to find the cross pollination. What gifts do we each have to exchange with one another?
Jorge Ferrer:
With that being said, that does not mean that everyone has to do psychedelics. There are many ways to co-inquire and to co-journey through meditation and through different practices together. The importance is to include people from very diverse backgrounds and worldviews, different cultures, different worldviews, different epistemologies with humility and openness. I think this will be the challenge of our times.
Thal:
Absolutely. Thank you, Jorge.
Adrian:
Thank you so much for your time today.
Thal:
Thank you so much.
Jorge Ferrer:
My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much.
