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Newsletter...
6-21-02
Consciousness Timeline... by Stephen Dinan
Stephen Dinan
CEO, TCN, Inc.
stdinan@transformunity.com
author & founder, Radical Spirit
http://www.radicalspirit.org
The following timeline is by necessity somewhat arbitrary and
quite partial.
The point is not to chart the minutiae of events constituting
what I am
loosely calling the "consciousness movement," but
to give a sense for a few
prominent milestones. The last hundred years have witnessed
the gradual
creation of a new world philosophy, one that sees human beings
engaged in an
evolutionary process to access a deeper, richer, more playful
consciousness
and to manifest the fruits of that work in the world. This new
amalgam of
ideas and practices has drawn from dozens of traditions, thousands
of books
and experiments, and millions of collectively focused lives.
Drawing a firm
boundary around this "movement" is thus misleading.
It is better likened to
the flow of a tumultuous river, its millions of eddies and currents
creating, when seen from afar, a cohesive sense of direction.
This timeline
is best viewed as a snapshot of that river from high above.
1875
*Founding of the
Theosophical Society in New York, spurs interest in
spiritualism. The Society propounded the notion of spiritual
evolution in an
attempt to bridge the religious world view with that arising
in science.
1890
*William James, Principles
of Psychology.
1893
*First Parliament
of World Religions, Vivekananda electrifies the
gathering and brings Vedanta to the West.
1894
*Rudolf Steiner,
The Philosophy of Freedom, first of his four
"foundational" books.
1900
*Sigmund Freud, The
Interpretation of Dreams. Birth of the
psychoanalytic movement.
1901
*William James, Varieties
of Religious Experience, lays the groundwork
for the cross-cultural study of mystical experience.
1903
*Frederic Myers,
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.
1905
*Richard Maurice
Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness.
1906
*James Mark Baldwin,
Thought and Things.
1907
* D. T. Suzuki's Outline of Mahayana Buddhism introduces Zen
to the West.
* Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution.
1909
*Alexandra David-Neel's
The Buddhism of the Buddha and Buddhist
Modernism, presents a non-academic account of Buddhist practice.
1911
*Evelyn Underhill,
Mysticism.
1912
* Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, break from Freud.
* P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum.
1913
*Rudolf Steiner founds
anthroposophy.
1914
* James H. Woods, The Yoga System of Patanjali, considered the
first
full-length scholarly work in America on Indian philosophy.
* Caroline Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology, offers the first
well-developed discussion of the compatibility between Western
psychology
and Buddhism.
1917
*Rudolf Otto, The
Idea of the Holy.
1918
*Oswald Spengler,
The Decline of the West, especially influential on J.
Campbell.
1920
*Arrival of Paramahansa
Yogananda in Boston, an important figure in the
spread of Hinduism in the West.
1921
*Carl Jung, Psychological
Types.
1923
* Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id.
* Martin Buber, I and Thou.
1924
* Otto Rank, The Trauma of Birth.
* Jean Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child, demonstrates
how
structures of thought evolve.
1925
* C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature.
* Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
1926
* Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West, helps create the discipline
of
East-West comparative mysticism.
* Jan Smuts, Holism and Evolution, argues that each subsequent
level of
evolution is more encompassing than the last, that what was
once a whole
becomes part of a greater whole. Influential in systems theory.
1927
*Wilhelm Reich, Die Funktion des Orgasmus.
1928
*Richard Wilhelm
invites Jung to write a commentary on the Taoist text
The Secret of the Golden Flower in which Jung aims "to
build a bridge of
psychological understanding between East and West."
1929
* Alfred North Whitehead, in Process and Reality, introduces
the notion
of prehension, that interiority is fundamental all the way down
to the most
basic levels of the universe.
* Krishnamurti, who had been chosen as the next World Teacher
by the
Theosophical Society, rejects the organization and states that
"truth is a
pathless land," setting the stage for the nondoctrinal
teachings of his next
sixty years.
1933
*Beginning of the
Eranos seminars, started with the purpose of finding
common ground between Eastern and Western religious thought.
Participants
included C.G. Jung, Heinrich Zimmer, D. T. Suzuki, Martin Buber,
and Mircea
Eliade.
1934
* Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
* Arnold Toynbee, in A Study of History, explicates his theory
of the
rise and breakdown of civilizations.
1936
*Arthur Lovejoy,
The Great Chain of Being.
1937
* Anna Freud, The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense.
1938
*Jung travels to
India and upon his return warns against the Western
adoption of the practice of yoga, instead calling for the development
of a
Western form of yoga.
1939
*First East-West
Philosophers' Conference, organized by Charles A. Moore
in Honolulu, attempts to forge a global philosophy.
1943
*Albert Hoffman accidentally
ingests LSD-25 (first synthesized in 1938),
a mistake leading eventually to the widespread use of psychedelics.
(4/16)
1944
*Aldous Huxley, The
Perennial Philosophy.
1945
* Merleau-Ponty, inPhénoménologie de la Perception,
creates a methodology
for the study of subjective experience.
* Rene Guénon, Man and His Becoming According to Vedanta.
1946
* Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi.
* Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.
1947
*Fritz Perls, Ego,
Hunger, and Aggression.
1948
* Fritjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (French
edition).
Proposes the esoteric identity of all religions.
* Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, important work in
the
revitalization of Christian mysticism.
1949
* Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, articulates a theory
of the
evolution of human culture through five stages: archaic, magical,
mythic,
rational, and aperspectival.
* Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, highly influential
in
comparative mythology.
* Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sex.
* Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, foundational for many of the
leading
lights of the consciousness movement.
* Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return.
* Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness.
* Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety,
Sex,
Gravitation and Learning.
1950
*L. L. Whyte, The
Next Development in Man.
1951
*Carl Rogers, Client-Centered
Therapy.
1952
* Radhakrishnan, History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western.
* Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, highly
influential on Michael Murphy's later work in Future of the
Body.
* Carl Jung, Answer to Job and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting
Principle.
1954
* Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China argues
for the
scientific side of Taoism.
* Aldous Huxley, with The Doors of Perception, piques the interest
of
many as to the possible benefits of psychedelic experience.
* Mircea Eliade, The Myth of Eternal Return.
1955
* Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, published posthumously,
a
vision of the evolution of the universe from Creation to an
Omega Point.
* Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization.
1956
* Gregory Bateson et al. formulate the double bind theory of
the genesis
of schizophrenia.
* Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man.
* Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.
1957
* Karl Jaspers includes chapters on the Buddha and Nagarjuna
in his The
Great Philosophers.
* Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.
* Leon Festinger, The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
* C. Thigpen and H. Cleckley, The Three Faces of Eve.
* P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way, published posthumously and
assembled
by students.
1958
* Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion.
* Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology.
* Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion.
1959
* Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death.
* Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, first volume of Masks
of God
series.
* Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development
* John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po.
* Arrival of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to San Francisco, start of
the
enormously influential Transcendental Meditation movement. Peak
hits about
1967 or 1968.
* Arrival of Shunryu Suzuki to San Francisco as a priest for
the Japanese
Zen Buddhist congregation. He eventually creates the San Francisco
Zen
Center which plays an influential role in introducing Soto Zen
practice to
America. (5/23)
* Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupying force leads to
bloodshed and
the flight of the Dalai Lama and much of the core of the Tibetan
religious
hierarchy, setting the stage for the dissemination of Tibetan
Buddhist
teachers and practices.
1960
* Erich Fromm &
D. T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, dialogues
between modern psychoanalysis and Eastern religion.
1961
* Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West establishes parallels
between
Western psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality.
* Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness.
* Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Folie.
* Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person.
* J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, fictional account of the
turn towards
mysticism.
* George Leonard, "The Explosive Generation" article
in Look, first major
piece to foretell the tumultuous times to come.
* Founding of The Journal of Humanistic Psychology. (Spring)
* Founding of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
1962
* Founding of the Esalen Institute as a forum for exploring
new
philosophies and visions of human development.
* Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being.
* Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, describes the effect
of
electronic technologies on the age of the book.
* Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions articulates
his
theory of paradigm shifts governing the process of scientific
discovery.
* Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, his autobiography.
* Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, an important catalyst for the
environmental movement.
* Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology.
* Psychedelic experiments with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert
at
Harvard.
1963
* Civil rights march on Washington, M. L. King's "I Have
a Dream" speech
(8/29).
* Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique.
* E. N. Lorenz publishes the first paper on chaos theory.
* Gerald Heard, The Five Ages of Man.
* Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
* Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks begin teaching Sensory
Awareness at
Esalen.
1964
* Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, The Psychedelic
Experience, an adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as
a guide for the
Western use of psychedelics.
* Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, Peak Experiences.
* Robert Bellah, "Religious Evolution."
* Mircea Eliade, Shamanism.
* Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology.
* Idries Shah, The Sufis.
* K. Dabrowski, Positive Disintegration.
* Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation.
* Arrival of Fritz Perls at Esalen, which provides a platform
for the
dissemination of Gestalt (May)
1965
* Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City.
* R. D. Laing, The Divided Self.
* Morey Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy, stokes public
fascination with reincarnation.
* Robert Assagioli, Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings.
* Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen.
* Haridas Chaudhuri, Integral Yoga.
* Ida Rolf begins summers-in-residence at Esalen, bringing her
work of
Structural Integration into prominence, though she had practiced
it for 25
years.
* George Leonard, while brainstorming with Esalen co-founder
Michael
Murphy, coins the term "human potential movement."
(March)
1966
* Norman O. Brown, Love's Body.
* Lama Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds.
* Bell's theory of nonlocality proposed, precursor of physics
and
consciousness movement to follow in 1970s and 80s.
* San Francisco Zen Center purchases Tassajara Hot Springs,
which becomes
the center of gravity for intensive practice of Soto Zen in
the West.
* Thich Nhat Hanh arrives in the U.S. for a three-week speaking
tour.
1967
* R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience.
* Alexander Lowen,
The Betrayal of the Body.
* Arthur Koestler,
The Ghost in the Machine.
* Will Schutz, Joy,
turns group therapy into an important national
movement. (May approx.)
* Summer of Love
* Stanislav Grof
suggests the term "transpersonal" to describe an
emerging orientation in the consciousness movement.
* Ford Foundation
grant starts the Confluent Education program at Esalen,
directed by George Brown, applying humanistic principles to
education. This
program is eventually incorporated into UC-Santa Barbara's School
of
Education.
1968
* Haridas Chaudhuri founds the California Institute of Asian
Studies
(CIAS) in San Francisco to spread Sri Aurobindo's integral philosophy.
(April 8)
* Thomas Merton travels
to South-East Asia in order to build bridges
between Christian and Asian monasticism.
* Von Bertalanffy,
General System Theory.
* Carlos Casteneda,
The Teachings of Don Juan, first in his series of
influential semi-fictional tales of a Yaqui sorcerer.
* Stewart Brand,
The Whole Earth Catalog.
* George Leonard,
Education and Ecstasy.
* Joseph Campbell,
Creative Mythology.
* Ralph Metzner leads
a series of dialogues at the Esalen San Francisco
center on ecology and psychology.
1969
* Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich create the Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology.
* Theodore Roszak,
The Making of a Counter Culture, helps define the
epochal social changes occurring in America in the sixties.
* Charles Tart, ed.,
Altered States of Consciousness.
* James Lovelock
first proposes, but does not name, the Gaia hypothesis.
* Fritz Perls, Gestalt
Therapy Verbatim.
* Elizabeth Kübler-Ross,
On Death and Dying.
* Rollo May, Love
and Will.
* Mircea Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
* F. M. Alexander,
The Resurrection of the Body.
* S. N. Goenka returns
to India to teach vipassana courses, a pivotal
event in the dissemination of Dharma practice in the world.
* Samuel Bercholz
founds Shambhala Publications.
* Launching of the
Agnews Project by Esalen, an alternative approach to
psychosis in a state mental hospital.
* Ashley Montagu,
Sex, Man, and Society.
* Lawrence LeShan,
"Physicists and Mystics: Similarities in World View."
(Nov.)
* First Council Grove,
Kansas, conference on voluntary control of
internal states.
* First Association
of Humanistic Psychology conference with a
transpersonal subsection.
1970
* First Earth Day (April 22), a significant launching point
for the
environmental movement
* Robert Bellah,
Beyond Belief.
* John Blofeld, The
Tantric Mysticism of Tibet.
* Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron Curtain, opens channels for the bridging of the Western
consciousness
movement with similar work in the Soviet Union.
* Chogyam Trungpa,
Meditation in Action.
* Jacob Needleman,
The New Religions, examines the emergence of Eastern
disciplines and cults and the growing number of spiritual seekers,
especially in California.
* Moshe Feldenkrais,
Body and Mature Behavior.
* Esalen contingent
visits Roberto Assagioli, bringing his system of
Psychosynthesis back to the United States and leading to its
popularization.
(June)
1971
* Baba Ram Dass, Be Here Now, a transitional point for consciousness
movement away from psychedelics.
* Robert Monroe,
Journeys Out of the Body, popular autobiographical
treatment of out-of-body experiences.
* William Irwin Thompson,
At the Edge of History.
* Shunryu Suzuki,
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
* Lama Angarika Govinda,
Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.
* Abraham Maslow,
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.
* Werner Erhard springs
into limelight with his est trainings, a
quick-fix distillation of human potential ideas in a weekend
workshop
format.
* Creation of the
Association for Transpersonal Psychology (Nov.)
* Ralph Metzner,
Maps of Consciousness.
* Gopi Krishna, Kundalini
-- The Evolutionary Energy in Man.
* E. Herrigel, Zen
in the Art of Archery.
* Karl Pribram, Languages
of the Brain.
* Esalen creates
the Program in Humanistic Medicine, planting some of the
first seeds for holistic medicine, an extension in many ways
of the
consciousness movement.
1972
* Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, an influential
synthesis
of anthropology, biology, and cybernetics.
* Michael Murphy,
Golf in the Kingdom. Though fictional, Murphy's book
becomes the bestselling golf book of all time, inaugurating
the "inner game"
of sports, sports psychology, and mystical offshoots.
* Ervin Laszlo, Introduction
to Systems Philosophy.
* Robert Ornstein,
The Psychology of Consciousness.
* George Leonard,
The Transformation.
* Andrew Weil, The
Natural Mind.
* John Lilly, The
Center of the Cyclone.
* First International
Transpersonal Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland
(5/31-6/5)
1973
* Arne Naess, The Shallow and Deep Ecology Movements.
* E. F. Schumacher's
Small is Beautiful advocates the adoption of
Buddhist principles in the Western economic system.
* New Dimensions
Radio first begins to broadcast as a voice for the
emerging new perspectives.
* Chogyam Trungpa,
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
* Michael Harner,
Hallucinogens and Shamanism.
* Founding of the
Institute of Noetic Sciences by astronaut Edgar
Mitchell as a research and educational institution to explore
human
consciousness.
* First national
conference of the Association for Transpersonal
Psychology.
* Conference on "Spiritual
and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness to
Submit" addressed abuses of power in human potential arena.
(Dec. 7-8, SF)
1974
* Chogyam Trungpa founds the Naropa Institute in Boulder, helping
to
bring Tibetan Buddhism to the West.
* Ian Stevenson's
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, begins his
lifework of a systematic and scientific study of reincarnation.
* Marija Gimbutas,
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, influential in
the seeding of the Goddess and neo-pagan movements.
* Anica Mander and
Anne Kent Rush, Feminism as Therapy.
* Lawrence LeShan,
The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist.
* Edgar Mitchell
and John White, eds., Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science.
* Robert Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
* Kenneth Ring, "A
Transpersonal View of Consciousness: A Mapping of
Farther Reaches of Inner Space," JTP, attempts to synthesize
a range of
perspectives on consciousness.
1975
* Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious, adds perinatal
(birth)
matrices between the personal unconscious and transpersonal
realms and
chronicles the results of thousands of psychedelic sessions.
* Terrence and Dennis
McKenna, The Invisible Landscape.
* James Hillman,
Revisioning Psychology, deconstructs the hero myth and
ego psychology.
* Fritjof Capra,
The Tao of Physics, explores parallels between Eastern
mystical systems and the worldview of modern physics.
* Charles Tart, States
of Consciousness, proposes the idea of
state-specific sciences and pioneers the scientific study of
altered states
of consciousness.
* Ken Wilber, "Psychologia
Perennis: The Spectrum of Consciousness."
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. First exposition of Wilber's
spectrum
model, in which all psychologies and traditions are situated
on one
continuum.
* Peter Marin, "The
New Narcissism" in Harper's begins self-critical
phase of consciousness movement.
* Raymond Moody,
Life After Life, brings near-death experiences and their
potential meaning into the public consciousness.
* Jeffrey Mishlove,
The Roots of Consciousness.
* Herbert Benson,
The Relaxation Response, influential in
medical/scientific circles as a paradigm for understanding meditation
and
its effects.
* George Leonard,
The Ultimate Athlete, applies human potential
philosophies and principles to sports, games, and the growing
fitness
movement.
* Founding of the
journal Anima as a forum for psychology, religion, and
women's studies.
* Founding of Yoga
Journal (May)
1976
* Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth.
* Julian Jaynes,
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind.
* A Course in Miracles.
* Chogyam Trungpa,
The Myth of Freedom.
* Arthur Young, The
Reflexive Universe.
* Founding of the
Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, by Joseph
Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzburg. Important in
bringing the
practice of Theravadan Buddhism to the West.
* Lee Sanella, Kundalini:
Psychosis or Transcendence?
* James Fadiman and
Robert Frager, Personality and Personal Growth, first
textbook on personality theory to include transpersonal and
Eastern
viewpoints.
* June Singer, Androgyny:
Toward a New Theory of Sexuality.
* Johannes Fabricius,
Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal
Art.
* J. Poortman, Vehicles
of Consciousness: The Concept of Hylic Pluralism,
examines the cross-cultural evidence for subtle bodies.
* Founding of the
journal Parabola as a forum for the study of myth and
the quest for meaning.
1977
* Ken Wilber, Spectrum of Consciousness, important synthesis
of a variety
of approaches to consciousness, situating them on one spectrum,
bridging
Eastern mysticism and Western psychology in influential ways.
* Amory Lovins, Soft
Energy Paths.
* Ida P. Rolf, Rolfing:
The Integration of Human Structures.
* Haridas Chaudhuri,
The Evolution of Integral Consciousness.
* Elmer and Alyce
Green, Beyond Biofeedback.
* Stanislav and Christina
Grof create Holotropic Breathwork during an
Esalen month-long workshop.
* Ken Wilber and
Jack Crittenden found the journal Revision: A Journal of
Knowledge and Consciousness as a forum for the consciousness
movement.
* John Welwood, "Meditation
and the Unconscious: A New Perspective," JTP,
proposes four grounds of consciousness: situational, personal,
transpersonal, basic.
* Daniel Goleman,
The Varieties of the Meditative Experience, outlines a
dozen major meditative disciplines, popularizes distinction
between
awareness and concentration paths, a distinction derived from
Theravada
Buddhism.
* James Ogilvy, Many-Dimensional
Man.
* Russell Targ and
Harold Putoff, Mind Reach.
* Robert M. Anderson,
"A Holographic Model of Transpersonal
Consciousness," JTP.
* Don Hanlon Johnson,
The Protean Body.
* Ida Rolf, Rolfing:
The Integration of Human Structures
* Founding of the
journal Consciousness and Culture.
* Release of Star
Wars, first movie to show significant influence of
human potential movement through Lucas' study of J. Campbell,
tai chi, and
other related fields. (summer)
1978
* Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, articulates the theory
of
"holons."
* Stephen Katz, Mysticism
and Philosophical Analysis, launches the
constructivist program in the study of comparative mysticism.
* Theodore Roszak,
Person/Planet.
* Hazel Henderson,
Creating Alternative Futures.
* Lex Hixon, Coming
Home, explores parallel visions in different
traditions of enlightenment or liberation.
* George Leonard,
Silent Pulse.
* Susan Griffin,
Woman and Nature.
* Eugene Gendlin,
Focusing, argues that the common denominator in
successful therapy is a capacity to tune in to more subtle levels
of bodily
felt sense.
* Michael Murphy
and Rhea White, The Psychic Side of Sports.
* Helen Wambach,
Reliving Past Lives
* Michael Washburn,
"Observations Relevant to a Unified Theory of
Meditation," JTP.
* Founding of the
journal Somatics to create a framework for the new
body-based disciplines, arts, and sciences.
1979
* Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature.
* James Lovelock,
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
* Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism, a backlash against the
human potential movement.
* Elaine Pagels,
The Gnostic Gospels.
* Frances Vaughan,
Awakening Intuition, one of the first books on
intuition that addresses both personal and transpersonal levels.
* Kenneth Pelletier,
Holistic Medicine: From Stress to Optimum Health,
reflects growing turn of consciousness movement to practical
problems of
health.
* Starhawk, The Spiral
Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the
Great Goddess, gives voice to the growing Goddess movement.
* Gary Zukav, The
Dancing Wu Li Masters, quantum physics and
consciousness exploration that won the American Book Award for
Science,
ideas influenced by Esalen conferences.
* Carol Christ and
Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising.
* Founding of the
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research group by
Robert Jahn, a source of some of the most important research
on
psychokinesis and field effects of consciousness.
1980
* Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis and Cognition,
an
important step in seeing how organisms actually co-create their
environments.
* Ilya Prigogine,
From Being to Becoming, develops the theory of
"dissipative
structures" by applying thermodynamics to biology.
* Erich Jantsch,
The Self-Organizing Universe, attempts an overall view
of the universe including the theories and ideas of Prigogine,
Lovelock,
Margulis, Varela, and Maturana.
* Roger Walsh and
Frances Vaughan, eds., Beyond Ego, a transpersonal
psychology anthology.
* Ken Wilber, with
The Atman Project presents a developmental model of
consciousness stretching from prepersonal to transpersonal realms.
* Creation of the
Spiritual Emergence Network by Stanislav and Christina
Grof
* David Bohm, in
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, develops a
holographic model of the universe to reconcile quantum mechanics
with an
"implicate order," an ontological ground of being.
* Stanislav Grof's
LSD Psychotherapy, provides the best overview of the
research programs, therapeutic strategies, and results from
psychedelic
research before the government closed formal research programs.
* Marilyn Ferguson,
The Aquarian Conspiracy.
* Kenneth Ring, Life
at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the
Near-Death Experience.
* Michael Harner,
Way of the Shaman.
* Jacob Needleman,
Lost Christianity.
* Seymour Boorstein,
ed., Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
* William Irwin Thompson,
The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.
* Hastings, Fadiman,
and Gordon, Health for the Whole Person: The
Complete Guide to Holistic Medicine.
1981
* Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life, proposes the theory
of
morphogenetic fields to explain anomalous data in a variety
of fields.
* Morris Berman,
The Reenchantment of the World.
* Charlene Spretnak,
ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality.
* B. Schultz and
D. Hughes, eds., Ecological Consciousness.
* Duane Elgin, Voluntary
Simplicity
* Ken Wilber, Up
From Eden, examines cultural evolution from the
Paleolithic to the present.
* Haridas Chaudhuri,
Integral Yoga.
* Thomas Robbins
and Dick Anthony, eds., In Gods We Trust: New Patterns
of Religious Pluralism in America. Sociology of religion angle
on new
movements.
* Lynn Andrews, Medicine
Woman.
* Founding of the
journal Anabiosis, which subsequently becomes the
Journal of Near-Death Studies.
1982
* James Hillman, "Anima Mundi: the Return of Soul to the
World"
* Fritjof Capra,
The Turning Point, examines the parallel changes
occurring in multiple fields to support his thesis that one
historical epoch
is coming to a close and another is arising.
* Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice, extends Kohlberg's work with
moral development, examining ways in which women's moral growth
differs.
* Michael Sabom,
Recollections at Death.
* Arthur Deikman,
The Observing Self.
* Huston Smith, Beyond
the Postmodern Mind.
1983
* First Leonard Energy Training at Esalen, an eight-week program
of
physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines. Early attempt at
long-term,
integral transformation program.
* N. Katz, Buddhist
and Western Psychology.
* Founding of Common
Boundary.
* Peter Russell,
The Global Brain.
1984
* Kenneth Ring, Heading Towards Omega.
* Willis Harman and
Howard Rheingold, Higher Creativity: Liberating the
Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights.
* Jean Shinoda Bolen,
Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women.
* Tsultrim Allione,
Women of Wisdom.
1985
* Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain, the most sophisticated articulation
of his synthesis of various depth psychologies.
* Stephen LaBerge,
Lucid Dreaming. First popularization of the
transformative possibilities of lucidity in dreams.
* Howard Gardner,
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
* Charlene Spretnak
and Fritjof Capra, Green Politics.
* Jeanne Achterberg,
Imagery in Healing.
* John Welwood, Challenge
of the Heart: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in
Changing Times.
* Thomas Armstrong,
The Radiant Child, explores the spiritual experiences
of children, calling into question some transpersonal assumptions.
* Nick Herbert, Quantum
Reality: Beyond the New Physics.
* Ram Dass and Paul
Gorman, How Can I Help?
* Stanley Keleman,
Emotional Anatomy.
1986
* Hameed Ali, under the pen name A.H. Almaas, publishes Essence,
the
first exposition of his Diamond Approach, synthesizing Sufism,
object
relations psychology, and Tibetan Buddhism.
* Frances Vaughan,
The Inward Arc.
* Donald Rothberg's
"Philosophical Foundations of Transpersonal
Psychology" addresses philosophical assumptions underpinning
the
consciousness movement.
* Sam Keen publishes
Faces of the Enemy, foundational work on the
psychology of enmity and propaganda.
* Ken Wilber, Jack
Engler, and Daniel Brown, eds.,Transformations of
Consciousness.
* Beginning of David
Ray Griffin's SUNY Press series on constructive
postmodernism, drawing from many works of the human potential
movement.
1987
* Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Margins of Reality: The Role
of
Consciousness in the Physical World. Important validation of
PSI and field
effects of consciousness from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research
Program.
* Ervin Laszlo, Evolution:
The Grand Synthesis.
* James Glick, Chaos.
* Georg Feuerstein,
Structures of Consciousness.
* Riane Eisler, The
Chalice and the Blade.
* Barbara Brennan,
Hands of Light, an overview of subtle energy bodies
and hands-on healing practices, linking them to psychodynamic
processes.
* Jon Klimo, Channeling:
Investigations on Receiving Information from
Paranormal Sources.
* Deane Juhan, Job's
Body: A Handbook for Bodywork.
1988
* Willis Harman, Global Mind Change.
* Michael Washburn,
The Ego and the Dynamic Ground, proposes a
neo-Jungian transpersonal model of development alternative to
Wilber's
spectrum model.
* Hameed Ali, under
the pen name A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price.
* Thomas Berry, The
Dream of the Earth.
* Michael Murphy
and Steve Donovan, The Physical and Physiological
Effects of Meditation, a comprehensive review of all published
studies of
meditation.
1989
* Deepak Chopra, Quantum Healing, marks a significant turning
point in
the popularization of the role of consciousness in health and
well-being.
* Stanislav and Christina
Grof publish Spiritual Emergency: When Personal
Transformation Becomes a Crisis, which distinguishes between
psychosis and
potentially liberating spiritual openings.
* Marija Gimbutas,
The Language of the Goddess.
* Huston Smith, Beyond
the Postmodern Mind.
* George Feuerstein,
ed., Enlightened Sexuality.
* William Irwin Thompson,
Imaginary Landscapes.
* Dalai Lama awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize.
1990
* Warwick Fox, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology
* Arthur Hastings,
With the Tongues of Men and Angels, a scholarly review
of the channeling phenomenon.
* Robert Forman,
ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness.
* Roger Walsh, The
Spirit of Shamanism.
* Gary Zukav, The
Seat of the Soul.
* Morris Berman,
Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden
History of the West.
* Mihaly Csikszentmihaly,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience,
argues that a broad range of transpersonal experiences can be
attributed to
the common experience of "flow."
* Jeanne Achterberg,
Woman As Healer.
* Gary Doore, ed.,
What Survives: Contemporary Explorations of Life After
Death.
* John Nelson's Healing
the Split, explores the relation of madness to
transcendence, drawing on major consciousness theorists.
* Founding of the
journal Anthropology of Consciousness.
1991
* Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied
Mind,
a fusion of Buddhism, Merleau-Ponty and research into cognitive
science and
the immune system.
* Joanna Macy, World
As Lover, World As Self.
* Richard Tarnas'
Passion of the Western Mind, overviews Western history
through the lens of the transformation of consciousness.
* Michael Mahoney,
Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations of
Psychotherapy.
* Matthew Fox, Creation
Spirituality.
* Michael Talbot,
The Holographic Universe.
* Jacob Needleman's
Money and the Meaning of Life, turns a transformative
lens on a largely neglected area in spiritual circles.
* Howard Rheingold,
Virtual Realities.
* Charlene Spretnak,
States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the
Postmodern Age.
* Sam Keen, Fire
in the Belly.
1992
* Michael Murphy writes The Future of the Body, the most comprehensive
compendium yet published of evidence for metanormal capacities
in human
beings.
* Theodore Roszak,
The Voice of the Earth.
* Michael Murphy
and George Leonard initiate a two-year experimental
class in what they called Integral Transformative Practice,
a program
combining meditation, imaging, affirmations, intellectual study,
physical
discipline, nutrition, and group work.
* Brian Swimme and
Thomas Berry's The Universe Story: From the Primordial
Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, tells the epic story of the
creation of
the universe combining scientific accuracy and poetic vision.
* Al Gore, Earth
in the Balance, reflects penetration of ecological
consciousness and human potential movement into upper echelons
of
government.
* Founding of "What
is Enlightenment?" magazine by Andrew Cohen
* Margaret Wheatley
writes Leadership and the New Science, popular
extrapolation of new science and consciousness movement principles
into
organizational theory, very influential in business world.
* Michael Lerner,
ed., Tikkun -- To Heal, Repair, and Restore the World:
An Anthology.
* Thomas Moore, Care
of the Soul.
1993
* James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy, pop spiritual adventure
book
based loosely on human potential principles taps unseen vein
of interest in
publishing, becoming a runaway bestseller.
* Sogyal Rinpoche,
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, quickly
surpasses the important milestone of 100,000 copies sold, reflecting
Buddhism's growing popularity.
* Roger Walsh and
Frances Vaughan, eds., Paths Beyond Ego.
* First of two conferences
at Esalen, convened by Theodore Roszak, to
consolidate and articulate the outlines of the field of Ecopsychology.
(6/12-6/18)
* J. Kramer and D.
Alstad, The Guru Papers, a harsh indictment of the
abuse of power in hierarchical guru relationships.
* Duane Elgin, Awakening
Earth: Exploring the Human Dimensions of
Evolution.
* Brendan O'Regan
and Caryle Hirshberg, Spontaneous Remission: An
Annotated Bibliography, the most comprehensive survey of the
subject.
1994
* Ralph Abraham,
Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three
Great Streams of History.
1995
* Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution.
Wilber's magnum opus, presents a four-quadrant model of evolution
(inner/outer, individual/collective) in an attempt to create
a comprehensive
integral philosophy.
* Daniel Goleman,
Emotional Intelligence, argues that our emotional
intelligence might be more central to our capacity to deal succesfully
with
the world than traditional measures of intelligence.
* Stuart Kauffman,
At Home in the Universe, a version of complexity
theory which posits "order for free" as the result
of sufficient diversity
and complexity. His basic ideas are extended into human domains
as well.
* Daniel Matt, The
Essence of Kabbalah, popularization of mystical
Judaism, part of the revitalization of Western traditions.
* Andrew Harvey,
The Return of the Mother, articulates the revival of the
divine feminine principle in major world religions.
* O. J. Simpson verdict
provides compelling evidence for field effects
from collectively focused intention. Random-event generators
in several
locations show highly improbable deviations in randomness precisely
correlated with collective attention (est. 500 million people)
focused on
verdict. (10/3)
* George Leonard
and Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given.
* Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi,
From Age-ing to Sage-ing, introduces
concept of Spiritual Eldering, revising visions of retirement
and old age.
* Don Hanlon Johnson,
ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of
Embodiment, the first of three edited volumes that articulate
the contours
of the Somatics field.
* Frances Vaughan,
Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual
Illusions.
* First State of
the World Forum (October).
1996
* William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts
in the
Evolution of Consciousness.
* Jenny Wade, Changes
of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of
Consciousness.
* Michael Lerner,
The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility
in an Age of Cynicism.
* Bruce Scotton,
Allen Chinen, and John Battista, eds., Textbook of
Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology.
* James Hillman,
The Soul's Code.
* Jean Houston, A
Mythic Life.
* Paul Ray completes
his social survey on an emerging integral culture, a
group he numbers at 44 million US adults, all of whom share
"values focused
on spiritual transformation, ecological sustainability, and
the worth of the
feminine."
* Experiments by
Marilyn Schiltz and Richard Wiseman provide strong
evidence of experimenter effects on the success or failure of
psychical
research. Presented at the 39th Parapsychological Association
Convention.
1997
* Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe, comprehensive overview
of the
scientific evidence for psi phenomena.
* Marianne Williamson,
The Healing of America, a turn from the inner
world to political and social action.
* Willis Harman and
Maya Porter, eds., The New Business of Business:
Sharing Responsibility for a Positive Global Future.
* Lama Surya Das,
Awakening the Buddha Within.
1998
* Stanislav Grof, The Cosmic Game, the capstone work for this
pioneering
psychiatrist, charts the metaphysical insights gleaned from
thousands of
non-ordinary state sessions over four decades.
* Willis Harman and
Elisabet Sahtouris, Biology Revisioned, examines the
repercussions of including consciousness in biology.
* Andrew Harvey,
Son of Man, radical revisioning of Jesus Christ through
a mystical lens, also reflects the turning Westward of the consciousness
movement.
* Erik Davis, Techgnosis,
explores the magic, mythic, and spiritual
fabric of the growing world of information technologies.
* Barbara Marx Hubbard,
Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our
Social Potential.
* Ken Wilber, The
Marriage of Sense and Soul, first book of consciousness
movement to be publicly endorsed by the President and Vice-President
of
America.
* Kenneth Ring, Lessons
From the Light: What We Can Learn from the
Near-Death Experience.
* Ian Stevenson,
Reincarnation and Biology, extends study of
reincarnation evidence to include birthmarks and physical deformities.
* David Ray Griffin,
Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom,
and the Mind-Body Problem.
1999
* Collected Works of Ken Wilber, a first for a living psychologist,
reflects the growing popularity of the integral vision.
----
This timeline was heavily influenced by three sources in particular:
Jorge
Ferrer's unpublished chronology of the East-West encounter,
Richard Tarnas'
timeline in Passion of the Western Mind, and John David Ebert's
timeline in
Twilight of the Clockwork God: Conversations on Science and
Spirituality at
the End of an Age.
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