The library
PSYCHOSIS: “Experimental” and Real
It is not difficult to see how insights, whether into oneself or the outside world, can precipitate "psychotic" episodes, and why from that point onward the individual is likely to find it difficult to articulate with the culture. There are at least two ways in which an "insight" can trigger a neurological "jam session": (1) by arousing an intense emotion and thus altering the chemical composition of the blood and consequently the functioning of the brain, and (2) by a sudden collapse of boundaries between two or more cognitive structures previously kept separated from each other, within that particular individual's total set of cognitive structures.
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Brief History of Transpersonal Psychology
The renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation, ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s, made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross- culturally valid psychology had to include observations from such areas as mystical states, cosmic consciousness, psychedelic experiences, trance phenomena, creativity, and religious, artistic, and scientific inspiration.
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Psychedelia & Visionary Art
This essay investigates the poetics of visionary art as a result of interactions between local cultures and non-ordinary states of consciousness. We seek, through brief examples, to draw a parallel between images produced in the past, images produced by Amazonian tribes, and the production of contemporary artists and to point out series of meaningful coincidences between them.
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Psychegnosis
The altruistic and compassionate instinct in humanity seeks for the wellbeing of the entire community if not all sentient beings, and so the reason for application of spiritual effort is not only driven by the individuals longing for Union but also for the spiritual enlightenment of humanity and for the reduction of suffering wherever possible. We can call this collective effort <em>'The Great Work'</em>. As its heart or centre is the individual communion with the Divine, which we have described as <em>autopsychegnosia</em>.
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H. R. Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century
A penetrating and groundbreaking analysis of the biomechanical, transhuman, mystical and perinatal imagery in the artistic oeuvre of Han Rudi Giger.
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A Cosmological Hypothesis
The following pages by Dr. A. Kafkalides have been taken from his book (in Greek) Beyond the Boundaries of the Womb which was left unfinished in 1987 due to his death. We thank John Alevizos , Nicholas Biniaris and Jody Morgan for the translation of the pages into English.
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To See a World: Art and the I of the Beholder
Like huge successive waves crashing ashore, worldviews succeed one another, and the avant-garde, at its best, were the great surfers of these waves. And now that the postmodem wave is washing on the shore of its own demise, what new waves are forthcoming? What new worldviews surge from the ocean of the soul to announce a new perception?
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Beyond Mind – Steps to a Meta-transpersonal Psychology
Though broadening the scope of consciousness may give access to the transpersonal realm and the experiences of cosmic unity, and so on, that are characteristic of it, this does not necessarily amount to the transcendence of ego-delusion.
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Introduction to Transpersonal Perinatal Psychology
The symbolism of regression to the womb can be found in shamanism, myths of great heroes, fairy tales, and initiation rites. Recurring patterns of symbolic regression and rebirth appears to be a fundamental way in which pre- and perinatal experience influences postnatal consciousness.
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