Transpersonal Inquiry

A Transpersonal Vision

Rosemarie Anderson and William Braud, in their revised outline of transpersonal inquiry methods (2011), have argued for the pressing need to reclaim science's original vision to promote a global community which would include a ‘more-than-human’ world. This transformative vision for research would aim to support individual, communal and worldwide transformation by embracing and honouring the full range of the world's wisdom traditions. This calls for an approach to human inquiry that would involve the [Page 794]reinvention of humanity as a global community, such that people worldwide should become perfectly themselves without any need to imitate each other. The human species cannot survive without diversity. It is through our diversity that we will survive.

It is precisely this vision that resonates with what Reason and Hilary Bradbury offer as a ‘participatory world view’ for action research, which they see as a democratic process that can develop practical knowledge in the search for what is really worthwhile in being human—in other words, research that will identify realistic ways to encourage the flourishing of individuals and their community. Reason and Bradbury's emphasis upon a participative approach to action research closely aligns with the transpersonal world view.

In Heron's Co-Operative Inquiry approach to action research, an extended list of ‘special inquiry skills' has been identified. This includes participative knowing, being present, openness of imagination, emotional competence, non-attachment, self-transcending intentionality, chaos and order, managing unaware projections and authentic collaboration. Such a range of skills is largely supported by an underlying transpersonal level of awareness, which again reinforces the close link between transpersonal inquiry and action inquiry.

Furthermore, the important consequence of equating action research with a participative inquiry approach is the link that is being made to the idea that the essence of transpersonal experience is that it involves the notion of ‘knowing through participation’. This idea of knowing through participation is part of what Jorge Ferrer has called the ‘participatory turn’ in the human sciences, which relates directly to ideas such as ‘participatory consciousness' (Morris Berman), the ‘participatory mind’ (Henryk Skolimowski), ‘sacred inquiry’ (Peter Reason), ‘participatory reality’, ‘participatory theology’ and a ‘sacred science’ (John Heron).

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