The concept of spiritual emergency grew out of Dr. Grof's research in non-ordinary states of consciousness in a clinical context as well as Christina's personal experiences and work with other people.
Together the Grofs have been exploring the mysteries of spiritual growth, articulating the patterns in which it unfolds, and developing psychotherapeutic modalities to encourage spiritual opening. They found themselves paying particular attention to the needs of people who had spontaneous, unexpected spiritual openings in social contexts which were unsympathetic and unsupportive. Many of these people had no guidance, no encouragement, no companionship, no conceptual framework to help them find their way in integrating these experiences in a healthful manner. Christina Grof founded the Spiritual Emergency Network at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in 1980 as a referral service to assist such people in finding supportive counselors and friends who were prepared to help them integrate spiritual awakening phenomena. At its inception a few work-scholars came each month to train with the Grofs. Together they collected referral names and addresses, produced educational materials, started a library, and published a newsletter.
In 1985, the Spiritual Emergency Network was moved to the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Menlo Park, California. Shortly after the move, the name was changed to the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN) in order to emphasize support of the whole process of spiritual emergence and not only the crises of dramatic transition points. Since 1985, the Spiritual Emergence Network has branched out, and now offers educational workshops, lectures, and conferences to the public, and sponsors the publication of a newsletter, journal and educational materials, as well as continuing to expand its networking.
There are now over forty regional centers throughout the world, providing educational materials and referrals to people who seek this specialized support service. The Grofs travel worldwide, educating people about spiritual awakening phenomena and the Spiritual Emergence Network, as well as continuing their writing and conducting a training program for certification in helping people in spiritual emergency.
My own role at the Spiritual Emergence Network is in writing educational materials, including editing the Spiritual Emergence Network Journal. I also teach workshops about the field of spiritual emergence/emergency based on my first book, A Sourcebook for Helping People in Spiritual Emergency. The Sourcebook synthesizes the seminal work of the Grofs and other leaders in the field of transpersonal psychology with my own perspective. I have been involved with Eastern yogas, shamanism, and transpersonal psychology for twenty-five years. During this time, I have lived within several spiritual communities and worked as a Neo-Reichian therapist. My intimate involvement with the intricacies of spiritual development in myself and others has made me particularly aware of the dovetailing of spiritual and psychological growth.
What does this close relationship between spiritual and psychological growth mean in terms of spiritual emergence? It means that we cannot move forward spiritually unless we are also willing to deal completely with our personal psychology, especially developmental issues from early childhood that pattern the way we perceive and react to the present. In the first half of this century, Wilhelm Reich, M.D., in his study of body psychology, and Carl Jung, M.D., in focusing on wholeness and the quest for meaning, each supported this theory. Various ancient esoteric traditions throughout the world have been built on this premise. More recently, Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ken Wilber, and other theoreticians have tied this idea to the psychology of transformation and the thrust of human evolution.
This book brings these theories close to home, helping to demystify an area of experience often seen as alien or academic. Stories volunteered from my clients and members of spiritual communities, all ordinary people, expand our understanding of the stresses in our world that pull increasing numbers of individuals toward spiritual emergence. Transpersonal experiences can happen to anyone—a child, an adolescent, an adult, young or old. These experiences can happen spontaneously or with intention. They can happen anywhere: on a mountainside, in a therapy office, in church, in bed. They can catalyze feelings of deep peace or ecstasy. Perhaps some of us have these experiences quite often; but unless we have a name for them, they often pass us by unrecognized.
Ultimately, it is the responsibility of our institutions, especially our religious and medical establishments, to accommodate the needs of the public. Social service institutions are currently in a period of transformation, making changes in structure to respond to new needs. Special facilities in hospitals set aside for hospice care and natural childbirth are two examples of recent changes. It is now time for us to make organizational changes to more gracefully support spiritual emergence during the critical processes that carry us beyond the conventional norms of human development. Suggestions for this are included in this book. Realizing these institutional changes is the current goal for many of us involved with helping people in spiritual emergency.
The Transpersonal Levels
Transpersonal levels of experience go beyond personality and personal concerns. How do we know we are reaching these levels? What does it look like and feel like to have a transpersonal experience?
Ken Wilber, in The Atman Project,1 has described three levels of transpersonal experience—Subtle, Causal, and Atman (in ascending order). At these levels people have access to a fluid creativity from a higher order of inspiration than the personality. This kind of intelligence is native to geniuses such as Mozart. The transpersonal levels also offer the possibility of communing with entities of higher intelligence who personify wisdom, love, and compassion. For example, true psychic channels move to the Subtle level when they bring forth guidance from higher levels of consciousness. In the transpersonal realms, there is often a feeling of boundlessness, of being beyond the limits of time and space. Unusual things may appear as visionary inner experiences, or as actual externalized apparitions. Mental telepathy, healing abilities, psychic phenomena, are native to these realms, as is, ultimately, complete absorption in Higher Power, or God. Following is a more definitive description of each level.
The Subtle Level
The Subtle level is a level of conscious awareness that includes extrasensory perceptions indigenous to the body, as well as experiences apparently divorced from the body, such as out-of-body experiences (OOBE) and psychokinetic phenomena (objects moving without a physical catalyst). The Subtle level can be experienced in many and diverse ways that are directly related to a system of energy centers in the body, called chakras in Sanskrit, that are of a higher order than physiological organ systems. The chakras activate a higher order of perception than our five senses. Following are examples of Subtle level transpersonal experiences. The majority of Americans have experienced at least one of these.
A woman is sitting in a church/synagogue/temple where prayers are being invoked for someone who is ill. The woman has an inner feeling that she knows the person who is ill, or she senses his experience, even though she has never met him.
A new mother wakes in the middle of the night, keenly in tune with her baby, who sleeps in his room. She goes to him and finds that he has an unexpected high fever and needs her immediate care. She was using, albeit unconsciously, her "sixth sense," or ESP.
A woman is watching a sunset in the mountains. The beauty of the changing light overwhelms her. She becomes rapt in bliss, feeling a deep love and gratefulness for being alive.
A young man sits in meditation at the bedside of a sick friend and senses the presence of a higher energy, what we might call an angel, full of love and divine compassion, attending the ailing friend.
A man goes to a counselor for a past-life regression and has a deep emotional experience of himself as living five hundred years ago in another space/time orientation. Through the experience, he finds understanding and healing of several of his current relationships.
A child has a winged pixie as her playmate for several years. Together, they explore the natural
