By Helen Palmer

Keynote speech of the 2nd Psychosynthesis Gathering in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2011.

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga karangaranga maha
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

I want to thank the organisers not only for making this event of Gathering happen, but also for their care in crafting the process of coming together. It’s such an engaging experience when attention is given to the fullness of welcome, of greeting, of being acknowledged as a whole being. Our enquiry about standing in our place and expanding the edges is unfolding as a participatory process. We are heartfully, and consciously, acknowledging that we come together with different histories, ancestries, and culture. We gather together because of our shared love of psychosynthesis. Yet at the same time, we need to manage and negotiate our differences with goodwill to include the shadows we carry, such as painful cultural histories of dominance and oppression.

Aotearoa New Zealand is a bicultural nation – and increasingly, we are a multicultural society. We have not yet had the degree of significant violence of cultural clashes that occur elsewhere – and, there is violence, there are tensions in our land.

I started with a brief mihi – I am not fluent in Te Reo, so why do I choose to begin in this way? In 1987 Te Reo became the second official language of NZ, it has legal and diplomatic standing. Yet, if I am not fluent, should I speak it at all? I am a 4th generation pakeha female of Norwegian, English, French, Scottish, and Cornish ancestry. My bones will be 5th generation bones in the land. What meaning can my greeting have? This is a psychologically complex question that I think is highly relevant to the theme of this gathering.

I speak to show respect. A mihi is a graceful way of acknowledging tangata whenua as first people of this land, the first to stand here, the first people to name this place, the flora and the fauna, the mountains, the waters, and the stars in the heavens above this land. Theirs were the first stories of this land. And, there are shadow currents to my speaking even such a brief mihi – shadows of tokenism, challenges about privileging one culture’s language in a multicultural society, judgements re my motivations, the dangers of being viewed as a try hard pakeha, etc.

Respect. Such an important stance to bring to our theme, this participatory enquiry into what is happening in this land, and where we stand with psychosynthesis. Do we have a contribution to make to our multicultural society? How are we with asking edgy questions such as: Who is indigenous? How many generations before you become indigenous? How long do we use colonisation as a reference point for cultural conversations? How do we address the diverse needs of all cultures present in this land? What (and whose) psychological models and processes best facilitate exploration of these questions? What might psychosynthesis offer?

Peter and I arrived back home on the 15th of February 1986 – 25 years ago, with the dream of founding the Institute. We found a very different socio-cultural context from the one we had left. We were raised in a New Zealand where the official governmental policy for race relations was one of assimilation and integration, based on the dominant ideology that ‘we are all New Zealanders’ – meaning we are one people. This rubric did not acknowledge alternative world-views and differing cultural aspirations, preferences and practices, particularly of Maori as the indigenous minority. It also failed to acknowledge the history of colonization and post-colonial power imbalances entrenched by land dispossession, suppression of language and identity, and institutionalized policies based on Western values at the expense of traditional Polynesian values.

As we started finding our feet – in a city that was new to both of us – we became increasingly aware of the complexities unfolding in this land. The Immigration Act of 1987 meant migrants from many other cultures started coming here, making this their place too. It has been essential for us, both as educators – and as psychotherapists – that we acknowledge identity is multidimensional and multipositioned. Notions of personal identity as autonomous and individual are often seen as a pakeha, or Western perspective, and contrasted with indigenous understandings of identity as spiralling outward towards an interdependent identity within the group and the wider universe. Yet from the simple genius of Winnicott’s statement: There is no such thing as a baby – a baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship; to Assagioli’s assertion a person is always in a social context; we have our own therapeutic understandings that identity is relationally complex.

Assagioli said: ‘I am a centre of pure self consciousness and will’, but this implies a construct about identity that is associated with a particular metaphysical stance, and we need to allow more space for cultural realities that make identity multidimensional and multipositioned. To say ‘I am a centre of consciousness and will’ gives more room for multiple understandings about the nature of personal identity. We hold an assumption that identity is distinct, and not separate from our universal context. For example, the stance of: ‘We are all one’ – we prefer to express as: ‘We are all interconnected’. Both are ideas of unity, but there is a different emphasis in how this idea of unity is languaged.

We are committed to the exploration of bicultural partnership and multicultural dialogue, by being in relationship. This is how I learn about standing in this place, and its edges. Speaking a little reo also helps me stay mindful that Te Reo is the language of an oral culture – it is animistic, participatory and place-centered, whereas my mother tongue of English, from a literate culture, is based on a grammatical structure that separates the subject from the event. Subject – verb – object. It represents a relationship, but it’s hard to talk about subjective-objective fluidities and transformations and the dimensions of relatedness of I/Thou connections with such a grammatical structure.

Linguistic patterns reflect and shape ways of engaging reality – so we need to practise spacious conversations and dialogue, rather than dogmatic monologues that impose assumptions, certainties based on partial ways of viewing the world that become absolute truths, and don’t allow room for another viewpoint to at least be considered, even if it is not eventually chosen. For me, spaciousness is the difference in the distinction I made between the statements ‘We are all one’ and ‘We are all interconnected’. It feels like the latter has more breathing room, and identity is constructed with more differentiation of relatedness. We speak by shaping our breath – so can we speak in ways that shape breathing room in our speaking together? Can this help our becoming better connected? Space makes room for noticing content and process. Both are important, particularly as we engage in post-colonial conversations about power and responsibility.

A common defence in these conversations is: Why should I feel guilty for things I have not done?

Mike Richards wrote in The Age (which is a Melbourne paper) on Friday 13th June 1997 subsequent to The Stolen Generations Report:

I have difficulty crediting the arguments of those who say: ‘Why should I feel guilty for things I have not done?’ Such people have missed the point. It is not a matter of guilt or blame but of responsibility and regret. It is a matter of acknowledging the truth of our past, accepting responsibility for it, and making reparations – beginning with an apology.

Treaty settlements include a formal acknowledgement of the history and a Crown apology for Treaty breaches. It was only 16 years ago, in 1995, that the Queen gave the royal assent to legislation that contained the first Crown apology – to Waikato-Tainui. I have heard how moving this formal apology is for all those involved.

Avril Bell, a sociologist says:

Whatever identity labels we use, it is important that they capture the ways in which identity is a becoming as well as a being, and in the context of our settler society, a becoming that crucially involves the myriad practices and power dynamics of colonisation. It is the impact of these practices and politics on our ‘becoming’ Maori and Pakeha, and identities ‘in between’, that must be understood if we are to come to terms with that history and thus to reconstruct our relationships with each other.

And, other cultures are not just identities ‘in between’, they are fully ‘other’ cultural identities. So finetuning our awareness about how we express psychosynthesis in this land is essential for multicultural respectful relationship. We try to be receptive to other ways of being in this land and not just impose a psychosynthesis canon. We want a psychosynthesis that is of this place, this beautiful land.

So, our place – Aotearoa New Zealand. I recently completed an MA and my thesis title is: Psychosynthesis in the South Pacific: Ontological and epistemological considerations in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Ontology involves the philosophy of reality, epistemology addresses how we come to know that reality while methodology identifies the particular practices used to attain knowledge of it. So it’s what do we know and how do we know. I look at the assumptions of classical psychosynthesis about the nature of reality, what those assumptions are based on, and what implications there are for us in 2011 in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Let me read you a little from the beginning:

To develop comprehensive and meaningful psychological theories about human beings requires us to ask questions such as: ‘Who are we as human beings?’ and ‘What is our place in the universe?’ Humans have engaged with these profound questions for millennia, creating stories and rituals to explain how we came to be, how we are connected with the world and the heavens, and how we should best manage these connections to ensure survival and well-being. We need frameworks of meaning-making to organise knowledge coherently. We use these frameworks to organise our experience and inform our behaviour as we negotiate life and its developmental challenges.

Frameworks of meaning that shape our perceptions and how we organise our experience about the nature of reality and how we know it, are themselves shaped by ontological and epistemological assumptions about reality.

Remember the emphasis throughout your training, of differentiating content and process, and the importance of this in our clinical work. As a global cultural development, we are more conscious and adept at scrutinizing the process of knowledge creation. This scrutiny uses tools associated with postmodernism. Postmodernism is to be thought of here as part of the unfolding cultural vision that recognises that human knowledge is subjectively and locally determined, cannot be fully objectively known, and that reality is not a solid, self-contained ‘given’ but rather, is indeterminate and multidimensional. It challenges the assumptions underpinning the modernist approach to knowledge that reality can be objectively known, and that there are sovereign and enduring truths that can be apprehended through reason alone, based on the hierarchical and mechanistic principles of the Cartesian paradigm. Postmodernism in this sense can be considered as an epistemological stance applicable to any knowledge domain of contemporary culture. We are all one is a modernist assertion – we are all interconnected is more postmodern. Using a postmodernist lens gives room to pay attention to process as well as content.

Let me give a specific example. In 1994 I went to the International Transpersonal Association Conference in Ireland. The theme was: Toward Earth Community: Ecology, Native Wisdom and Spirituality. Ram Dass, Stanislav Grof, Jack Kornfield, Elizabeth Sahtouris, Brian Swimme, Rupert Sheldrake, Thomas Berry, David Abram, Roger Walsh, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Frances Vaughan, Angeles Arrien, Ralph Metzner, Peter Russell, and many more were there. Yet it wasn’t till nearly the end of the Conference when I went to an offsite venue – an edge, on the margins – with not ‘name’ presenters, and we began with a simple breath centering and sharing with a neighbour, that the process of what all the content we had been talking about was engaged through embodiment. Most presentations focused on content: we engaged both content and process. Let’s engage in an embodying process right now –

Gently bring your awareness to your breathing – without trying to change or do anything, soften your awareness to focus on your inbreath…the pause between the breath – the outbreath – and the pause – resting in the rhythm of your breathing – allowing yourself to settle more fully in your embodied experience – and then stretch your awareness to other people sitting here in this room – breathing – and outwards, to this centre – to Auckland – to the rest of Aotearoa New Zealand and then to encompass the rest of our world – all people – and be aware that everyone is breathing – as are a myriad of other life forms. The exact same process – in breath – outbreath – now, maintaining that expanded awareness, reconnect with me now.

The practice of being alive and connecting with all that there is stretches our capacities so we can open to all the possible knowing pathways besides the pathway of our mind. Such openness has many names – I like the term participatory knowing. Jorge Ferrer says:

participatory knowing refers to a multidimensional access to reality that includes not only the intellectual knowing of the mind, but also the emotional and empathic knowing of the heart, the sensual and somatic knowing of the body, the visionary and intuitive knowing of the soul, as well as any other way of knowing available to human beings. (p.121 his italics)

So ontological and epistemological considerations – what is it we know, and how do we know it? We know a lot about technology and this kind of knowledge is valued globally. It comes from the scientific framework of the natural sciences and observable phenomena. The bottom line of this framework is if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. Clearly, if you want to study the metaphysical and psychological nature of human consciousness, this approach won’t work.

It is only one way of knowing. Karen Armstrong in The Case for God says that in most premodern cultures there were two ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge, which the Greeks called logos and mythos – they were complementary. Logos as reason, had to correspond accurately to external reality to help people function effectively in the world. But it wasn’t how people assuaged their grief, or found meaning in life. For this knowledge, they used mythos – the creative imagination that creates a programme for action for engaging in the deeper and numinous dimensions of life.

However, the complementarity became lopsided. Logos achieved such spectacular results that myth has been discredited and the scientific method is thought by many to be the only reliable means of attaining truth. And this is not just a Western phenomenon, the global technoculture is rooted in this framework. But now, by paying attention to the process of scientific knowing, rather than just its content, many are loosening the hold that reason has had on our collective psyche – by thinking about thinking, reflecting on ecological implications and respecting the power of creative imagination.

One of the most common current ideas about how scientific frameworks work is based on Thomas Kuhn’s thinking in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He said that research proceeds for long periods within a certain way of thinking – a paradigm – then when there are too many anomalous pieces of information, there is a paradigm shift that overthrows the old theory. He based his thinking on the Copernican revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries that did overthrow the idea the earth was the immoveable centre of the universe to the understanding that it’s a planet that revolves round the sun. A consequence has been that many people take the stance that scientific theories are only educated opinions about reality that will be overthrown as knowledge develops.

Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams, who have written a book called The View from the Center of the Universe, think Kuhn was wrong. Yes, there are scientific revolutions – but they are no longer overthrowing previous theories, they are encompassing them. This is an important distinction. Encompassing, rather than overthrowing. The limits of each theory are defined – and then, another is developed from this foundation. As Isacc Newton said: If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. (1676)

Primack and Abrams are of the opinion that we live in exciting times, because for the first time, what is emerging is a cosmology, a picture of the universe as a whole that might actually have scientific validity, and, also, make soul sense to us. Logos – and mythos – and participatory knowing. They use the term “centering cosmologies” for the cosmological stories that provide us with a meaningful sense of who we are, our relationship with our world, and the universe. For instance, the flat earth cosmology of Egypt gave Egyptians the experience of belonging to the structure and drama of creation, it made sense of the physical world, shaped by the rhythms of the year, the Nile and the desert. Its rituals and ceremony provided an integration of life, spirit and cosmos that helped stabilise a culture that lasted 3000 years.

Centering cosmologies give people a soulful sense, a heartfelt understanding of their place in the great scheme of things, and, they haven’t had scientific validity. The cosmology story of the Newtonian clockwork universe that is our most prevalent global cosmology has scientific validity but it is definitely not a centering cosmology because the answers it gives to the questions Who are we as human beings? What is our place in the universe? Do we matter? don’t usually help us feel meaningfully connected to the universe.

Pay attention to the choice of words of this viewpoint:

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that orbits a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy comprised of 400 billion stars in a universe of some hundred billion galaxies, which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number of separate, closed-off universes. Many, perhaps most, of those stars probably have planets. In this perspective, how can anyone seriously believe that we are central – physically, much less to the purpose of the universe?

Primack and Abrams identify this as an existential view, contrasting it with the meaningful view of a centering cosmology that provides us with a sense of belonging. We know from our work the effect of experiencing a sense of belonging and its visceral informing of our being – and we also know what happens when that sense is missing – the profound unease of not belonging, of not having an anchored sense of who I am.

I remember the terror that arose in me as an adolescent when I first read Yeats poem The Second Coming – let me quote the first 4 lines.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The centre cannot hold. I had a glimpse of chaos, of a meaningless world. Later, when I came to psychosynthesis, I understood I had had a glimpse of existential despair.

Indigenous cosmologies are centering cosmologies in that they emphasise our being connected with all that there is, they draw lines of relatedness with all forms of life. For instance, Maori cosmology – depicted on the marae at Te Papa – shows the whakapapa, the interconnectedness of the universe with all that there is, from the beginning, Te Kore, the first energy state, all the way to present reality, and every one of us here in this room.

Primack and Abrams say: ‘There is nothing in modern cosmology that requires the existential view, nor anything that requires the meaningful view.’ But they point to the indisputable reality that there are distinct feelings associated with these different viewpoints. Think of these questions: Where do we really come from? What are we made of? Are we alone? And most importantly, do we matter? We know what it feels like, to trust we matter – and, what it feels like to think we don’t matter. We know this in ourselves and in our clients. A crucial point for me is that a meaningful cosmology that is also scientifically accurate can encompass the existential view – but the existential view cannot encompass the meaningful view. It often rejects it, but this is not what encompassing involves, rejection is usually a defensive strategy of cynicism.

We have a choice about which cosmological view we embrace – and our choosing affects our attitude. We know this from psychosynthesis, we understand that we have the responsibility of choosing – OVER AND OVER AGAIN – what helps us be in relationship, what helps us live our values, what helps us participate in the great Mystery of the unfolding universe.

The great Mystery

As we have developed psychosynthesis over the last 24 years, we have become attentive to unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality – which is the great Mystery – underpinning psychosynthesis. We used to teach, as we were taught, that psychosynthesis espouses the perennial philosophy. This is the doctrine that holds there is a single eternal Truth that underlies the apparent plurality of spiritual traditions. Over time, the philosophical problems with this doctrine and its ontological and epistemological assumptions have become more evident. We found Jorge Ferrer’s book Revisioning Transpersonal Theory – that Joan and Roger Evans talked about at the last Conference – particularly helpful. He shows how objectivist assumptions of the empirical method made the legitimization of transpersonal psychology claims about consciousness dependent for validation upon the perennial philosophy being deemed true. This philosophy often privileges nondual, monistic spiritual traditions that have historically devalued body, women, nature and indigenous peoples. We can find evidence of this framework in psychosynthesis, most obviously in Assagioli’s disidentification practice: I am not my body, I am not my feelings, I am not my mind. I am a centre of pure self consciousness and will.

Yet Assagioli declares: It [psychosynthesis} is a scientific conception, and as such it is neutral towards the various religious forms and the various philosophical doctrines, excepting only those which are materialistic and therefore deny the existence of spiritual realities. Psychosynthesis does not aim nor attempt to give a metaphysical nor a theological explanation of the great Mystery – it leads to the door, but stops there.’

He states: ‘it should be noted at the outset that no “metaphysical” claim is being made either for or against the proposition that the “will” exists’; stating his approach is ‘empirical and phenomenological’. However, he did make statements espousing perennialist assumptions about spiritual knowledge and a supreme ultimate reality. ‘The most extreme expression of the identity in nature between the human spirit in its purest form and the Supreme Spirit is contained in the central teaching of the Vedantic philosophy: Tat twam asi (Thou art that) and Aham evam param Brahman (In truth I am the Supreme Brahman)’. He claims it is possible to have ‘the direct experience of spiritual realities’ (1980, p.194) and that the purpose of psychosynthesis ‘is to help to attain the direct experience [of Self]’ (p.195). With statements such as these, what is coming through his metaphysical door?

I believe the genius of Assagioli was in positioning psychosynthesis as leading to the door of the great Mystery, and not engaging in religious, metaphysical, or philosophical debate. It is a powerful metaphor; it demarcates a psychic geography that reminds us we are not spiritual teachers. This helps us stay humble, and be alert to our own process when we get into a kind of doctrinal certainty about the unfolding Mystery, instead of tolerating uncertainty and holding space for the unknown.

He affirms:

We would therefore emphasize our neutrality towards those “ultimate” problems, for our concern is to focus on living psychological experience and psychological facts found through the exploration of the unconscious. This is an attitude of realism, and in its best and proper sense a pragmatic position.

But even though Assagioli claimed metaphysical neutrality, created a ‘wall of silence’ round his personal spiritual beliefs, and tried to position psychosynthesis as a pragmatic, practical approach to human development that was scientifically acceptable, his personal beliefs about ‘ultimate reality’ and the nature of consciousness leak into psychosynthesis through his assertions about the nature of the Self and the I, based on ‘the Ageless Wisdom’ of the theosophical-mystical tradition.

I propose that allegiance to the perennial philosophy, whether explicit or implicit, is neither mandatory nor necessary for psychosynthesis to be effective. If we value pragmatic neutrality, we can focus upon a more postmodern participatory and transformative vision by which experiences of what is beyond the door may or may not fit neatly into perennialist assumptions. You may believe in the truth of the perennial philosophy, it may help you articulate and understand the experiences you deem numinous and divine. But belief in an indeterminate and emerging universe may work better for someone else. The test for us as psychosynthesis practitioners is whether we observe experiences in ourselves and in our clients that are transformative of egoic identifications and self-centredness and promote moral and ethical behaviour.

Ferrer suggests a distinction needs to be made between ‘knowledge that is matched with a pregiven reality’ and ‘knowing that is grounded in, aligned to, or coherent with the Mystery.’ I think this is what we aspire to communicate in our work, and in our training – that you become attuned to the linguistic nuances that help you sense someone is becoming dogmatic about their version of Truth, and what really matters is how they are embodying their values or not. (How you then address this is a matter for supervision.)

So, we do not have to overthrow the perennial philosophy – but, the ways it is held as the absolute truth about ultimate reality, as a modernist assertion, can be encompassed. It’s one view of the great Mystery.

We do identify Self ontologically, as the luminous source both ‘of’ and ‘not of’ our four dimensional experience, acknowledging our immanence and our transcendence. We use the word transcendence not to locate spirit away from the physical, perpetuating the dualistic opposition of matter and spirit, but to mean the multidimensionality of the universe of which our four-dimensional experience is a part – it’s all interconnected, which is why we draw the egg the way we do. It’s why we have dropped the definite article from Self – to talk of The Self reifies luminosity into a thing, and we want to create spaciousness in our naming. It’s why we don’t use the term The ‘I’. Instead, using the term Personal Centre of Identity is an attempt to focus on a function of human being, of will, rather than using the term ‘The ‘I’, which is a metaphysical construct that becomes philosophically problematic to justify by knowledge claims privileging individual subjective experience.

We prefer to stress that the ongoing experience of identifying and disidentifying is the constant engagement of consciousness/will expressing in four dimensional time/space, which can be tracked through the Body Feelings Mind system. We try to be process oriented. One of the most important ideas we have had about will is that we distinguish will from the archetypal force of power, which frees us up from the Love-Will duality. It is conceptually much clearer to understand will as the psychological function that regulates and directs the energies of love and power, rather than being one of the energies that eventually directs the other. We use the word will for the function of being that is distinct and not separate from consciousness. Distinct and not separate.

Earlier, when discussing identity, I said how we hold this as distinct, and not separate from our universal context. I think this is a fundamental psychosynthesis tenet that has not changed – it’s how we language this idea that is changing. Firman and Gila say distinct but not separate. We say distinct and not separate. Or, most recently, I say distinct and connected. Semantics are important as we strive for spacious linguistic structures, to serve spacious conversations.

Jorge Ferrer takes a popular perennialist metaphor – that spiritual traditions are like rivers leading to the same ocean – and suggests the ocean is not that of a pre-given spiritual ultimate reality, but rather, the ocean of liberation from self-centredness. He proposes the Ocean of Emancipation having many shores, the many shores referring to the multiplicity of transconceptual disclosures of reality as well as the enactments of different spiritual ultimates through participatory knowing.

This elegant metaphor has profound resonance for us living here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and our geographic reality of the Pacific Ocean and its many peoples. It offers a potent contextual frame for a participatory spiritual pluralism that is respectful of difference and diversity. It means we don’t champion a particular religion or metaphysic, we can respect any code that provides an ethos for living that does not cause harm. We can challenge any behaviour that does cause harm, whether it is in the name of religion, or cultural practice, or power imbalances. Participatory knowing also chimes with Assagioli’s vision of a pragmatic, metaphysically neutral psychology that acknowledges all aspects of human experience – the physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual. Such a psychology also accords with indigenous models of health and well-being. It is not a colonising psychology, it can be a taonga.

Psychosynthesis – it’s a mouthful, but I cherish this approach to human evolution that can speak to the dynamic nature of multiplicity and unity in ways that can be meaningful to people from different cultures. It has been an honour to be the first speaker.

Helen Palmer is the Director of the Institute of Psychosynthesis of New Zealand. She is a Registered Psychotherapist, and holds:
M.A. (Dist.) LL.B. Dip. Tchg.
Diploma in Psychosynthesis Counselling (London)
Diploma in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy (London)
MNZAP (Advanced Clinical Practice) Fellow of PAnzA
References

1. The first 3 Crown apologies made in person were made by women. Jenny Shipley in 1998, by Margaret Wilson in 2003, and Helen Clark in 2004.

2. Bell A. The Politics of Maori-Pakeha Hybrid Identities in Cultural Studies in Aotearoa New Zealand ed. Bell C. & Matthewman S. 2004 OUP p.136.

3. Krauss S. E. Research Paradigms and Meaning Making: A Primer The Qualitative Report Volume 10 Number 4 December 2005 758-770 pp.758-759.

4. Palmer H.J. Psychosynthesis in the South Pacific: Ontological and Epistemological considerations in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand 2010 Masters thesis.

5. Ferrer J. N. Revisioning Transpersonal Theory State University of New York Press 2002.

6. Armstrong K. The Case for God The Bodley Head London 2009.

7. Kuhn T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago 1962.

8. Primack J. & Abrams N. The View from the Center of the Universe Riverhead Books 2006.

9. Carl Sagan quoted in Primack and Abrams p.274.

10. Ibid. p.274.

11. Ferrer J. N. 2002.

12. Assagioli R. Psychosynthesis A Manual of Principles and Techniques Turnstone Books Wellingborough, Northamptonshire 1980 p.30.

13. Assagioli R. Transpersonal Development Smiling Way Inner Way Productions Findhorn 2007 pp.113-114.

14. Assagioli R. 1980 p. 193.

15. Ferrer J.N. 2002, p. 169.