Emotional Truth............................................................................
Thirty years ago I was engaged in dialogue with the
leading transpersonal researchers of that time, Ken
Wilber and Dan Brown among others. The debate was
whether there were developmental phases that an
individual passes through before they could
“transcend” the ‘ego’.
For decades Freud and the self and object relations
theorists, like Winnocott, Guntrip, Kohut, Klein et al,
had postulated that the infant and child passed
through phases or developmental “crises” on the way
to developing a cohesive sense of self.
The transpersonal psychologists opined that those
who have successfully developed a “healthy” sense of
self can later evolve to a point of self-transcendence,
oneness, etc., as manifest in persons like Ramana
Maharshi. Later, Wilber latched onto Adi Da, who
talked about different stages of transcendence.
All the transpersonal theorists were of the opinion
that the developmental sequence, the crises and
resolutions were sequential, and you could not “skip”
a step. That is, you had to have developed a strong
ego, or secure sense of self (they are different in
concept), before you could transcend the ego and
successfully and permanently become enlightened.