Consciousness Timeline I: 1875-1969
compiled
by Stephen Dinan
The following timeline is by necessity somewhat arbitrary
and quite partial. The point is not to chart the minutiae of events of what I
am loosely calling the "consciousness movement," but to give a sense
for a few prominent milestones. The last hundred years have witnessed the gradual
creation of a new world philosophy, one that sees human beings engaged in an evolutionary
process to access a deeper, richer, more playful consciousness and to manifest
the fruits of that work in the world. This new amalgam of ideas and practices
has drawn from dozens of traditions, thousands of books and experiments, and millions
of lives. Drawing a firm boundary around this "movement" is thus misleading.
It is better likened to the flow of a tumultuous river, its millions of eddies
and currents creating, when seen from afar, a cohesive sense of direction. This
timeline is best viewed as a snapshot of that river from high above.
Part I:1875-1969
(below) | Part II: 1970-present
1875 Founding of the Theosophical Society in
New York, spurs interest in spiritualism. The Society propounded the notion of
spiritual evolution in an attempt to bridge the religious world view with that
arising in science. (Nov. 17)
1890 William James, Principles of Psychology.
1893
First Parliament of World Religions, Vivekananda electrifies the gathering and
brings Vedanta to the West.
1894 Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom,
first of his four "foundational" books.
1900 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation
of Dreams. Birth of the psychoanalytic movement.
1901 William James, Varieties
of Religious Experience, lays the groundwork for the cross-cultural study of mystical
experience.
1903 Frederic Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily
Death.
1905 Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness.
1906 James Mark
Baldwin, Thought and Things.
1907
" D. T. Suzuki's Outline of Mahayana
Buddhism introduces Zen to the West.
" Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution.
1909 Alexandra David-Neel's The Buddhism of the Buddha and Buddhist Modernism,
presents a non-academic account of Buddhist practice.
1911 Evelyn Underhill,
Mysticism.
1912
" Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, break
from Freud.
" P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum.
1913 Rudolf Steiner
founds anthroposophy.
1914
" James H. Woods, The Yoga System of Patanjali,
considered the first full-length scholarly work in America on Indian philosophy.
" Caroline Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology, offers the first well-developed
discussion of the compatibility between Western psychology and Buddhism.
1917
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy.
1918 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the
West, especially influential on J. Campbell.
1920 Arrival of Paramahansa Yogananda
in Boston, an important figure in the spread of Hinduism in the West.
1921
Carl Jung, Psychological Types.
1923
" Sigmund Freud, The Ego and
the Id.
" Martin Buber, I and Thou.
1924
" Otto Rank, The
Trauma of Birth.
" Jean Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child,
demonstrates how structures of thought evolve.
1925
" C. D. Broad,
The Mind and Its Place in Nature.
" Alfred North Whitehead, Science and
the Modern World
1926
" Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West, helps
create the discipline of East-West comparative mysticism.
" Jan Smuts,
Holism and Evolution, argues that each subsequent level of evolution is more encompassing
than the last, that what was once a whole becomes part of a greater whole. Influential
in systems theory.
1927Wilhelm Reich, Die Funktion des Orgasmus.
1928 Richard
Wilhelm invites Jung to write a commentary on the Taoist text The Secret of the
Golden Flower in which Jung aims "to build a bridge of psychological understanding
between East and West."
1929
" Alfred North Whitehead, in Process
and Reality, introduces the notion of prehension, that interiority is fundamental
all the way down to the most basic levels of the universe.
" Krishnamurti,
who had been chosen as the next World Teacher by the Theosophical Society, rejects
the organization and states that "truth is a pathless land," setting
the stage for the nondoctrinal teachings of his next sixty years.
1933 Beginning
of the Eranos seminars, started with the purpose of finding common ground between
Eastern and Western religious thought. Participants included C.G. Jung, Heinrich
Zimmer, D. T. Suzuki, Martin Buber, and Mircea Eliade.
1934
" Carl
Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
" Arnold Toynbee, in
A Study of History, explicates his theory of the rise and breakdown of civilizations.
1936 Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being.
1937 Anna Freud, The Ego
and Mechanisms of Defense.
1938 Jung travels to India and upon his return warns
against the Western adoption of the practice of yoga, instead calling for the
development of a Western form of yoga.
1939 First East-West Philosophers' Conference,
organized by Charles A. Moore in Honolulu, attempts to forge a global philosophy.
1943
Albert Hoffman accidentally ingests LSD-25 (first synthesized in 1938), a mistake
leading eventually to the widespread use of psychedelics. (4/16)
1944 Aldous
Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy.
1945
" Merleau-Ponty, inPhénoménologie
de la Perception, creates a methodology for the study of subjective experience.
" Rene Guénon, Man and His Becoming According to Vedanta.
1946
"
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi.
" Anna Freud, The Ego
and the Mechanisms of Defense.
1947 Fritz Perls, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression.
1948
"
Fritjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (French edition). Proposes
the esoteric identity of all religions.
" Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey
Mountain, important work in the revitalization of Christian mysticism.
1949
"
Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, articulates a theory of the evolution of
human culture through five stages: archaic, magical, mythic, rational, and aperspectival.
" Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, highly influential
in comparative mythology.
" Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sex.
"
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, foundational for many of the leading lights of
the consciousness movement.
" Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal
Return.
" Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness.
"
Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation
and Learning.
1950 L. L. Whyte, The Next Development in Man.
1951 Carl
Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy.
1952
" Radhakrishnan, History of
Philosophy, Eastern and Western.
" Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena
of Mysticism, highly influential on Michael Murphy's later work in Future of the
Body.
" Carl Jung, Answer to Job and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting
Principle.
1954
" Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China
argues for the scientific side of Taoism.
" Aldous Huxley, with The Doors
of Perception, piques the interest of many as to the possible benefits of psychedelic
experience.
" Mircea Eliade, The Myth of Eternal Return.
1955
"
Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, published posthumously, a vision
of the evolution of the universe from Creation to an Omega Point.
" Herbert
Marcuse, Eros and Civilization.
1956
" Gregory Bateson et al. formulate
the double bind theory of the genesis of schizophrenia.
" Lewis Mumford,
The Transformations of Man.
" Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.
1957
"
Karl Jaspers includes chapters on the Buddha and Nagarjuna in his The Great Philosophers.
" Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.
" Leon Festinger, The Theory of
Cognitive Dissonance.
" C. Thigpen and H. Cleckley, The Three Faces of
Eve.
" P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way, published posthumously and assembled
by students.
1958
" Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion.
" Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology.
" Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion.
1959
" Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death.
" Joseph Campbell,
Primitive Mythology, first volume of Masks of God series.
" Edward Conze,
Buddhism: Its Essence and Development
" John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching
of Huang Po.
" Arrival of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to San Francisco, start
of the enormously influential Transcendental Meditation movement. Peak hits about
1967 or 1968.
" Arrival of Shunryu Suzuki to San Francisco as a priest
for the Japanese Zen Buddhist congregation. He eventually creates the San Francisco
Zen Center which plays an influential role in introducing Soto Zen practice to
America. (5/23)
" Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupying force leads
to bloodshed and the flight of the Dalai Lama and much of the core of the Tibetan
religious hierarchy, setting the stage for the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhist
teachers and practices.
1960
" Erich Fromm & D. T. Suzuki's Zen
Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, dialogues between modern psychoanalysis and Eastern
religion.
1961
" Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West establishes
parallels between Western psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality.
" Thomas
Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness.
" Michel Foucault, Histoire de la
Folie.
" Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person.
" J. D. Salinger,
Franny and Zooey, fictional account of the turn towards mysticism.
"
George Leonard, "The Explosive Generation" article in Look, first major
piece to foretell the tumultuous times to come.
" Founding of The Journal
of Humanistic Psychology. (Spring)
" Founding of The Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion.
1962
" Founding of the Esalen Institute
as a forum for exploring new philosophies and visions of human development.
"
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being.
" Marshall McLuhan, The
Gutenberg Galaxy, describes the effect of electronic technologies on the age of
the book.
" Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions articulates
his theory of paradigm shifts governing the process of scientific discovery.
"
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, his autobiography.
" Rachel
Carson, Silent Spring, an important catalyst for the environmental movement.
"
Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology.
" Psychedelic experiments with Timothy
Leary and Richard Alpert at Harvard.
1963
" Civil rights march on
Washington, M. L. King's "I Have a Dream" speech (8/29).
"
Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique.
" E. N. Lorenz publishes the first
paper on chaos theory.
" Gerald Heard, The Five Ages of Man.
"
Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
" Charlotte Selver and Charles
Brooks begin teaching Sensory Awareness at Esalen.
1964
" Timothy
Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, The Psychedelic Experience, an adaptation
of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a guide for the Western use of psychedelics.
" Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, Peak Experiences.
" Robert
Bellah, "Religious Evolution."
" Mircea Eliade, Shamanism.
" Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology.
" Idries Shah, The
Sufis.
" K. Dabrowski, Positive Disintegration.
" Arthur Koestler,
The Act of Creation.
" Arrival of Fritz Perls at Esalen, which provides
a platform for the dissemination of Gestalt (May)
1965
" Harvey Cox,
Religion in the Secular City.
" R. D. Laing, The Divided Self.
"
Morey Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy, stokes public fascination with
reincarnation.
" Robert Assagioli, Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic
Writings.
" Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen.
" Haridas
Chaudhuri, Integral Yoga.
" Ida Rolf begins summers-in-residence at Esalen,
bringing her work of Structural Integration into prominence, though she had practiced
it for 25 years.
" George Leonard, while brainstorming with Esalen co-founder
Michael Murphy, coins the term "human potential movement." (March)
1966
"
Norman O. Brown, Love's Body.
" Lama Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds.
" Bell's theory of nonlocality proposed, precursor of physics and consciousness
movement to follow in 1970s and 80s.
" San Francisco Zen Center purchases
Tassajara Hot Springs, which becomes the center of gravity for intensive practice
of Soto Zen in the West.
" Thich Nhat Hanh arrives in the U.S. for a
three-week speaking tour.
1967
" R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience.
" Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body.
" Arthur Koestler,
The Ghost in the Machine.
" Will Schutz, Joy, turns group therapy into
an important national movement. (May approx.)
" Summer of Love
"
Stanislav Grof suggests the term "transpersonal" to describe an emerging
orientation in the consciousness movement.
" Ford Foundation grant starts
the Confluent Education program at Esalen, directed by George Brown, applying
humanistic principles to education. This program is eventually incorporated into
UC-Santa Barbara's School of Education.
1968
" Haridas Chaudhuri founds
the California Institute of Asian Studies (CIAS) in San Francisco to spread Sri
Aurobindo's integral philosophy. (April 8)
" Thomas Merton travels to
South-East Asia in order to build bridges between Christian and Asian monasticism.
" Von Bertalanffy, General System Theory.
" Carlos Casteneda,
The Teachings of Don Juan, first in his series of influential semi-fictional tales
of a Yaqui sorcerer.
" Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalog.
"
George Leonard, Education and Ecstasy.
" Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology.
" Ralph Metzner leads a series of dialogues at the Esalen San Francisco
center on ecology and psychology.
1969
" Abraham Maslow and Anthony
Sutich create the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.
" Theodore Roszak,
The Making of a Counter Culture, helps define the epochal social changes occurring
in America in the sixties.
" Charles Tart, ed., Altered States of Consciousness.
" James Lovelock first proposes, but does not name, the Gaia hypothesis.
" Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
" Elizabeth Kübler-Ross,
On Death and Dying.
" Rollo May, Love and Will.
" Mircea Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
" F. M. Alexander, The Resurrection of
the Body.
" S. N. Goenka returns to India to teach vipassana courses,
a pivotal event in the dissemination of Dharma practice in the world.
"
Samuel Bercholz founds Shambhala Publications.
" Launching of the Agnews
Project by Esalen, an alternative approach to psychosis in a state mental hospital.
" Ashley Montagu, Sex, Man, and Society.
" Lawrence LeShan,
"Physicists and Mystics: Similarities in World View." (Nov.)
"
First Council Grove, Kansas, conference on voluntary control of internal states.
" First Association of Humanistic Psychology conference with a transpersonal
subsection.
Consciousness
Timeline II: 1970-present
compiled by Stephen Dinan
The following
timeline is by necessity somewhat arbitrary and quite partial. The point is not
to chart the minutiae of events of what I am loosely calling the "consciousness
movement," but to give a sense for a few prominent milestones. The last hundred
years have witnessed the gradual creation of a new world philosophy, one that
sees human beings engaged in an evolutionary process to access a deeper, richer,
more playful consciousness and to manifest the fruits of that work in the world.
This new amalgam of ideas and practices has drawn from dozens of traditions, thousands
of books and experiments, and millions of lives. Drawing a firm boundary around
this "movement" is thus misleading. It is better likened to the flow
of a tumultuous river, its millions of eddies and currents creating, when seen
from afar, a cohesive sense of direction. This timeline is best viewed as a snapshot
of that river from high above.
1875-1969 | 1970-present (below)
1970
"
First Earth Day (April 22), a significant launching point for the environmental
movement
" Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief.
" John Blofeld, The
Tantric Mysticism of Tibet.
" Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic
Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, opens channels for the bridging of the Western
consciousness movement with similar work in the Soviet Union.
" Chogyam
Trungpa, Meditation in Action.
" Jacob Needleman, The New Religions,
examines the emergence of Eastern disciplines and cults and the growing number
of spiritual seekers, especially in California.
" Moshe Feldenkrais,
Body and Mature Behavior.
" Esalen contingent visits Roberto Assagioli,
bringing his system of Psychosynthesis back to the United States and leading to
its popularization. (June)
1971
" Baba Ram Dass, Be Here Now, a transitional
point for consciousness movement away from psychedelics.
" Robert Monroe,
Journeys Out of the Body, popular autobiographical treatment of out-of-body experiences.
" William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History.
" Shunryu
Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
" Lama Angarika Govinda, Foundations
of Tibetan Mysticism.
" Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human
Nature.
" Werner Erhard springs into limelight with his est trainings,
a quick-fix distillation of human potential ideas in a weekend workshop format.
" Creation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (Nov.)
"
Ralph Metzner, Maps of Consciousness.
" Gopi Krishna, Kundalini -- The
Evolutionary Energy in Man.
" E. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery.
" Karl Pribram, Languages of the Brain.
" Esalen creates the
Program in Humanistic Medicine, planting some of the first seeds for holistic
medicine, an extension in many ways of the consciousness movement.
1972
"
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, an influential synthesis of anthropology,
biology, and cybernetics.
" Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom. Though
fictional, Murphy's book becomes the bestselling golf book of all time, inaugurating
the "inner game" of sports, sports psychology, and mystical offshoots.
" Ervin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy.
" Robert
Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness.
" George Leonard, The Transformation.
" Andrew Weil, The Natural Mind.
" John Lilly, The Center of
the Cyclone.
" First International Transpersonal Conference in Reykjavik,
Iceland (5/31-6/5)
1973
" Arne Naess, The Shallow and Deep Ecology
Movements.
" E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful advocates the adoption
of Buddhist principles in the Western economic system.
" New Dimensions
Radio first begins to broadcast as a voice for the emerging new perspectives.
" Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
"
Michael Harner, Hallucinogens and Shamanism.
" Founding of the Institute
of Noetic Sciences by astronaut Edgar Mitchell as a research and educational institution
to explore human consciousness.
" First national conference of the Association
for Transpersonal Psychology.
" Conference on "Spiritual and Therapeutic
Tyranny: The Willingness to Submit" addressed abuses of power in human potential
arena. (Dec. 7-8, SF)
1974
" Chogyam Trungpa founds the Naropa Institute
in Boulder, helping to bring Tibetan Buddhism to the West.
" Ian Stevenson's
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, begins his lifework of a systematic
and scientific study of reincarnation.
" Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses
and Gods of Old Europe, influential in the seeding of the Goddess and neo-pagan
movements.
" Anica Mander and Anne Kent Rush, Feminism as Therapy.
"
Lawrence LeShan, The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist.
" Edgar Mitchell
and John White, eds., Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science.
"
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
" Kenneth Ring,
"A Transpersonal View of Consciousness: A Mapping of Farther Reaches of Inner
Space," JTP, attempts to synthesize a range of perspectives on consciousness.
1975
" Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious, adds perinatal
(birth) matrices between the personal unconscious and transpersonal realms and
chronicles the results of thousands of psychedelic sessions.
" Terrence
and Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape.
" James Hillman, Revisioning
Psychology, deconstructs the hero myth and ego psychology.
" Fritjof
Capra, The Tao of Physics, explores parallels between Eastern mystical systems
and the worldview of modern physics.
" Charles Tart, States of Consciousness,
proposes the idea of state-specific sciences and pioneers the scientific study
of altered states of consciousness.
" Ken Wilber, "Psychologia Perennis:
The Spectrum of Consciousness." Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. First
exposition of Wilber's spectrum model, in which all psychologies and traditions
are situated on one continuum.
" Peter Marin, "The New Narcissism"
in Harper's begins self-critical phase of consciousness movement.
" Raymond
Moody, Life After Life, brings near-death experiences and their potential meaning
into the public consciousness.
" Jeffrey Mishlove, The Roots of Consciousness.
" Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response, influential in medical/scientific
circles as a paradigm for understanding meditation and its effects.
"
George Leonard, The Ultimate Athlete, applies human potential philosophies and
principles to sports, games, and the growing fitness movement.
" Founding
of the journal Anima as a forum for psychology, religion, and women's studies.
" Founding of Yoga Journal (May)
1976
" Huston Smith, Forgotten
Truth.
" Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind.
" A Course in Miracles.
" Chogyam Trungpa,
The Myth of Freedom.
" Arthur Young, The Reflexive Universe.
"
Founding of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, by Joseph Goldstein,
Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzburg. Important in bringing the practice of Theravadan
Buddhism to the West.
" Lee Sanella, Kundalini: Psychosis or Transcendence?
" James Fadiman and Robert Frager, Personality and Personal Growth, first
textbook on personality theory to include transpersonal and Eastern viewpoints.
" June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality.
"
Johannes Fabricius, Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art.
"
J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness: The Concept of Hylic Pluralism, examines
the cross-cultural evidence for subtle bodies.
" Founding of the journal
Parabola as a forum for the study of myth and the quest for meaning.
1977
"
Ken Wilber, Spectrum of Consciousness, important synthesis of a variety of approaches
to consciousness, situating them on one spectrum, bridging Eastern mysticism and
Western psychology in influential ways.
" Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths.
" Ida P. Rolf, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures.
"
Haridas Chaudhuri, The Evolution of Integral Consciousness.
" Elmer and
Alyce Green, Beyond Biofeedback.
" Stanislav and Christina Grof create
Holotropic Breathwork during an Esalen month-long workshop.
" Ken Wilber
and Jack Crittenden found the journal Revision: A Journal of Knowledge and Consciousness
as a forum for the consciousness movement.
" John Welwood, "Meditation
and the Unconscious: A New Perspective," JTP, proposes four grounds of consciousness:
situational, personal, transpersonal, basic.
" Daniel Goleman, The Varieties
of the Meditative Experience, outlines a dozen major meditative disciplines, popularizes
distinction between awareness and concentration paths, a distinction derived from
Theravada Buddhism.
" James Ogilvy, Many-Dimensional Man.
"
Russell Targ and Harold Putoff, Mind Reach.
" Robert M. Anderson, "A
Holographic Model of Transpersonal Consciousness," JTP.
" Don Hanlon
Johnson, The Protean Body.
" Ida Rolf, Rolfing: The Integration of Human
Structures
" Founding of the journal Consciousness and Culture.
"
Release of Star Wars, first movie to show significant influence of human potential
movement through Lucas' study of J. Campbell, tai chi, and other related fields.
(summer)
1978
" Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, articulates
the theory of "holons."
" Stephen Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical
Analysis, launches the constructivist program in the study of comparative mysticism.
" Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet.
" Hazel Henderson, Creating
Alternative Futures.
" Lex Hixon, Coming Home, explores parallel visions
in different traditions of enlightenment or liberation.
" George Leonard,
Silent Pulse.
" Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature.
" Eugene Gendlin,
Focusing, argues that the common denominator in successful therapy is a capacity
to tune in to more subtle levels of bodily felt sense.
" Michael Murphy
and Rhea White, The Psychic Side of Sports.
" Helen Wambach, Reliving
Past Lives
" Michael Washburn, "Observations Relevant to a Unified
Theory of Meditation," JTP.
" Founding of the journal Somatics to
create a framework for the new body-based disciplines, arts, and sciences.
1979
"
Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature.
" James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look
at Life on Earth.
" Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, a backlash
against the human potential movement.
" Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.
" Frances Vaughan, Awakening Intuition, one of the first books on intuition
that addresses both personal and transpersonal levels.
" Kenneth Pelletier,
Holistic Medicine: From Stress to Optimum Health, reflects growing turn of consciousness
movement to practical problems of health.
" Starhawk, The Spiral Dance:
A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, gives voice to the growing
Goddess movement.
" Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, quantum physics
and consciousness exploration that won the American Book Award for Science, ideas
influenced by Esalen conferences.
" Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow,
eds., Womanspirit Rising.
" Founding of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research group by Robert Jahn, a source of some of the most important research
on psychokinesis and field effects of consciousness.
1980
" Francisco
Varela and Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis and Cognition, an important step in
seeing how organisms actually co-create their environments.
" Ilya Prigogine,
From Being to Becoming, develops the theory of "dissipative structures"
by applying thermodynamics to biology.
" Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing
Universe, attempts an overall view of the universe including the theories and
ideas of Prigogine, Lovelock, Margulis, Varela, and Maturana.
" Roger
Walsh and Frances Vaughan, eds., Beyond Ego, a transpersonal psychology anthology.
" Ken Wilber, with The Atman Project presents a developmental model of
consciousness stretching from prepersonal to transpersonal realms.
"
Creation of the Spiritual Emergence Network by Stanislav and Christina Grof
"
David Bohm, in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, develops a holographic model
of the universe to reconcile quantum mechanics with an "implicate order,"
an ontological ground of being.
" Stanislav Grof's LSD Psychotherapy,
provides the best overview of the research programs, therapeutic strategies, and
results from psychedelic research before the government closed formal research
programs.
" Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy.
" Kenneth
Ring, Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience.
" Michael Harner, Way of the Shaman.
" Jacob Needleman, Lost
Christianity.
" Seymour Boorstein, ed., Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
" William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.
"
Hastings, Fadiman, and Gordon, Health for the Whole Person: The Complete Guide
to Holistic Medicine.
1981
" Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life,
proposes the theory of morphogenetic fields to explain anomalous data in a variety
of fields.
" Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World.
"
Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality.
" B. Schultz
and D. Hughes, eds., Ecological Consciousness.
" Duane Elgin, Voluntary
Simplicity
" Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, examines cultural evolution from
the Paleolithic to the present.
" Haridas Chaudhuri, Integral Yoga.
"
Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, eds., In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious
Pluralism in America. Sociology of religion angle on new movements.
"
Lynn Andrews, Medicine Woman.
" Founding of the journal Anabiosis, which
subsequently becomes the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
1982
" James
Hillman, "Anima Mundi: the Return of Soul to the World"
" Fritjof
Capra, The Turning Point, examines the parallel changes occurring in multiple
fields to support his thesis that one historical epoch is coming to a close and
another is arising.
" Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, extends Kohlberg's
work with moral development, examining ways in which women's moral growth differs.
" Michael Sabom, Recollections at Death.
" Arthur Deikman, The
Observing Self.
" Huston Smith, Beyond the Postmodern Mind.
1983
"
First Leonard Energy Training at Esalen, an eight-week program of physical, mental,
and spiritual disciplines. Early attempt at long-term, integral transformation
program.
" N. Katz, Buddhist and Western Psychology.
" Founding
of Common Boundary.
" Peter Russell, The Global Brain.
1984
"
Kenneth Ring, Heading Towards Omega.
" Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold,
Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights.
"
Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women.
"
Tsultrim Allione, Women of Wisdom.
1985
" Stanislav Grof, Beyond the
Brain, the most sophisticated articulation of his synthesis of various depth psychologies.
" Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming. First popularization of the transformative
possibilities of lucidity in dreams.
" Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind:
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
" Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof
Capra, Green Politics.
" Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing.
"
John Welwood, Challenge of the Heart: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Changing Times.
" Thomas Armstrong, The Radiant Child, explores the spiritual experiences
of children, calling into question some transpersonal assumptions.
"
Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics.
" Ram Dass and
Paul Gorman, How Can I Help?
" Stanley Keleman, Emotional Anatomy.
1986
"
Hameed Ali, under the pen name A.H. Almaas, publishes Essence, the first exposition
of his Diamond Approach, synthesizing Sufism, object relations psychology, and
Tibetan Buddhism.
" Frances Vaughan, The Inward Arc.
" Donald
Rothberg's "Philosophical Foundations of Transpersonal Psychology" addresses
philosophical assumptions underpinning the consciousness movement.
"
Sam Keen publishes Faces of the Enemy, foundational work on the psychology of
enmity and propaganda.
" Ken Wilber, Jack Engler, and Daniel Brown, eds.,Transformations
of Consciousness.
" Beginning of David Ray Griffin's SUNY Press series
on constructive postmodernism, drawing from many works of the human potential
movement.
1987
" Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Margins of Reality:
The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Important validation of PSI and
field effects of consciousness from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
Program.
" Ervin Laszlo, Evolution: The Grand Synthesis.
" James
Glick, Chaos.
" Georg Feuerstein, Structures of Consciousness.
"
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.
" Barbara Brennan, Hands of
Light, an overview of subtle energy bodies and hands-on healing practices, linking
them to psychodynamic processes.
" Jon Klimo, Channeling: Investigations
on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources.
" Deane Juhan, Job's
Body: A Handbook for Bodywork.
1988
" Willis Harman, Global Mind Change.
" Michael Washburn, The Ego and the Dynamic Ground, proposes a neo-Jungian
transpersonal model of development alternative to Wilber's spectrum model.
"
Hameed Ali, under the pen name A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price.
"
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.
" Michael Murphy and Steve Donovan,
The Physical and Physiological Effects of Meditation, a comprehensive review of
all published studies of meditation.
1989
" Deepak Chopra, Quantum
Healing, marks a significant turning point in the popularization of the role of
consciousness in health and well-being.
" Stanislav and Christina Grof
publish Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis, which
distinguishes between psychosis and potentially liberating spiritual openings.
" Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess.
" Huston Smith,
Beyond the Postmodern Mind.
" George Feuerstein, ed., Enlightened Sexuality.
" William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscapes.
" Dalai Lama
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1990
" Warwick Fox, Toward a Transpersonal
Ecology
" Arthur Hastings, With the Tongues of Men and Angels, a scholarly
review of the channeling phenomenon.
" Robert Forman, ed., The Problem
of Pure Consciousness.
" Roger Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism.
"
Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul.
" Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses:
Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West.
" Mihaly Csikszentmihaly,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, argues that a broad range of transpersonal
experiences can be attributed to the common experience of "flow."
"
Jeanne Achterberg, Woman As Healer.
" Gary Doore, ed., What Survives:
Contemporary Explorations of Life After Death.
" John Nelson's Healing
the Split, explores the relation of madness to transcendence, drawing on major
consciousness theorists.
" Founding of the journal Anthropology of Consciousness.
1991
" Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied
Mind, a fusion of Buddhism, Merleau-Ponty and research into cognitive science
and the immune system.
" Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self.
" Richard Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind, overviews Western history
through the lens of the transformation of consciousness.
" Michael Mahoney,
Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations of Psychotherapy.
"
Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality.
" Michael Talbot, The Holographic
Universe.
" Jacob Needleman's Money and the Meaning of Life, turns a
transformative lens on a largely neglected area in spiritual circles.
"
Howard Rheingold, Virtual Realities.
" Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace:
The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age.
" Sam Keen, Fire in the
Belly.
1992
" Michael Murphy writes The Future of the Body, the most
comprehensive compendium yet published of evidence for metanormal capacities in
human beings.
" Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth.
" Michael
Murphy and George Leonard initiate a two-year experimental class in what they
called Integral Transformative Practice, a program combining meditation, imaging,
affirmations, intellectual study, physical discipline, nutrition, and group work.
" Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's The Universe Story: From the Primordial
Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, tells the epic story of the creation of the
universe combining scientific accuracy and poetic vision.
" Al Gore,
Earth in the Balance, reflects penetration of ecological consciousness and human
potential movement into upper echelons of government.
" Founding of "What
is Enlightenment?" magazine by Andrew Cohen
" Margaret Wheatley
writes Leadership and the New Science, popular extrapolation of new science and
consciousness movement principles into organizational theory, very influential
in business world.
" Michael Lerner, ed., Tikkun -- To Heal, Repair,
and Restore the World: An Anthology.
" Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul.
1993
" James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy, pop spiritual adventure
book based loosely on human potential principles taps unseen vein of interest
in publishing, becoming a runaway bestseller.
" Sogyal Rinpoche, The
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, quickly surpasses the important milestone of
100,000 copies sold, reflecting Buddhism's growing popularity.
" Roger
Walsh and Frances Vaughan, eds., Paths Beyond Ego.
" First of two conferences
at Esalen, convened by Theodore Roszak, to consolidate and articulate the outlines
of the field of Ecopsychology. (6/12-6/18)
" J. Kramer and D. Alstad,
The Guru Papers, a harsh indictment of the abuse of power in hierarchical guru
relationships.
" Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth: Exploring the Human Dimensions
of Evolution.
" Brendan O'Regan and Caryle Hirshberg, Spontaneous Remission:
An Annotated Bibliography, the most comprehensive survey of the subject.
1994
" Ralph Abraham, Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three
Great Streams of History.
1995
" Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality:
The Spirit of Evolution. Wilber's magnum opus, presents a four-quadrant model
of evolution (inner/outer, individual/collective) in an attempt to create a comprehensive
integral philosophy.
" Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, argues
that our emotional intelligence might be more central to our capacity to deal
succesfully with the world than traditional measures of intelligence.
"
Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, a version of complexity theory which
posits "order for free" as the result of sufficient diversity and complexity.
His basic ideas are extended into human domains as well.
" Daniel Matt,
The Essence of Kabbalah, popularization of mystical Judaism, part of the revitalization
of Western traditions.
" Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother, articulates
the revival of the divine feminine principle in major world religions.
"
O. J. Simpson verdict provides compelling evidence for field effects from collectively
focused intention. Random-event generators in several locations show highly improbable
deviations in randomness precisely correlated with collective attention (est.
500 million people) focused on verdict. (10/3)
" George Leonard and Michael
Murphy, The Life We Are Given.
" Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, From
Age-ing to Sage-ing, introduces concept of Spiritual Eldering, revising visions
of retirement and old age.
" Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and
Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, the first of three edited volumes that articulate
the contours of the Somatics field.
" Frances Vaughan, Shadows of the
Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions.
" First State of the World
Forum (October).
1996
" William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being:
Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness.
" Jenny Wade,
Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness.
"
Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an
Age of Cynicism.
" Bruce Scotton, Allen Chinen, and John Battista, eds.,
Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology.
" James Hillman,
The Soul's Code.
" Jean Houston, A Mythic Life.
" Paul Ray completes
his social survey on an emerging integral culture, a group he numbers at 44 million
US adults, all of whom share "values focused on spiritual transformation,
ecological sustainability, and the worth of the feminine."
" Experiments
by Marilyn Schiltz and Richard Wiseman provide strong evidence of experimenter
effects on the success or failure of psychical research. Presented at the 39th
Parapsychological Association Convention.
1997
" Dean Radin, The Conscious
Universe, comprehensive overview of the scientific evidence for psi phenomena.
" Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, a turn from the inner
world to political and social action.
" Willis Harman and Maya Porter,
eds., The New Business of Business: Sharing Responsibility for a Positive Global
Future.
" Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within.
1998
"
Stanislav Grof, The Cosmic Game, the capstone work for this pioneering psychiatrist,
charts the metaphysical insights gleaned from thousands of non-ordinary state
sessions over four decades.
" Willis Harman and Elisabet Sahtouris, Biology
Revisioned, examines the repercussions of including consciousness in biology.
" Andrew Harvey, Son of Man, radical revisioning of Jesus Christ through
a mystical lens, also reflects the turning Westward of the consciousness movement.
" Erik Davis, Techgnosis, explores the magic, mythic, and spiritual fabric
of the growing world of information technologies.
" Barbara Marx Hubbard,
Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential.
" Ken
Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, first book of consciousness movement to
be publicly endorsed by the President and Vice-President of America.
"
Kenneth Ring, Lessons From the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience.
" Ian Stevenson, Reincarnation and Biology, extends study of reincarnation
evidence to include birthmarks and physical deformities.
" David Ray
Griffin, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body
Problem.
1999
" Collected Works of Ken Wilber, a first for a living
psychologist, reflects the growing popularity of the integral vision.