How can we connect the spiritual realizations of Buddhism with the psychological insights of the West? In Toward a Psychology of Awakening John Welwood addresses this question with comprehensiveness and depth. Along the way he shows how meditative awareness can help us develop more dynamic and vital relationships and how psychotherapy can help us embody spiritual realization more fully in everyday life. Welwood's psychology of awakening brings together the three major dimensions of human experience: personal, interpersonal, and suprapersonal, in one overall framework of understanding and practice.

Can the meditative traditions of Buddhism be integrated with the practice of Western psychology? John Welwood's latest book addresses this question with new comprehensiveness and depth. His psychological approach brings together three major dimensions of human existence: personal, interpersonal, and suprapersonal, in one overall framework of understanding and practice. TOWARDS A PSYCHOLOGY OF AWAKENING addresses basic questions about the relationship between psychology and contemplative spirituality, the practical implications of this convergence for psychological health and healing, and the implications for relationship and community.

Can a meditative practice assist and promote the healing relationship between psychotherapist and patient? The notable contributors to this practical book draw on a wide range of Eastern and Western disciplines—psychoanalysis, Gestalt, Aikido, and various Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist contemplative traditions—to show that it can. What they propose is a meeting between the Western psychotherapeutic approach—grounded in working with the personal problems and the need to carve out a strong awareness of self—and Eastern tradition, which emphasizes a larger kind of awareness and equanimity as a continuously available source of clarity and health for those who know how to find it. They show that joining psychotherapy with meditation can mutually awaken the hearts of both therapist and client, sparking them both to open more fully. Jacob Needleman, Erich Fromm, Robin Skynner, Ram Dass, Karl Sperber, Roger Walsh, Chögyam Trungpa, and Thomas Hora are among the contributors.

What does it mean to be enlightened or spiritually awakened? In The Leap, Steve Taylor shows that this state is much more common than is generally believed. He shows that ordinary people — from all walks of life — can and do regularly “wake up” to a more intense reality, even if they know nothing about spiritual practices and paths. Wakefulness is a more expansive and harmonious state of being that can be cultivated or that can arise accidentally. It may also be a process we are undergoing collectively. Drawing on his years of research as a psychologist and on his own experiences, Taylor provides what is perhaps the clearest psychological study of the state of wakefulness ever published. Above all, he reminds us that it is our most natural state — accessible to us all, anytime, anyplace.

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and generalization from self) that are involved in our folk psychological practices.

Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.