Abstract

This dissertation introduces an epistemic approach to transpersonal and spiritual phenomena alternative to the modern experiential understanding of these events. Central to this epistemic turn is a shift in our understanding of transpersonal phenomena from individual inner experiences to epistemic events in which individual consciousness can participate, but that can also occur in relationships, communities, and places. Part One describes the nature and origins of the experiential approach, as well as identifies some of its main conceptual and practical limitations. Also, it uncovers some of the fundamental problems of inner empiricism---the method and epistemology of the experiential approach---and questions the universalist vision of spirituality that has commonly provided the metaphysical foundations of the experiential approach. Part Two outlines the nature of the epistemic approach and shows how it not only overcomes the limitations of the experiential approach, but also situates transpersonal studies in greater alignment with the aims of the spiritual quest. Moreover, it is shown how the participatory metaphysics of the epistemic approach provides a pluralistic vision of spiritual knowledge, spiritual liberations, and spiritual ultimates, and has important emancipatory implications for interreligious relations, transpersonal developmental models, the problem of conflicting truth-claims in religion, the problem of mediation in spiritual knowledge, and our understanding of spiritual liberation. It is expected that this epistemic turn will contribute to the development of a more sophisticated, pluralistic, and spiritually grounded transpersonal theory