The Evolution of Consciousness? Transpersonal Theories in Light of Cultural Relativism

This paper examines some of the principal theories in transpersonal psychology on the nature of the evolution of human consciousness within the context of anthropological perspectives of ecological and neoevolutionary adaptation and cultural relativism. New perspectives on the evolution of consciousness are provided by the work of transpersonal psychologists. These transpersonal perspectives are particularly important because they depart from traditional western psychology in important ways. In contrast to the psychiatric view that altered states of consciousness are pathological, regressive, or infantile, transpersonal perspectives consider altered states of consciousness to be more highly evolved forms of consciousness. These transpersonal perspectives on human development transcend the limitations of the Piagetian formal operational stage in proposing transrational and translogical forms of thought. The transpersonal approaches also provide new cultural perspectives on consciousness by borrowing from or basing themselves upon the philosophical and psychological perspectives of the contemplative mystical traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern religions. These transpersonal psychology perspectives (e.g., Wilber, Walsh) also incorporate traditional Western views about the hierarchical stages in the evolution of human consciousness. The typical model proposes a series of fixed linear steps in the evolution of consciousness, an evolutionary hierarchy with their own preferred states at the apex of the path of evolution. These notions of inherently superior states or levels of the evolution of consciousness conflicts with some anthropological perspectives. The notion of superior stages is incompatible with many anthropological findings and perspectives, including: the realizations of cultural relativism, the characterizations of general and specific evolution as manifested in levels of sociocultural evolution of political integration, the principles of ecological adaptation, and the recognition of a lack of directionality in the domain of physical evolution. While many contemporary transpersonal evolutionary perspectives appear to lack an understanding of the problems of unilinear and directional evolution, some of their original sources of inspiration (e.g., Schoun, Smith) develop perspectives which incorporate concerns of cultural relativism. The founding perspectives of transpersonal psychology illustrate that a major aspect of the development of human cognition and consciousness involves a recognition of cultural relativism. This paper examines some of the contemporary transpersonal contributions to understanding the evolution of human consciousness, but with a critical application of the perspectives of cultural relativism in understanding the nature of cross-cultural differences in consciousness. Certain transpersonal insights can be incorporated without accepting all of the assumptions of contemporary spokespeople. One issue addressed is how shamans' states of consciousness are related to the transpersonalists' stages of the evolution of human consciousness and those of the contemplative traditions. This paper calls into question the transpersonalist perspective that shamans and their states of consciousness should be considered less evolved than those of the Eastern mystical traditions. We can concede that some mystical states of consciousness may be more difficult to access and assess than typical shamanic states. But cultural relativism and culturally and ecologically specific adaptations preclude considering any particular adaptation superior to all others in all circumstances. The questions of what evolves, and what set of criteria allow us to place some levels as superior to others, are assessed from the perspective of cultural relativism as a constraint in evaluating the nature of differences. Future directions for theories of human cognitive and consciousness evolution are suggested by an examination of different understandings of meaning, and its potential as a basis for evolutionary stages.