"During this phase of the experiment, I was hit by a radiance that seemed comparable to the light at the epicenter of an atomic explosion, or possibly the supernatural light described in Eastern scriptures that appears at the moment of death. This thunderbolt of light catapulted me from my body. I lost all awareness of the research assistant, the laboratory, and any detail of my life as a doctor in Prague."

"There was no doubt in my mind that was I was experiencing was very close to experiences of 'cosmic consciousness' I had read about in the great mystical scriptures of the world. In psychiatric handbooks, such states were defined as manifestations of severe pathology. In the midst of it I knew that the experience was not the result of a psychosis brought on by the substance, but a glimpse into a world beyond ordinary reality."

The Holotropic Mind by Stanislav Grof, M.D.

"There has been increasing dissatisfaction with the application of the medical model in psychiatry. Probably the best known and most eloquent representative of this movement is Thomas Szasz In a series of books, including his Myth of Mental Illness (1961); Szasz has adduced strong evidence that most cases of so-called mental illness should be regarded as expressions and reflections of the individual's struggles with the problems of living. They represent social, ethical, and legal problems, rather than 'diseases' in the medical sense. The doctor-patient relationship as defined by the medical model also reinforces the passive and dependent role of the client. It implies that the solution of the problem depends critically on the resources of the person in the role of scientific authority, rather than on the inner resources of the client..."

"Western psychology and psychiatry thus tend to discard globally any form of spirituality, no matter how sophisticated and wellfounded, as unscientific. In the context of mechanistic science, spirituality is equated with primitive superstition, lack of education, or clinical psychopathology. When a religious belief is shared by a large group within which it is perpetuated by cultural programming, it is more or less tolerated by psychiatrists. Under these circumstances, the usual clinical criteria are not applied, and sharing such a belief is seen as not necessarily indicative of psychopathology."

Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy - Stanislav Grof

Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that studies the transpersonal, self-transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience. A short definition from the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology suggests that transpersonal psychology "is concerned with the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992:91). Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance and other metaphysical experiences of living.

Transpersonal psychologists see the school as a companion to other schools of psychology that include psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology. Transpersonal psychology attempts to unify modern psychology theory with frameworks from different forms of mysticism. These vary greatly depending on the origin but include religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, trance and other spiritual practices. Although Carl Jung and others have explored aspects of the spiritual and transpersonal in their work, Miller (1998: 541-542) notes that Western psychology has had a tendency to ignore the spiritual dimension of the human psyche.

The terms "Spiritual Emergence", and "Spiritual Emergency", were coined by Stanislav and Christina Grof (1989) in order to describe the appearance of psycho-spiritial categories in a persons life (precedents of Grof's approach in this regard are found in Jung, Perry, Dabrowski, Bateson, Laing, Cooper and antipsychiatry in the widest sense of the term). The term "Spiritual emergence" describe a "gradual unfoldment of spiritual potential with no disruption in psychological-social-occupational functioning"(Lukoff, Lu & Turner, 1996:238). In cases where the spiritual unfoldment is intensified beyond the control of the individual it may lead to a state of "Spiritual Emergency". A Spiritual Emergency may cause significant disruption in psychological, social and occupational functioning. Many of the psycho-spiritual problems described above can, according to Transpersonal theory, lead to episodes of spiritual emergency (Lukoff, Lu & Turner, 1996:236-39; Turner et al., 1995).

Because of the nature of psychoreligious and psychospiritual problems, authors Lukoff, Lu & Turner (Turner et al., 1995: 435) made a proposal for a new diagnostic category entitled "Psychoreligious or Psychospiritual Problem" at the beginning of the 1990s. The category was approved by the DSM-IV Task Force in 1993, after changing the title to "Religious or Spiritual Problem" (Turner et al., 1995: 436). It is included in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) under the heading "Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention", Code V62.89 (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; Lu et al., 1997). According to Chinen (1996:12) the inclusion marks "increasing professional acceptance of transpersonal issues". Besides signifying a greater sensitivity towards spiritual issues, and spiritually oriented narratives, (Sovatsky: 179,187) the new V-Code may also contribute to the greater cultural sensitivity of the manual and could help promote enhanced understanding between the fields of psychiatry and religion/spirituality (Turner et al.:443).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal_psychology