Integrating Brain, Mind, Soul and Spirit: Exploring Transpersonal Psychology, Psychedelics and Altered States of Consciousness

Referring to major spiritual traditions, transpersonal psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and modern physics, this book identifies and systematically integrates core ideas concerning psychospiritual development.

Integrating Brain, Mind, Soul, and Spirit presents neuropsychological research on psychedelics, with reference to mystical experience, and Psi/extrasensory perception as an extension of cognitively controlled brain-based homeostasis. The book equates concepts from modern physics with perennial metaphysics concerning intelligent consciousness, evolution, and the transfer of energy and information. It also compares spiritual literature regarding consciousness, spirit-soul, and brain-mind personality, to neuropsychological and psychological literature concerning emotion, cognition, and altered states of consciousness. Finally, a nested neuro-psycho-spiritual control hierarchy is presented as an architecture for systematically integrating; describing; and understanding brain, mind, soul, and spirit, and neuro-psycho-spiritual development.

Providing a modern multidisciplinary perspective, and highlighting implications for psychiatry, psychotherapy, and education, this book is a must-read for students and researchers of transpersonal psychology, psychospiritual matters, and altered states of consciousness.

Eric John Parkins studied at Imperial College, Oxford University, and Manchester University. He has a PhD in engineering, a PhD in psychology, and postgraduate qualifications in education and in integrative psychotherapy. Whilst working at the University of Nottingham, he lectured on Gestalt psychology, psychosynthesis, and meditation. He is author of the book Cerebellum and Cerebrum in Homeostatic Control and Cognition, published by Routledge in 2022.