ABSTRACT
Beginning in the early 1990s, transformative research methods uniquely suited to the study of spiritual experience emerged in the field of transpersonal psychology. The methods were developed by Rosemarie Anderson and the late William Braud (Braud and Anderson 1998; Anderson 2015a, 2015b; Anderson and Braud 2011) in collaboration with doctoral students at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University. Implicating our full human potential, these transformative approaches feature research as a sacred encounter, a journey of transformation that involves the researchers’ understanding of the topic and themselves as human beings.
This essay begins with a brief overview of the historical development, essential skills, and potential risks and limitations of these transformative approaches to research and scholarship. Following the overview, a study of “soul loss” among survivors of chronic child sexual abuse (CSA) illustrates how to conduct a study from a transformative perspective using intuitive inquiry as the research method. The findings, the ethical implications of the study, and intuitive inquiry as a method are briefly discussed. The concluding section reflects on the development of a Sacred Science now emerging as a new paradigm approach to research and scholarship that integrates the natural and human sciences with knowledge gleaned in the world’s great spiritual traditions, including the epistemologies and methods known to the ancient world. Since all the emergent methods developed in transpersonal psychology are first-person methods, they inherently involve personal and spiritual values. Therefore, the first-person “I” and “we” are used in this chapter to reflect transparency between the personal values and spiritual intent.
