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Beyond the mind, 11th Eurotas Conference
P.L.Lattuada M.D., Ph.D

The history of the transpersonal movement is quite peculiar.

Transpersonal psychology developed in the seventies in the Bay area around San Francisco. Even before been really known it passed through many divisions and sharp disagreement, to such a point that Ken Wilber, a milestone of the transpersonal thought, went off the movement accomplishing the wrench many years ago, as he considered it already on the way of a final and hopeless decline.
The transpersonal movement has been much criticized. Some of its detractors describe transpersonal psychology as a movement of characters talking about spirituality, often arguing between themselves on the real meaning of this word, people a little absent minded, confused in magic and mythological prerationalist thought.
For others the representative of transpersonal movement avoid the hard and ordinary psychological work to seek refuge in non ordinary states of consciousness, often induced by drugs, showing in such a way a eco-primitivism retro-Romantic, to use Wilber’s words 
(http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/interviews/interview1220.cfm/), that prevents them to speak with exponents of other psychological theories looking to more actual dimension of consciousness.
Still for others, the most misunderstanding, transpersonal psychologist moves in a dangerous area closely with new age arguments. They would say: “they talk with spirits” “They believe in angels”, for them transpersonal psychologist ignore real problems, they regress to the oral phase of development through meditation and mantras murmuring.
However many detractors do not know what they are talking about, as they never met a transpersonal psychotherapist. Others, like Ken Wilber and Claudio Naranjo base their opinion on the experience of the transpersonal movement at the beginning, perhaps they hardly know that in Europe there is a transpersonal movement in good health, counting two international associations, one of them the EUROTAS strong of 24 national associations, including authors such as John Rowan, Laura Boggio Gilot, Vitor Rodrigues, Arturo De Luca, Ingo Benjamin Jahretz, Beata Bishop, Vladimir Maykov, Jure Biechonsky, Bernadette Blin, Judith Miller and myself, just to name a few of them, which published ten or so books and scientific works describing original approaches. Maybe transpersonal critics never had a chance to know all of this.
Perhaps even less known is the transpersonal movement from Brazil, where since the seventies it has been developing in the academic circle bringing forth methods and models absolutely innovating. We are talking about Pierre Weil’s pioneering work, culminated in the foundation of the Universidade da Paz in Brasilia. Or to mention the Eliezer Crequiera Mendes’s extraordinary contribution with his psycotranstherapy and David Akstein with Terpsicoterapia or professor Armando Leite Neves with his transpersonal analysis.

At last is right to mention the contribution of the most viable Psycosintesis, with centres spread all over the world under the drive of fervent minds such as Massimo Rosselli and Piero Ferrucci, just to name some of them.
Let us cite, at the end, the bio-trans-energetic, a wide and articulated transpersonal methodology founded in the early eighties by Marlene Silveira and Pier Luigi Lattuada, my self, who since then worked it out in more than twenty-five thousand hours of clinical work and twelve published books.
Reading carefully the texts and actively participating to the annual eurotas conferences, with delegates from more than 30 countries, and most of all, from the direct and heartily acquaintance of the transpersonal movement representatives, it is possible to deeply understand the essence and vital cultural pregnancy of the phenomenon we are talking about.
For example it would be possible to understand that a unitary vision can only result from an unitary sight, and an unitary sight descend from an unitary state of consciousness which some call consciousness of unity. This consciousness seem to be characterized as a state of being reachable when it is possible to overstep the ordinary mind, usually curbed in a dual vision, due to attachments and personal conflicts. It would then be easy to understand, may be with the support of an encyclopaedic knowledge about quadrants, circles and spirals, that the point is the descent of the mind inside the heart, something easy to be said but endless to be accomplished.
It would then be possible to understand that the word transpersonal does not belong to one or the other but it is available to whoever is truly stepping on a heart bounded road.
This word belongs to the hero journeying toward home, through valleys of passion and ignorance, peaks of intuition and fits of enthusiasm, nights of the soul and never ending awakenings, deaths and rebirths, in the humble attempt to free ourselves and to water to the spring of being, whom somebody calls God, others Self and others heart.
This spring sometimes seems relentlessly drained, other gush plentiful, sometimes seems unreachable others unveil forever present here and now.
In these rare moments of presence, when we are bestowed a sip, the transpersonal dimension reveals itself with its copious and astonishing wealth. In front of such a dimension just stay in religious silence and devotional surrender, compassion for our self and our fellow creatures, with consciousness of the linked unity of everything.
In such a dimension it is unambiguously clear that the access to the unity is possible when we disappear to ourselves, when we have the courage to loose and find ourselves, beyond the mind, which is in the transpersonal kingdoms.
From such a dimension we are often driven away from the icy wind of arrogance, from the avid bite of power, from the wicked thirst of self-importance. The hero coming back from the journey in such a dimension must remember: “not two, one”.
Then, beyond the mind, namely beyond the attachment to our limited personal view, there is the transpersonal vision which appears deeply complete, realizing that the integral vision is absolutely transpersonal.
Beyond the mind, meaning beyond the narcissistic identification with one’s own model, the different psychological models appear to pertain to the linked flow of consciousness expressing the present humankind condition. 
Beyond the mind, to say beyond judgement, the travelling hero shyly dear to open the doors.
In the eleventh eurotas conference to be held in Milan from the 15 to the 18 of October 2009 delegates of the transpersonal movement from more than 30 countries will discuss and share ideas, models and experiences, to map out a hearty route for education, science, companies and social organizations.
Doors are open to delegates of psychoanalysis, behavioural and humanistic psychology, to representatives of the academic scientific world, organized religions, as well as political institutions and finally to good will people.

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