A Teacher
Jorge Ferrer
The participatory turn in spirituality
The transmission
Jorge N. Ferrer was born on 30 October 1968 in Spain. A Spanish-American psychologist, he became a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he chaired the department of East-West Psychology, and has since continued as research faculty at the California Institute for Human Science.
His work applies participatory theory across transpersonal psychology, religious studies, integral education, and the study of intimate relationships. Ferrer is best known for inaugurating what is called the “participatory turn” in transpersonal psychology with his book Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (2001).
Against the earlier “perennialist” and “experientialist” models that treated spiritual realisation as access to a single pre-given truth or as a private inner experience, Ferrer argued that spiritual realities are enacted, or brought forth, through the participatory engagement of human beings with a creative, indeterminate mystery.
This reframing is pluralistic, allowing for many genuine spiritual “shores” rather than one summit, and relational, locating spiritual knowing in co-creative participation rather than passive reception. He is regarded as one of the principal architects of “second-wave” transpersonalism.
What they gave
The participatory turn: Reframed spiritual experience as co-creative enactment rather than perception of a single pre-existing reality.
- Critique of perennialism: Challenged the assumption that all traditions point to one identical truth, opening a pluralistic account of spiritual knowing.
- Relational spirituality: Located spiritual realisation in participatory engagement between persons and a creative mystery, not in isolated inner states.
- Second-wave transpersonal theory: Helped move transpersonal psychology beyond its experientialist origins toward inquiry-driven, pluralistic foundations.
In their words
The participatory approach holds that human spirituality emerges from our cocreative participation in a dynamic and undetermined mystery or generative power of life, the cosmos, and/or the spirit.
Intrapersonal cocreation consists of the collaborative participation of all human attributes—body, vital energy, heart, mind, and consciousness—in the enactment of spiritual phenomena.
This dimension is grounded in the principle of equiprimacy, according to which no human attribute is intrinsically superior or more evolved than any other.
Participatory enaction entails a model of spiritual engagement that does not simply reproduce certain tropes according to a given historical a priori, but rather embarks upon the adventure of openness to the novelty and creativity of nature or spirit.
This emphasis in creativity is central to spiritual individuation, that is, the process through which a person gradually develops and embodies his or her unique spiritual identity and wholeness.
In other words, the participatory approach aims at the emergence of a human community formed by spiritually differentiated individuals.
As I argued elsewhere, in the same way an individual is their actions (whether perceptual, cognitive, emotional, or subtle), we could say that the mystery is its enactions.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Richard Tarnas and participatory philosophy, the transpersonal framework of Ken Wilber (which he critiqued and revised), and the radical empiricism of William James.
- Taught / Influenced: second-wave transpersonal psychology and participatory approaches within religious studies and integral education.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Revisioning Transpersonal Theory2002
- Participation and the Mystery2017