Integrating Brain, Mind, Soul, and Spirit

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.

1. Spirituality, Religion, and Transpersonal Psychology 2. Psychedelics: Spiritual Experiences, the Brain, and Psychotherapy 3. Parapsychology 4. Physics of the Macrocosm and Human Microcosm 5. Metaphysics of the Macrocosm 6. Metaphysics of the Human Microcosm 7. The Soul 8. The Mind 9. The Brain: Mind, Soul, and Spirit 10. Psychospiritual Phenomena and Processes 11. Spiritual Development 12. Death, Afterlife, and Reincarnation 13. Psychospiritual Development: Processes, Challenges, and Opportunities 14. Brain, Mind, Soul, and Spirit: Summaries, Correspondences, and Integration