Secular Buddhism as a materialist transpersonalism

Must transpersonal psychology and the transpersonal world necessarily occupy an ontology that opposes materialist science? Must a “transpersonalist” necessarily accept the postulates of parapsychology, or of theistic religion? Can a “goat” hold a transpersonal worldview? I will use the example of modern Western expressions of Buddhism (including so-called “secular Buddhism”) to show how we can honour and express a truly transpersonal vision while retaining the best that modern and postmodern thought has to offer. I will examine how we can accept a materialist position without abandoning metaphor, symbol and meaning, still taking advantage of the best of the scientific method to explain the world in which we find ourselves. I will also explore the contributions of the non-materialist epistemologies of the postmodern traditions, showing how secular Buddhism questions the given narratives of traditional Buddhism while not abandoning the essence of the Buddha’s original message. Through all this, I will highlight the parallels between Buddhism and both the modern and postmodern traditions. Finally, I will reiterate how all of this does not undermine secular Buddhism as a truly transpersonal position, indeed one that can be used to critique some existing transpersonal systems (e.g. Wilber’s integral psychology).