Consciousness Timeline by Steve Dinan

Steve Dinan's Consciousness Timeline, which comes to Enlightenment.Com under Special Arrangement with the Transformative Community Network, is a marvel of brevity and depth. While any timeline can be expanded, and while one might quibble with some of the things that are included or excluded, there is no doubt that this is a superb resource and tool for those interested in consciousness, transformation, and spirituality.

Steve formerly directed and helped to create the Esalen Institute's Center for Theory & Research, a think tank where leading scholars, researchers, and teachers can explore the frontiers of human potential. He graduated from Stanford University, holds a master's degree in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has studied Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, and Christian and Jewish mysticism, as well as transpersonal psychology. He is the editor of an anthology, Radical Spirit: Voices of Vision and Hope from the Teachers of Tomorrow (March 2002, New World Library), and the author of various books in development: The Call, In Kali's Garden, and Savoring Samsara. His volume of mystical poetry Angelfire is available as a pdf file via email. Steve, who is now associated with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, can be reached at stdinan@transformunity.com.

Consciousness Timeline
by Steve Dinan

The following timeline is by necessity somewhat arbitrary and quite partial. The point is not to chart the minutiae of events constituting what I am loosely calling the "consciousness movement," but to give a sense for a few prominent milestones. The last hundred years have witnessed the gradual creation of a new world philosophy, one that sees human beings engaged in an evolutionary process to access a deeper, richer, more playful consciousness and to manifest the fruits of that work in the world. This new amalgam of ideas and practices has drawn from dozens of traditions, thousands of books and experiments, and millions of collectively focused lives. Drawing a firm boundary around this "movement" is thus misleading. It is better likened to the flow of a tumultuous river, its millions of eddies and currents creating, when seen from afar, a cohesive sense of direction. This timeline is best viewed as a snapshot of that river from high above.

1875 Founding of the Theosophical Society in New York, spurs interest in spiritualism. The Society propounded the notion of spiritual evolution in an attempt to bridge the religious world view with that arising in science. (Nov. 17)

1890 William James, Principles of Psychology.

1893 First Parliament of World Religions, Vivekananda electrifies the gathering and brings Vedanta to the West.

1894 Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, first of his four "foundational" books.

1900 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. Birth of the psychoanalytic movement.

1901 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, lays the groundwork for the cross-cultural study of mystical experience.

1903 Frederic Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.

1905 Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness.

1906 James Mark Baldwin, Thought and Things.

1907

D. T. Suzuki's Outline of Mahayana Buddhism introduces Zen to the West.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution.

1909 Alexandra David-Neel's The Buddhism of the Buddha and Buddhist Modernism, presents a non-academic account of Buddhist practice.

1911 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism.

1912

Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, break from Freud.
P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum.

1913 Rudolf Steiner founds anthroposophy.

1914

James H. Woods, The Yoga System of Patanjali, considered the first full-length scholarly work in America on Indian philosophy.
Caroline Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology, offers the first well-developed discussion of the compatibility between Western psychology and Buddhism.

1917 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy.

1918 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, especially influential on J. Campbell.

1920 Arrival of Paramahansa Yogananda in Boston, an important figure in the spread of Hinduism in the West.

1921 Carl Jung, Psychological Types.

1923

Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id.
Martin Buber, I and Thou.

1924

Otto Rank, The Trauma of Birth.
Jean Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child, demonstrates how structures of thought evolve.

1925

C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

1926

Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West, helps create the discipline of East-West comparative mysticism.
Jan Smuts, Holism and Evolution, argues that each subsequent level of evolution is more encompassing than the last, that what was once a whole becomes part of a greater whole. Influential in systems theory.

1927Wilhelm Reich, Die Funktion des Orgasmus.

1928 Richard Wilhelm invites Jung to write a commentary on the Taoist text The Secret of the Golden Flower in which Jung aims "to build a bridge of psychological understanding between East and West."

1929

Alfred North Whitehead, in Process and Reality, introduces the notion of prehension, that interiority is fundamental all the way down to the most basic levels of the universe.
Krishnamurti, who had been chosen as the next World Teacher by the Theosophical Society, rejects the organization and states that "truth is a pathless land," setting the stage for the nondoctrinal teachings of his next sixty years.

1933 Beginning of the Eranos seminars, started with the purpose of finding common ground between Eastern and Western religious thought. Participants included C.G. Jung, Heinrich Zimmer, D. T. Suzuki, Martin Buber, and Mircea Eliade.

1934

Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
Arnold Toynbee, in A Study of History, explicates his theory of the rise and breakdown of civilizations.

1936 Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being.

1937 Anna Freud, The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense.

1938 Jung travels to India and upon his return warns against the Western adoption of the practice of yoga, instead calling for the development of a Western form of yoga.

1939 First East-West Philosophers' Conference, organized by Charles A. Moore in Honolulu, attempts to forge a global philosophy.

1943 Albert Hoffman accidentally ingests LSD-25 (first synthesized in 1938), a mistake leading eventually to the widespread use of psychedelics. (4/16)

1944 Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy.

1945

Merleau-Ponty, inPhénoménologie de la Perception, creates a methodology for the study of subjective experience.
Rene Guénon, Man and His Becoming According to Vedanta.

1946

Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi.
Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.

1947 Fritz Perls, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression.

1948

Fritjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (French edition). Proposes the esoteric identity of all religions.
Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, important work in the revitalization of Christian mysticism.

1949

Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, articulates a theory of the evolution of human culture through five stages: archaic, magical, mythic, rational, and aperspectival.
Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, highly influential in comparative mythology.
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sex.
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, foundational for many of the leading lights of the consciousness movement.
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return.
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness.
Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning.

1950 L. L. Whyte, The Next Development in Man.

1951 Carl Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy.

1952

Radhakrishnan, History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western.
Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, highly influential on Michael Murphy's later work in Future of the Body.
Carl Jung, Answer to Job and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

1954

Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China argues for the scientific side of Taoism.
Aldous Huxley, with The Doors of Perception, piques the interest of many as to the possible benefits of psychedelic experience.
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of Eternal Return.

1955

Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, published posthumously, a vision of the evolution of the universe from Creation to an Omega Point.
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization.

1956

Gregory Bateson et al. formulate the double bind theory of the genesis of schizophrenia.
Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man.
Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

1957

Karl Jaspers includes chapters on the Buddha and Nagarjuna in his The Great Philosophers.
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.
Leon Festinger, The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
C. Thigpen and H. Cleckley, The Three Faces of Eve.
P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way, published posthumously and assembled by students.

1958

Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion.
Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology.
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion.

1959

Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death.
Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, first volume of Masks of God series.
Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development
John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po.
Arrival of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to San Francisco, start of the enormously influential Transcendental Meditation movement. Peak hits about 1967 or 1968.
Arrival of Shunryu Suzuki to San Francisco as a priest for the Japanese Zen Buddhist congregation. He eventually creates the San Francisco Zen Center which plays an influential role in introducing Soto Zen practice to America. (5/23)
Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupying force leads to bloodshed and the flight of the Dalai Lama and much of the core of the Tibetan religious hierarchy, setting the stage for the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhist teachers and practices.

1960

Erich Fromm & D. T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, dialogues between modern psychoanalysis and Eastern religion.

1961

Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West establishes parallels between Western psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality.
Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness.
Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Folie.
Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person.
J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, fictional account of the turn towards mysticism.
George Leonard, "The Explosive Generation" article in Look, first major piece to foretell the tumultuous times to come.
Founding of The Journal of Humanistic Psychology. (Spring)
Founding of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

1962

Founding of the Esalen Institute as a forum for exploring new philosophies and visions of human development.
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being.
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, describes the effect of electronic technologies on the age of the book.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions articulates his theory of paradigm shifts governing the process of scientific discovery.
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, his autobiography.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, an important catalyst for the environmental movement.
Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology.
Psychedelic experiments with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Harvard.

1963

Civil rights march on Washington, M. L. King's "I Have a Dream" speech (8/29).
Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique.
E. N. Lorenz publishes the first paper on chaos theory.
Gerald Heard, The Five Ages of Man.
Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks begin teaching Sensory Awareness at Esalen.

1964

Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, The Psychedelic Experience, an adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a guide for the Western use of psychedelics.
Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, Peak Experiences.
Robert Bellah, "Religious Evolution."
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism.
Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology.
Idries Shah, The Sufis.
K. Dabrowski, Positive Disintegration.
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation.
Arrival of Fritz Perls at Esalen, which provides a platform for the dissemination of Gestalt (May)

1965

Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City.
R. D. Laing, The Divided Self.
Morey Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy, stokes public fascination with reincarnation.
Robert Assagioli, Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings.
Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen.
Haridas Chaudhuri, Integral Yoga.
Ida Rolf begins summers-in-residence at Esalen, bringing her work of Structural Integration into prominence, though she had practiced it for 25 years.
George Leonard, while brainstorming with Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, coins the term "human potential movement." (March)

1966

Norman O. Brown, Love's Body.
Lama Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds.
Bell's theory of nonlocality proposed, precursor of physics and consciousness movement to follow in 1970s and 80s.
San Francisco Zen Center purchases Tassajara Hot Springs, which becomes the center of gravity for intensive practice of Soto Zen in the West.
Thich Nhat Hanh arrives in the U.S. for a three-week speaking tour.

1967

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience.
Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body.
Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine.
Will Schutz, Joy, turns group therapy into an important national movement. (May approx.)
Summer of Love
Stanislav Grof suggests the term "transpersonal" to describe an emerging orientation in the consciousness movement.
Ford Foundation grant starts the Confluent Education program at Esalen, directed by George Brown, applying humanistic principles to education. This program is eventually incorporated into UC-Santa Barbara's School of Education.

1968

Haridas Chaudhuri founds the California Institute of Asian Studies (CIAS) in San Francisco to spread Sri Aurobindo's integral philosophy. (April 8)
Thomas Merton travels to South-East Asia in order to build bridges between Christian and Asian monasticism.
Von Bertalanffy, General System Theory.
Carlos Casteneda, The Teachings of Don Juan, first in his series of influential semi-fictional tales of a Yaqui sorcerer.
Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalog.
George Leonard, Education and Ecstasy.
Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology.
Ralph Metzner leads a series of dialogues at the Esalen San Francisco center on ecology and psychology.

1969

Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich create the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.
Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, helps define the epochal social changes occurring in America in the sixties.
Charles Tart, ed., Altered States of Consciousness.
James Lovelock first proposes, but does not name, the Gaia hypothesis.
Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying.
Rollo May, Love and Will.
Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
F. M. Alexander, The Resurrection of the Body.
S. N. Goenka returns to India to teach vipassana courses, a pivotal event in the dissemination of Dharma practice in the world.
Samuel Bercholz founds Shambhala Publications.
Launching of the Agnews Project by Esalen, an alternative approach to psychosis in a state mental hospital.
Ashley Montagu, Sex, Man, and Society.
Lawrence LeShan, "Physicists and Mystics: Similarities in World View." (Nov.)
First Council Grove, Kansas, conference on voluntary control of internal states.
First Association of Humanistic Psychology conference with a transpersonal subsection.

1970

First Earth Day (April 22), a significant launching point for the environmental movement
Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief.
John Blofeld, The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet.
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, opens channels for the bridging of the Western consciousness movement with similar work in the Soviet Union.
Chogyam Trungpa, Meditation in Action.
Jacob Needleman, The New Religions, examines the emergence of Eastern disciplines and cults and the growing number of spiritual seekers, especially in California.
Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior.
Esalen contingent visits Roberto Assagioli, bringing his system of Psychosynthesis back to the United States and leading to its popularization. (June)

1971

Baba Ram Dass, Be Here Now, a transitional point for consciousness movement away from psychedelics.
Robert Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body, popular autobiographical treatment of out-of-body experiences.
William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
Lama Angarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.
Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.
Werner Erhard springs into limelight with his est trainings, a quick-fix distillation of human potential ideas in a weekend workshop format.
Creation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (Nov.)
Ralph Metzner, Maps of Consciousness.
Gopi Krishna, Kundalini -- The Evolutionary Energy in Man.
E. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery.
Karl Pribram, Languages of the Brain.
Esalen creates the Program in Humanistic Medicine, planting some of the first seeds for holistic medicine, an extension in many ways of the consciousness movement.

1972

Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, an influential synthesis of anthropology, biology, and cybernetics.
Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom. Though fictional, Murphy's book becomes the bestselling golf book of all time, inaugurating the "inner game" of sports, sports psychology, and mystical offshoots.
Ervin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy.
Robert Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness.
George Leonard, The Transformation.
Andrew Weil, The Natural Mind.
John Lilly, The Center of the Cyclone.
First International Transpersonal Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland (5/31-6/5)

1973

Arne Naess, The Shallow and Deep Ecology Movements.
E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful advocates the adoption of Buddhist principles in the Western economic system.
New Dimensions Radio first begins to broadcast as a voice for the emerging new perspectives.
Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
Michael Harner, Hallucinogens and Shamanism.
Founding of the Institute of Noetic Sciences by astronaut Edgar Mitchell as a research and educational institution to explore human consciousness.
First national conference of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology.
Conference on "Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness to Submit" addressed abuses of power in human potential arena. (Dec. 7-8, SF)

1974

Chogyam Trungpa founds the Naropa Institute in Boulder, helping to bring Tibetan Buddhism to the West.
Ian Stevenson's Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, begins his lifework of a systematic and scientific study of reincarnation.
Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, influential in the seeding of the Goddess and neo-pagan movements.
Anica Mander and Anne Kent Rush, Feminism as Therapy.
Lawrence LeShan, The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist.
Edgar Mitchell and John White, eds., Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science.
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Kenneth Ring, "A Transpersonal View of Consciousness: A Mapping of Farther Reaches of Inner Space," JTP, attempts to synthesize a range of perspectives on consciousness.

1975

Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious, adds perinatal (birth) matrices between the personal unconscious and transpersonal realms and chronicles the results of thousands of psychedelic sessions.
Terrence and Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape.
James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, deconstructs the hero myth and ego psychology.
Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, explores parallels between Eastern mystical systems and the worldview of modern physics.
Charles Tart, States of Consciousness, proposes the idea of state-specific sciences and pioneers the scientific study of altered states of consciousness.
Ken Wilber, "Psychologia Perennis: The Spectrum of Consciousness." Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. First exposition of Wilber's spectrum model, in which all psychologies and traditions are situated on one continuum.
Peter Marin, "The New Narcissism" in Harper's begins self-critical phase of consciousness movement.
Raymond Moody, Life After Life, brings near-death experiences and their potential meaning into the public consciousness.
Jeffrey Mishlove, The Roots of Consciousness.
Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response, influential in medical/scientific circles as a paradigm for understanding meditation and its effects.
George Leonard, The Ultimate Athlete, applies human potential philosophies and principles to sports, games, and the growing fitness movement.
Founding of the journal Anima as a forum for psychology, religion, and women's studies.
Founding of Yoga Journal (May)

1976

Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
A Course in Miracles.
Chogyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom.
Arthur Young, The Reflexive Universe.
Founding of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, by Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzburg. Important in bringing the practice of Theravadan Buddhism to the West.
Lee Sanella, Kundalini: Psychosis or Transcendence?
James Fadiman and Robert Frager, Personality and Personal Growth, first textbook on personality theory to include transpersonal and Eastern viewpoints.
June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality.
Johannes Fabricius, Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art.
J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness: The Concept of Hylic Pluralism, examines the cross-cultural evidence for subtle bodies.
Founding of the journal Parabola as a forum for the study of myth and the quest for meaning.

1977

Ken Wilber, Spectrum of Consciousness, important synthesis of a variety of approaches to consciousness, situating them on one spectrum, bridging Eastern mysticism and Western psychology in influential ways.
Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths.
Ida P. Rolf, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures.
Haridas Chaudhuri, The Evolution of Integral Consciousness.
Elmer and Alyce Green, Beyond Biofeedback.
Stanislav and Christina Grof create Holotropic Breathwork during an Esalen month-long workshop.
Ken Wilber and Jack Crittenden found the journal Revision: A Journal of Knowledge and Consciousness as a forum for the consciousness movement.
John Welwood, "Meditation and the Unconscious: A New Perspective," JTP, proposes four grounds of consciousness: situational, personal, transpersonal, basic.
Daniel Goleman, The Varieties of the Meditative Experience, outlines a dozen major meditative disciplines, popularizes distinction between awareness and concentration paths, a distinction derived from Theravada Buddhism.
James Ogilvy, Many-Dimensional Man.
Russell Targ and Harold Putoff, Mind Reach.
Robert M. Anderson, "A Holographic Model of Transpersonal Consciousness," JTP.
Don Hanlon Johnson, The Protean Body.
Ida Rolf, Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures
Founding of the journal Consciousness and Culture.
Release of Star Wars, first movie to show significant influence of human potential movement through Lucas' study of J. Campbell, tai chi, and other related fields. (summer)

1978

Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, articulates the theory of "holons."
Stephen Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, launches the constructivist program in the study of comparative mysticism.
Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet.
Hazel Henderson, Creating Alternative Futures.
Lex Hixon, Coming Home, explores parallel visions in different traditions of enlightenment or liberation.
George Leonard, Silent Pulse.
Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature.
Eugene Gendlin, Focusing, argues that the common denominator in successful therapy is a capacity to tune in to more subtle levels of bodily felt sense.
Michael Murphy and Rhea White, The Psychic Side of Sports.
Helen Wambach, Reliving Past Lives
Michael Washburn, "Observations Relevant to a Unified Theory of Meditation," JTP.
Founding of the journal Somatics to create a framework for the new body-based disciplines, arts, and sciences.

1979

Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature.
James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, a backlash against the human potential movement.
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.
Frances Vaughan, Awakening Intuition, one of the first books on intuition that addresses both personal and transpersonal levels.
Kenneth Pelletier, Holistic Medicine: From Stress to Optimum Health, reflects growing turn of consciousness movement to practical problems of health.
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, gives voice to the growing Goddess movement.
Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, quantum physics and consciousness exploration that won the American Book Award for Science, ideas influenced by Esalen conferences.
Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising.
Founding of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research group by Robert Jahn, a source of some of the most important research on psychokinesis and field effects of consciousness.

1980

Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis and Cognition, an important step in seeing how organisms actually co-create their environments.
Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming, develops the theory of "dissipative structures" by applying thermodynamics to biology.
Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, attempts an overall view of the universe including the theories and ideas of Prigogine, Lovelock, Margulis, Varela, and Maturana.
Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan, eds., Beyond Ego, a transpersonal psychology anthology.
Ken Wilber, with The Atman Project presents a developmental model of consciousness stretching from prepersonal to transpersonal realms.
Creation of the Spiritual Emergence Network by Stanislav and Christina Grof
David Bohm, in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, develops a holographic model of the universe to reconcile quantum mechanics with an "implicate order," an ontological ground of being.
Stanislav Grof's LSD Psychotherapy, provides the best overview of the research programs, therapeutic strategies, and results from psychedelic research before the government closed formal research programs.
Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy.
Kenneth Ring, Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience.
Michael Harner, Way of the Shaman.
Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity.
Seymour Boorstein, ed., Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.
Hastings, Fadiman, and Gordon, Health for the Whole Person: The Complete Guide to Holistic Medicine.

1981

Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life, proposes the theory of morphogenetic fields to explain anomalous data in a variety of fields.
Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World.
Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality.
B. Schultz and D. Hughes, eds., Ecological Consciousness.
Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity
Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, examines cultural evolution from the Paleolithic to the present.
Haridas Chaudhuri, Integral Yoga.
Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, eds., In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America. Sociology of religion angle on new movements.
Lynn Andrews, Medicine Woman.
Founding of the journal Anabiosis, which subsequently becomes the Journal of Near-Death Studies.

1982

James Hillman, "Anima Mundi: the Return of Soul to the World"
Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point, examines the parallel changes occurring in multiple fields to support his thesis that one historical epoch is coming to a close and another is arising.
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, extends Kohlberg's work with moral development, examining ways in which women's moral growth differs.
Michael Sabom, Recollections at Death.
Arthur Deikman, The Observing Self.
Huston Smith, Beyond the Postmodern Mind.

1983

First Leonard Energy Training at Esalen, an eight-week program of physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines. Early attempt at long-term, integral transformation program.
N. Katz, Buddhist and Western Psychology.
Founding of Common Boundary.
Peter Russell, The Global Brain.

1984

Kenneth Ring, Heading Towards Omega.
Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold, Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women.
Tsultrim Allione, Women of Wisdom.

1985

Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain, the most sophisticated articulation of his synthesis of various depth psychologies.
Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming. First popularization of the transformative possibilities of lucidity in dreams.
Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra, Green Politics.
Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing.
John Welwood, Challenge of the Heart: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Changing Times.
Thomas Armstrong, The Radiant Child, explores the spiritual experiences of children, calling into question some transpersonal assumptions.
Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics.
Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, How Can I Help?
Stanley Keleman, Emotional Anatomy.

1986

Hameed Ali, under the pen name A.H. Almaas, publishes Essence, the first exposition of his Diamond Approach, synthesizing Sufism, object relations psychology, and Tibetan Buddhism.
Frances Vaughan, The Inward Arc.
Donald Rothberg's "Philosophical Foundations of Transpersonal Psychology" addresses philosophical assumptions underpinning the consciousness movement.
Sam Keen publishes Faces of the Enemy, foundational work on the psychology of enmity and propaganda.
Ken Wilber, Jack Engler, and Daniel Brown, eds.,Transformations of Consciousness.
Beginning of David Ray Griffin's SUNY Press series on constructive postmodernism, drawing from many works of the human potential movement.

1987

Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Important validation of PSI and field effects of consciousness from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Program.
Ervin Laszlo, Evolution: The Grand Synthesis.
James Glick, Chaos.
Georg Feuerstein, Structures of Consciousness.
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.
Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light, an overview of subtle energy bodies and hands-on healing practices, linking them to psychodynamic processes.
Jon Klimo, Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources.
Deane Juhan, Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork.

1988

Willis Harman, Global Mind Change.
Michael Washburn, The Ego and the Dynamic Ground, proposes a neo-Jungian transpersonal model of development alternative to Wilber's spectrum model.
Hameed Ali, under the pen name A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price.
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.
Michael Murphy and Steve Donovan, The Physical and Physiological Effects of Meditation, a comprehensive review of all published studies of meditation.

1989

Deepak Chopra, Quantum Healing, marks a significant turning point in the popularization of the role of consciousness in health and well-being.
Stanislav and Christina Grof publish Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis, which distinguishes between psychosis and potentially liberating spiritual openings.
Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess.
Huston Smith, Beyond the Postmodern Mind.
George Feuerstein, ed., Enlightened Sexuality.
William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscapes.
Dalai Lama awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1990

Warwick Fox, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology
Arthur Hastings, With the Tongues of Men and Angels, a scholarly review of the channeling phenomenon.
Robert Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness.
Roger Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism.
Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul.
Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West.
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, argues that a broad range of transpersonal experiences can be attributed to the common experience of "flow."
Jeanne Achterberg, Woman As Healer.
Gary Doore, ed., What Survives: Contemporary Explorations of Life After Death.
John Nelson's Healing the Split, explores the relation of madness to transcendence, drawing on major consciousness theorists.
Founding of the journal Anthropology of Consciousness.

1991

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, a fusion of Buddhism, Merleau-Ponty and research into cognitive science and the immune system.
Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self.
Richard Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind, overviews Western history through the lens of the transformation of consciousness.
Michael Mahoney, Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations of Psychotherapy.
Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality.
Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe.
Jacob Needleman's Money and the Meaning of Life, turns a transformative lens on a largely neglected area in spiritual circles.
Howard Rheingold, Virtual Realities.
Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age.
Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly.

1992

Michael Murphy writes The Future of the Body, the most comprehensive compendium yet published of evidence for metanormal capacities in human beings.
Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth.
Michael Murphy and George Leonard initiate a two-year experimental class in what they called Integral Transformative Practice, a program combining meditation, imaging, affirmations, intellectual study, physical discipline, nutrition, and group work.
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, tells the epic story of the creation of the universe combining scientific accuracy and poetic vision.
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, reflects penetration of ecological consciousness and human potential movement into upper echelons of government.
Founding of "What is Enlightenment?" magazine by Andrew Cohen
Margaret Wheatley writes Leadership and the New Science, popular extrapolation of new science and consciousness movement principles into organizational theory, very influential in business world.
Michael Lerner, ed., Tikkun -- To Heal, Repair, and Restore the World: An Anthology.
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul.

1993

James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy, pop spiritual adventure book based loosely on human potential principles taps unseen vein of interest in publishing, becoming a runaway bestseller.
Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, quickly surpasses the important milestone of 100,000 copies sold, reflecting Buddhism's growing popularity.
Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan, eds., Paths Beyond Ego.
First of two conferences at Esalen, convened by Theodore Roszak, to consolidate and articulate the outlines of the field of Ecopsychology. (6/12-6/18)
J. Kramer and D. Alstad, The Guru Papers, a harsh indictment of the abuse of power in hierarchical guru relationships.
Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth: Exploring the Human Dimensions of Evolution.
Brendan O'Regan and Caryle Hirshberg, Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography, the most comprehensive survey of the subject.

1994

Ralph Abraham, Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three Great Streams of History.

1995

Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Wilber's magnum opus, presents a four-quadrant model of evolution (inner/outer, individual/collective) in an attempt to create a comprehensive integral philosophy.
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, argues that our emotional intelligence might be more central to our capacity to deal succesfully with the world than traditional measures of intelligence.
Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, a version of complexity theory which posits "order for free" as the result of sufficient diversity and complexity. His basic ideas are extended into human domains as well.
Daniel Matt, The Essence of Kabbalah, popularization of mystical Judaism, part of the revitalization of Western traditions.
Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother, articulates the revival of the divine feminine principle in major world religions.
O. J. Simpson verdict provides compelling evidence for field effects from collectively focused intention. Random-event generators in several locations show highly improbable deviations in randomness precisely correlated with collective attention (est. 500 million people) focused on verdict. (10/3)
George Leonard and Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given.
Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, introduces concept of Spiritual Eldering, revising visions of retirement and old age.
Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, the first of three edited volumes that articulate the contours of the Somatics field.
Frances Vaughan, Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions.
First State of the World Forum (October).

1996

William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness.
Jenny Wade, Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness.
Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism.
Bruce Scotton, Allen Chinen, and John Battista, eds., Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology.
James Hillman, The Soul's Code.
Jean Houston, A Mythic Life.
Paul Ray completes his social survey on an emerging integral culture, a group he numbers at 44 million US adults, all of whom share "values focused on spiritual transformation, ecological sustainability, and the worth of the feminine."
Experiments by Marilyn Schiltz and Richard Wiseman provide strong evidence of experimenter effects on the success or failure of psychical research. Presented at the 39th Parapsychological Association Convention.

1997

Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe, comprehensive overview of the scientific evidence for psi phenomena.
Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, a turn from the inner world to political and social action.
Willis Harman and Maya Porter, eds., The New Business of Business: Sharing Responsibility for a Positive Global Future.
Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within.

1998

Stanislav Grof, The Cosmic Game, the capstone work for this pioneering psychiatrist, charts the metaphysical insights gleaned from thousands of non-ordinary state sessions over four decades.
Willis Harman and Elisabet Sahtouris, Biology Revisioned, examines the repercussions of including consciousness in biology.
Andrew Harvey, Son of Man, radical revisioning of Jesus Christ through a mystical lens, also reflects the turning Westward of the consciousness movement.
Erik Davis, Techgnosis, explores the magic, mythic, and spiritual fabric of the growing world of information technologies.
Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential.
Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, first book of consciousness movement to be publicly endorsed by the President and Vice-President of America.
Kenneth Ring, Lessons From the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience.
Ian Stevenson, Reincarnation and Biology, extends study of reincarnation evidence to include birthmarks and physical deformities.
David Ray Griffin, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem.

1999

Collected Works of Ken Wilber, a first for a living psychologist, reflects the growing popularity of the integral vision.

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This timeline was heavily influenced by three sources in particular: Jorge Ferrer's unpublished chronology of the East-West encounter, Richard Tarnas' timeline in Passion of the Western Mind, and John David Ebert's timeline in Twilight of the Clockwork God: Conversations on Science and Spirituality at the End of an Age.

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