As a student of spiritual experience I am much exercised by the question of the status of such experience: on the one hand it is often seminal and transformative for the life and understanding of the subject, and on the other it can be dismissed as purely subjective, as if this decisively reduces its validity in any wider sense. The issue raised here goes beyond spiritual experience as such, into the human sense of relationship – or not – with our bodies and the environment. Both contemplative spirituality and psychotherapy seek to guide the subject from alienation to integration, from a divided self to a wholeness which includes all the dimensions of human being and awareness. In this chapter I shall suggest that these insights demand a wider consideration of the value of subjective experience, feelings and intuitions, and that this in turn suggests the need for an expanded paradigm for what counts as truth.

This chapter will examine the proposition that current attempts to reconnect with nature have the potential to be stepping-stones to spiritual experience. In order to do so it will look at examples of attempts at reconnection but also at some of the more theoretical ideas that are relevant to this. Examples include Forest Bathing and Forest Schools, Regenerative Agriculture and digital apps. The issue of whether secular reconnections can be equated with spiritual experience is examined in the light of ideas about the binary of culture and nature which is then brought into question in the work of such writers as Stengers and Latour. Stengers suggests that it necessary to acknowledge that we are sick through being disconnected with nature and Latour suggests that the language of folds is a means of understanding the reconnections that need to happen. If attention can be focussed on nature and lead to such developments then apparently secular attempts to reconnect even though taken out of their original spiritual context can indeed become stepping stones to spiritual experience as defined in the work of Jeff Leonardi, including a sense of the transcendent and the importance of relationships with both the human and the nonhuman.

Many religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs), particularly those which take place in nature, lead to an enhanced appreciation of the natural world and to an understanding of our interconnectedness with every living thing. Sir Alister Hardy’s youthful experiences of nature mysticism led him to value the spiritual side of human nature, and to establish a centre for the study of RSEs in Oxford in 1969. Today the renamed Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) maintains an archive of over 6000 accounts of RSEs, and continues to receive new additions as people seek to have their experiences valued and validated. In this chapter I will select accounts of experiences of oneness from the RERC Archive to illustrate the positive effect of this altered perspective. I will show how the change from a focus on the individual self with problems of isolation and alienation to an understanding of our essential interconnectedness can lead to a sense of wellbeing, as well as compassion for other people and care for the environment.

Of the world’s mystics, Julian of Norwich is one of the most relational. Her entire spiritual experience, related in narrative detail in her Revelations of Divine Love, is one of relational intimacy — a security of connection and sharing of self, back and forth with the divine Other. Not only does Julian share with us the to-and-fro of this relationship the giving and receiving, but she offers an understanding of how it leads to healing and maturation — our birth into a life of intimacy with self, others, and God. In this chapter, I will trace the progression of Julian’s developing relationship with God as well as draw evidence from Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love for the personal development outcomes from this relationship. This will allow me to describe the kind of spiritual and personal maturity that Julian expects to flow from spiritual experience. I will show how Julian understands spiritual experience and maturation leading to a restoration of union between our everyday experiential selves with a depth of self that, Julian insists, is ‘knit’ lovingly to God from the moment of our creation. They key is surrender, and surrender in the context of intimacy and trust.

There is a strong scientific consensus (IPCC, 2022) that we are heading towards the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. However, this is the first such event that is a direct result of human actions. I have spent much of my adult life contemplating how to respond to this knowledge and this has become for me akin to a Zen koan, or unanswerable question, and thus part of my Buddhist practice. In 2015, Pope Francis (2015) attributed the impending environmental catastrophe to the selfishness of human beings. As a person-centred therapist with a buddhist practice, the philosophy underpinning these approaches have led me to question the notion of inherent human selfishness. Both the person-centred approach, which assumes a prosocial self-actualising tendency in humans, and a Buddhist philosophy which recognises the goodness of our buddha-nature, challenge this view. In this chapter, I consider the notion that working towards healing the environment may be dependent on healing and accepting ourselves (Macy, 2007; Nhat Hanh, 2021) and how a person-centred therapeutic approach informed by Buddhist philosophy may enable the recognition and realisation of our true nature. I consider whether these complementary approaches may be of some help in finding ways to respond, act, live and be on this earth as we face the enormity of the predicament of our times.

For many people spiritual experiences are very positive, often life changing. However, they can have a down side especially when mental health issues are involved. Many people in the health and therapy world still have polarized views – seeing such experiences as always either healthy or crazy. It is much better to view such experiences through the lens of ‘what does this do for this person’ and ‘what support might they need?’ In other words to put the experience into the context of the client, their life and their needs. Given that over half of us in Britain have such experiences from time to time we deserve a more a nuanced approach Britain and many parts of the West could well be viewed as post Christian. Church attendance is at an old time low. This does not reduce spiritual experiences but it does mean that many people struggling with such experiences would not seek religious help. This may not be a bad thing given the history of religion and its support for people struggling with spiritual experience. However, it does mean that the support offered by secular therapists will vary in its acceptance, knowledge and valuing of such experiences.

Inspired by the metaphor of the Marriage of Heaven and Earth, we shall attempt in this presentation to describe some psycho-sociocultural aspects of the relationships between spirituality, wellbeing, and the environment in Brazil, from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, we shall try to put into historical and contemporary context the indigenous cosmology in Brazil and its implications for the relationship between human beings and nature. Secondly, we shall explore the impact of the influx of immigrants to this country on the indigenous people’s lives, cosmology, relationships with nature, wellbeing, and health in general. We then propose to explore five aspects involved in this complex journey: a)  the role of religion, religiosity and spirituality in this process; b) the psychological mechanisms involved in the specific features of the spiritual and religious systems that may have positive and/or negative impacts on the global environment in general, and this country in particular; c) the specific impacts on the relationship between indigenous people and health professionals based on the researches whose results illustrate the conflicts between indigenous cosmology and medical science; d) the challenges for and the impacts of this situation on health policy for indigenous people in Brazil, and for the population in general, relating to the cultural identity, physical and mental health, and the environment; e) the implications for educational/training of future social and health professionals.

Ancestral peoples looking at the sky, wondered, “what is out there?” and buried their loved ones using rituals that reveal their beliefs of life after physical death. These archetypal feelings of longing to return to the womb of la Pachamama or Mother Earth have connected us through the ages. To the ancestral peoples, the Earth was sacred; it had a soul and was considered a common house. For the Andean people, for instance, all were alive and had a soul: the great mountains, the rivers, Pachamama, and majestic trees had subjectivity and alterity. Life and death were part of the same reality, a cycle in which humans took part but were not less or more important than other living beings. I will argue in this chapter that we can only attain spiritual enlightenment by being aware that our nature is interbeing or intersubjectivity. The longing is archetypal, and along with the concept of intersubjectivity, I introduce the concept of archetypal intersubjectivity as an epistemology concerned with Ecospirituality that alerts us to the urgent need for a new ethical centrality to take care of our common house, Earth.

Based on research about spirituality and wellbeing in Brazil, this chapter reflects on the idea that wellbeing is more than living well, even more than living well together. Instead, it puts forward the notion that the sense of wellbeing depends closely on our relationship with others, human and non-human agencies, as well as with the world we are living in. The environmental aspect within the notion of wellbeing was long neglected despite the importance founding scholars of the study of religious experience such as William James and later Alister Hardy attributed to nature. More recently the ‘connectedness to nature theory’ (Restall & Conrad, 2015) which points to the importance of the relationship with the natural world for wellbeing, gained attraction among scholars. Starting will a discussion of nature as an importance place for spiritual experience, this chapter illustrates that our environment is more than the place we live but a living entity with which we develop relationship. Enriched by excerpts from interviews and surveys conducted in Brazil the chapter illustrate the interconnectedness that is at the core of the expanding understanding of wellbeing.

The Person-centered Approach (PCA) is a well-established theory and practice of personal growth and interpersonal relationships, with applications in counselling, group work, education, organizational and cross-cultural behavior etc. This chapter seeks to enrich the approach in the light of Biosynergistic research and theory. It begins by laying the foundation for a Biosynergy-enriched Person-Centered Psychology (Be- PCP) that expands beyond humanism and acknowledges the Personhood of all organisms. To extend Personhood globally requires crafting a qualitative science of collective reality, an interdisciplinary/interspecies theory of Eco-spiritual well- becoming, and new synergistic core conditions to extend the reach and capacity of Person-Centered Interventions (PCI) beyond psychotherapy and social communion. On that biosynergy enriched foundation of PC-Psychology science, theory and intervention, the author constructs four pillars-of-biosynergy to demonstrate 1 new and 3 amplified Core Conditions for Be-PCP. Each pillar represents an essential Condition for enabling Global Well-becoming. The first three are biosynergistic elaborations of the original Rogerian therapeutic Conditions: 1. All Inclusive Positivity (AIP), 2. Mutually Empathic Compassion (MEC) and 3. Ecologically Adaptive Authenticity (EAA). The fourth pillar represents the author’s 4th Key Condition: 4. Global Creative Biosynergy (GCB). Normally represented by “wellbeing,” the term “well-becoming” is coined here to indicate that the vital quest for worldwide wellness is not merely “ being well in the moment.” Through Creative Biosynergy-enabled actualization, all Life – from cell to species, ecosystem to biosphere – pursues continually inclusive, mutually adaptive well- becoming. Finally, the case is made for Biosynergy as driving force in interspecies co- creation of Paradise on Earth – the rebecoming of Eden. Biosynergy may be the main mutual well-becoming process in EarthLife’s spiritual Quest for Transcendence.