The Association for Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) is sponsoring another ATP Forum. Dr. Steven Schmitz is hosting the Forums as a community service. This series of presentations was started in March of 2020 and has continued to be offered to the global community. Each event features a Transpersonal Psychology Professional as a guest speaker. The Forums are provided online, at no cost, the second Saturday of every month.

The Forums last for 90 minutes and are held online in the USA from 11:00 am until 12:30 pm (PST). The format consists of approximately 60 minutes for a presentation of a transpersonal topic and 30 minutes for Q & A and dialogue with the speaker.

You are invited to join the next ATP Forum on Saturday, March 11, 2023. Our featured speaker is Dr. John H. Buchanan. John received his master's degree in humanistic/transpersonal psychology from West Georgia College and his doctorate from the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. He has been trained and certified as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner by Stan and Christina Grof. His book, Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics, and Sobriety, based upon his continuing interests in process philosophy and transpersonal psychology, was published in the fall of 2022. Dr. Buchanan has contributed a number of journal articles and book chapters on similar topics. In 2020 he was a contributing editor for Rethinking Consciousness: Extraordinary Challenges for Contemporary Science. Dr. Buchanan also serves as president of the Helios Foundation.

Dr. Buchanan will be speaking about ideas from his book, Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics, and Sobriety. In this book, John Buchanan details his search for a paradigm capable of integrating the diverse kinds of data arising out of the scientific endeavor, our philosophical heritage, and insights from extraordinary experience, as well as recognizing fully the value and importance of nature and everyday life. The author traces both his personal and his academic journey to discover a worldview adequate to all the experiences and ideas from his studies in psychology, philosophy, and religion. He also addresses his encounters with alcohol and drugs, psychedelics and non-ordinary states, and addiction and recovery. Using some pivotal experiences?including psychedelic ones?to illuminate the most important questions and revelations that arose in his life, Dr. Buchanan attempts to make more accessible the sometimes difficult, often novel, and always fascinating ideas and theories found in process thought and transpersonal psychology.

In particular, Processing Reality acts as an in-depth introduction to Stanislav Grof's transpersonal psychology and Alfred North Whitehead's "philosophy of organism." It is argued that these two revolutionary theories, working together, form the basis for a postmodern paradigm capable of unifying science, religion, and human existence. In this way it recognizes the achievements of the modern world, while rescuing spiritual values and vital dimensions of human experience and the natural world that have been lost or obscured along the way. Whitehead's process philosophy provides a uniting worldview. Grof's transpersonal psychology fleshes out the spiritual dimensions of Whitehead's thought, as well as offers experiential access to these spiritual depths. Together this reenchanted worldview is poised to help us address the crises that are facing our society and our planet.