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ABSTRACT: This introductory article to a special thematic issue of the Journal is devoted to creating a better understanding of the nexus between transpersonal psychology and the media. This article provides a general overview of what appears to be emerging as a transpersonal media movement. A brief discussion of the various signposts and implications of this movement are considered, with particular attention paid to cinema, as film seems to provide a vivid example of how the transpersonal appears in media by virtue of its widespread availability, its diffusion of shared and vicarious experience, and other aspects. Three lenses for perceiving and dialoguing about transpersonal media are offered: transpersonal content, transpersonal form, and transpersonal purpose. Some of the implications are suggested, and an invitation for further inquiry is made.
INTRODUCTION
This article provides an introductory overview of what seems to be an emerging movement of transpersonal elements that are appearing in the popular media. By suggesting only a portion of the mounting evidence for this nascent area of inquiry and research, we invite the reader into a dialogue exploring this emerging movement. This special focus issue of the Journal presents several scholarly approaches to this topic rather than a comprehensive examination of it. The discussion will focus on this movement as it appears in the cinematic medium, since cinema seems to provide a vivid example of what may in fact be occurring within other media sources as well.
MODERN TRANSPERSONAL MEDIA
There are several senses in which the modern popular media may be considered as inherently transpersonal. The first is that the newspapers, magazines, books, television, internet, and cinema which comprise these media are all designed to communicate directly with the masses; they deal intrinsically with the human collective, and thus they may be conceptualized as a form of transpersonal transmission.
Also, the popular media is the major carrier of new information or insight. So just as one might say that the filaments in a light bulb are the media by which an electric light illuminates an entire room, so too, the popular media becomes the source of illumination for an entire culture. ''Media'' may thus be considered inherently transpersonal inasmuch as it ''transcends the personal,'' and is ''transindividual'' (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, Vol....