Some women experience non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) during childbirth. This paper applies a transpersonal psychology framework to understand these experiences, drawing on stories collected from mothers, fathers, and midwives in Auckland, New Zealand between 2001 and 2006. It compares local women's NOSC with ethnographic accounts of spirit-possession in indigenous midwifery and reinterprets Medieval European witch-hunts from this perspective. The author argues that midwives should learn to identify and support women's NOSC during labor, as many women find strength and wisdom through these states. The topic is also relevant to men present at births as fathers or health professionals. The inquiry aims to revalorize NOSC among mothers and educate birth attendants.
A spiritual revolution in American religious culture, driven by the hybridization of Eastern and Western traditions (a process called Creolization), peaked after WWII and during the Vietnam War, making transcendence a central orientation. This led to a non-relational transpersonal psychology where Americanized nondualism dominates. The author argues that popular New Age transpersonalism traps the spirit, breeding a self-serving, Self-as-everything form of spiritual narcissism. Given that some call the New Age the religion of global capitalism, a more relational spirituality is proposed as a vital intervention into this self-centeredness and a salve for a world in Creolization.