Consciousness Development in Rastafari: A Perspective from the Psychology of Religion
Anthropology of Consciousness February 10, 2021 Christian Stokke 5 citations
A Rastafari perspective on consciousness development, symbolized by the animals Anancy, lion, and lamb, is compared to established developmental stage theories from psychology and the psychology of religion. The analysis draws on dialogues from an online Rastafari community with a global reach, run by a group based in Trinidad, whose members align with the "spiritual, but not religious" trend. The paper interprets this material through the lens of Rastafari theorist Dennis Forsythe, relating the Rastafari stages to preconventional, traditional, modern, pluralist, and integral stages described by theorists such as Maslow, Kohlberg, Fowler, Gilligan, and Wilber.