GPHD8216: Transpersonal Perspectives on Eros and Gender

This course explores the role of Eros in transpersonal development, including physical, relational, cognitive, creative, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. The course will briefly touch upon historical and anthropological understandings of Eros, as well as the complicated role that sexuality plays in religion. The phenomenology of transcendent sexual experiences will be examined as a window into the relationship between the erotic and the spiritual. We will investigate spiritual disciplines and practices that specifically cultivate the erotic potentials of sexuality as transpersonal development. Traditional binary models of gender identity will be deconstructed and expanded to include more fluid and nondual approaches to the experience of gender and gendered models of divinity and spirituality. There will be an experiential component to this course, and students should be prepared to critically examine and reflect upon personal assumptions, values, and attitudes about Eros and gender within a safe environment. This course examines exceptional human experiences (EHEs; also called peak, anomalous, transcendent, mystical, spiritually transformative, etc. experiences). Students will learn basic EHE classifications and therefore how to identify an EHE. Students will also learn how EHEs may dramatically influence some people's lives (called aftereffects), as well as techniques used to integrate said aftereffects.