Britisher John Heron is an internationally recognized  transpersonal psychologist who created the International Centre for Co-operative Inquiry in Tuscany, Italy.  A bit of biographic data:  He also founded the Human Potential Research Project at the University of Surrey in England.  He was Assistant Director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation at the University of London.  A couple of his several books are Co-operative Inquiry [1996], Sacred Science:  Person-centred Inquiry into the Spiritual and the Subtle [1998].  Heron is also known for his critiquing of Ken Wilber's philosophy, famously and infamously, depending on which side of the fence that may call you.  It definitely was a spirited debate, one not to be missed by those who are drawn to the meeting ground of spirituality and psychology.

          Heron [and also fellow collaborator, Peter Reason] suggest, ".. what is needed is an honest account of personal spiritual experience in a true community of peers."  This is the most basic premise of their "Sacred Science" or co-operative inquiry approach to better understanding our multidimensional beingness, and exactly this adventure is what this web portal is all about.  

Similarly he says in Sacred Science:

If the structure of the spiritual path were really based on transcendental inquiry involving consensual validation in a community of peers, then we should expect to see this at work among those who claim to be spiritually accomplished, the so-called spiritual maters.  Current masters of the same  and different schools would meet regularly and engage in ecumenical dialogue and experiential inquiry.  This would parallel what goes on in ordinary science, where leaders in any field are in regular peer exchange to review the validity of each other's work and try it out experimentally.  But of course spiritual masters are notorious for each becoming a law unto himself.  They sedulously avoid acknowledging the existence of other masters.  The authority each master claims for himself -- as a basis for eliciting spiritual projection in devotees -- precludes any kind of peer relationship with any other.  There are important exceptions to this tendency, such as the Dalai Lama, who need to be honoured [whom Heron quotes here]:   

I suggest that we encourage meetings between people from different religious traditions who have had some deeper spiritual experiences ... genuine practitioners who  come together and share insihgts as a result of religious practice.  According to my own experience, this is a powerful and effective means of enlightening each other in a more profound and direct way.  (Dalai Lama, 1996) 

                                                               ~~John Heron (1998)

What is so far unknown is a form of sacred science in which human beings co-operate together to inquire in a rigorous manner into the nature of their own spiritual and subtle experience, without prior allegiance to any existing school.    An increasing number of spiritually minded people are currently busy with their own lived inquiry, and are seeking open and constructive dialogue about it.   I call this social phenomenon a newly emerging and self-generating spiritual culture.  It is a loose, informal network of individuals and groups who are creating their own spiritual path from a diversity of ancient and modern sources.  It involves a growing and significant minority of people across the planet.   

This culture is born from the post-war [WWII] boom of adult and continuing education, of people-centred and peer self-help movements of all kinds, of the democratization and laicization of knowledge-acquisition, of health care, of psychological and soul growth.  There has been in the second half of the twentieth century, a growing deprofessionalization of the skills of taking care of body, mind and spirit.  At the same time a vast proliferation of methods of self-care has mushroomed, from innumerable diets to every kind of spiritual practice.  The human race stirs itself to fulfill the legacy of the Renaissance:  the idea of the free and self-determining human person, active in all spheres of human endeavor.      

What this means is a doctrine of universal political rights.  This is an advance on the widely accepted right of any person to political membership of their community, that is, to participate in the framing and working of political institutions.  The universal version expands such participation so that every social situation of persons to participate in any decision-making that affects the fulfillment of their needs and interests, the expression of their preferences, values, and above all, the inner life of their spirit.  This right to political participation in the universal sense is on an unidentified march throughout the world, claiming attention not only in political institutions, but, in piecemeal fashion, in the family, in education, in medicine, in industry, in research, and, finally, in religion.  It is the emergence of personhood as the imago dei:  each human a responsible co-creator of their domain within the universal estate, in relation with others similarly engaged.     

Religious authority has for centuries been the lynch-pin which has kept in place the whole wheel of authoritarianism in society.  Traditional religious institutions, East and West, are still today major bastions of the restriction of rights, for example, the spiritual rights of women.  Religious authoritarianism ... makes its continuing bid for control, even in modern transpersonal theory and practice.  Yet people on every hand are bursting out of this ancient containing chrysalis of the free human spirit.         

Emerging self-determination in the religious sphere is, in my worldview, the sign of immanent spiritual life at work at a breakthrough level, not as in the past when this or that religious innovator started a modified version of Christianity or Buddhism or some other traditional creed, but in large numbers of ordinary people generating their own lived inquiry into religious practice and deep inner transformation.  My sense of it is that there are three interrelated criteria which, applying in varying degrees to any one individual, identify people in this self-generating spiritual culture:

                                                                                               ~~John Heron (1998)