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The contribution of meditative experiences to personal growth : a case study

A three month meditation programme based on Joseph Goldstein's (1976) instructions and discourses given at a Vipassana meditation retreat was implemented among four 17 year old white English-speaking school girls at a private non-racial co-educational high school in South Africa. The meditation experiences of all four subjects were noted, hut only one subject's meditative experiences were documented and used as a case study to explore their use as a tool for personal growth within the framework of ego-psychology and transpersonal psychology. It is concluded that the subject, who meditated on a daily basis, experienced personal growth primarily from the ego-psychology perspective and, it is interesting to note, less so from the transpersonal perspective. Three bypotheses have been put forward for this. Firstly, the actual length of the meditation programme may have been too short, and secondly, the daily meditation sessions too brief to facilitate a process of personal growth and development from within the trans personal psychology framework. Thirdly, the subject was an adolescent school girl and thus may not have been developmentally ready in terms of reaching a level of cognitive, emotional, social and spiritual maturity necessary to experience identification to the transpersonal self.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:1466
Date January 1991
CreatorsKnight, Zelda Gillian
PublisherRhodes University, Faculty of Education, Education
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MEd
Format100 leaves, pdf
RightsKnight, Zelda Gillian

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