Robert K. C. Forman

Robert K. C. Forman, a long-term TM-practitioner and a critic of the constructionist approach to mystical experience, was professor of religion at the City University of New York, author of several studies on religious experience, and co-editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Forman is a long-term Transcendental meditation practitioner, with over 40 years of practice. After two years of practice he had his first "break-through" during a nine-month meditation retreat:

On January 4, 1972, at about 4 in the afternoon, the back of my neck zipped itself into extinction. I was on a 9 month Transcendental Meditation retreat, meditating and doing Yoga for about 8 hours daily. Even though I was hyper vigilant about inner shifts there, I could not have missed it. Who I was, how I thought, how I saw, even how I would sleep from that night on were now, and would remain ever after, different.

This initial experience led him to pursuing a PhD at Columbia University, and an academic career in religious studies.

Forman has worked as professor of religion at City University of New York, both Hunter College and City College, and is Founding Executive Director of The Forge Institute for Spirituality and Social Change. His books include The Problems of Pure Consciousness, The Innate Capacity and "Enlightenment Ain't What It's Cracked Up to Be".

As well as editing a number of books on the topic of consciousness and mysticism, Forman has worked as co-editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He has also collaborated with Ken Wilber on work (Forman, Wilber & Andresen, 2000).

Forman describes his position as "perennial psychology", but he is keen to point out that this is not the same as perennial philosophy.

Forman has taken a strong stance against Katz' constructivism, and can be understood as a defender of the perennialist position on mystical experience, the view that there is indeed a core experience common to mystics of all creeds, cultures and generations. Notable representatives of this perennial philosophy school, such as William James, Evelyn Underhill, James Bissett Pratt, Mircea Eliade and Walter Terence Stace, argue that mystical experience gives a direct contact with an absolute reality, which is thereafter interpreted according to one's religious and cultural background.

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