Mowlavi’s Educated Person versus Transpersonal Curriculum: A Comparative Critique of Divine and Cosmic Spirituality and Implications for a Unitive Curriculum

Document Type : پژوهشی

Authors

Mahmoud Rezaei Otorabad ¹

Behrooz Mahram ²

Bakhtiar Shabani Varaki ³

¹ . Ph.D. Candidate in Curriculum Development, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

² Professor, Department of Curriculum Studies and Instruction, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

³ Professor, Department of Foundations of Education, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

10.22067/fedu.2026.99992.1540

Abstract

Abstract
This study critically compares the transpersonal curriculum with Mawlana’s educational anthropology to explore the implications for developing an alternative spiritual curriculum. The central problem concerns two contrasting conceptions of spirituality: the transpersonal perspective, which approaches spirituality primarily through inner experience and psychological processes without necessarily grounding them in a determinate conception of divine reality, and Mawlana’s mystical perspective, which understands spirituality as an existential dimension rooted in the human relationship with divine truth and oriented toward proximity to God. Adopting a speculative and critical-comparative approach, the study examines the two frameworks along four dimensions: conceptions of spirituality, ontology, anthropology, and epistemology. The findings indicate that, within the transpersonal framework, the ideal person is conceived as a self-transcending subject with a fluid identity who participates in the construction and interpretation of spiritual reality. In contrast, Mawlana’s educated person (ensān-e farhīkhte) is conceived as a monotheistic wayfarer (sālek) whose formation involves four interconnected existential dimensions: loving being, integral consciousness, ethical integration, and compassionate presence. The fundamental contrast between these two frameworks concerns not transpersonal experience as such, but the curricular assumptions and structures through which spirituality is educationally articulated. From Mawlana’s perspective, a transpersonal curriculum that does not commit to a determinate monotheistic telos cannot adequately provide the conditions for cultivating the educated person as a monotheistic wayfarer. The study therefore proposes a Unitive Curriculum as an alternative spiritual curriculum, in which the overarching aim is spiritual wayfaring toward divine proximity. Its content, teaching and learning strategies, assessment, learning environment, and the roles of teacher and learner are derived from Mawlana’s educational anthropology, particularly his conception of the wayfarer and the four dimensions of the educated person. This alternative curriculum is organized around a hermeneutical-spiritual arc, which serves as the integrating principle of the educational process and connects its aims, content, pedagogical practices, and forms of evaluation.
Synopsis
Modern education, after a long period dominated by secularism and by classical models centered on cognitive and skill-based outcomes, faces an existential and semantic crisis. Holistic education and spiritual curricula have emerged in response, and the transpersonal curriculum is among the most influential; it seeks educational spaces oriented toward meaning, purpose, and existential transcendence (Esbjorn-Hargens et al., 2010; Miller, 2000). The foundational question is how spirituality is defined in this curriculum and on which ontological, anthropological, and epistemological foundations it rests. This study argues that the transpersonal approach reduces spirituality to inner experiences and psychological functions severed from divine foundations, whereas in Mowlavi's (Mawlana Rumi's) mysticism spirituality is an existential dimension rooted in the human relation to divine truth and oriented toward proximity to God (qurb). It asks what limitations the transpersonal foundations pose for educating the "educated person" (ensān-e farhīkhte) as Mowlavi conceives of it, and it draws on Mowlavi's epistemic resources to design an alternative spiritual curriculum. The closest earlier study built a religion-and-life curriculum on the transpersonal framework without critiquing its ontological compatibility with monotheistic anthropology; this study places that critique first. Following Peters (1966), the educated person is derived analytically from within a determinate tradition, without claiming a binding definition.
The research is speculative and comparative-critical, and proceeded in two steps. First, the two systems were conceptually formulated. Document analysis (Bowen, 2009) served as an independent stage for selecting and validating sources by Scott's criteria of authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaningfulness. For Mowlavi, the six books of the Masnavi in Nicholson's edition were the primary document, supplemented by Karim Zamani's commentary; for the transpersonal approach, foundational texts and the independent curriculum literature were used (Rowe & Braud, 2013; Ferrer, Romero, & Albareda, 2005; Kessler, 2000; Miller, 2000). Inductive conceptual content analysis (Krippendorff, 2018; Weber, 1990), through open coding, axial categorization, and abstraction (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008), extracted the ontological, anthropological, and epistemological foundations, while the Masnavi was read hermeneutically, with Gadamer and Ricoeur, to reconstruct a coherent character from dispersed anecdotes. Second, the systems were compared and critiqued along four axes—conception of spirituality, ontology, anthropology, and epistemology—and implications for an alternative curriculum were derived deductively. Validity rested on authentic texts and expert peer review. The authors declare an explicitly normative, monotheistic stance and acknowledge limits, such as the "Americanized Rumi" phenomenon.
The transpersonal curriculum draws on James's radical empiricism, Jungian and Assagiolian psychology, and the participatory turn. Its ontology is participatory holism: the subject–object divide dissolves, spiritual reality is co-created in the interaction of person and world, and God or the Absolute is identified with the totality of being. Its ideal person is a fluid, self-transcending consciousness who, through peak experiences, moves beyond individual identity; the aim is self-transcendence, not self-actualization, and knowledge is validated by experiential depth and coherence.
Mowlavi's ontology is explicitly divine. Existential monotheism (tawhīd-e vojūdī) means not incarnation but the wayfarer's annihilation (fanā') in, and subsistence (baqā') through, God, within a hierarchy of being and a purposeful world. Partial reason, bound to carnal desires, cannot discern truth; universal reason connects the human being to perfect reason, and true knowledge comes from monotheistic intuition, inner purification, and the move from imitation to verification. The educated person is a monotheistic wayfarer (sālek) defined by four interconnected dimensions—loving being, integral consciousness, ethical integration, and compassionate presence—manifestations of one identity rather than scattered virtues.
The comparison shows opposition on all four axes: experience and function versus existential relation to sacred truth; participatory holism versus monotheistic ontology; an endless, self-transcending subject versus a directed wayfarer; and an immanent criterion of efficacy versus a transcendent criterion of correspondence with independent truth. The opposition concerns not transpersonal experience itself but the curricular apparatus built upon it. Given the mystical distinction between state (ḥāl) and station (maqām), such experience may at most be a bridge; a curriculum that refuses a determinate end mistakes the bridge for the destination and is therefore insufficient for educating Mowlavi's educated person.
Because the educated person is a being in becoming, the alternative is not linear and Tylerian but a path of wayfaring grounded in the hermeneutical-spiritual arc, with eight elements derived from Klein's classification. Aims: proximity to God, love-based motivation, existential sincerity, merciful justice. Content: servitude, contentment, submission, annihilation, subsistence, universal reason, self-purification. Competencies: persistent seeking, resilient contentment, sincerity in action, integrative insight. Strategies: guided philosophical dialogue, collective spiritual experience, monotheistically redefined mindfulness, teaching through action and metaphor, gardening. Assessment: seeking as the main indicator, growth "from crescent to full moon," continuous and mirror-like evaluation. Environment: garden-like, combining the fire of challenge and the water of care. Roles: the teacher as lover, physician, and mirror; the learner as seeker, patient, and self-accountable researcher.
Conclusion
Despite moving beyond purely cognitive and skill-based approaches, the transpersonal curriculum results from a rupture with ontological foundations and yields a functional spirituality and an anthropology without a transcendent end. Mowlavi's thought offers a coherent, operational alternative whose four dimensions support an integrated curriculum rather than separate courses in ethics, religion, and life skills. The model addresses a gap in Iran's Document of Fundamental Transformation of Education, whose aim of a monotheistic, truth-seeking person has largely remained at the level of ideals, and is proposed as a complement, not a replacement, in non-governmental schools, teacher education, and elective higher-education units. It is a theoretical framework rather than a prescription; implementation requires institutional mediations, such as redesigning teacher practicums around the teacher roles and pilot testing, followed by qualitative and experimental studies. No revision of content, strategy, or assessment succeeds without transforming the teacher's existential quality—from a source of knowledge to an exemplar of the educated person.

Keywords

Mowlavi

educated person

transpersonal curriculum

unitive curriculum

spiritual education

Subjects

• Foundations of Education

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