When I decided to return to the academia at the age of 60 (I dropped out of medical school 30 years earlier), it was with the intention to continue my spiritual journey in that framework. My research questions are, accordingly, my spiritual questions. 

​

Wishing to actively engage with the possibility of living on a "spiritual high plateau" (Maslow's term) I embarked on a PhD research on Living Transcendence: A phenomenological study of spiritual exemplars at the University of Haifa, Counselling and Human Development Department. This research enabled me to conduct multiple interviews (mostly by Zoom) with 32 spiritual exemplars of the Abrahamic, Eastern, shamanic / indigenous and humanistic / transpersonal psyhcology traditions around the globe about their lived experience.

​

At the beginning of 2025 I completed my 3-publications PhD thesis, titled Living Transcendence and Spiritual Exemplarity and received the PhD title. At the same time that I was writing my thesis, I started a follow-up educational and research project I call Experience of Being.

​

The Experience of Being project will include 160 to 200 in-depth phenomenological interviews with spiritual practitioners from India, Japan, Israel and the West. As of the summer of 2026, it has produced three offshoots:

• An online university course (MOOC) at the University of Haifa called Enlightenment for Beginners: Where Brain Meets Being, which I co-created with Prof. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana.

• A manuscript with the title Bringing forth the background: Living Transcendence and the Experience of Being, which was accepted for publication at the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

• A research with the title Recognizing the Ever-present Background experience-of-Being (EBB): A cross-cultural/tradition neurophenomenological study of awakening, supported by a grant from The Consciousness Foundation, which I will conduct with Prof. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana and Dr. Yair Dor-Ziderman.

​

Books

• Tadmor, Y., Freimann, A. (editors). Education - Essence and Spirit. MOFET Publications, Israel (2012)

• Tadmor, Y., Freimann, A. (editors). Education - The Human Questions. MOFET Publications, Israel (2015)

• Freimann, A. Spiritual Transmission: Paradoxes and Dilemmas On the Spiritual Path. Monkfish Book Publishing, Rhinebeck, NY. (2018). ISBN-13: 978-1939681959

​

Papers

• ​​Freimann, A. (2026). Bringing forth the background: Living Transcendence and the Experience of Being. Accepted for publication at the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in July 2026. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35444.10889

• Freimann, A., Mayseless, O., Hart, T., & Johnson, A. (2025). Self-transformative research: Effects on researchers of a holistic collaborative study of spiritual exemplars. In Journal of Contemplative Studies no. 02 (2025): 1-1–31. doi: 10.57010/TIWG2652 

• Freimann, A., Mayseless, O., Hart, T., & Johnson, A. (2024). Living transcendence: A phenomenological study of spiritual exemplars. The Humanistic Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000359

• Freimann, A., Mayseless, O., Hart, T., & Johnson, A. (2025). What makes someone a spiritual exemplar to another? Archive for the Psychology of Religion. 10.1177/00846724251329353

• Freimann A., Mayseless O. (2020). Surrender to Another Person: The Case of a Spiritual Master. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. doi:10.1177/0022167820975636

 

Chapters

• Freimann, A., Berkovich-Ohana, A. (2024). Enligthened joy and love, selflessness and beyond. In Happiness and the Psychology of Enlightenment (Editor: Patrick Jones). IntechOpen. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.1007429

​

See my profile on ResearchGate

​