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  After some time, I was able to recognize to my great surprise that I was a spermatozoid and that the regular explosive pulses were the beats of a biological pacemaker that were transmitted to my long flagella, which was flashing in vibratory movements. I was involved in a hectic super-race toward the source of some chemical messages that had an enticing and irresistible quality. By then I realized (using the information I had as an educated human adult) that the goal was to reach, penetrate, and fertilize the egg. In spite of the fact that this whole scene seemed absurd and ridiculous to my scientific mind, I could not resist getting involved in this strange race with all seriousness and great expenditure of energy.

  Experiencing myself as a spermatozoid competing for the egg, I was conscious of all the processes involved. What was happening had the basic characteristics of the physiological event as it is taught in medical schools. However, there were many additional dimensions that were far beyond anything that my fantasy could conjure up in the ordinary state of consciousness. The cellular consciousness of this spermatozoid was a whole autonomous microcosm, a universe of its own. I had a clear awareness of the complexity of the biochemical processes in the nucleoplasm and a nebulous sense of the chromosomes, genes, and molecules of DNA.

  As he was perceiving these physiochemical configurations, the psychiatrist in the above narrative was also in touch with elements of ancestral memories, imprints from animal ancestors, mythological motifs, and archetypal forms. Genetics, biochemistry, mythology, and evolutionary history seemed to him to be inextricably interwoven, being different aspects of the same phenomenon. He said he had the sense that this microworld of the spermatozoid was, at that time, influenced and governed by primordial forces that were modifying and determining the outcome of the race. He described these forces as having "the form of karmic, cosmo-biological, and astrological forcefields." He continued:

 The excitement of this race was growing every second and the hectic pace seemed to increase to such a degree that it felt like the flight of a spaceship approaching the speed of light. Then came the culmination in the form of a triumphant implosion and ecstatic fusion with the egg. Shortly before the moment of conception, my consciousness was alternating between the speeding sperm and the egg experiencing strong excitement and expectation of a vaguely defined, but overwhelming event. At the moment of conception, the two units of consciousness merged and I became both of these germinal cells at once.

  After the fusion, the experience continued, still at a fast pace. In a condensed and accelerated way, I experienced the development of the embryo following the conception with full conscious awareness of tissue growth, cellular divisions, and even biochemical processes. There were numerous tasks to be met, occasional challenges, and critical periods to overcome. I was witnessing the differentiation of tissues and formation of new organs; I became the pulsating fetal heart, the columns of liver cells, and the epithelium of the intestinal mucous membrane. An enormous release of energy and light accompanied the embryonal development. I felt that this blinding golden glow had something to do with the biochemical energy involved in the precipitous growth of cells and tissues.

  The following example comes from records of therapy sessions with Richard, a man who had been suffering from chronic suicidal depressions. In one of his sessions, he felt immersed in fetal liquid and fixed to the placenta by the umbilical cord. He was aware of nourishment streaming into his body through the navel area and experienced wonderful feelings of symbiotic unity with his mother. They were connected with each other through the placentary circulation of blood that seemed to be a magical life-giving fluid.

  Richard heard two sets of heart sounds with different frequencies that were merging into one undulating pattern. This was accompanied by peculiar hollow and roaring noises that Richard identified after some hesitation as those produced by the blood gushing through the pelvic arteries and by movements of gas and liquid during the peristaltic movements of the intestines adjacent to the uterus. He was fully aware of his body image and recognized it was very different from his adult one. He was small and his head was disproportionately larger than his body and extremities. On the basis of various experiential clues and with the use of adult judgment, he was able to identify himself as being a mature fetus just before delivery.

  In this state, he suddenly heard strange noises coming from the outside world. They had a very unusual echoing quality, as if they were resounding in a large hall or coming through a layer of water. The resulting effect reminded him of the sound quality that music technicians achieve through electronic means in modern recordings. He finally concluded that the abdominal and uterine walls and the fetal liquid were responsible for this effect and that this was the form in which external sounds reached the fetus.

  He then tried to identify what produced these sounds and where they were coming from. After some time, he could recognize human voices that were yelling and laughing and what seemed to be sounds of carnival trumpets. Suddenly, the idea came to him that these had to be the sounds of a

fair, held annually in his native village two days prior to his birthday. After having put together the above pieces of information, he concluded that his mother must have attended this fair at the advanced stages of pregnancy.

  When we asked Richard's mother independently about the circumstances of his birth, without telling her about his LSD experience, she volunteered among other things the following story: In the relatively dull life of the village, the annual fair was an event providing rare excitement. Although she was in a late stage of pregnancy, she would not have missed this opportunity for anything in the world. In spite of strong objections and warnings from her own mother, she left home to participate in the festivities. According to her relatives, the noisy environment and turmoil of the mart precipitated Richard's delivery. Richard denied ever having heard this story and his mother did not remember ever having told him about this event.

While the possibility of cellular memory from the earliest stages of our lives may stretch the boundaries of our imaginations, it is by no means the greatest challenge posed by transpersonal experience. It is not unusual for people in non-ordinary states of mind to accurately portray material that precedes their conception or to explore the world of their parents, their ancestors, and of the human race. Particularly interesting are "past life" experiences, which suggest that individual consciousness might maintain continuity from one lifetime to another.

 On many occasions, people in non-ordinary states have reported that they experienced episodes occurring long before their own conceptions. For example, many report being able to enter the consciousness of their parents during their mother's or father's childhoods and to experience through their parents' consciousness events from that time. These sequences bring to mind Steven Spielberg's movie
Back to the Future,
in which the characters race back and forth in time.

  I recall the experience of a young Finnish woman who attended one of our workshops in Sweden. Inga experienced herself as a young soldier during World War II, a full fourteen years before her conception. The soldier she became was her father, and she was in the midst of a battle, experiencing it all through his senses and nervous system. She fully identified with him, reliving how his body had felt and the sharpness of the high adrenalin emotions he was undergoing at the time. She was acutely aware of everything that was happening in the area around her. While hiding behind a birch tree, a bullet whistled past and grazed
his-her
cheek and ear.

  Inga's experience was extremely vivid and compelling to her. She could not even imagine where such a memory could have come from. She did know that her father had fought in the Russo-Finnish war, but she was certain he had never told her of anything like the experience that had come to her mind. She decided to call her father on the phone and ask him about her experience.

  After speaking with him for some time she reported back to the rest of the workshop group. As she spoke, she grew more and more excited, awed by her discovery. When she described what she had experienced to her father he had been absolutely astonished. Everything she described to him had actually occurred! Her descriptions of the battlefield and his thoughts and feelings that day were absolutely correct, down to the detailed descriptions of a birch tree forest where the event happened. He also assured her that he had never spoken to anyone about his experience because he had never considered it serious or interesting enough to tell. Though he had never verbalized it, the experience had somehow been passed along to his daughter.

  Early in our LSD research, psychiatrists and psychologists who wished to work with these drugs had to undergo extensive training, which included firsthand experiences with the drug, carefully monitored by trained therapists. In many cases, highly sophisticated and well-educated men and women, who had previously been quite skeptical of even relatively wellfounded concepts such as Jung's "collective unconscious," found themselves, nevertheless, moving across both physical and temporal boundaries in their consciousnesses. In one case, for example, a fifty-year-old psychologist, Nadja, experienced a vivid and convincing identification with her mother. This episode reaches even farther back than Inga's since it depicts an episode from Nadja's mother's early childhood.

  Nadja reported that she experienced a sense of a dramatic shift in her ego identity. Suddenly she was her mother at the age of three or four. The year was 1902 and she was dressed in a starched, fussy dress, though she found herself in a very peculiar and unlikely place, which was especially puzzling because of the way she was dressed. She was hiding under a staircase. She felt frightened and lonely, painfully aware that something terrible had just happened. She realized that only moments before she had said something very bad, had been reprimanded, and someone had roughly put a hand over her mouth.

  From her hiding place, Nadja could see her relatives—aunts, uncles, and cousins—sitting on the porch of a large frame house, dressed in old-fashioned clothes characteristic of that time. Everyone was talking, unaware of her or her unhappiness. She was filled with a sense of failure, overwhelmed by the unfathomable demands of the adults—to be good, to behave herself, to talk properly, to keep herself clean. It seemed impossible to please them. She felt alienated and ashamed.

  As with all such cases, we urged Nadja to attempt to verify this experience, to see if it connected with any objective reality. Soon after the event, Nadja spoke with her mother. She did not want to admit to her mother that she had taken LSD, since she knew her mother would not have approved. Instead, she told her mother that she had dreamed about being her as a little girl, hiding under the steps, deeply ashamed, peaking out at the adults on the porch who were so unmindful of her. No sooner had she begun than her mother interrupted, filling in the details just exactly as Nadja had experienced them. Her mother's detailed descriptions of the event matched Nadja's LSD experience exactly, including details of the large porch and the steps leading up to it, as well as the descriptions of the peoples' clothes, and even the dress she herself had been wearing, covered by a starched white pinafore.

Sometimes the experiential exploration of our ancestry takes us into the lives of grandparents now dead or even into the lives of relatives who lived centuries before us. These distant ancestral experiences are characterized by a sense of being wholly convinced that the person or persons with whom we are identifying belong to our own bloodline. This sense of a genetic connection is often described by those who experience it as "primordial," something that cannot be conveyed with words but must be experienced.

  True ancestral experiences of this kind are always congruent with the racial, cultural, and historical backgrounds of the person through whose eyes we are seeing. In a few instances, apparent discrepancies—such as a person of Anglo Saxon descent having Native American or African ancestral experiences—were cleared up when closer examination of the family genealogy confirmed the accuracy of the experience. Very often, the ancestral

memories contain objective data, allowing us to verify them; this might include information about customs, habits, belief systems, family traditions, idiosyncrasies, prejudices, and superstitions known to be held or practiced by the ancestor in question.

  Additional support for the authenticity of ancestral experiences can come from observing the people having these experiences. Very often, in both workshops and private therapy sessions we have noted dramatic changes in the person's physical appearance and behavior. For example, a person's facial expressions, physical posture, gestures, emotional reactions, and thought processes may all take on characteristics of the ancestor in question.