When the Impossible Happens (3 page)

Parts 2, 3, and 4 of the book feature stories that challenge the current scientific understanding of the nature of memory and its limits. Mainstream psychiatrists and neurophysiologists assume that the brain of the newborn is not mature enough to record the memory of hours of stressful and painful experiences during biological birth. The work with holotropic states of consciousness clearly demonstrates that each of us carries in the unconscious psyche not only the memory of our delivery and the trauma associated with it, but also memories of our prenatal life and early embryonal existence, our conception, and of the lives of our human and animal ancestors.

It is not very plausible that our entire biological history could be stored in the DNA and that, under special circumstances, this record could be translated into a vivid experience. However, the above memories—embryonal, ancestral, racial, and phylogenetic—at least come from situations for which it is possible to imagine material substrate capable of carrying information. Many experiences in holotropic states present an even more formidable conceptual problem because they suggest the existence of memory without any material substrate whatsoever.

Here belong, for example, experiential sequences portraying events from human history stored in the archives of the collective unconscious as envisioned by C.G. Jung, past-life memories, and experiential identification with the members of other species. All these experiences clearly transcend ancestral, racial, and biological lines of any kind, and it is impossible to imagine any physical medium in which they could be recorded. They seem to be stored in fields that are currently unknown to science or embedded in the field of consciousness itself.

The fifth part of the book consists of stories illustrating phenomena traditionally studied by parapsychologists—telepathy and clairvoyance, psychometry, experiences of astral realms, communication with discarnate entities and spirit guides, encounters with archetypal beings, channeling, mind-over-matter phenomena
(siddhis),
and out-of-body experiences during which disembodied consciousness accurately perceives immediate or remote environments. Unbiased study of these extraordinary experiences and events suggests that materialistic science has been premature in ridiculing this entire realm and the researchers who study it. These observations reveal the existence of “anomalous phenomena” that might in the future lead to a radical revision of the scientific worldview and its basic metaphysical assumptions.

A special section in the book (Part 6) is dedicated to stories describing observations that challenge the most fundamental assumptions of mainstream psychiatrists concerning the nature of psychotic episodes, currently considered manifestations of serious mental diseases. It also includes accounts of surprising positive results of highly unorthodox and controversial approaches to treatment. An example of such psychiatric “heresy” is seeing episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness as crises of spiritual opening (“spiritual emergencies”), rather than as psychotic episodes. Another example is approaching symptoms as expressing a self-healing attempt of the psyche and working with them. The most radical and unusual situations described in this section of the book involve the use of psychedelics to activate, rather than suppress, psychotic symptoms, dramatic improvements achieved by a method resembling exorcism, and therapeutic breakthroughs featuring psychodynamic mechanisms that would not make any sense to traditional psychiatrists.

Part 7 of the book focuses on the attitude of traditional scientists toward the paradigm-breaking observations generated by consciousness research and transpersonal psychology. The first story is an extreme but typical example of resistance to the new data found in many members of the academic community. It involves a brilliant, world-renowned scientist who defends his intellectual convictions with such stubbornness and determination that it matches the position of a religious fundamentalist. The second story illustrates what happens when traditionally trained professionals with a materialistic orientation have the opportunity to experience holotropic states of consciousness. The third one describes how my own determined resistance to astrology, a discipline mocked and ridiculed by “serious” scientists, had to succumb to the influx of convincing observations.

This book is a very personal statement, revealing many intimate details of my private and professional life. Most clinicians and researchers would hesitate to disclose so much subjective information because of their concern that this would damage their scientific reputation. The reason that I share with so much honesty the trials and tribulations of my personal quest is that I want this information to ease the struggle and quandary of people involved in serious self-exploration and help them avoid the mistakes and pitfalls that are integral parts of any venture into new, unexplored territories.

I hope that open-minded readers will see the personal stories that I share in these memoirs of my unconventional quest as a testimony to the passion with which I have pursued the search for knowledge and wisdom hidden in the deep recesses of the human psyche. If this book provides useful information and assistance for even a small fraction of the thousands of people experiencing holotropic states of consciousness and exploring non-ordinary realities, my sacrifice of personal privacy has not been in vain.

Stanislav Grof M.D., Ph.D.
Mill Valley, California
August 2005

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a rich tapestry of extraordinary adventures in my inner world and everyday reality that I have experienced in the course of five decades of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances, by various nondrug methods, and those occur ring spontaneously in the middle of everyday life. This quest has taken me to realms and dimensions of reality my culture and my professional colleagues were telling me did not exist, except in the minds of severely disturbed psychiatric patients. It took years of intellectual struggle before I reached certainty that the normally invisible beings I was encountering and the domains I was visiting in my inner journeys had objective existence in the collective unconscious and lent themselves to consensual validation. In most cases, such validation required individuals who had the opportunity to experience personally these realities in non-ordinary states of consciousness.

This challenging journey of discovery and self-discovery would have been incomparably more difficult had I undertaken it alone. It has been extremely helpful and validating to meet open-minded individuals who shared the new understanding of consciousness, reality, and the human psyche that was emerging from the study of non-ordinary states or who were open to it. I am extremely grateful for the encouragement and support I have received from like-minded colleagues, who have independently confirmed, on the basis of their own research and personal experiences, various aspects of the new understanding of reality emerging from my work. Over the years, the number of such individuals kept increasing, and at present there are too many to acknowledge all of them individually by name. I will mention only a few, whose support was particularly important and meaningful.

Immediately after my arrival in the United States, it was Joel Elkes, head of the psychiatric department at Johns Hopkins University, who had invited me to this country as Experimental and Research Fellow and later offered me the position of assistant professor of psychiatry. A brilliant scientist with impeccable academic credentials, Joel was very open-minded and showed keen interest in the new vision of the human psyche and of reality emerging from psychedelic research. His intellectual and administrative support was invaluable for our team at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Catonsville, Maryland, conducting in the late 1960s and early 1970s the last surviving psychedelic research in the United States. It is difficult to find appropriate words for the gratitude I feel to Albert Kurland, director of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, and the members of our research team, particularly Sandy Unger, the late Walter Pahnke, Charles Savage, Bill Richards and his late wife, Ilse, Bob and Karen Leihy, Sidney Wolf, Rich Yensen, the late Franco di Leo, and Nancy Jewel, who received me with open hearts into their professional and personal lives; their families became for me my second home.

I am extremely grateful to Michael Murphy, who invited me as Scholar-in-Residence to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, a unique center for exploration of the human potential that he had founded jointly with Dick Price. My stay at Esalen between 1973 and 1987 was for me an exceptionally validating and affirming experience. Thanks to the extraordinarily rich program of workshops offered by the institute, I had the opportunity to meet personally most of the pioneers of new paradigm science, founders of various schools of experiential psychotherapy, and prominent spiritual figures, who came to Esalen as visiting teachers. My wife, Christina, and I conducted thirty monthlong workshops at Esalen, which gave us the opportunity to invite these remarkable people as guest faculty, get acquainted with their teachings, and establish friendships with them. Esalen also provided for us an ideal setting for developing Holotropic Breathwork, a powerful experiential method of self-exploration and therapy.

The bonds we formed at Esalen with visiting teachers made it possible for Christina and me to launch a series of large transpersonal conferences held in different parts of the world—North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The stellar cast of these meetings and their rich interdisciplinary program provided further validation for the new emerging vision of reality and understanding of the psyche, consciousness, and human nature. It was particularly encouraging that many presenters at these conferences sharing this new perspective had solid educational backgrounds, extraordinary intelligence, and impressive academic credentials.

My special thanks go to a circle of our close friends and fellow seekers in the Bay Area that has been meeting regularly since we moved from Big Sur to Mill Valley—Angeles Arrien, Michael and Sandra Harner, Jack and Liana Kornfield, Bokara Legendre, Ram Dass, Frances Vaughan, and Roger Walsh. Our joint dinners, meditation groups, and exchange of information about various subjects have been for me a treasure trove of new ideas, inspiration, useful suggestions, and critical comments but, above all, provided powerful support and validation based on our general consensus about the basic tenets of the transpersonal vision and the spiritual worldview. Rick Tarnas, another close friend, brilliant astrologer, and archetypal psychologist, has helped me enormously in our countless discussions and courses and workshops we have co-led over the years to appreciate and embrace astrology, a discipline that—more than any other—stretched my conceptual boundaries and expanded my intellectual horizons. Independently, I have also received much inspiration, validation, and support from Ervin Laszlo and Ralph Metzner.

I am deeply grateful to Michael Marcus, Janet Zand, John Buchanan, Bokara Legendre, and Betsy Gordon for their friendship and generous support they have granted our work over the years. My brother, Paul, psychiatrist specializing in research of affective disorders, represents a unique combination of excellent probing intellect, scientific passion, and extraordinary generosity. He has been my intimate friend, confidant, enthusiastic fan, and honest and sincere critic. Special thanks go to Tav and Cary Sparks, our dear friends and co-workers for more than two decades. They both have played a pivotal role in our lives as codirectors of Grof Transpersonal Training (GTT) and as cocoordinators of workshops and international transpersonal conferences we have organized in many different parts of the world. Tav has been for years my travel companion and coleader, and Cary has been the soul of all our joint projects. My special thanks go to Marianne Wobcke for allowing me to include in this book the extraordinary story of her personal quest.

The normally invisible non-ordinary dimensions of reality would have remained hidden for me without the epoch-making discovery and life’s work of Albert Hofmann, who gave the world extraordinary tools for exploring the human psyche—LSD, psilocybine, psilocine, and monoethylamid of lysergic acid. I would like to use this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to him for everything that his discoveries brought into my personal and professional life and the lives of countless others who used his gift responsibly and with the respect that this extraordinary tool deserves.

I have had the privilege to know Albert personally and meet him on various occasions. Over the years, I have developed great affection and deep admiration for him, not only as an outstanding scientist, but also as an extraordinary human being. After more than a century of a full, blessed, and productive life, he radiates amazing vitality, curiosity, and love for all creation. A few months ago, when he spent a day with the group of our trainees in Gruyeres, Switzerland, we all felt that we were not listening to a scientific lecture, but had a darshan with a spiritual teacher. We had no doubt that Albert had joined the group of great scientists—like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton—whose rigorous pursuit of their discipline brought recognition of the miraculous divine order underlying the world of matter and the natural phenomena. He will remain a model and shining example for me for the rest of my life.

My list of acknowledgements would not be complete without expressing my profound gratitude to Christina, my wife, lover, best friend, co-worker, and fellow seeker, for all the inspiration I have received from her over the years and for everything she has contributed to my life and to our joint projects. Among others, she founded the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN), has made unique contributions to the understanding of the relationship between addiction, attachment, and the spiritual quest, and has codeveloped with me Holotropic Breathwork, a powerful form of therapy and self-exploration. The breathwork workshops and training we have jointly conducted all over the world have been the source of extraordinary observations that provided the material for many of the stories in this book. Christina played an important role in many of these stories and was present “when the impossible happened.” I am aware that writing this book and many others before often encroached on our private life. I would like to use this opportunity to thank Christina for her patience and understanding and extend to her my apologies.