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Transpersonal Vision Vision Transpersonal the The healing potential of nonordinary states of consciousness Stanislav Grof, M.D. The Transpersonal Vision the Transpersonal Vision The healing potential of nonordinary states of consciousness Stanislav Grof, M.D. 2 Sounds True, Inc., Boulder, CO 80306 ©1998 by Stanislav Grof. All rights reserved. No part of this booklet may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher. Published in 1998 Printed in the United States of America Grof, Stanislav. The Transpersonal Vision. By Stanislav Grof: Realms of the Human Unconscious. New York: Viking Press, 1975. (with Joan Halifax) The Human Encounter with Death. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977. LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980. (with Christina Grof) Beyond Death. London: Thames & Hudson, 1982. Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1985. The Adventure of Self-Discovery. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988. (with Christina Grof) Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1989. (with Christina Grof) The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth through Transformational Crisis. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1990. (with Hal Zina Bennett) The Holotropic Mind. San Francisco: Harper, 1992. Books of the Dead. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1998. For information on the work of Stanislav Grof, contact: Grof Transpersonal Training, 20 Sunnyside Avenue, Suite 314, Mill Valley, CA 94941; or call (415)383-8779 For a catalog of transformational audio and video tapes and sacred music from around the world, please contact: Sounds True, P.O. Box 8010, Boulder, CO 80306-8010; or call (800)333-9185. 3 Contents Chapter 1: Nonordinary States of Consciousness .......................................... 1 A New Cartography of the Human Psyche ............................................... 6 Postnatal Biography and the Individual Unconscious .............................. 6 The Perinatal Level of the Psyche ........................................................ 10 The Transpersonal Domain of the Psyche ............................................. 18 Chapter 2: The Architecture of Emotional and Psychosomatic Disorders . 23 A Short History of Psychiatric Attitudes ................................................. 24 The Psychological Approach ................................................................ 24 The Origin and Dynamics of COEX Systems ........................................ 26 The contributions of astrology ............................................................. 27 New Insights from Holotropic Research ................................................. 27 Anxiety and Phobias ........................................................................... 28 Obsessive-Compulsive Neurosis ............................................................ 33 Depression and Mania........................................................................ 34 A New Understanding of Suicide ........................................................ 39 Alcoholism and Drug Addiction .......................................................... 43 Sexual Disorders and Deviations ......................................................... 44 Psychosomatic Disorders ...................................................................... 51 Chapter 3: Theory and Practice of Holotropic Therapy ............................. 55 Holotropic Breathwork ........................................................................... 57 Breath, Psyche, and Spirit ................................................................... 57 The Healing Power of Music ............................................................... 59 The Use of Bodywork ......................................................................... 62 The Course of a Holotropic Session ....................................................... 64 Spiritual Emergency: Understanding and Treating Crises of Transformation......................................................................... 66 Triggers of Spiritual Emergency ........................................................... 67 Defining Spiritual Emergencies ........................................................... 68 Varieties of Spiritual Emergency .......................................................... 69 Spiritual Emergency: Future Promises and Challenges ............................ 79 Chapter 4: The Experience of Death and Dying ......................................... 81 Death and Dying in Western Civilization ............................................... 82 Death and Dying in Preindustrial Cultures ........................................... 84 4 Practicing for Death ............................................................................... 85 Western Science and the Holotropic Paradigm ....................................... 87 Consciousness after Death: Fact or Fiction? .......................................... 88 The Implications of Research on Death and Dying ................................ 97 Chapter 5: The Cosmic Game ...................................................................... 99 Experiencing the Supreme Cosmic Principle ....................................... 100 The Radiant Divine ......................................................................... 100 The Void .......................................................................................... 101 Defining the Infinite ........................................................................ 102 The Process of Creation ...................................................................... 102 The “Why” of Creation ..................................................................... 103 The “How” of Creation .................................................................... 104 The Ways to Reunion ........................................................................... 105 Varieties of Unitive Experiences ......................................................... 106 “The Taboo against Knowing Who You Are” ....................................... 107 The Perfect Illusion .......................................................................... 107 The Problem of Good and Evil ............................................................ 107 Entering the Cosmic Dance ................................................................. 111 Walking the Mystical Path with Practical Feet ...................................... 112 The Emptiness of All Forms .............................................................. 113 Chapter 6: Consciousness Evolution and Human Survival ....................... 115 The Current Global Crisis .................................................................... 115 The Crucial Talk of Change ................................................................. 116 Holotropic Insights Essential to a Planetary Future .............................. 117 A New Image of the Universe ............................................................ 117 Understanding the Roots of Aggression and Violence ........................... 119 New Insights into the Nature of Insatiable Greed ............................... 131 Experiential Approaches to Consciousness Evolution............................ 133 Understanding and treating the Global Crisis .................................... 135 The Future of Transpersonal Evolution................................................. 136 5 1 Nonordinary States of Consciousness The observations we will explore on The Transpersonal Vision arise from research into what academic psychiatry calls “altered” or “nonordinary” states of consciousness. Within this arena, I have focused primarily on experiences that can yield specific new information about the human psyche, and on those that have a healing, transformative, and evolutionary potential. For this purpose, the term “nonordinary states of consciousness” is too general, for it includes a wide range of conditions that do not conform to these parameters. Consciousness can be profoundly changed by a variety of pathological processes: cerebral traumas, intoxications with poisonous chemicals, infections, or degenerative and circulatory processes in the brain. Such conditions can result in profound mental changes that would be included in the broad category of “nonordinary states of consciousness.” These conditions cause “trivial deliria” or “organic psychoses” – states associated with general disorientation, impairment of intellect, and subsequent amnesia. Although important clinically, these processes are not particularly interesting to consciousness researchers. Contemporary psychiatry does not have a specific term for the large and important subgroup of nonordinary states of consciousness on which The Transpersonal Vision is based. I believe that, because of their unique characteristics, these states deserve to be distinguished from the rest and placed in a special 1 The Transpersonal Vision category. I coined the name “holotropic” to describe them. This composite word literally means “oriented toward wholeness” or “moving in the direction of wholeness” (from the Greek holos, or “whole,” and trepein, or “moving toward or in the direction of something”). Thus, “holotropic” suggests that in our everyday state of consciousness, we are fragmented and
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