Old Paradigm World View, Myth, and Vision Underlying the Global Crisis.The old vision driving the Western technological civilization received powerful support and justification from science based on the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm and monistic materialism. This world view is based on the metaphysical assumption that the universe is a mechanical system that is strictly deterministic and in which matter is primary. Life, consciousness, and intelligence are seen as more or less accidental side-products of matter, essentially flukes that happened in an insignificant section of a giant universe after billions of years of evolution of inert and reactive inorganic materials.
In the old paradigm, the universe and nature have no guiding intelligence or creative blueprint. All the incredible complexity of forms revealed by various scientific disciplines from astronomy through biology to quantum-relativistic physics has been attributed to meaningless play of material particles. Particles of inorganic matter just happened to generate organic compounds and these just happened to organize themselves into cells. The entire Darwinian evolution from unicellular organisms to humans is seen as having been guided by accidental genetic mutations and natural selection. According to this world view, the principal mechanism of evolution in nature is survival of the fittest and the militant strategy of the selfish gene. This seems to explain and justify pursuit of individual interest in competition with and at the expense of others from personal life to collective economic, political, and military pursuits.
This was further reinforced by the findings of depth psychology pioneered by Sigmund Freud and his followers, which purported that all our behavior is, in the last analysis, driven by basic instincts. From this perspective, feelings of love are nothing but reaction formation to our innate hostility or desexualized interest in our parents, ethical behavior is based on fear of punishment, esthetic interest is psychological defense against powerful anal impulses, and so on. Without societal restrictions, penal institutions, and superegos created by parental prohibitions and injunctions, we would indulge in indiscriminate promiscuous sexual acting out, killing, and stealing (Freud: Civilization and its Discontent). Religious beliefs and spiritual interests of any kind are essentially attributed to superstition, gullibility, primitive magical thinking, primary process, obsessive-compulsive behavior resulting from suppression of anal impulses, and unresolved Oedipal or Electra complex, or result of serious psychopathology (Freud: Totem and Taboo, Future of An Illusion).
Our current scientific world view provides implicit or explicit support for our ethics and life strategy. In Western capitalist society, personal success at the expense of others has been glorified. It appears perfectly natural to create a better future for one’s own group at the expense of others (e.g. plundering non-renewable resources of fossil fuels and turning them into pollution in pursuit of our own living standard, seeing killing of innocent civilians in other countries as “collateral damage” in the pursuit of our own security, etc). We are unable to see and appreciate the critical importance of cooperation, synergy, and peaceful coexistence for planetary survival. We are also brainwashed into believing that our well-being is directly proportionate to and depends critically on material means – personal income and possessions, growth of the gross national product, and so on.
There are additional specific problems related to the current political situation in the United States, a country which, because of its enormous economic and political power, represents the key player in the global crisis. The democratic ideals are cherished and defended primarily by American liberals. The leading philosophy of this group is humanism; this is typically linked with atheism, because religious beliefs of any kind appear to this group to be naïve and in conflict with reason and the scientific worldview. This perspective thus does not address the spiritual hunger and needs. History shows that these are important and powerful forces inherent in human nature, more powerful than sex, which Freud saw as the primary motivating force of the psyche (Andrew Weil: The Natural Mind). The social concerns of liberals, their philanthropic efforts, ecological awareness, and antiwar protests in their present form lack a deeper ideological basis and spiritual foundation. They can thus easily be dismissed as signs of weakness alien to capitalist mentality.
This seems to account for the widespread appeal of the fundamentalist and neocon groups, who present their ideas cloaked in religious terminology. These groups violate in many ways the basic principles of democracy, but address the spiritual needs of their followers. These followers tend to overlook that their leaders are feeding them useless religious dogmas and dangerous delusional nonsense, which only exploit their spiritual needs and do not actually satisfy them. Even in this distorted form, however, allusions to the divine are extremely powerful and can override democratic ideals and basic human decency.
Religion that should unite (religare = to bind together again) becomes a divisive element in the world, separating not only one creed from another (“we are Christians, you are pagans,” “we are Moslems, you are Infidels,” “we are Jews, you are Goyim”), but also one faction of a religion from another (“we are Catholics, you are Protestants,” “we are Shiites, you are Sunnis”), in a way well-known from history. In recent years this split has taken also a specifically American form radically dividing the population, including the Christian community, into two irreconcilable camps (“we are the chosen ones who will experience ‘rapture’; we will be united with Jesus, you will be left behind”).
The convictions, which drive these Christian fundamentalists are based on misinterpretation of the Biblical description of the Armageddon and the Apocalypse. Their beliefs are so preposterous and fantastic that they would provide a sufficient basis for diagnosis of psychosis if they were reported by an individual psychiatric patient. Unfortunately, in contemporary United States they dominate the thinking of tens of millions of people and have found their way into the highest echelons of the government. Dangerous trends in the global situation, such as destruction of the environment, industrial pollution, political crises, and increase of violence are actually welcome by this group, because they are signs of the approaching Armageddon and herald the imminence of “rapture” that will unite them with Jesus (see the scary entries on the Internet concerning the “rapture index”). It is more than unfortunate that this insanity affects the political decisions on the highest level and has at its disposal the formidable American military power. Occasional heavy-handed and highly inappropriate references of our Commander-in-Chief to the war in the Middle East as a “crusade” feed into the equally deluded ideology of “jihad” entertained by Moslem fundamentalists and make the global situation particularly precarious.
What we need to counteract this dangerous religious propaganda that has succeeded in deluding and blinding so many Americans, is a new guiding myth, an exciting new vision, one that would be based on the best of science and also spiritually informed, one that would appeal to both rational and spiritual aspects of human nature. We need a vision that is truly democratic (not one confusing democracy with aggressive export of values and goods of Western capitalistic society) and that provides genuine satisfaction of human spiritual needs. It seems relevant to include here a passage from the Stanford lecture of the Czech president, Václav Havel, to illustrates this point: “ I am deeply convinced that (the answer) lies in what I have already tried to suggest --- in that spiritual dimension that connects all cultures and in fact all humanity. If democracy is not only to survive but to expand successfully and resolve those conflicts of cultures, then, in my opinion, it must rediscover and renew its own transcendental origins ……. Planetary democracy does not yet exist, but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it: It is the very Earth we inhabit, linked with Heaven above us. Only in this setting can the mutuality and the commonality of the human race be newly created, with reverence and gratitude for that which transcends each of us, and all of us together. The authority of a world democratic order simply cannot be built on anything else but the revitalized authority of the universe.”
In the following text, I will try to outline such a vision on the basis of my observations made in years of research of holotropic states of consciousness. It is not a construct or result of speculation, but a worldview and life strategy that emerges spontaneously in individuals who, in the process of freeing themselves from the imprints imposed on them by the trauma of their birth and their early life, have had profound transpersonal experiences. Deep experiential work of this kind generates what we can call “spiritual intelligence.”
It is not difficult to understand that an important prerequisite for successful existence is general intelligence - the ability to learn and recall, think and reason, and adequately respond to our material environment. More recent research emphasized the importance of “emotional intelligence,” the capacity to adequately respond to our human environment and skillfully handle our interpersonal relationships (Goleman 1996). Observations from the study of holotropic states confirm the basic tenet of perennial philosophy that the quality of our life ultimately depends on what can be called “spiritual intelligence.” Spiritual intelligence is the capacity to conduct our life in such a way that it reflects deep philosophical and metaphysical understanding of reality and of ourselves. Buddhist scriptures refer to this kind of spiritual wisdom as “prajñā paraāmitā.” Unlike the dogmas of organized churches, spiritual intelligence acquired in the process of experiential self-exploration has the power to override the scientistic worldview of materialistic science. At the same time, it is equally effective as a remedy that can counteract the useless dogmas of organized religions.
Findings of Modern Consciousness Research and Transpersonal Psychology
Observations from psychedelic therapy, holotropic breathwork, and the work with individuals undergoing spiritual crises have shown that the human propensity to violence and greed has much deeper roots than current biological theories (naked ape, selfish gene, triune brain) and psychological theories (psychoanalysis, ego psychology, and related schools) assume. Deep motivating forces underlying these dangerous traits of human nature have their origin on the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche, domains that mainstream psychology does not recognize (Grof 2000). The finding that the roots of human violence and insatiable greed reach far deeper than academic psychiatry ever suspected and that their reservoirs in the psyche are truly enormous could in and of itself be very discouraging. However, it is balanced by the exciting discovery of new therapeutic mechanisms and transformative potentials that become available in holotropic states on the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche.
I have seen over the years profound emotional and psychosomatic healing, as well as radical personality transformation, in many people who were involved in serious and systematic experiential self-exploration and inner quest. Some of them were meditators and had regular spiritual practice, others had supervised psychedelic sessions or participated in various forms of experiential psychotherapy and self-exploration or shamanic rituals. I have also witnessed profound positive changes in many people who received adequate support during spontaneous episodes of spontaneous psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies”).
As the content of the perinatal level of the unconscious emerged into consciousness and was integrated, these individuals underwent radical personality changes. They experienced considerable decrease of aggression and became more peaceful, comfortable with themselves, and tolerant of others. The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth and conscious connection with positive postnatal or prenatal memories reduced their irrational drives and ambitions. It caused a shift of focus from the past and future to the present moment and enhanced their élan vital and joi de vivre - ability to enjoy and draw satisfaction from simple circumstances of life, such as everyday activities, food, love-making, nature, and music. Another important result of this process was emergence of spirituality of a universal and mystical nature that, unlike the dogmas of mainstream religions, was very authentic and convincing, because it was based on deep personal experience.
The process of spiritual opening and transformation typically deepened further as a result of transpersonal experiences, such as identification with other people, entire human groups, animals, plants, and even inorganic materials and processes in nature. Other experiences provided conscious access to events occurring in other countries, cultures, and historical periods and even to the mythological realms and archetypal beings of the collective unconscious. Experiences of cosmic unity and one's own divinity resulted in increasing identification with all of creation and brought the sense of wonder, love, compassion, and inner peace.
What had begun as psychological probing of the unconscious psyche conducted for therapeutic purposes automatically became a philosophical quest for the meaning of life and a journey of spiritual discovery. People who connected to the transpersonal domain of their psyche tended to develop a new appreciation for existence and reverence for all life. One of the most striking consequences of various forms of transpersonal experiences was spontaneous emergence and development of deep humanitarian and ecological concerns and need to get involved in service for some common purpose. This was based on an almost cellular awareness that the boundaries in the universe are arbitrary and that each of us is identical with the entire web of existence.
It was suddenly clear that we can not do anything to nature without simultaneously doing it to ourselves. Differences among people appeared to be interesting and enriching rather than threatening, whether they were related to sex, race, color, language, political conviction, or religious belief. Following this transformation, these people (like many of American astronauts who have seen the earth from outer space (see Mickey Lemle’s documentary The Other Side of the Moon) developed a deep sense of being planetary citizens rather than citizens of a particular country or members of a particular racial, social, ideological, political, or religious group. It is obvious that a transformation of this kind would increase our chances for survival if it could occur on a sufficiently large scale.
A New Vision of Reality and a New Myth to Live By The image of the universe at large underlying the new vision is based on philosophical implications of quantum-relativistic physics and the anthropic principle. It acknowledges consciousness as a fundamental aspect of existence, equal or possibly supraordinated to matter, rather than its accidental product, an epiphenomenon of matter. It sees the universe as a product of superior creative intelligence and permeated with it (“anima mundi”). Instead of the Newtonian supermachine consisting of separate building blocks (elementary particles and objects) it portrays the universe as a unified field, an organic whole in which everything is meaningfully interconnected.
New biology recognizes that evolution of species was guided by creative intelligence and that synergy and cooperation between species was at least as important guiding principle as Darwin’s survival of the fittest. The biosphere and its inhabitants cannot be understood when we take into consideration only materials that constitute them without explaining where order, forms, meaningful relations, and esthetic aspects of creation come from. Concepts similar to Sheldrake’s morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields are critical for understanding the function of DNA and the genetic code, as well as the relationship between consciousness, memory, and the brain (see Shelddrake’s New science of Life). Holographic thinking pioneered by David Bohm and Karl Pribram threw new light on the relationship between the part and the whole (see Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order and Pribram’s Languages of the Brain). Ervin Laszlo has provided a brilliant model of the interconnected universe in his concept of the “psi-field” or akashic field (see Laszlo’s books The Creative Cosmos, The Connectivity Hypothesis, and Science and the Akashic Field).
Modern consciousness research and transpersonal psychology have shown the painful limitations and misconceptions of Freudian psychoanalysis in understanding the human psyche in health and disease. It suggests urgent need of radical revision of the most fundamental assumptions of mainstream psychology and psychiatry in the following areas:
The Nature of the Human Psyche and the Dimensions of Consciousness
Traditional academic psychiatry and psychology use a model that is limited to biology, postnatal biography, and the Freudian individual unconscious. To account for all the phenomena occurring in holotropic states, we must drastically revise our understanding of the dimensions of the human psyche. Besides the postnatal biographical level, the new expanded cartography includes two additional domains: perinatal (related to the trauma of birth) and transpersonal (comprising ancestral, racial, collective, and phylogenetic memories, karmic experiences, and archetypal dynamics). The Nature and Architecture of Emotional and Psychosomatic Disorders.
To explain various disorders that do not have an organic basis (“psychogenic psychopathology”), traditional psychiatry uses a model that is limited to postnatal biographical traumas in infancy, childhood, and later life. The new understanding suggests that the roots of such disorders reach much deeper to include significant contributions from the perinatal level (trauma of birth) and from the transpersonal domains (as specified above). Effective Therapeutic Mechanisms
Traditional psychotherapy knows only therapeutic mechanisms operating on the level of the biographical material, such as remembering of forgotten events, lifting of repression, reconstruction of the past from free associations, dreams, and neurotic symptoms, reliving of traumatic memories, and analysis of transference. Holotropic research reveals many other important mechanisms of healing and personality transformation that become available when our consciousness reaches the perinatal and transpersonal levels. Strategy of Psychotherapy and Self-Exploration
The goal in traditional psychotherapies is to reach an intellectual understanding how the psyche functions, why symptoms develop, and what they mean. This understanding then becomes the basis for developing a technique that therapists can use to treat their patients. A serious problem with this strategy is the striking lack of agreement among psychologists and psychiatrists concerning the most fundamental theoretical issues and the resulting astonishing number of competing schools of psychotherapy. The work with holotropic states shows us a surprising radical alternative - mobilization of deep inner intelligence of the clients that guides the process of healing and transformation.
The Role of Spirituality in Human Life
Western materialistic science has no place for any form of spirituality and, in fact, considers it incompatible with the scientific worldview. It sees any form of spirituality as reflecting lack of education, superstition, primitive magical thinking, or serious psychopathology. Modern consciousness research seriously challenges this misconception and shows that spirituality is a natural and legitimate dimension of the human psyche and of the universal scheme of things. However, in this context, it is important to emphasize that this statement applies to genuine spirituality based on direct personal experience and not to ideologies and dogmas of organized religions.
The Nature of Reality: Psyche, Cosmos, and Consciousness
The necessary revisions discussed up to this point were related to the theory and practice of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. However, the work with holotropic states brings challenges of a much more fundamental nature. Many of the experiences and observations that occur during this work are so extraordinary that they cannot be understood in the context of the monistic materialistic approach to reality. Their conceptual impact is so far-reaching that it undermines the most basic metaphysical assumptions of Western science, particularly those regarding the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter.
The new world view and basic life strategy that emerge spontaneously in the process of deep exploration are the following:
1. On the individual scale: Our deepest needs are of spiritual nature; material means can not, in and of themselves, bring us fulfillment and happiness, once we have reached satisfaction of basic biological needs (food, security, shelter, sex). In the course of biographically oriented psychotherapy, many people discover that their life has been inauthentic in certain specific sectors of interpersonal relations. For example, problems with parental authority can lead to specific patterns of difficulties with authority figures, repeated dysfunctional patterns in sexual relationships can be traced to parents as models for sexual behavior, sibling issues can color and distort future peer relationships, and so on.
When the process of experiential self-exploration reaches the perinatal level, we typically discover that our life up to that point has been largely inauthentic in its totality, not just in certain partial segments. We find out to our surprise and astonishment that our entire life strategy has been misdirected and therefore incapable of providing genuine satisfaction. The reason for this is the fact that it was primarily motivated by the fear of death and by unconscious forces associated with biological birth, which have not been adequately processed and integrated. In other words, during biological birth, we completed the process anatomically, but not emotionally.
When our field of consciousness is strongly influenced by the underlying memory of the struggle in the birth canal, it leads to a feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction with the present situation. This discontent can focus on a large spectrum of issues - unsatisfactory physical appearance, inadequate resources and material possessions, low social position and influence, insufficient amount of power and fame, and many others. Like the child stuck in the birth canal, we feel a strong need to get to a better situation that lies somewhere in the future.
Whatever is the reality of the present circumstances, we do not find them satisfactory. Our fantasy keeps creating images of future situations that appear more fulfilling than the present one. It seems that, until we reach these imagined goals, life will be only preparation for a better future, not yet “the real thing.” This results in a life pattern that my client have described as a “treadmill” type of existence (the image of a hamster running inside a rotating wheel) or “rat-race” way of life. The existentialists talk about “auto-projecting” into the future – always imagining oneself in some more satisfying situation in the future and attempting to create it. This strategy is a basic fallacy of human life. It is essentially a loser strategy, since it does not deliver the satisfaction that is expected from it. From this perspective, it is irrelevant whether or not it brings fruit in the material world. In Joseph Campbell’s words, it means “getting to the top of the ladder and finding out that it stands against the wrong wall.”
When the goal is not reached, the continuing dissatisfaction is attributed to the fact that we have failed to reach the corrective measures. When we succeed in reaching the goal of our aspirations, it typically does not have much influence on our basic life feelings. The continuing dissatisfaction is then blamed either on the fact that the choice of the goal was not correct or that it was not ambitious enough. The result is either substitution of the old goal with a different one or amplification of the same type of ambitions.
In any case, the failure is usually not correctly diagnosed as being an inevitable result of a fundamentally wrong life strategy, which is in principle incapable of providing satisfaction. This fallacious pattern applied on a large scale is responsible for reckless irrational pursuit of various grandiose goals that results in much suffering and many problems in the world. It can be played out on any level of importance and affluence, since it never brings true satisfaction. The only strategy that can significantly reduce this irrational drive is full conscious reliving and integration of the trauma of birth in systematic inner self-exploration and connecting to the transpersonal level of the psyche.
Modern consciousness research and experiential psychotherapy have discovered that the deepest source of our dissatisfaction and striving for perfection lies even beyond the perinatal domain. This insatiable craving that drives human life is ultimately transpersonal in nature. In Dante Alighieri's words, "The desire for perfection is that desire which always makes every pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in our soul" (Dante 1990).
In the most general sense, the deepest transpersonal roots of insatiable greed can described in terms of Ken Wilber's concept of the Atman Project (Wilber 1980). Our true nature is divine - God, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Buddha, Brahman, the Tao, the Great Spirit - and although the process of creation separates and alienates us from our deep source, the awareness of this fact is never completely lost. The deepest motivating force in the psyche on all the levels of consciousness evolution is to return to the experience of our own divinity. However, the constraining conditions of the consecutive stages of development prevent an experience of full liberation in and as God.
Real transcendence requires death of the separate self, dying to the exclusive subject. Because of the fear of annihilation and because of grasping onto the ego, the individual has to settle for Atman substitutes or surrogates, which are specific for each particular stage. For the fetus and the newborn, this means the satisfaction experienced in the good womb or on the good breast. For an infant, this is satisfaction of age-specific physiological needs. For the adult the range of possible Atman projects is large; it includes - besides food and sex - also money, fame, power, appearance, knowledge, and many others.
Because of our deep sense that our true identity is the totality of cosmic creation and the creative principle itself, substitutes of any degree and scope - the Atman Projects - will always remain unsatisfactory. Only the experience of one's divinity in a holotropic state of consciousness can ever fulfill our deepest needs. Thus the ultimate solution for the insatiable greed is in the inner world, not in secular pursuits of any kind and scope. The Persian mystic and poet Rumi made it very clear:
All the hopes, desires, loves, and affections that people have for different things - fathers, mothers, friends, heavens, the earth, palaces, sciences, works, food, drink - the saint knows that these are desires for God and all those things are veils. When men leave this world and see the King without these veils, then they will know that all were veils and coverings, that the object of their desire was in reality that One Thing (Hines 1996).
2. On the collective level:
As biological organisms, we are embedded in the natural environment and we critically depend on clean air, clear water, and soil. Our highest priority has to be to protect these vital resources necessary for survival and health. No other concerns, such as economic profit, nationalistic ideological, religious motives should be allowed to override concerns about health and survival of the individual and the species. As Buckminster Fuller reminded us, we are “spaceship earth” with limited resources. This requires to orient ourselves on renewable energy resources that will always be available and do not pollute our environment (solar energy, zero point energy). It should not be allowed to produce materials that are not biodegradable without providing for recycling or their destruction. The escalating chemical pollution of water, air, and soil, accumulation of radioactive fallout, and floating plastic in the ocean covering an area of the size of Texas should be a serious warning.
Our unity with nature, as well as all fellow humans, dictates that we should transcend racial, sexual, national, cultural, political, and religious boundaries and divides and create a planetary civilization. Violence has to be eliminated as an acceptable means of solving conflicts. We should have world constitution that sees protection of the environment and human life as the highest imperative. Our primary focus in foreign politics should be on synergy, cooperation, and making friends, not fighting enemies (and certainly not making enemies). United States with its incredible resources of scientific know-how and economic means should become the leading force in the development of alternative energies. This goal deserves a concerted effort of the best minds in science. comparable to the Manhattan project. Development of alternative renewable sources of energy would also be a long-term radical solution of serious political problems. Its success would make us independent of the Middle Eastern oil and eliminate thus the dangerous economic dependence on the Arab world. It would also be probably the most effective way of combating terrorism of the fundamentalist Moslems and the danger of jihad.
It should be possible to develop programs that would help American economy and, at the same time, help underdeveloped countries, make friends, and generate respect in the world. This could involve such projects as helping to develop infrastructure in India, irrigate parts of Africa, and eliminate hunger and diseases in the world. Increasing living standard of underdeveloped countries has also been shown to be the most effective way of combating social unrest and the danger of Communism. Lessons from Holotropic States for the Psychology of Survival Some of the insights of people experiencing holotropic states of consciousness are directly related to the current global crisis and its relationship with consciousness evolution. They show that we have exteriorized in the modern world many of the essential themes of the perinatal process that a person involved in deep personal transformation has to face and come to terms with internally. The same elements that we would encounter in the process of psychological death and rebirth in our visionary experiences make our evening news today. This is particularly true in regard to the phenomena that characterize what I refer to as the third Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM III)(Grof 2000).
We certainly see the enormous unleashing of the aggressive impulse in the many wars and revolutionary upheavals in the world, in the rising criminality, terrorism, and racial riots. Equally dramatic and striking is the lifting of sexual repression and freeing of the sexual impulse in both healthy and problematic ways. Sexual experiences and behaviors are taking unprecedented forms, as manifested in the sexual freedom of adolescents, premarital sex, gay liberation, general promiscuity, common and open marriages, high divorce rate, overtly sexual books, plays and movies, sadomasochistic experimentation, and many others.
The demonic element is also becoming increasingly manifest in the modern world. Renaissance of satanic cults and witchcraft, popularity of books and horror movies with occult themes, and crimes with satanic motivations attest to that fact. Terrorism of the fundamentalist fanatics and groups is also reaching satanic proportions. The scatological dimension is evident in the progressive industrial pollution, accumulation of waste products on a global scale, and rapidly deteriorating hygienic conditions in large cities. A more abstract form of the same trend is the escalating corruption and degradation of political, military, economic, and religious institutions, including the American presidency.
Many of the people with whom we have worked saw humanity at a critical crossroad facing either collective annihilation or an evolutionary jump in consciousness of unprecedented nature and dimension. Terence McKenna put it very succinctly: "The history of the silly monkey is over, one way or another" (McKenna 1992). We either undergo a radical transformation of our species or we might not survive. It seems that we are collectively involved in a process that parallels the psychospiritual death and rebirth, which so many people have experienced individually in holotropic states of consciousness. If we continue to act out the problematic destructive and self-destructive tendencies originating in the depth of the unconscious, we will undoubtedly destroy ourselves and seriously damage life on this planet. However, if we succeed in internalizing this process on a large enough scale, it might result in an evolutionary progress that can take us as far beyond our present condition as we now are from primates. As utopian as the possibility of such a development might seem, it might be our only real chance.
Let us now look into the future and explore how the concepts that have emerged from consciousness research, from the transpersonal field, and from the new paradigm in science could be put into action in the world. Although the past accomplishments are very impressive, the new ideas still form a disjointed mosaic rather than a complete and comprehensive new worldview. Much work has to be done in terms of accumulating more data, formulating new theories, and achieving a creative synthesis. In addition, the existing information has to reach much larger audiences before a significant impact on the world situation can be expected.
But even a radical intellectual shift to a new scientific paradigm on a large scale would not be sufficient to alleviate the global crisis and reverse the destructive course we are on. This would require a deep emotional and spiritual transformation of humanity. Using the existing evidence, it is possible to suggest certain strategies that might facilitate and support such a process. Efforts to change humanity would have to start with psychological prevention at an early age. The data from prenatal and perinatal psychology indicate that much could be achieved by changing the conditions of pregnancy, delivery, and postnatal care. This would include improving the emotional preparation of the mother during pregnancy, practicing natural childbirth, creating a psychospiritually informed birth environment, and cultivating emotionally nourishing contact between the mother and the child in the postpartum period.
Much has been written about the importance of child rearing, as well as disastrous emotional consequences of traumatic conditions in infancy and childhood. Certainly this is an area where continued education and guidance is necessary. However, to be able to apply the theoretically known principles, the parents have to reach sufficient emotional stability and maturity themselves. It is well known that emotional problems are passed like curse from generation to generation. We are facing here a very complex problem of chicken and egg.
Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have developed effective experiential methods of self-exploration, healing, and personality transformation. Some of these come from the therapeutic traditions, others represent modern adaptations of ancient and native spiritual practices. There exist approaches with a very favorable ratio between professional helpers and clients and others that can be practiced in the context of self-help groups. Systematic work with them can lead to a spiritual opening, a move in a direction that is sorely needed on a collective scale for our species to survive. It is essential to spread the information about these possibilities and get enough people personally interested in pursuing them. An important part of these efforts would be creation of a network providing psychological assistance and support to individuals undergoing spontaneous psychospiritual transformation in spiritual emergencies. Currently, many of these people are misdiagnosed as suffering from psychosis and the potentially healing and evolutionary process of transformation is arrested by tranquilizing medication (Grof and Grof 1989, 1991).
The comprehensive vision described above can be seen as a mosaic consisting of many pieces, each of which represents the results of research in a particular scientific discipline. Further refinement and development of its various parts thus requires interdisciplinary cooperation and communication of the theoretical concepts and their practical application with the help of various media. We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of life on this planet. If we continue the old strategies, which in their consequences are clearly extremely self-destructive, it is unlikely that the human species will survive. However, if a sufficient number of people undergo a process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a stage and level of consciousness evolution at which we will deserve the proud name we have given to our species: homo sapiens sapiens.
Literature:
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Dante, A. 1990. Il Convivio. (R. H. Lansing, transl.). New York: Garland.
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Psychedelic Research: Past, Present, and Future. Stanislav Grof, M.D.
The use of psychedelic substances can be traced back for millennia, to the dawn of human history. Since time immemorial, plant materials containing powerful consciousness- expanding compounds were used in many different parts of the world in various ritual and spiritual contexts to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness or, more specifically, an important subgroup of them, which I call “holotropic” (Grof 2000). These plants have played an important role in shamanic practice, aboriginal healing ceremonies, rites of passage, mysteries of death and rebirth, and various other spiritual traditions. The ancient and native cultures using psychedelic materials held them in great esteem and considered them to be sacraments, “flesh of the gods” (Schultes, Hofmann, and Raetsch 2001).
Human groups, which had at their disposal psychedelic plants, took advantage of their entheogenic effects (entheogenic means literally “awakening the divine within) and made them the principal vehicles of their ritual and spiritual life. The preparations made from these plants mediated for these people experiential contact with the archetypal dimensions of reality - deities, mythological realms, power animals, and numinous forces and aspects of nature. Another important area where states induced by psychedelics played a crucial role was diagnosing and healing of various disorders. Anthropological literature also contains many reports indicating that native cultures have used psychedelics for enhancement of intuition and extrasensory perception for a variety of divinatory, as well as practical purposes, such as finding lost persons and objects, obtaining information about people in remote locations, and following the movement of the game that these people hunted. In addition, psychedelic experiences served as important sources of artistic inspiration, providing ideas for rituals, paintings, sculptures, and songs.
In the history of Chinese medicine, reports about psychedelic substances can be traced back about 3,000 years. The legendary divine potion referred to as haoma in the ancient Persian Zend Avesta and as soma in the Indian Vedas was used by the Indo-Iranian tribes millenia ago. The mystical states of consciousness induced by soma were very likely the principal source of the Vedic and Hindu religion. Preparations from different varieties of hemp have been smoked and ingested under various names - hashish, charas, bhang, ganja, kif, and marijuana - in Asia, in Africa, and in the Caribbean area for recreation, pleasure, and during religious ceremonies. They represented an important sacrament for such diverse groups as the Indian Brahmans, certain orders of Sufis, ancient Scythians, and the Jamaican Rastafarians.
Ceremonial use of various psychedelic substances also has a long history in Central America. Highly effective mind-altering plants were well known in several Pre-Columbian Indian cultures - among the Aztecs, Mayans, and Olmecs. The most famous of these are the Mexican cactus peyote (Anhalonium Lewinii), the sacred mushroom teonanacatl (Psilocybe mexicana) and ololiuqui, or morning glory seeds (Rivea corymbosa). These materials have been used as sacraments until this day by several Mexican Indian tribes (Huichols, Mazatecs, Cora people, and others), and by the Native American Church.
The famous South American yajé or ayahuasca is a decoction from a jungle liana (Banisteriopsis caapi) with other plant additives. The Amazonian area is also known for a variety of psychedelic snuffs (Virola callophylla, Piptadenia peregrina). Preparations from the bark of the shrub iboga (Tabernanthe iboga) have been used by African tribes in lower dosage as a stimulant during lion hunts and long canoe trips and in higher doses as a ritual sacrament. The above list represents only a small fraction of psychedelic compounds that have been used over many centuries in various countries of the world. The impact that the experiences encountered in these states had on the spiritual and cultural life of pre-industrial societies has been enormous.
The long history of ritual use of psychedelic plants contrasts sharply with a relatively short history of scientific efforts to identify their psychoactive alkaloids, prepare them in a pure form, and to study their effects. The first psychedelic substance that was synthetized in a chemically pure form and systematically explored under laboratory conditions was mescaline, the active alkaloid from the peyote cactus. Clinical experiments conducted with this substance in the first three decades of the twentieth century focused on the phenomenology of the mescaline experience and its interesting effects on artistic perception and creative expression (Vondráček 1935, Nevole 1947, 1949). Surprisingly, they did not reveal its therapeutic, heuristic, and entheogenic potential of this substance. Kurt Beringer, author of the influential book Der Meskalinrausch (Mescaline Inebriation) published in 1927, concluded that mescaline induced a toxic psychosis (Beringer 1927).
After these pioneering clinical experiments with mescaline, very little research was done in this fascinating problem area until Albert Hofmann’s 1942 epoch-making accidental intoxication and serendipitous discovery of the psychedelic properties of LSD-25, or diethylamid of lysergic acid. After the publication of the first clinical paper on LSD by Walter A. Stoll in the late 1940's (Stoll 1947), this new semisynthetic ergot derivative, active in incredibly minute quantities of micrograms or gammas (millionths of a gram) became practically overnight a sensation in the world of science.
The discovery of powerful psychoactive effects of miniscule dosages of LSD started what has been called a “golden era of psychopharmacology.” During a relatively short period of time, the joint efforts of biochemists, pharmacologists, neurophysiologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists succeeded in laying the foundations of a new scientific discipline that can be referred to as “pharmacology of consciousness.” The active substances from several remaining psychedelic plants were chemically identified and prepared in chemically pure form. Following the discovery of the psychedelic effects of LSD-25, Albert Hofmann identified the active principles of the Mexican magic mushrooms (Psilocybe mexicana), psilocybin and psilocin, and that of ololiuqui, or morning glory seeds (Ipomoea violacea), which turned out to be monoethylamid of lysergic acid (LAE-32), closely related to LSD-25.
The armamentarium of psychedelic substances was further enriched by psychoactive derivatives of tryptamine - DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine), DET (diethyl-tryptamine), and DPT (dipropyltryptamine) - synthetized and studied by the Budapest group of chemists, headed by Stephen Szara, The active principle from the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga, ibogaine, and the pure alkaloid from ayahuasca’s main ingredient Banisteriopsis caapi, known under the names harmaline, yageine, and telepathine had already been isolated and chemically identified earlier in the twentieth century. In the 1950s, a wide range of psychedelic alkaloids in pure form was available to researchers. It was now possible to study their properties in the laboratory and explore the phenomenology of their clinical effects and their therapeutic potential. The revolution triggered by Albert Hofmann’s serendipitous discovery of LSD was underway.
During this exciting era, LSD remained the center of attention of researchers. Never before had a single substance held so much promise in such a wide variety of fields of interest. For psychopharmacologists and neurophysiologists, the discovery of LSD meant the beginning of a golden era of research that could solve many puzzles concerning neuroreceptors, synaptic transmitters, chemical antagonisms, and the intricate biochemical interactions underlying cerebral processes.
Experimental psychiatrists saw LSD as a unique means for creating a laboratory model for naturally occurring functional, or endogenous, psychoses. They hoped that the “experimental psychosis,” induced by miniscule dosages of this substance, could provide unparalleled insights into the nature of these mysterious disorders and open new avenues for their treatment. It was suddenly conceivable that the brain or other parts of the body could under certain circumstances produce small quantities of a substance with similar effects as LSD. This meant that disorders like schizophrenia would not be mental diseases, but metabolic aberrations that could be counteracted by specific chemical intervention. The promise of this research was nothing less that the fulfillment of the dream of biologically oriented clinicians, the Holy Grail of psychiatry – a test-tube cure for schizophrenia.
LSD was also highly recommended as an extraordinary unconventional teaching device that would make it possible for clinical psychiatrists, psychologists, medical students, and nurses to spend a few hours in a world similar to that of their patients and as a result of it to understand them better, be able to communicate with them more effectively, and hopefully be more successful in treating them. Thousands of mental health professionals took advantage of this unique opportunity. These experiments brought surprising and astonishing results. They not only provided deep insights into the world of psychiatric patients, but also revolutionized the understanding of the nature and dimensions of the human psyche and consciousness.
Many professionals involved in these experiments discovered that the current model, limiting the psyche to postnatal biography and the Freudian individual unconscious, was superficial and inadequate. My own new map of the psyche that emerged out of this research added two large transbiographical domains – the perinatal level, closely related to the memory of biological birth, and the transpersonal level, harboring the historical and archetypal domains of the collective unconscious as envisioned by C. C. Jung (Grof 1975, Jung 1959). Early experiments with LSD also showed that the sources of emotional and psychosomatic disorders were not limited to traumatic memories from childhood and infancy, as traditional psychiatrists assumed, but that their roots reached much deeper into the psyche, into the perinatal and transpersonal regions (Grof 2000). This surprising revelation was accompanied by the discovery of new powerful therapeutic mechanisms operating on these deep levels of the psyche.
Using LSD as a catalyst, it became possible to extend the range of applicability of psychotherapy to categories of patients that previously had been difficult to reach – sexual deviants, alcoholics, narcotic drug addicts, and criminal recidivists (Grof 2001). Particularly valuable and promising were the early efforts to use LSD psychotherapy in the work with terminal cancer patients. Research on this population showed that LSD was able to relieve severe pain, often even in those patients who had not responded to medication with narcotics. In a large percentage of these patients, it was also possible to ease or even eliminate difficult emotional and psychosomatic symptoms, such as depression, general tension, and insomnia, alleviate the fear of death, increase the quality of their life during the remaining days, and positively transform the experience of dying (Cohen 1965, Kast and Collins 1966, Grof 2006).
For historians and critics of art, the LSD experiments provided extraordinary new insights into the psychology and psychopathology of art, particularly paintings and sculptures of various native, so-called “primitive” cultures and psychiatric patients, as well as various modern movements, such as abstractionism, impressionism, cubism, surrealism3 and fantastic realism (Roubíček 1961). For professional painters, who participated in LSD research, the psychedelic session often marked a radical change in their artistic expression. Their imagination became much richer, their colors more vivid, and their style considerably freer. They could also often reach into deep recesses of their unconscious psyche and tap archetypal sources of inspiration. On occasion, people who had never painted before were able to produce extraordinary pieces of art.
LSD experimentation brought also fascinating observations, which were of great interest to spiritual teachers and scholars of comparative religion. The mystical experiences frequently observed in LSD sessions offered a radically new understanding of a wide variety of phenomena from the spiritual domain, including shamanism, the rites of passage, the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, the Eastern religions and philosophies, and the mystical traditions of the world (Forte 1997, Roberts 2001, Grof 1998).
The fact that LSD and other psychedelic substances were able to trigger a broad range of spiritual experiences became the subject of heated scientific discussions. They revolved around the fascinating problem concerning the nature and value of this “instant” or “chemical” mysticism” (Grof 1998). As Walter Pahnke demonstrated in his famous Good Friday experiment, mystical experiences induced by psychedelics are indistinguishable from those described in mystical literature (Pahnke 1963). This finding that was recently confirmed by a meticulous study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University (Griffith et al. 2006) has important theoretical and legal implications.
Psychedelic research involving LSD, psilocybine, mescaline, and the tryptamine derivatives seemed to be well on its way to fulfill all the above promises and expectations when it was suddenly interrupted by the unsupervised mass experimentation of the young generation in the USA and other Western countries. In the infamous Harvard affair, psychology professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert lost their academic posts and had to leave the school after their overeager proselytizing of LSD’s promise. The ensuing repressive measures of administrative, legal, and political nature had very little effect on street use of LSD and other psychedelics, but they drastically terminated legitimate clinical research. However, while the problems associated with this development were blown out of proportion by sensation-hunting journalists, the possible risks were not the only reason why LSD and other psychedelics were rejected by the Euro-American mainstream culture. An important contributing factor was also the attitude of technological societies toward holotropic states of consciousness.
As I mentioned earlier, all ancient and pre-industrial societies held these states in high esteem, whether they were induced by psychedelic plants or some of the many powerful non-drug “technologies of the sacred” – fasting, sleep deprivation, social and sensory isolation, dancing, chanting, music, drumming, or physical pain. Members of these social groups had the opportunity to repeatedly experience holotropic states of consciousness during their lifetime in a variety of sacred contexts. By comparison, the industrial civilization has pathologized holotropic states, rejected or even outlawed the contexts and tools that can facilitate them, and developed effective means of suppressing them when they occur spontaneously, Because of the resulting naiveté and ignorance concerning holotropic states, Western culture was unprepared to accept and incorporate the extraordinary mind-altering properties and power of LSD and other psychedelics.
The sudden emergence of the Dionysian element from the depths of the unconscious and the heights of the superconscious was too threatening for the Euro-American society. In addition, the irrational and transrational nature of psychedelic experiences seriously challenged the very foundations of the materialistic worldview of Western science. The existence and nature of these experiences could not be explained in the context of mainstream theories and seriously undermined the metaphysical assumptions concerning priority of matter over consciousness on which Western culture is built. It also threatened the leading myth of the industrial world by showing that true fulfillment does not come from achievement of material goals but from a profound mystical experience.
It was not just the culture at large that was unprepared for the psychedelic experience; this was also true for the helping professions. For most psychiatrists and psychologists, psychotherapy meant disciplined face-to-face discussions or free-associating on the couch. The intense emotions and dramatic physical manifestations in psychedelic sessions appeared to them to be too close to what they were used to associate with psychopathology. It was hard for them to imagine that such states could be healing and transformative. As a result, they did not trust the reports about the extraordinary power of psychedelic psychotherapy coming from those colleagues who had enough courage to take the chances and do psychedelic therapy, or from their clients.
To complicate the situation even further, many of the phenomena occurring in psychedelic sessions could not be understood within the context of theories dominating academic thinking. The possibility of reliving birth or episodes from embryonic life, obtaining accurate information about world history and mythology from the collective unconscious, experiencing archetypal realities and karmic memories, or perceiving remote events in out-of-body states, were simply too fantastic to be believable for an average professional. Yet those of us who had the chance to work with LSD and were willing to radically change our theoretical understanding of the psyche and practical strategy of therapy were able to see and appreciate the enormous potential of psychedelics, both as therapeutic tools and as substances of extraordinary heuristic value.
In one of my early books, I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology and medicine or the telescope has for astronomy. My later experience with psychedelics only confirmed this initial impression. These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviors to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology. In addition, it offers unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.
Naturally, the tools of this power carry with them greater risks than more conservative and far less effective tools currently accepted and used by mainstream psychiatry, such as verbal psychotherapy or tranquillizing medication. Clinical research has shown that these risks can be minimized by responsible use and careful control of the set and setting. The safety of psychedelic therapy when conducted in a clinical setting was demonstrated by Sidney Cohen’s study based on information drawn from more than 25,000 psychedelic sessions. According to Cohen, LSD therapy appeared to be much safer than many other procedures that had been at one time or another routinely used in psychiatric treatment, such as electroshock therapy, insulin coma therapy, and psychosurgery (Cohen 1960). However, legislators responding to unsupervised mass use of psychedelics did not get their information from scientific publications, but from the stories of sensation-hunting journalists. The legal and administrative sanctions against psychedelics did not deter lay experimentation, but they all but terminated legitimate scientific research of these substances.
For those of us who had the privilege to explore and experience the extraordinary potential of psychedelics, this was a tragic loss for psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. We felt that these unfortunate developments wasted what was probably the single most important opportunity in the history of these disciplines. Had it been possible to avoid the unnecessary mass hysteria and continue responsible research of psychedelics, they could have undoubtedly radically transformed the theory and practice of psychiatry. I believe that the observations from this research have the potential to initiate a revolution in the understanding of the human psyche and of consciousness comparable to the conceptual cataclysm that modern physicists experienced in the first three decades in relation to their theories concerning matter. This new knowledge could become an integral part of a comprehensive new scientific paradigm of the twenty-first century.
At present, when more than three decades elapsed since official research with psychedelics was effectively terminated, I can attempt to evaluate the past history of these substances and glimpse into their future. After having personally conducted over the last fifty years more than four thousand psychedelic sessions, I have developed great awe and respect for these compounds and their enormous positive, as well as negative potential. They are powerful tools and like any tool they can be used skillfully, ineptly, or destructively. The result will be critically dependent on the set and setting.
The question whether LSD is a phenomenal medicine or a devil's drug makes as little sense as a similar question asked about the positive or negative potential of a knife. Naturally, we will get a very different report from a surgeon who bases his or her judgment on successful operations and from the police chief who investigates murders committed with knives in back alleys of New York City. A housewife
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