The Cosmic Game

SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology

Richard D. Mann, editor

The Cosmic Game

Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness

Stanislav Grof

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Cover Illustration : Plate 48 from Rawson, Philip, Tantra: The Indian Cult of
Ecstasy, (London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd, 1973). Copyright © Thames & Hudson. Used by
permission. From the Collection of Ajit Mookerjee, New Delhi.

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© 1998 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grof, Stanislav, 1931–

The cosmic game : explorations of the frontiers of human

consciousness / Stanislav Grof.

p. cm. — (SUNY series in transpersonal and humanistic psychology)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7914-3875-9 (hardcover : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-3876-7

(pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Spiritual life. 2. Altered states of consciousness.

I. Title. II. Series.

BL625.G697 1998

200’.1’9—dc21 97-41502

CIP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents
List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Cosmos, Consciousness, and Spirit

3. The Cosmic Creative Principle

4. The Process of Creation

5. The Ways to Reunion with the Cosmic Source

6. The Problem of Good and Evil

7. Birth, Sex, and Death: The Cosmic Connection

8. The Mystery of Karma and Reincarnation

9. The Taboo against Knowing Who You Are

10. Playing the Cosmic Game

11. The Sacred and the Profane

Bibliography
Index

Experiential Holotropic Breathwork Workshops and Training for Facilitators

Those readers who are interested in a personal experience of the Holotropic

Breathwork or would like to participate in a training program for Holotropic
Breathwork facilitators can obtain the necessary information from:

Cary Sparks

Director

Grof Transpersonal Training

20 Sunnyside Ave, #A 314

Mill Valley, California 94941

tel.: (415) 383-8779

fax.: (415) 383-0965

e-mail: [email protected]

website: www.holotropic.com

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca

Figure 2. Purushakara Yantra

Figure 3. The Hermetic Cosmic Man

Figure 4. Adam Kadmon

Figure 5. The Tibetan Wheel of Life

Figure 6. The Sorcerer of Les Trois Frères

Figure 7. Beast Master from Les Trois Frères

Figure 8. Hunting Scene from Lascaux

Figure 9. The Dancer from La Gabillou

Acknowledgments

This book is an attempt to summarize the philosophical and spiritual insights from
forty years of my personal and professional journey that involved exploration of
uncharted frontiers of the human psyche. It has been a complex, difficult, and at
times challenging pilgrimage that I could not have undertaken alone. Over the
years, I have received invaluable help, inspiration, and encouragement from many
people. Some of them have been my close friends, others important teachers, and
most of them have played an important part in my life in both roles. I cannot
acknowledge all of them individually, but some of them deserve special notice.

Angeles Arrien, an anthropologist and daughter of a “vision maker”—a spiritual

teacher from the Basque mystical tradition—has been for many years a true friend
and an important teacher. Drawing on forty years of her spiritual training, she has
been a living example of how to integrate the feminine and masculine aspects of
one’s psyche and how to “walk the mystical path with practical feet.”

Gregory Bateson, an original and seminal thinker, with whom I had the privilege of
spending hundreds of hours in personal and professional discussions during the two
and half years when we were both scholars-in-residence at the Esalen Institute in
Big Sur, California, was for me an important teacher and a special friend. In our
talks, he never wholeheartedly embraced the mystical realm. However, the relentless
logic of his inquisititive mind produced an incisive critique of mechanistic
thinking in science that provided a large opening for the transpersonal vision.

David Bohm’s work has been one of the most important contributions to my efforts to
establish connections between my own findings concerning the nature and dimensions
of human consciousness, on the one hand, and the scientific worldview, on the
other. I found his holographic model of the universe invaluable for my own
theoretical formulations. The fact that Karl Pribram’s model of the brain is also
based on holographic principles has been particularly important for this bridging
work.

Joseph Campbell, brilliant thinker, story teller, and master teacher, and for many
years my dear friend, has taught me to understand the meaning of mythology and its
function as a bridge to the realms of the sacred. He had a strong influence on my
own thinking and his contributions to my personal life were equally profound. Today
I consider mythology as understood by C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell to be of
critical importance for psychology, as well as for spirituality and religion.

Fritjof Capra’s ground-breaking book The Tao of Physics was extremely influential
in my own intellectual quest. By showing the convergence between quantum-
relativistic physics and the Eastern spiritual philosophies, it gave me hope that
spirituality and transpersonal psychology will one day become an integral part of a
comprehensive scientific paradigm of the future. It helped me enormously to free
myself from the straitjacket of my own academic training. Our friendship over the
years has been a source of inspiration.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk and philosopher, has helped me to

understand the difference between spirituality and religion. More specifically, he
taught me to appreciate the mystical core of Christianity and the nature of Jesus’
original message that in my early life was for me obscured by the complex and
confusing history of the Christian Church.

Michael Harner, who has been able to integrate in a unique way his academic
training as an anthropologist and his shamanic initiation in the Amazon, is one of
my closest friends, as well as an important teacher. I have been able to learn from
him, both theoretically and experientially, to deeply appreciate shamanism,
humanity’s oldest religion and healing art. This has been an important complement
to my direct experiences with North American, Mexican, South American, and African
shamans.

Albert Hofmann has had indirectly a more profound influence on my personal and
professional life than any other single individual. His “serendipitous” discovery
of the powerful psychedelic effects of LSD led to my first experience with this
substance in 1956 when I was a beginning psychiatrist. This experiment has changed
my personal and professional life and generated a profound interest in nonordinary
states of consciousness.

Jack Kornfield, is a dear friend, colleague, spiritual teacher, and a true master
of “skillful means” in the meditation hall, as well as in everyday life. He has
been able to bring together and integrate in a remarkable way years of training as
a Buddhist monk with his Western academic training in psychology. All of us who
know him, friends and disciples alike, admire his compassion, wisdom, and
extraordinary humor. In the two decades we have known each other, we have co-led
many workshops and retreats. I have probably learned from him more about Buddhism
and spirituality than from all the books I have read on these subjects.
Ervin Laszlo, the world’s foremost representative of systems philosophy and the
theory of general evolution, has been a very important influence in my professional
life. His books—in which he succeeded in formulating the outlines of a unified
science of matter, life, and mind—as well as personal discussions with him,
provided for me the most satisfying conceptual framework for understanding my own
experiences and observations. They made it possible to integrate my findings into a
comprehensive worldview that unites spirituality and science.

Ralph Metzner, a psychologist and psychotherapist, who represents a rare

combination of rigorous scholarship, concern for nature and the future of humanity,
and an adventurous spirit, has been since our first meeting thirty years ago an
important friend and fellow seeker. He has been for me an important model for
maintaining emotional balance and intellectual rigor in view of challenging and
unsettling experiences and observations.

Ram Dass, another member of a close circle of special friends, has been one of my
most important spiritual teachers. Representing a unique combination of jñana,
bhakti, karma, and raja yoga, he has played in our culture the role of an
archetypal spiritual seeker reporting with brutal honesty all the triumphs and
failures of his spiritual quest. I do not remember a single time among our many
meetings where he would not have enriched me with some unique insights and ideas.

Rupert Sheldrake has brought to my attention with unusual incisiveness and clarity
the shortcomings of mainstream science. This helped me to be more open to new
observations and trust my own judgment, even if my findings contradicted basic
metaphysical assumptions of the conceptual frameworks I had been brought up with. I
found his emphasis on the need to find adequate explanations for form, pattern,
order, and meaning to be particularly important for my work.

Rick Tarnas, a psychologist, philosopher, and astrologer, has been one of my

closest friends and a constant source of inspiration and new ideas. During the
years we lived at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and more recently in
the classes we have been jointly teaching at the California Institute of Integral
Studies (CIIS), we have been exploring the extraordinary correlations between
holotropic states of consciousness, archetypal psychology, and transit astrology.
Through his meticulous research, Rick has helped me to deeply appreciate the grand
design underlying creation.

Charles Tart has been for me an example of a brilliant and accomplished academician
who has the courage, honesty, and integrity to stand uncompromisingly behind what
he believes is true and to pursue unorthodox avenues in research, even if they are
as controversial and misunderstood as parapsychology and spirituality. I admire him
and have learned much from him.
Frances Vaughan and Roger Walsh are important pioneers and leaders in the field of
transpersonal psychology. They are partners in life and work and I will thank them
as a couple. They have been for me a source of continuing inspiration, support, and
encouragement. In their lectures, seminars, and writings, as well as in their
personal life, they have been modeling the possibility of integrating science,
spirituality, and sane living. It has been wonderful to have them as friends and
colleagues.

Ken Wilber has done more than any other single individual in terms of laying solid
philosophical foundations for future reconciliation of science and spirituality.
The series of his ground-breaking books has been a tour de force, offering an
extraordinary synthesis of data drawn from a vast variety of areas and disciplines,
Eastern and Western. Although we have occasionally disagreed about details, his
work has been for me a rich source of information, stimulation, and conceptual
challenge. I also greatly appreciate his critical comments on the present book.

I also feel deep gratitude to John Buchanan—for the inspiration, the humor he
brought into our lives, and the generous support he has given my work over the
years. Last but not least, I would like to express my high regard for Robert
McDermott, president of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) for the
extraordinary generosity and open-mindedness with which he supports and encourages
free exchange of ideas in the controversial area of transpersonal psychology. I am
also very grateful for the thoughtful and valuable comments he offered me after
reading the manuscript of this book.

My special thanks go to the immediate members of my family, who have shared with me
the excitement and the vicissitudes of my stormy personal and professional journey
and have been a constant source of support and encouragement—my wife Christina, my
brother Paul, and my late parents. Christina and I have jointly developed the
holotropic breathwork that has been an important source of data for this book and
have used it in our workshops and training all over the world. I feel deep
gratitude for all she has contributed to the spiritual journey we have shared over
the years. I would also like to express my appreciation to Cary and Tav Sparks, who
have played an important role in my life by being close friends, as well as highly
competent, dependable, and dedicated co-workers.

Many people whose contributions to this book were absolutely essential and critical
will have to remain anonymous. I am referring here to thousands of individuals with
whom I have worked over the years and who have discussed with me their experiences
and insights from nonordinary states of consciousness. I feel great respect for
their courage in exploring hidden dimensions of reality and gratitude for the
openness and honesty with which they have shared with me their remarkable
adventures. Without them this book could not have been written.

Introduction
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. … He to whom this
emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is
as good as dead.

—Albert Einstein

Use the light that dwells within you to regain your natural clarity of sight.

—Lao-tzu

This book addresses some of the most fundamental questions of existence that human
beings have been asking since time immemorial. How did our universe come into
being? Is the world we live in merely a product of mechanical processes involving
inanimate, inert, and reactive matter? Do we have to assume the existence of
superior cosmic intelligence responsible for the creation and evolution of the
cosmos? Can material reality be explained solely in terms of natural laws or does
it involve forces and principles that elude such descriptions?

How can we come to terms with such dilemmas as finiteness of time and space versus
eternity and infinity? What is the source of order, form, and meaning in the
universe? What is the relationship between life and matter, and between
consciousness and the brain? Many of the issues that we will explore in this book
have great relevance for everyday existence. How should we understand the apparent
conflict between good and evil, the mystery of karma and reincarnation, and the
problem of the meaning of human life?

These are not questions that are usually asked in the context of psychiatric
practice or psychological research. And yet, in my work as a psychiatrist, these
issues emerged quite spontaneously and with extraordinary urgency in the minds of
many of the people with whom I have worked. The reason for this is the unusual
field of study that has been the main focus of my interest during the forty years
of my professional life—research of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

This interest began quite unexpectedly and in a very dramatic way in 1956, only a
few months after my graduation from medical school, when I volunteered for an
experiment with LSD in the Psychiatric Department of the School of Medicine in
Prague, Czechoslovakia. This experience profoundly influenced my personal and
professional life and provided the inspiration for my lifelong commitment to
consciousness research.

Although I have been interested in the entire spectrum of nonordinary states of

consciousness, I have had most personal experience with psychedelic research, with
therapeutic work involving individuals undergoing spontaneous psychospiritual
crises (spiritual emergencies), and with holotropic breathwork, a method that I
have developed jointly with my wife Christina. In psychedelic therapy the
nonordinary states of consciousness are induced by chemical means; in spiritual
emergencies they develop spontaneously for unknown reasons in the middle of
everyday life; and in holotropic breathwork they are facilitated by a combination
of faster breathing, evocative music, and a specific form of focused body work. In
this book, I will be drawing on all these three areas, since the insights from all
of them are very similar, if not identical.

Consciousness Research and Perennial Philosophy

In my previous publications, I have described the important implications of

systematic study of nonordinary states of consciousness for the understanding of
emotional and psychosomatic disorders and for psychotherapy (Grof 1985, 1992). This
book has a much larger and general focus: it explores the extraordinary
philosophical, metaphysical, and spiritual insights that have emerged in the course
of this work. The experiences and observations from this research have revealed
important aspects and dimensions of reality that are usually hidden from our
everyday awareness.

Throughout centuries, these experiences and the realms of existence they disclose
have been described in the context of spiritual philosophies and mystical
traditions, such as Vedanta, Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism,
Gnosticism, Christian mysticism, Cabala, and many other sophisticated spiritual
systems. The findings of my research and contemporary consciousness research in
general essentially confirm and support the position of these ancient teachings.
They are thus in radical conflict with the most fundamental assumptions of
materialistic science concerning consciousness, human nature, and the nature of
reality. They clearly indicate that consciousness is not a product of the brain,
but a primary principle of existence, and that it plays a critical role in the
creation of the phenomenal world.

This research also radically changes our conception of the human psyche. It shows
that, in its farthest reaches, the psyche of each of us is essentially commensurate
with all of existence and ultimately identical with the cosmic creative principle
itself. This conclusion, while seriously challenging the worldview of modern
technological societies, is in far-reaching agreement with the image of reality
found in the great spiritual and mystical traditions of the world, which the Anglo-
American writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley referred to as the “perennial
philosophy” (Huxley 1945).

Modern consciousness research has generated important data that support the basic
tenets of the perennial philosophy. It has revealed a grand purposeful design
underlying all of creation and has shown that all of existence is permeated by
superior intelligence. In the light of these new discoveries, spirituality is
affirmed as an important and legitimate endeavor in human life, since it reflects a
critical dimension of the human psyche and of the universal scheme of things. The
mystical traditions and spiritual philosophies of the past have often been
dismissed and even ridiculed for being “irrational” and “unscientific”. This is an
uninformed judgment that is unwarranted and unjustified. Many of the great
spiritual systems are products of centuries of in-depth exploration of the human
psyche and consciousness that in many ways resembles scientific research.

These systems offer detailed instructions concerning the methods of inducing

spiritual experiences on which they base their philosophical speculations. They
have systematically collected data drawn from these experiences and subjected them
to collective consensus validation, usually over a period of many centuries. These
are exactly the stages necessary for achieving valid and reliable knowledge in any
area of scientific endeavor (Smith 1976; Wilber 1997). It is very exciting that the
claims of various schools of perennial philosophy can now be supported by data from
modern consciousness research.

The approaches to self-exploration that make this modern validation possible, as

they are described in this book, do not require the same degree of commitment and
personal sacrifice as the ancient spiritual practices. They are more accessible and
practical for Westerners who are trapped in the complexity of modern life. The use
of psychedelics has been compromised by widespread unsupervised experimentation and
is at present seriously barred by a host of administrative and legal restrictions.
However, holotropic breathwork is a method that is available for all those
interested in exploring the validity of the insights described in this book. The
experiences from our workshops conducted all over the world and the feedback from
several hundred people who have completed our training and facilitate holotropic
breathwork sessions themselves have convinced me that the observations I have
described in this book are fully replicable.

Holotropic States of Consciousness

Before we begin to explore the spiritual and philosophical insights from my work, I
would like to clarify in which sense I will be using in this book the term
nonordinary states of consciousness. My primary interest is to focus on experiences
that represent a useful source of data about the human psyche and the nature of
reality, particularly those that reveal various aspects of the spiritual dimension
of existence. I would also like to examine the healing, transformative, and
evolutionary potential of these experiences. For this purpose, the term nonordinary
states of consciousness is too general, since it includes a wide range of
conditions that are not interesting or relevant from this point of view.

Consciousness can be profoundly changed by a variety of pathological processes—by

cerebral traumas, by intoxications with poisons, by infections, or by degenerative
and circulatory processes in the brain. Such conditions can certainly result in
profound mental changes that would be included in the category of nonordinary
states of consciousness. However, they cause “trivial deliria” or “organic
psychoses,” states that are very important clinically, but are not relevant for our
discussion. People suffering from delirious states are typically disoriented. They
might be confused to such a degree that they do not know who and where they are and
what month or year it is. They typically show a disturbance of intellectual
functions and have subsequent amnesia for the experiences they have had.

I will, therefore, narrow our discussion to a large and important subgroup of

nonordinary states of consciousnes for which contemporary psychiatry does not have
a specific term. Because I am convinced that they deserve to be distinguished from
the rest and placed into a special category, I have coined for them the name
holotropic (Grof 1992). This composite word literally means “oriented toward
wholeness” or “moving in the direction of wholeness” (from the Greek holos = whole,
and trepein = moving toward or in the direction of something). The full meaning of
this term and the justification for its use will become clear later in this book.
It suggests that in our everyday state of consciousness we are not really whole; we
are fragmented and identify with only a small fraction of who we really are.

Holotropic states are characterized by a specific transformation of consciousness

associated with perceptual changes in all sensory areas, intense and often unusual
emotions, and profound alterations in the thought processes. They are also usually
accompanied by a variety of intense psychosomatic manifestations and unconventional
forms of behavior. Consciousness is changed qualitatively in a very profound and
fundamental way but, unlike in the delirant conditions, it is not grossly impaired.
In holotropic states, we experience intrusion of other dimensions of existence that
can be very intense and even overwhelming. However, at the same time, we typically
remain fully oriented and do not completely lose touch with everyday reality. We
experience simultaneously two very different realities.

Extraordinary changes in sensory perception represent a very important and

characteristic aspect of holotropic states. With the eyes open, we typically
experience profound changes in the shapes and colors of the environment. When we
close our eyes, we can be flooded with images drawn from our personal history and
from the collective unconscious. We can also have visions portraying various
aspects of nature, of the cosmos, or of the mythological realms. This can be
accompanied by a wide range of experiences engaging other senses—various sounds,
physical sensations, smells, and tastes.

The emotions associated with holotropic states cover a very broad spectrum that
extends far beyond the limits of our everyday experience. They range from feelings
of ecstatic rapture, heavenly bliss, and “peace that passeth all understanding” to
episodes of abysmal terror, overpowering anger, utter despair, consuming guilt, and
other forms of extreme emotional suffering. The intensity of these agonizing
experiences can match the descriptions of the tortures of hell in some of the great
religions of the world. The physical sensations that accompany these states are
similarly polarized. Depending on the content of the experience, it can be a sense
of extraordinary health and well-being, optimal physiological functioning, and
orgastic sexual sensations of enormous intensity, but also extreme discomfort, such
as excruciating pains, pressures, nausea, or feelings of suffocation.
A particularly interesting aspect of holotropic states is their effect on the
thought processes. The intellect is not impaired, but it operates in a way that is
significantly different from its everyday functioning. While we might not be able
to rely in these states on our judgment in ordinary practical matters, we can be
literally flooded with remarkable new information on a variety of subjects. We can
reach profound psychological insights concerning our personal history, unconscious
dynamics, emotional difficulties, and interpersonal problems. We can also
experience extraordinary revelations concerning various aspects of nature and the
cosmos that transcend our educational and intellectual background. By far the most
interesting insights that become available in holotropic states revolve around
philosophical, metaphysical, and spiritual issues. Exploration of these insights is
the main focus of this book.

Philosophical and Spiritual Insights from Holotropic States

The content of holotropic states of consciousness is often philosophical and

mystical. In these episodes, we can experience sequences of psychospiritual death
and rebirth or feelings of oneness with other people, nature, the universe, and
God. We might uncover what seem to be memories from other incarnations, encounter
powerful archetypal beings, communicate with discarnate entities, and visit
numerous mythological domains. The rich spectrum of these states also includes out-
of-body experiences during which the disembodied consciousness maintains the
capacity of optical perception and can accurately observe from unusual angles and
distances the events in the immediate environment of the body, as well as in
various remote locations.

Holotropic experiences can be induced by a variety of ancient and aboriginal

techniques, “technologies of the sacred.” These procedures combine in various ways
drumming, rattling, sounds of bells or gongs, chanting, rhythmic dancing, changes
of breathing, and cultivation of special forms of awareness. They might include
extended social and sensory isolation, fasting, sleep deprivation, dehydration, and
even drastic physical interventions, such as bloodletting, powerful laxatives and
purgatives, and infliction of severe pain. A particularly effective technology of
the sacred has been ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances.

These mind-altering techniques have played a critical role in the ritual and
spiritual history of humanity. Induction of holotropic states has been absolutely
essential for shamanism, rites of passage, and other ceremonies of native cultures.
It also represented the key element of the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth
that were conducted in different parts of the world and particularly flourished in
the Mediterranean area. Holotropic experiences have been equally important for
various mystical branches of the great religions of the world. These esoteric
traditions have developed a variety of technologies of the sacred—specific methods
of inducing such experiences. Here belong various forms of yoga, meditation and
concentration techniques, multivocal chanting, whirling of the dervishes, ascetic
practices, the Christian hesychasm or “Jesus prayer,” and many others.
In modern times, the spectrum of mind-altering techniques has been considerably
enriched. The clinical approaches include the use of pure alkaloids from
psychedelic plants or synthetic psychedelic substances, as well as powerful forms
of experiential psychotherapy, such as hypnosis, primal therapy, rebirthing, and
holotropic breathwork. The most popular of the laboratory methods for inducing
holotropic states has been sensory deprivation, an approach based on various
degrees of reduction of sensory stimuli. Another well-known method is biofeedback,
which makes it possible to use the information about the changes in one’s brain
waves as a guideline to specific states of consciousness. Many special electronic
devices use the principle of “entrainment” or “driving” of the brainwaves by
various acoustic and optical stimuli.

It is important to emphasize that episodes of holotropic states of varying depth

and duration can also occur spontaneously, without any specific identifiable cause,
and often against the will of the people involved. Since modern psychiatry does not
differentiate between mystical or spiritual states and psychotic episodes, people
experiencing these states are often diagnosed as mentally ill, hospitalized, and
subjected to routine suppressive pharmacological treatment. My wife Christina and I
have suggested that many of these states are actually psychospiritual crises or
spiritual emergencies. If they are properly understood and individuals undergoing
them are supported by experienced facilitators, episodes of this kind can result in
psychosomatic healing, spiritual opening, positive personality transformation, and
consciousness evolution (Grof and Grof 1990).

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science

As we have seen from the above description, holotropic experiences are the common
denominator in many procedures that have throughout centuries shaped the ritual,
spiritual, and cultural life of many human groups. They have been the main source
of cosmologies, mythologies, philosophies, and religious systems describing the
spiritual nature of the cosmos and of existence. They are the key for understanding
the spiritual life of humanity from shamanism and sacred ceremonies of aboriginal
tribes to the great religions of the world. But, most important, they provide
invaluable practical guidelines for a rich and satisfying life strategy that makes
it possible to realize to the fullest our creative potential. For all these
reasons, it is important that Western scientists free themselves from their
materialistic prejudices and subject holotropic states to unbiased systematic
research.

I have been deeply interested in all the categories of holotropic states of

consciousness mentioned above and have had important personal experiences in many
of them. However, as I have mentioned earlier, most of my professional work has
been in the areas of psychedelic therapy, holotropic breathwork, and “spiritual
emergency.” Although the experiences observed in these three situations differ in
terms of the triggers that initiate them, they seem to be remarkably similar in
terms of their experiential content and of the spiritual and philosophical insights
that they convey.
During my professional career, I have personally conducted over four thousand
psychedelic sessions with such substances as LSD, psilocybine, mescaline, dipropyl-
tryptamine (DPT), and methylene-dioxy-amphetamine (MDA), and had access to over two
thousand sessions conducted by my colleagues. A significant proportion of these
sessions involved psychiatric patients suffering from various forms of emotional
and psychosomatic disorders, such as depression, psychoneurosis, psychosomatic
disorders, alcoholism, and narcotic drug addiction.

Another large group consisted of patients suffering from various forms of cancer,
most of them terminal. In this study, the objective was not only to relieve the
emotional distress and severe physical pain associated with this illness, but also
to offer these patients an opportunity to achieve mystical states in order to
alleviate their fear of death, change their attitude toward it, and transform their
experience of dying. The remaining subjects were “normal volunteers,” such as
psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, clergy, artists, and scientists from
various disciplines, who volunteered for psychedelic sessions because they sought
understanding and insight.

The breathing sessions were conducted in the context of a long-term training

program of professionals and of experiential workshops with a broad cross-section
of the general population. Over the years, my wife Christina and I have supervised
over thirty thousand holotropic sessions, mostly carried out in groups, only
exceptionally on an individual basis. Besides the experimentation with psychedelics
and with the holotropic breathwork, I have also worked with many individuals
undergoing spontaneous psychospiritual crises. This occurred occasionally as part
of my personal and professional life and was not carried out systematically as a
specific project.

In writing this book, I used the records that I had amassed during more than forty
years of work in the field of consciousness studies. I have focused specifically on
those parts of the records that described experiences and observations related to
basic ontological and cosmological questions. To my surprise, what emerged from
these accounts of holotropic states was a comprehensive and logically consistent
alternative to the understanding of human nature and of existence that has been
formulated by materialistic science and that represents the official ideology of
the Western industrial civilization.

People who experience holotropic states and integrate them effectively do not
develop idiosyncratic delusional worldviews representing disjointed distortions of
“objective reality.” They discover various partial aspects of a grand vision of a
universe that is created and permeated by superior cosmic intelligence. In the last
analysis, this ensouled cosmos is commensurate with their own psyche and
consciousness. These insights show a remarkable similarity to the understanding of
reality that has repeatedly emerged, often quite independently, throughout history
in different parts of the world. In many variations, this vision of reality has
been shared by all the people who have had the opportunity to complement their
everyday experience of material reality with insights from holotropic states of
consciousness.
This finding brings good news to the millions of Westerners and people in
technologized societies who have had various forms of holotropic experiences and
were unable to integrate them with the belief system of their mainstream cultures.
Because of this discrepancy, many of them questioned their own sanity or had their
sanity questioned by others, including the mental health professionals from whom
they sought advice or to whom they were brought against their will. The study of
holotropic states vindicates these people and reveals the shortcomings of
contemporary psychiatry. It shows an urgent need for a radical revision and
revisioning of our understanding of human nature and of the nature of reality.

As the revolutionary advances of various disciplines of modern science continue to

lift the spell of the outdated materialistic worldview, we begin to see the
outlines of a new comprehensive understanding of ourselves, nature, and the
universe. It is increasingly clear that this emerging alternative approach to
existence will integrate science and spirituality and introduce important elements
of the ancient wisdom into our technological world. Even at present, we have much
more than just a disjointed mosaic of revolutionary theories and a vague outline of
such a vision. Ervin Laszlo has already provided a brilliant synthesis of the most
important theoretical breakthroughs in various fields of modern science (Laszlo
1993). Ken Wilber has formulated an extraordinary interdisciplinary framework that
provides the necessary philosophical foundations for such integral understanding of
reality (Wilber 1995, 1996, 1997).

Clearly, when this new vision of the cosmos is completed, it will not be a simple
return to prescientific understanding of reality, but an overarching creative
synthesis of the best of the past and the present. A worldview preserving all the
achievments of modern science and, at the same time, reintroducing into the Western
civilization the spiritual values that it has lost, could have profound influence
on our individual, as well as collective life. I firmly believe that the
experiences and observations from holotropic states explored in this book will be
an integral part of this exciting new image of reality and of human nature that is
now painfully being born.

Cosmos, Consciousness, and Spirit

As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realize that there
is consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in
every thing that belongs to physical nature.

—Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

The difference between most people and myself is that for me the ‘dividing walls’
are transparent.

—C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The Worldview of Materialistic Science

According to Western science, the universe is an immensely complex assembly of

material particles that has essentially created itself. Life, consciousness, and
intelligence are insignificant and more or less accidental latecomers on the cosmic
scene. These three aspects of existence allegedly appeared in a negligible portion
of an immense cosmos after billions of years of evolution of matter. Life owes its
origin to random chemical processes in the primeval ocean that gathered atoms and
inorganic molecules into organic compounds. The organic material then acquired
during further evolution the capacity for self-preservation, reproduction, and
cellular organization. The unicellular organisms assembled into larger and larger
multicellular life forms and eventually developed into the rich panoply of species
inhabiting this earth, including Homo sapiens.

We are told that consciousness emerged in late stages of this evolution out of the
complexity of the physiological processes in the central nervous system. It is a
product of the brain and, as such, it is confined to the inside of our skull. From
this perspective, consciousness and intelligence are functions that are limited to
human beings and higher animals. They certainly do not and cannot exist
independently of biological systems. According to this way of understanding
reality, the content of our psyche is more or less limited to the information we
have received through our sensory organs from the external world since the time we
were born.

Here Western scientists basically agree with the old saying of the British
empiricist school of philosophy: “There is nothing in the intellect that was not
previously in a sense organ.” This position, first articulated by John Locke in the
eighteenth century, naturally excludes the possibility of extrasensory perception
(ESP)—access to information of any kind that is not mediated by the senses, such as
telepathy, clairvoyance, or out-of-body experiences with accurate perception of
remote locations.

In addition, the nature and extent of our sensory input is determined by the
physical characteristics of the environment and by the physiological properties and
constraints of our senses. For example, we cannot see objects if we are separated
from them by a solid wall. We lose from our view a ship that passes beyond the
horizon, and we are unable to observe the other side of the moon. Similarly, we
cannot hear the sounds if the acoustic waves created by an external event do not
reach our ears with sufficient intensity. When we are in San Francisco, we cannot
see and hear what our friends are doing in New York City, unless, of course, this
perception is mediated by some modern technological inventions, such as television
or telephone.

Conceptual Challenges from Modern Consciousness Research

The experiences in nonordinary states of consciousness seriously challenge such

narrow understanding of the potential of the human psyche and of the limits of our
perception. What we can experience in these states is not limited to memories from
our life after we were born and to the Freudian individual unconscious, as
materialistic scientists have taught us to believe. Holotropic experiences reach
far beyond the boundaries of what the Anglo-American writer and philosopher Alan
Watts facetiously called “the skin-encapsulated ego.” They can take us into vast
territories of the psyche as yet uncharted by Western psychologists and
psychiatrists. In an effort to describe and classify all the phenomena that become
available in holotropic states, I have sketched a new map of human experience that
expands the conventional understanding of the psyche. In this context, I will only
briefly outline the basic features of this new cartography. A more detailed
description can be found in my earlier books (Grof 1975, 1988).

To account for all the experiences that can occur in holotropic states, I had to
radically expand the current Western understanding of the psyche by adding two
large domains. The first of these is a repository of intense physical sensations
and emotions linked to the trauma of birth, such as extreme physical pains in
various parts of the body, feelings of suffocation, experience of vital anxiety,
hopelessness, and intense rage. In addition, this domain also contains a rich
spectrum of corresponding symbolic images revolving around the issues of birth,
death, sex, and violence. I refer to this level of the psyche as perinatal because
of its association with biological birth (from the Greek peri = around or near, and
the Latin natalis = pertaining to chilbirth). I will return to this topic later in
the chapter exploring the spiritual dimensions of birth, sex, and death.

The second additional domain of the psyche included in my cartography can be

referred to as transpersonal, since its basic characteristic is the experience of
transcending the usual personal limitations of the body and the ego. Transpersonal
experiences vastly expand the sense of personal identity by including elements of
the external world and other dimensions of reality. One important category of
transpersonal experiences involves, for example, authentic experiential
identification with other people, animals, plants, and various other aspects of
nature and the cosmos.

Another large group of transpersonal phenomena can be described in terms of what

the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung (1959) called the collective unconscious. This
vast repository of ancestral, racial, and collective memories contains the entire
historical and cultural heritage of humanity. It also harbors primordial organizing
principles that Jung called archetypes. According to him, the archetypes govern the
processes in our psyche, as well as the events in the world at large. They also are
the creative force behind the infinitely rich imaginal world of the psyche with its
pantheons of mythological realms and beings. In holotropic states, the contents of
the collective unconscious become available for conscious experience.

Careful study of the perinatal and transpersonal experiences shows that the
boundaries between the individual human psyche and the rest of the cosmos are
ultimately arbitrary and can be transcended. This work brings strong evidence
suggesting that, in the last analysis, each of us is commensurate with the totality
of existence. What it means practically is that anything that we would, in our
everyday state of consciousness, perceive as an object, can be also encountered as
a corresponding subjective experience when we are in a holotropic state. In
addition to all the elements of the material world throughout the entire range of
space-time, we can also experience various aspects of other dimensions of reality,
such as archetypal beings and mythological domains of the collective unconscious.

In holotropic states, we can experience in remarkable detail all the stages of our
biological birth, memories of prenatal existence, and even a cellular record of our
conception. Transpersonal experiences can bring forth episodes from the lives of
our immediate or remote ancestors or take us into the realm of the racial and
collective unconscious. They can provide access to episodes that appear to be
memories from previous incarnations, or even vestiges from the lives of our animal
ancestors. We might experience full conscious identification with other people,
groups of people, animals, plants, and even inorganic objects and processes. During
such experiences, we can gain entirely new accurate information about various
aspects of the universe, including the data that we could not have possibly
acquired in our present lifetime through the ordinary channels.

When we have experienced to sufficient depth these dimensions that are hidden to
our everyday perception, we typically undergo profound changes in our understanding
of existence and of the nature of reality. The most fundamental metaphysical
insight we obtain is the realization that the universe is not an autonomous system
that has evolved as a result of mechanical interplay of material particles. We find
it impossible to take seriously the basic assumption of materialistic science,
which asserts that the history of the universe is merely the history of evolving
matter. We have directly experienced the divine, sacred, or numinous dimensions of
existence in a very profound and compelling way.

The Ensouled Universe

Following powerful transpersonal experiences, our worldview typically expands to

include some elements of the cosmologies of various native peoples and ancient
cultures. This development is completely independent of our intelligence,
educational background, or profession. Authentic and convincing experiences of
conscious identification with animals, plants, and even inorganic materials and
processes make it easy to understand the beliefs of animistic cultures that see the
entire universe as being ensouled. From their perspective, not only all the
animals, but also the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the sun, the moon, and the
stars appear to be sentient beings.

The following experience shows how it is possible in holotropic states of

consciousness to experience inorganic objects as divine entities. It involves John,
an intelligent and educated American, who had a powerful experience of loss of his
everyday identity and conscious identification with a granite mountain while
camping with his friends at a high altitude in Sierra Nevada.

I was resting on a large flat slab of granite with my feet immersed in a pristine
creek cascading down the mountain. I was basking in the sun, absorbing its rays
with my whole being. As I was getting more and more relaxed, I felt deep peace,
deeper than I could ever imagine. Time was progressively slowing down until it
finally seemed to stop. I felt the touch of eternity.

Gradually, I lost the sense of boundaries and merged with the granite mountain. All
my inner turmoil and chatter quieted down and was replaced with absolute stillness.
I felt that I had arrived. I was in a state of ultimate rest where all my desires
and needs were satisfied and all questions answered. Suddenly I realized that this
profound unfathomable peace had something to do with the nature of granite. As
incredible as it might seem, I felt that I became the consciousness of granite.

I suddenly understood why the Egyptians made granite sculptures of deities and why
the Hindus saw the Himalayas as the reclining figure of Shiva. It was the
imperturbable state of consciousness that they worshipped. It takes tens of
millions of years before even the surface of granite is broken by the assaults of
weather. During that time the mercurial organic world undergoes countless changes:
species originate, exist, and get extinct; dynasties are founded, rule, and are
replaced by others; and thousands of generations play out their silly dramas. The
granite mountain stands there like a majestic witness, like a deity, immovable and
untouched by anything that happens.

The World of Deities and Demons

Holotropic states of consciousness, can also provide deep insights into the
worldview of the cultures that believe that the cosmos is populated by mythological
beings and that it is governed by various blissful and wrathful deities. In these
states, we can gain direct experiential access to the world of gods, demons,
legendary heroes, suprahuman entities, and spirit guides. We can visit the domain
of mythological realities, fantastic landscapes, and abodes of the Beyond. The
imagery of such experiences can be drawn from the collective unconscious and can
feature mythological figures and themes from any culture in the entire history of
humanity. Deep personal experiences of this realm help us realize that the images
of the cosmos found in pre-industrial societies are not based on superstition or
primitive “magical thinking,” but on direct experiences of alternative realities.

A particularly convincing proof of the authenticity of these experiences is the

fact that, like other transpersonal phenomena, they can bring us new and accurate
information about various archetypal beings and realms. The nature, scope, and
quality of this information often by far surpasses our previous intellectual
knowledge concerning the respective mythologies. Observations of this kind led C.
G. Jung to the assumption that, besides the individual unconscious as described by
Sigmund Freud, we also have a collective unconscious that connects us with the
entire cultural heritage of all humanity.

I will describe here as an illustration one of the most interesting experiences of

this kind I have observed during the years of my work with holotropic states of
consciousness. It involved Otto, one of my clients in Prague, whom I treated for
depression and pathological fear of death (thanatophobia). In one of his
psychedelic sessions, he experienced a powerful sequence of psychospiritual death
and rebirth. As the experience was culminating, he had a vision of an ominous
entrance into the underworld guarded by a terrifying pig-goddess. At this point, he
suddenly felt an urgent need to draw a specific geometrical design.

Although I generally asked my clients to stay during their sessions in a reclining

position with the eyes closed and keep the experiences internalized, at this point
Otto opened his eyes, sat up, and urgently asked me to bring him some sheets of
paper and drawing utensils. He drew an entire series of complex abstract patterns
and, with great dissatisfaction and despair, he kept impulsively tearing and
crumpling these intricate designs as soon as he finished them. He was very
dissatisfied with his drawings and was getting increasingly frustrated, because he
was not able to “get it right.” When I asked him what he was trying to do, he was
not able to explain it to me. He said that he simply felt an irresistible
compulsion to draw these geometrical patterns and was convinced that drawing the
right kind of design was somehow a necessary condition for a successful completion
of his session.

The theme clearly had a strong emotional charge for Otto and it seemed important to
understand it. At that time, I was still under a strong influence of my Freudian
training and I tried my best to identify the unconscious motives for this strange
behavior by using the method of free associations. We spent much time on this task,
but without much success. The entire sequence simply did not make any sense.
Eventually, the process moved to other areas and I stopped thinking about this
situation. The entire episode had remained for me completely mysterious until many
years later, when I moved to the United States.

During my stay in Baltimore, a friend of mine suggested that Joseph Campbell might
be interested in the implications of my research for mythology and offered to
arrange a meeting with him. After a few initial encounters, we became good friends
and he played a very important role in my personal and professional life. Joseph
has been considered by many to be the greatest mythologist of the twentieth century
and possibly of all times. His intellect was remarkable and his knowledge of world
mythology truly encyclopedic. He had a keen interest in the research of nonordinary
states of consciousness, which he considered to be very relevant for the study of
mythology (Campbell 1972). We had many fascinating discussions over the years,
during which I shared with him various observations of obscure archetypal
experiences from my work that I was not able to understand. In most instances,
Joseph had no difficulties identifying the cultural sources of the symbolism
involved.

During one of these discussions, I remembered the above episode and shared it with
him. “How fascinating,” said Joseph without any hesitation, “it was clearly the
Cosmic Mother Night of Death, the Devouring Mother Goddess of the Malekulans in New
Guinea.” He then continued to tell me that the Malekulans believed they would
encounter this deity during the Journey of the Dead. She had the form of a
frightening female figure with distinct pig features. According to the Malekulan
tradition, she sat at the entrance into the underworld and guarded an intricate
sacred labyrinthine design.

The Malekulans had an elaborate system of rituals that involved breeding and
sacrificing pigs. This complex ritual activity was aimed at overcoming the
dependency on their human mothers and eventually on the Devouring Mother Goddess.
The Malekulans spent an enormous amount of time practicing the art of the labyrinth
drawing, since its mastery was considered essential for a successful journey to the
Beyond. Joseph, with his lexical knowledge, was able to solve an important part of
this puzzle that I had come across during my research. The remaining question, that
even he was not able to answer, was why my client had to encounter specifically
this Malekulan deity at that particular time of his therapy. However, the task of
mastering the posthumous journey certainly made good sense for somebody whose main
symptom was pathological fear of death.

C. G. Jung and the Universal Archetypes

In holotropic states we discover that our psyche has access to entire pantheons of
mythological figures, as well as domains that they inhabit. According to C. G.
Jung, these are manifestations of primordial universal patterns that represent
intrinsic constituents of the collective unconscious. The archetypal figures fall
into two distinct categories. The first one includes blissful and wrathful beings
embodying various specific universal roles and functions. The most famous of them
are the Great Mother Goddess, the Terrible Mother Goddess, the Wise Old Man, the
Eternal Youth (Puer Eternus and Puella Eterna), the Lovers, the Grim Reaper, and
the Trickster. Jung also discovered that men harbor in their unconscious a
generalized representation of the feminine principle that he called Anima. Her
counterpart, the generalized representation of the masculine principle in the
unconscious of women, is the Animus. The unconscious representation of the dark,
destructive aspect of human personality is in Jungian psychology called the Shadow.
In holotropic states, all these principles can come to life as complex protean
appearances condensing in a holographic fashion countless specific instances of
what they represent. I will use here as an example my own experience of an
encounter with the world of the archetypes.

In the final sequence of the session, I had a vision of a large brilliantly lit
stage that was located somewhere beyond time and space. It had a beautiful ornate
curtain decorated with intricate patterns that seemed to contain the entire history
of the world. I intuitively understood that I was visiting the Theater of the
Cosmic Drama, featuring the forces that shape human history. I began to witness a
magnificent parade of mysterious figures who entered the stage, presented
themselves, and slowly departed.

I realized that what I was seeing were personified universal principles,

archetypes, that through a complex interplay create the illusion of the phenomenal
world, the divine play that the Hindus call lila. They were protean personages
condensing many identities, many functions, and even many scenes. As I was watching
them, they kept changing their forms in extremely intricate holographic
interpenetration, being one and many at the same time. I was aware that they had
many different facets, levels, and dimensions of meaning, but was not able to focus
on anything in particular. Each of these figures seemed to represent simultaneously
the essence of his or her function, as well as all the concrete manifestations of
the principle they represented.

There was Maya, the magical ethereal figure symbolizing the world illusion, Anima,
embodying the eternal Female, the Warrior, a Mars-like personification of war and
aggression, the Lovers, representing all the sexual dramas and romances throughout
ages, the royal figure of the Ruler or Emperor, the withdrawn Hermit, the facetious
and elusive Trickster, and many others. As they were passing across the stage, they
bowed in my direction, as if expecting appreciation for their stellar performance
in the divine play of the universe.

The archetypal figures of the second category represent various deities and demons
related to specific cultures, geographical areas, and historical periods. For
example, instead of a generalized universal image of the Great Mother Goddess, we
can experience one of her concrete culture-bound forms, such as the Virgin Mary,
the Hindu goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati, the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Hera, and
many others. Similarly, specific examples of the Terrible Mother Goddess could be,
besides the Malekulan pig-goddess described in the above example, the Indian Kali,
the Pre-Columbian serpent-headed Coatlicue, or the Egyptian lion-headed Sekhmet. It
is important to emphasize that these images do not have to be limited to our own
racial and cultural heritage. They can be drawn from the mythology of any human
group, even those we have never heard about.

Particularly frequent in my work have been encounters or even identification with

various deities from different cultures who were killed by others or sacrificed
themselves and later came back to life. These figures representing death and
resurrection tend to emerge spontaneously when the process of inner self-
exploration reaches the perinatal level and takes the form of psychospiritual
rebirth. At this point, many people have, for example, visions of crucifixion or
experience an agonizing identification with Jesus Christ on the Cross. The
emergence of this motif in individuals with a Euro-American background seems to
make sense, because of the important role Christianity has over the centuries
played in Western culture.

However, we have also seen many powerful experiences of identification with Jesus
during our holotropic breathwork seminars in Japan and India. They occurred in
individuals whose background was Buddhist, Shinto, or Hindu. Conversely, many
Anglo-Saxons, Slavs, and Jews identified during their psychedelic or holotropic
breathwork sessions with Shiva or Buddha, the Egyptian resurrected god Osiris, the
Sumerian goddess Inanna, or the Greek deities Persephone, Dionysus, Attis, and
Adonis. Occasional identifications with the Aztec deity of death and rebirth,
Quetzalcoatl or the Plumed Serpent, or one of the Hero Twins from the Mayan Popol
Vuh, were even more surprising, since these deities appear in mythologies not
generally known in the West.

The encounters with these archetypal figures were very impressive and often brought
new and detailed information that was independent of the subjects’ racial,
cultural, and educational background and previous intellectual knowledge of the
respective mythologies. Depending on the nature of the deities involved, these
experiences were accompanied by extremely intense emotions ranging from ecstatic
rapture to paralyzing metaphysical terror. People who experienced these encounters
usually viewed these archetypal figures with great awe and respect, as beings that
belonged to a superior order, were endowed with extraordinary energies and power,
and had the capacity to shape events in our material world. These subjects thus
shared the attitude of many pre-industrial cultures that have believed in the
existence of deities and demons.

However, none of these individuals perceived their experiences of archetypal

figures to be encounters with the supreme principle in the universe, nor did they
claim to have gained an ultimate understanding of existence. They experienced these
deities to be creations of a higher power that transcended them. This insight
echoes Joseph Campbell’s idea that the deities should be “transparent to the
transcendent.” They should function as a bridge to the divine source, but not be
confused with it. When we are involved in systematic self-exploration or spiritual
practice, it is important to avoid the pitfall of making a particular deity opaque
and seeing it as the ultimate cosmic force rather than a window into the Absolute.

Mistaking a specific archetypal image for the ultimate source of creation leads to
idolatry, a divisive and dangerous mistake widespread in the histories of religions
and cultures. It might unite the people who share the same belief, but sets this
group against others who have chosen a different representation of the divine. They
might then try to convert others or conquer and eliminate them. By contrast,
genuine religion is universal, all-inclusive, and all-encompassing. It has to
transcend specific culture-bound archetypal images and focus on the ultimate source
of all forms. The most important question in the world of religion is thus the
nature of the supreme principle in the universe. In the next chapter, we will
explore the insights from holotropic states of consciousness regarding this
subject.

The Cosmic Creative Principle

O landless void, O skyless void,

O nebulous, purposeless space,

Eternal and timeless,

Become the world, extend!

—Tahitian creation tale

What is soundless, touchless, formless, imperishable,

Likewise tasteless, constant, odorless,

Without beginning, without end, higher than the great,

stable—

By discerning That, one is liberated from the mouth of

Death.

—Katha Upanishad

Absolute Consciousness

After we have had direct experiences of the spiritual dimensions of reality, the
idea that the universe, life, and consciousness could have developed without the
participation of superior creative intelligence appears to us absurd, naïve, and
untenable. However, as we have seen, the experiences of nature as ensouled and the
encounters with archetypal figures are not in and of themselves sufficient to
satisfy fully our spiritual craving. I therefore searched in the reports of the
people with whom I had worked for states of consciousness that were perceived as
reaching the ultimate frontiers of the human spirit. I was trying to find out what
experiences would convey the sense of encountering the supreme principle in the
universe.

People who had an experience of the Absolute that fully satisfied their spiritual
longing typically did not see any specific figurative images. When they felt that
they attained the goal of their mystical and philosophical quest, their
descriptions of the supreme principle were highly abstract and strikingly similar.
Those who reported such an ultimate revelation showed quite remarkable agreement in
describing the experiential characteristics of this state. They reported that the
experience of the Supreme involved transcendence of all the limitations of the
analytical mind, all rational categories, and all the constraints of ordinary
logic.

This experience was not bound by the usual categories of three-dimensional space
and linear time as we know them from everyday life. It also contained all
conceivable polarities in an inseparable amalgam and thus transcended dualities of
any kind. Time after time, people compared the Absolute to a radiant source of
light of unimaginable intensity, though they emphasized that it also differed in
some significant aspects from any forms of light that we know in the material
world. To describe the Absolute as light entirely misses some of its essential
characteristics, particularly the fact that it also is an immense and unfathomable
field of consciousness endowed with infinite intelligence and creative power.

The supreme cosmic principle can be experienced in tow different ways. Sometimes,
all personal boundaries dissolve or are drastically obliterated and we completely
merge with the divine source, becoming one with it and indistinguishable from it.
Other times, we maintain the sense of separate identity, assuming the role of an
astonished observer who is witnessing as if from the outside the mysterium
tremendum of existence. Or, like some mystics, we might feel the ecstasy of an
enraptured lover experiencing the encounter with the Beloved. Spiritual literature
of all ages abounds in descriptions of both types of experiences of the Divine.

“Just as a moth flies into the flame and becomes one with it,” say the Sufis, “so
do we merge with the Divine.” Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Indian saint and visionary,
describes in one of his spiritual poems “a sugar doll who went to the ocean for a
swim and completely dissolved.” By contrast, the Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Avila
and Rumi, the great Persian transcendental poet, refer to God as the Beloved.
Similarly, the bhaktas, Indian representatives of the yoga of devotion, prefer to
maintain a sense of separateness from and a relationship with the Divine. They do
not want to become Sri Ramana’s sugar doll who completely loses her identity in the
cosmic ocean. The great Indian saint and mystic Sri Ramakrishna once exclaimed
emphatically: “I want to taste sugar, not to become sugar.”

People who have had the experience of the supreme principle described above know
that they have encountered God. However, most of them feel that the term God does
not adequately capture the depth of their experience, since it has been distorted,
trivialized, and discredited by mainstream religions and cultures. Even the names
like Absolute Consciousness or Universal Mind that are often used to describe this
experience seem to be hopelessly inadequate to convey the immensity and shattering
impact of such an encounter. Some people consider silence to be the most
appropriate reaction to the experience of the Absolute. For them, it is obvious
that “those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.”

The supreme principle can be directly experienced in holotropic states of

consciousness, but it eludes any attempts at adequate description or explanation.
The language that we use to communicate about matters of daily life simply is not
adequate for this task. Individuals who have had this experience seem to agree that
it is ineffable. Words and the structure of our language are painfully
inappropriate tools to describe its nature and dimensions, particularly to those
who have not had it.

With all these reservations, I include the following report written by Robert, a
thirty-seven-year-old psychiatrist, who in his session had the experience of what
he considered to be the ultimate reality:

The beginning of the experience was very sudden and dramatic. I was hit by a cosmic
thunderbolt of immense power that instantly shattered and dissolved my everyday
reality. I completely lost contact with the surrounding world; it disappeared as if
by magic. The awareness of my everyday existence, my life, and my name faintly
echoed like dreamlike images on the far periphery of my consciousness. Robert …
California … United States … planet Earth … I tried hard to remind myself of the
existence of these realities, but they suddenly did not make any sense. Equally
absent were any archetypal visions of deities, demons, and mythological domains
that were so predominant in my previous experiences.

At that time, my only reality was a mass of swirling energy of immense proportions
that seemed to contain all of Existence in an entirely abstract form. It had the
brightness of myriads of suns, yet it was not on the same continuum with any light
I knew from everyday life. It seemed to be pure consciousness, intelligence, and
creative energy transcending all polarities. It was infinite and finite, divine and
demonic, terrifying and ecstatic, creative and destructive … all of that and much
more. I had no concept, no categories for what I was witnessing. I could not
maintain a sense of separate existence in the face of such a force. My ordinary
identity was shattered and dissolved; I became one with the Source. Time lost any
meaning whatsoever.

In retrospect, I believe I must have experienced the Dharmakaya, the Primary Clear
Light, that according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol, appears at
the moment of death.

Robert’s encounter with the Supreme lasted approximately twenty minutes of

clocktime, although during the entire duration of his experience time did not exist
for him as a meaningful dimension. While this was happening, he had no contact with
the environment and was not able to communicate verbally. Then he slowly began
experiencing a gradual return to ordinary reality, concerning which he wrote:

After what seemed like eternity, concrete dreamlike images and concepts began to
form in my experiential field. I started to feel that something like the earth with
large continents and specific countries might actually exist somewhere, but it all
seemed very distant and unreal. Gradually, this crystallized further into the
images of United States and California. Later, I connected with my everyday
identity and started to experience fleeting images of my present life. At first,
the contact with this reality was extremely faint. For some time, I thought that I
was dying and that I was experiencing the bardo, the intermediate state between the
present life and the next incarnation, as it is described in the Tibetan texts.

As I was regaining contact with ordinary reality, I reached a point where I knew
that I would survive this experience. I was lying on the couch feeling ecstatic and
awed by what had been revealed to me. Against this background, I was experiencing
various dramatic situations happening in different parts of the world throughout
centuries. They seemed to be scenes from my previous incarnations, many of them
dangerous and painful. Various groups of muscles in my body were twitching and
shaking, as my body was hurting and dying in these different contexts. However, as
my karmic history was being played out in my body, I was in a state of profound
bliss, completely detached from these dramas.

For many days afterwards, it was very easy for me to reach in my meditations a
state of peace and serenity. I am sure that this experience will have a lasting
influence on my life. It seems impossible to experience something like this and not
be profoundly touched and transformed by it.

The Pregnant Void

The encounter with Absolute Consciousness or identification with it is not the only
way to experience the supreme principle in the cosmos or the ultimate reality. The
second type of experience that seems to satisfy those who search for ultimate
answers is particularly surprising, since it has no specific content. It is the
identification with Cosmic Emptiness and Nothingness described in the mystical
literature as the Void. It is important to emphasize that not every experience of
emptiness that we can encounter in nonordinary states qualifies as the Void. People
very often use this term to describe an unpleasant sense of lack of feeling,
initiative, or meaning. To deserve the name Void, this state has to meet very
specific criteria.

When we encounter the Void, we feel that it is primordial emptiness of cosmic

proportions and relevance. We become pure consciousness aware of this absolute
nothingness; however, at the same time, we have a strange paradoxical sense of its
essential fullness. This cosmic vacuum is also a plenum, since nothing seems to be
missing in it. While it does not contain anything in a concrete manifest form, it
seems to comprise all of existence in a potential form. In this paradoxical way, we
can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and
nonexistence. However, the possibility of such a resolution cannot be adequately
conveyed in words; it has to be experienced to be understood.

The Void transcends the usual categories of time and space. It is unchangeable, and
lies beyond all dichotomies and polarities, such as light and darkness, good and
evil, stability and motion, microcosm and macrocosm, agony and ecstasy, singularity
and plurality, form and emptiness, and even existence and nonexistence. Some people
call it Supracosmic and Metacosmic, indicating that this primordial emptiness and
nothingness appears to be the principle that underlies the phenomenal world as we
know it and, at the same time, is supraordinated to it. This metaphysical vacuum,
pregnant with potential for everything there is, appears to be the cradle of all
being, the ultimate source of existence. The creation of all phenomenal worlds is
then the realization and concretization of its pre-existing potentialities.

When we experience the Void, we have a sense that while it is the source of all
existence, it also contains all creation within itself. Another way of expressing
it is to say that it is all of existence, since nothing exists outside of its
realm. In terms of our usual concepts and logical norms, this seems to involve some
basic contradictions. It would certainly seem absurd to think about emptiness as
containing the world of phenomena, the essential characteristic of which seems to
be that they have specific forms. Similarly, common sense is telling us that the
creative principle and its creation cannot be the same, that they have to be
different from each other. The extraordinary nature of the Void transcends these
paradoxes.

The following example is the description of an experience of the Cosmic Void of

Christopher Bache, a philosopher of religion, who has been involved for many years
in a systematic spiritual quest:

Suddenly an enormous Void opened up inside this world. Visually, It took the form
of a warping of my visual field, as if a giant, invisible bowl had been inserted
into my seeing and was bending all the lines out to the outer edges of the picture.
Nothing was torn or disrupted, but everything was being stretched and stopped to
reveal this underlying reality. It was as if God suddenly paused between inhaling
and exhaling, and the entire universe was suddenly suspended, not dissolved but
held in its place for an eternity. It was a gaping, yawning opening in existence.

At first this sensation took my breath away, both literally and figuratively, and I
waited in suspension for movement to be restored. But movement was not restored. I
was fully conscious, but absolutely suspended. And this suspension went on and on
and on. I could not believe how long it lasted. As I soaked in this experience I
realized that this was the Void out of which all form springs. This was the living
Stillness out of which all movement flows. This contentless experience of
concentrated consciousness that was pre-form and outside-form had to be what
Eastern philosophers called sunyata. When slowly movement resumed and the forms
congealed, in the wake of the Void came an exquisite sense of “suchness.” Fresh
from the Void, I touched the edges of experiencing existence “just as it is.”

On several occasions, people who experienced both the Absolute Consciousness and
the Void had the insight that these two states are essentially identical and
interchangeable, in spite of the fact that they can be experientially distinguished
from each other and that they might appear conceptually and logically incompatible.
These individuals claimed to have witnessed the emergence of creative Cosmic
Consciousness from the Void or, conversely, its return into the Void and
disappearance. Others experienced these two aspects of the Absolute simultaneously,
identifying with the Cosmic Consciousness and, at the same time, recognizing its
essential voidness.

The experience of the Void as the source of creation can also be associated with
the recognition of the fundamental emptiness of the material world. The realization
of the voidness of everyday reality is the core message of one of the most
important spiritual texts of Mahayana Buddhism, the Prajñaparamita Hridaya Sutra or
Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra. In the text Avalokiteshvara addresses Buddha’s
disciple Shariputra: “The nature of form is emptiness, the nature of emptiness is
form. Form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form. …
Feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are also like this.”

It is interesting that the concept of the vacuum that is a plenum and of the
“pregnant void” also exists in modern physics. A statement by Paul Dirac, one of
the founders of quantum physics and the “father” of antimatter, describes it in
these words: “All matter is created out of some imperceptible substratum and … the
creation of matter leaves behind it a ‘hole’ in this substratum which appears as
antimatter. Now, this substratum itself is not accurately decribed as material,
since it uniformly fills all space and is undetectable by any observation. But it
is a peculiarly material form of nothingness, out of which matter is created.” The
late American physicist Heinz Pagels is even more explicit: “The view of the new
physics suggests: ‘The vacuum is all of physics.’ Everything that ever existed or
can exist is already there in the nothingness of space … that nothingness contains
all being” (Pagels 1990).
In their experiments, involving acceleration of elementary particles to high
velocities and their collisions, physicists have observed creation of new subatomic
particles emerging from what they call the “dynamic vacuum” and their disappearance
back into this matrix. Of course, the similarity is only partial and does not go
very far. The problem of cosmic creation is not limited to the origin of the
fundamental building blocks of matter. It has important aspects that are outside of
the reach of physicists, such as the problem of the origin of forms, order, laws,
and meaning. The Void that we can experience in holotropic states seems to be
responsible for all the aspects of creation, not just the raw material for the
phenomenal world.

In our daily life, everything that happens involves complex chains of causes and
effects. The assumption of strict linear causality is a necessary prerequisite for
traditional Western science. Another fundamental characteristic of material reality
is that all processes in our world follow the law of conservation of energy. Energy
cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed into other forms of
energy. This way of thinking appears to be adequate for most of the events in the
macroworld. However, it breaks down when we trace the chains of causes and effects
back to the beginnings of the universe. When we apply it to the process of cosmic
creation, we are confronted with formidable problems: If everything is causally
determined, what is the original cause, the cause of causes, the Prime Mover? If
energy has to be conserved, where did it come from in the first place? And what
about the origin of matter, space, and time?

The current cosmogenetic theory of the Big Bang, suggesting that matter, time, and
space were simultaneously created out of a dimensionless “singularity” some 15
billion years ago, can hardly be accepted as an adequate rational explanation of
the deepest mystery of existence. And we generally cannot imagine that a
satisfactory answer could be anything else but rational. The solution to these
problems provided by transcendental experiences is of an entirely different nature
and order. Experiencing Absolute Consciousness, the Void, and their mutual
relationship makes it possible to transcend the baffling paradoxes that plague
scientists theorizing about a material universe governed by causality and
mechanical laws. Holotropic states can provide satisfactory answers to these
questions and paradoxes; however, these answers are not logical, but experiential
and transrational in nature.

When we experience the transition from the Void to Absolute Consciousness or vice
versa, we do not have the feeling of absurdity that we would have in the usual
state of consciousness, while considering the possibility of something originating
out of nothing or, conversely, disappearing into nothingness without traces. On the
contrary, there is a sense of self-evidence, simplicity, and naturalness about this
process. The experiential insights in this regard are accompanied with the feeling
of sudden clarification or an “aha” reaction. Since on this level the material
world is seen as an expression of Absolute Consciousness and the latter, in turn,
appears to be interchangeable with the Void, transcendental experiences of this
kind provide an unexpected solution for some of the most difficult and taxing
problems that beset the rational mind.

The insights of people who have experienced holotropic states of consciousness

concerning the source of existence are strikingly similar to those found in
perennial philosophy. I have already mentioned the description of cosmic emptiness
from the Prajñaparamita Sutra. Here is a passage from the ancient Tao Te Ching by
the Chinese sage Lao-tzu (1988):

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,

I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,

inside and outside, and returns

to the origin of things.

Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian visionary and mystical poet, describes the
source of creation in these words: “Nonexistence is eagerly bubbling in the
expectation of being given existence. … For the mine and treasure-house of God’s
making is naught but nonexistence coming into manifestation.” And here, for
comparison, are two passages from the Jewish mystical tradition. The thirteenth-
century Cabalist Azriel of Gerona says the following: “You may be asked: ‘How did
God bring forth being from nothingness? Is there not an immense difference between
being and nothingness?’ Answer as follows: ‘Being is in nothingness in the mode of
nothingness, and nothingness is in being in the form of being.’ Nothingness is
being and being is nothingness.” And the fourteenth-century Cabalist David Ben
Abraham he-Lavan writes: “Ayin, Nothingness, is more existent than all the being of
the world. But since it is simple, and every simple thing is complex compared with
its simplicity, it is called Ayin.” And, according to the Christian mystic Meister
Eckhart, “God’s nothingness fills the entire world; his something is nowhere.”

Words for the Ineffable

Illuminating insights into ultimate realities experienced in mystical states cannot

be adequately described in our everyday language. Lao-tzu was well aware of it and
put it very succinctly: “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name
that can be named is not the eternal Name.” Any descriptions and definitions have
to rely on words that have been developed to denote objects and activities in the
material world as it is experienced in daily life. For this reason, ordinary
language proves to be inappropriate and inadequate when we want to communicate
about the experiences and insights encountered in various holotropic states of
consciousness. This is particularly true when our experiences focus on the ultimate
problems of existence, such as the Void, Absolute Consciousness, and creation.

Those who are familiar with the Eastern spiritual philosophies, often resort to
words from various Asian languages when describing their spiritual experiences and
insights. They use Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, or Japanese terms like samadhi
(union with God), sunyata (Void), kundalini (Serpent Power), bardo (intermediate
state after death), anatta (no-self), satori (enlightenment experience), nirvana,
ch’i or ki energy, and the Tao for high transcendental states or, conversely,
samsara (the world of birth and death), Maya (world illusion), avidya (ignorance),
and the like when referring to everyday reality. These languages were developed in
cultures with high sophistication in regard to holotropic states and spiritual
realities. Unlike the Western languages, they contain many technical terms
specifically describing nuances of the mystical experiences and related issues.
Ultimately even these words can be fully understood only by those who have had the
corresponding experiences.

Poetry, although still a highly imperfect tool, seems to be a more adequate and
appropriate means for conveying the essence of spiritual experiences and for
communicating about transcendental realities. For this reason, many of the great
visionaries and religious teachers resorted to poetry while sharing their
metaphysical insights. Many people with whom I have worked recalled and quoted
passages from various transcendental poets. I have often heard them say that, after
their own mystical experience, visionary poems that they previously had not
comprehended or related to, suddenly became clear and illumined with new meaning.

Particularly popular among the people involved in spiritual quest seem to be

transcendental poets from the Middle East, such as the mystics Omar Khayyam, Rumi,
and Kahlil Jibran, and the Indian visionaries Kabir, Princess Mira Bai, and Sri
Aurobindo. I have chosen here as an example a poem by Kabir, a fifteenth-century
Indian sage, son of a Moslem weaver in Benares. In his long life that lasted 120
years, Kabir drew on the best of the Hindu and of the Sufi tradition and expressed
his spiritual wisdom in ecstatic verses. The following poem echoes the parallels
between the natural cycle of water and the creative process described in the
following section of this book.

I have been thinking of the difference

between water

and the waves on it. Rising,

water’s still water, falling back,

it is water, will you give me a hint

how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word

“wave,” do I have to distinguish it

from water?

There is a Secret One inside us;

the planets in all the galaxies

pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with

luminous eyes.

We have also our own rich Western tradition of visionary poetry, represented by
William Blake, D. H. Lawrence, Rainer Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman, William Butler
Yeats, and others. People who have experienced mystical states often refer to these
poets and recite passages from their work. Here is as an example William Blake’s
often quoted poem capturing the mystery of the immanent divine:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

The Beyond Within

In systematic spiritual practice involving holotropic states of consciousness, we
can repeatedly transcend the ordinary boundaries of the body-ego and identify with
other people, animals, plants, or inorganic aspects of nature and also with various
archetypal beings. We discover in this process that any boundaries in the material
universe and in other realities are ultimately arbitrary and negotiable. By
shedding the limitations of the rational mind and the straitjacket of commonsense
and everyday logic, we can break through the many separating barriers, expand our
consciousness to unimaginable proportions, and eventually experience union and
identity with the transcendental source of all being.

When we reach experiential identification with Absolute Consciousness, we realize

that our own being is ultimately commensurate with the entire cosmic network, with
all of existence. The recognition of our own divine nature, our identity with the
cosmic source, is the most important discovery we can make during the process of
deep self-exploration. This is the essence of the famous statement found in the
ancient Indian scriptures, the Upanishads: “Tat tvam asi.” The literal translation
of this sentence is “Thou are That,” meaning “You are of divine nature,” or “you
are Godhead.” It reveals that our everyday identification with the “skin-
encapsulated ego,” embodied individual consciousness, or “name and form” (namarupa)
is an illusion and that our true nature is that of cosmic creative energy (Atman-
Brahman).

This revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the
ultimate secret that lies at the core of all great spiritual traditions, although
it might be expressed in somewhat different ways. I have already mentioned that in
Hinduism Atman, the individual consciousness, and Brahman, the universal
consciousness, are one. The followers of Siddha Yoga hear in many variations the
basic tenet of their school: “God dwells within you as you.” In Buddhist
scriptures, we can read: “Look within, you are the Buddha.” In the Confucian
tradition, we are told that “Heaven, earth, and human are one body.”

The same message can be found in the words of Jesus Christ: “Father, you and I are
one.” And St. Gregory Palamas, one the greatest theologians of the Christian
Orthodox Church, declared: “For the kingdom of heaven, nay rather, the King of
Heaven … is within us.” Similarly, the great Jewish sage and Cabalist Avraham ben
Shemu’el Abulafia taught that “he and we are one.” According to Mohammed, “whoso
knoweth himself knoweth his Lord.” Mansur al-Hallaj, the Sufi ecstatic and poet
known as “the martyr of mystical love,” described it in this way: “I saw my Lord
with the Eye of the Heart. I said: ‘Who art thou?’ He answered: ‘Thou.’” Al-Hallaj
was imprisoned and sentenced to death for his statement: “Ana’l Haqq—I am God, the
Absolute Truth, the True Reality.”

The Divine and Its Creation

We can now summarize the insights from holotropic states of consciousness
concerning the creative principle, the nature of reality, and our own nature. As we
have seen, these insights echo the message of the great spiritual traditions of the
world. They suggest that the world of solid matter—featuring three-dimensional
space, linear time, and unrelenting causality, as we experience it in our ordinary
states of consciousness—does not have an independent existence of its own. Rather
than being the only true reality, as it is portrayed by materialistic science, it
is a creation of Absolute Consciousness.

In the light of these insights, the material world of our everyday life, including
our own body, is an intricate tissue of misperceptions and misreadings. It is a
playful and somewhat arbitrary product of the cosmic creative principle, an
infinitely sophisticated “virtual reality,” a divine play created by Absolute
Consciousness and the Cosmic Void. Our universe that appears to contain countless
myriads of separate entities and elements, is in its deepest nature just one being
of immense proportions and unimaginable complexity.

The same is true about all the other dimensions and domains of existence that we
can discover in holotropic states of consciousness. Since there are no absolute
boundaries between the individual psyche, any part of creation, and the cosmic
creative principle itself, each of us is ultimately identical with the divine
source of creation. We thus are, collectively and individually, both the
playwrights and actors in this cosmic drama. Since in our true nature we are
identical with the cosmic creative principle, we cannot assuage our cravings by
pursuits in the material world, no matter what their nature and scope. Nothing
short of the experience of mystical unity with the divine source will quench our
deepest longing.

The Process of Creation

As, from a well-blazing fire, sparks

By the thousand issue forth of like form,

So from the Imperishable, my friend, beings manifold

Are produced, and thither also go.

—Mundaka Upanishad

Even though you tie a hundred knots

The string remains one.

—Rumi

The Mystery of the Creative Impulse

The realization that all the phenomenal worlds, including our material plane, are
virtual realities created by Absolute Consciousness leads to some very interesting
questions. The merging and union with the cosmic creative principle, as it was
described in the previous chapter, is certainly an extraordinary and very desirable
experience from the point of view of an individual human being. Many spiritual
traditions consider reaching this state to be the ultimate goal of the spiritual
quest. Those who actually attain the union with the Universal Mind realize that the
situation is much more complicated.

They discover that what they once considered to be the goal of the spiritual
journey is also the source of creation. It becomes clear to them that, in order to
create the phenomenal worlds, the Divine has to abandon its original state of
pristine undifferentiated unity. Considering how fantastic the experience of
identification with Absolute Consciousness is from the human perspective, it seems
strange that the creative principle should seek an alternative, or at least a
complement, to a simple experience of itself. This naturally leads to the question
about the nature of the forces that compel Absolute Consciousness to relinquish its
primordial state and to engage in the process of creating experiential realities
like the world we live in. What could possibly motivate the Divine to seek
separation, pain, struggle, incompleteness, and impermanence, in short, precisely
the states from which we are trying to escape when we embark on the spiritual
journey?

People who achieve in their inner exploration the identification with Absolute
Consciousness often experience fascinating insights into the dynamics of creation.
Before we start examining these revelations, it is important to remember that
holotropic states in general, and those that involve transcendental levels of
awareness in particular, do not lend themselves well to verbal descriptions. As we
review these reports, we might find them interesting and intellectually stimulating
or feel inspired by them, but we should not expect logical explanations that would
fully satisfy our rational mind. Because of the inherent limitations of our
intellectual faculties, the human attempts to understand the “reasons” or “motives”
for creation will never be completely satisfactory. Reason is an inadequate
instrument for the analysis of transcendental dimensions of existence and of
principles that operate on a very high metaphysical level. Ultimately, true
understanding in these matters is possible only through direct personal experience.

Individuals describing their experiences of identification with the Divine are not
able to avoid anthropocentric perspectives and to overcome the limitations of
language. Thus the creative impulse of Absolute Consciousness is often described in
terms of certain psychological states that we know from our everyday life, such as
love, longing, or loneliness. Their authors usually capitalize the first letters of
such words to indicate that they mean transcendental analogs, or “higher octaves,”
of such feelings rather than states that are directly comparable to those that we
know from our everyday life. This is a practice well known from the writings of
psychiatric patients who have experienced unusual revelations concerning
transcendental issues and struggle to describe what happened to them.

The reports of people who in their holotropic states of consciousness have had
insights into the “motivation” of the divine creative principle to generate
experiential worlds contain some interesting contradictions. One important category
of these insights emphasizes the fantastic resources and inconceivable capacities
of Absolute Consciousness. Another group of revelations suggests that, in the
process of creation, Absolute Consciousness seeks something that it lacks and
misses in its original pristine state. From an ordinary perspective, these two
categories of insights appear to contradict each other. In holotropic states, this
conflict disappears and they can easily coexist.

Divine Cornucopia

The impulse to create is often described as an elemental force that reflects the
unimaginable inner richness and abundance of the Divine. The creative cosmic source
is so immense and overflowing with limitless possibilities that it cannot contain
itself and has to express its full hidden potential. The experience of this quality
of Absolute Consciousness is sometimes likened to a close-up view of the
thermonuclear processes in the sun, the life-giving principle and source of energy
for our planet. People who have this experience realize that the sun is the most
immediate expression of the divine that we can experience in the material world and
they understand why some cultures worshipped the sun as God.

However, they usually emphasize that this similarity should not be taken too
literally, since there are also important differences between the sun as an
astronomical body and the Cosmic Sun, the creative principle responsible for
creation. The physical sun only contributes the energy necessary for the life
processes, while the divine source also provides the Logos for creation—its order,
forms, and meaning. Yet, in our everyday life, observing the sun seems to be the
closest approximation to the experience of the divine source of creation as it
reveals itself to us in holotropic states.

Other descriptions stress the immense desire of the Universal Mind to get to know
itself and to explore and experience its full potential. This can only be done by
exteriorization and manifestation of all its latent possibilities in the form of a
concrete creative act. It requires polarization into subject and object, the
dichotomy of the observer and the observed. These insights are reminiscent of the
way creation is explained in certain Cabalistic texts, according to which there
once was a state of previous nonexistence, in which “Face did not gaze upon Face.”
The reason for creation was that “God wished to behold God.” Similarly, the great
Persian mystic Jalaluddin Rumi wrote: “I was a Hidden Treasure, so I wanted to be
known. … I created the whole of the universe, and the goal in all of it is to make
Myself manifest” (Hines 1996).

Additional important dimensions of the creative process that are often emphasized
are the playfulness, self-delectation, and cosmic humor of the Creator. These are
elements that have best been described in ancient Hindu texts that talk about the
universe and existence as lila, or Divine Play. According to this view, creation is
an intricate, infinitely complex cosmic game that the Godhead, Brahman, creates
from himself and within himself. He is the playwright who conceived the game, as
well as its producer, director, and also all the actors who play the countless
myriads of the roles involved. This cosmic game of games is played in many
dimensions, on many levels, and on unimaginable scales.

Creation can also be viewed as a colossal experiment that expresses the immense
curiosity of Absolute Consciousness, a passion that is analogous to the infatuation
of a scientist who dedicates his or her life to exploration and research. However,
the cosmic experiment is naturally infinitely more complex than anything that
collective effort of all of the scientists of the world could possibly conceive of.
All the fascinating discoveries of science that extend far into the microworld and
into the remote regions of the universe just barely scratch the surface of the
unfathomable enigma of existence. Science, as we know it, only explores in
increasingly refined ways the nature and content of the final products of creation,
but does not reveal anything about the mysterious process that underlies it and
brings it forth.

The question that repeatedly emerges in nonordinary states is the degree of control
that the Divine has in the process of creation. It is a problem that Albert
Einstein often struggled with. Here it is stated in his own words: “What really
interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.” The
answers of the people who have reached this level of insight are not unanimous.
Sometimes it appears that Absolute Consciousness is fully in charge of creation in
its totality and in all its details. In this case, any surprises in the cosmic game
occur only to individual protagonists. They are due to sudden lifting of their veil
of ignorance that reveals significant aspects of divine knowledge that were
previously hidden from them.

Occasionally, people experiencing holotropic states become aware of a significant

alternative to this scenario. They see that it might be possible that only the
basic parameters of creation are clearly defined, but the final outcome in detail
remains unpredictable even for the Divine. This latter model of the cosmic game can
be compared to a kaleidoscope or a chess game. The inventor of the kaleidoscope
obviously realized that rotating a tube containing specially arranged mirrors and
colorful pieces of glass would produce arrays of beautiful dynamic images. However,
he or she could not possibly have foreseen all the specific constellations and
combinations that would arise in the process of the use of this device.

Similarly, the inventor of chess could see the general potential of a game played
on a board of sixty-four black and white squares with figures of specifically
defined roles and movements. Yet it would have been absolutely out of question to
anticipate all the infinite possibilities of specific situations that playing chess
would eventually lead to. Naturally, the complexity of creation is infinitely
greater than that of the kaleidoscope or the chess game. Although the intelligence
of Absolute Consciousness is immense, it is conceivable that the unfolding of the
cosmic drama can be beyond its control and can provide genuine surprises.

This is closely related to the question of our own role in the cosmic drama. If the
universal script is written by the Divine in all the details, this does not leave
us as individual players any possibility of active creative participation. The best
we can do is to awaken to the fact that in the past our life has been inauthentic
because we were misinformed about critical aspects of existence and about our own
nature. However, if certain developments are unpredictable even for the Divine,
various undesirable trends, such as the current global crisis, might require our
assistance. In that case, we could actually become truly active players and
valuable partners of Absolute Consciousness in the divine play.

Some people who have experienced insights into the “motives” for creation also
emphasize its esthetic side. In our everyday life, we are often struck by the
inherent beauty of the universe and nature, as well as those aspects of creation
that are mediated by human activity, such as exquisite art and architecture. In
holotropic states the ability to appreciate the esthetic side of all the different
aspects of life and existence is greatly enhanced. When the “doors of perception
are cleansed,” to use William Blake’s expression, it is difficult to miss the
astonishing beauty of creation. From this perspective, the universe we live in and
all the experiential realities in other dimensions also appear to be ultimate works
of art and the impulse to create them can be likened to the inspiration and
creative passion of a supreme artist.

Divine Longing

As I mentioned earlier, sometimes the insights concerning the forces underlying

creation reveal “motives” that are of a different kind and even seem to be in
conflict with the ones described above. They do not reflect overflowing abundance,
richness, ultimate self-sufficiency, and mastery of the cosmic creative principle,
but a certain sense of deficiency, need, or want. For example, it is possible to
discover that, in spite of the immensity and perfection of its state of being,
Absolute Consciousness realizes that it is alone. This Loneliness finds its
expression in an abysmal yearning for partnership, communication, and sharing—a
kind of Divine Longing. The most powerful force behind creation is then described
as the need of the creative principle to give and receive Love.

Another critical dimension of the creative process that has occasionally been
reported in this category seems to be the primordial craving of the divine source
for the experience of the tangible material world. According to these insights,
Spirit has a profound desire to experience what is opposite and contrary to its own
nature. It wants to explore all the qualities that in its pristine nature it does
not have and to become everything that it is not. Being eternal, infinite,
unlimited, and ethereal, it longs for the ephemeral, impermanent, limited by time
and space, solid, and corporeal. This dynamic relation between spirit and matter
was portrayed in the Aztec mythology as the tension between two deities—
Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror) symbolizing matter and Quetzalcoatl (Plumed Serpent)
representing spirit. A beautiful illustration of this cosmic dance between
Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca can be found in the Aztec screenfold known as Codex
Borbonicus.

The understanding of the active role of consciousness in creation is not

necessarily limited to religion, philosophy, and mythology. According to modern
physicists, the act of conscious observation changes probability of certain events
into actuality and thus participates in the creation of material reality. In one of
his lectures exploring the philosophical and spiritual implications of quantum-
relativistic physics, physicist Fred Alan Wolf referred to the active role that
consciousness plays in the creation of the material world. He speculated about the
mechanisms underlying this process and suggested that the ultimate reason for
creation of the material world might be the addiction of consciousness and spirit
to the experience of matter. In everyday life, this craving of spirit for matter
might be the deepest root of all our human attachments and addictions.

Another important “motive” for creation that is occasionally mentioned is the

element of monotony. However immense and glorious the experience of the Divine
might appear from the human perspective, for the Divine it is always the same and,
in that sense, monotonous. Creation can then be seen as a titanic effort expressing
a transcendental longing for change, action, movement, drama, and surprise. The
countless experiential realities in many different dimensions and on many different
levels offer infinite number of opportunities for adventures in consciousness and
divine self-entertainment. The extreme forms of descriptions portraying creation as
an act aimed at overcoming the monotony of undifferentiated Absolute Consciousness
even refer to Cosmic Boredom. This again echoes passages from medieval Cabalistic
texts that describe that one of the reasons God created the universe was to
overcome boredom.

Figure 1.

Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. The legends of ancient Mexico assert that the worlds
of matter and spirit are coexistent and each has something that the other needs. In
this painting from the Aztec Codex Borbonicus, the dynamic tension between Spirit
and Matter is represented as the complementary cosmic dance of Quetzalcoatl (in his
form of Ehecatl, god of wind and breath) and Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror.

Source: Stanislav Grof, Books of the Dead. Thames & Hudson, London, 1996, p. 93.
Reprinted with permission of the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale, 126 Rue de
l’Université, 75007 Paris.
The creation of various phenomenal worlds also makes it possible for Absolute
Consciousness to escape from the intolerable Eternal Here and Now into the
comforting and predictable experience of linear time, limited space, and
impermanence. This would then be the polar opposite and negative mirror image of
the human fear of death and impermanence that underlies our deep craving for
immortality and transcendence. For people who have had this experience, the threat
of extinction of consciousness can be permanently replaced by the awareness that
ultimately there is no way out of consciousness.

All those who have been fortunate to experience such profound insights into the
cosmic laboratory of creation seem to agree that anything that can be said about
this level of reality cannot possibly do justice to what they have witnessed. The
monumental impulse of unimaginable proportions that is reponsible for creating the
worlds of phenomena seems to contain all the above elements, however contradictory
and paradoxical they might appear to our everyday sensibility and commonsense, and
many more. It is clear that, in spite of all our efforts to comprehend and describe
creation, the nature of the creative principle and of the process of creation
remains shrouded in unfathomable mystery.

Dynamics of the Creative Process

Besides the revelations concerning the “reasons” for creation (the “why” of
creation), the experiences in holotropic states often bring illuminating insights
into the specific dynamics and mechanisms of the creative process (the “how” of
creation). These are related to the “technology of consciousness” that generates
experiences with different sensory characteristics and by orchestrating them in a
systematic and coherent way creates virtual realities. Although the descriptions of
these insights vary in terms of details, language, and metaphors used to illustrate
them, they typically distinguish two interrelated and mutually complementary
processes that are involved in creating the worlds of phenomena.

The first of these is the activity that splits the original undifferentiated unity
of Absolute Consciousness into an increasing number of derived units of
consciousness. The Universal Mind engages in a creative play that involves
complicated sequences of divisions, fragmentations, and differentiations. This
finally results in experiential worlds that contain countless separate entities
that are endowed with specific forms of consciousness and possess selective self-
awareness. There seems to be general agreement that these come into being by
multiple divisions and subdivisions of the originally undivided field of cosmic
consciousness. The Divine thus does not create something outside of itself, but by
transformations within the field of its own being.

The second important element in the process of creation is a unique form of

“partitioning,” or of isolating “cosmic screenwork,” through which the filial
conscious entities progressively and increasingly lose contact with their original
source and the awareness of their pristine nature. They also develop a sense of
individual identity and absolute separateness from each other. In the final stages
of this process, intangible but relatively impermeable screens exist between these
split-off units and also between each of them and the original undifferentiated
pool of Absolute Consciousness. It is important to emphasize that this sense of
separation is purely subjective and ultimately illusory. On a deeper level, the
undivided and undifferentiated unity continues to underlie all of creation.

The terms “partitioning” and “cosmic screenwork” are not quite appropriate in this
context, since they suggest mechanical separation of elements and breaking of the
whole into its parts. Such concrete images are much more suitable for crafts
dealing with various materials, such as masonry or carpentry, than for the dynamics
I am referring to. This is why many people borrow the terminology from psychology
and compare this process with such mechanisms as forgetting, repression, or
dissociation. We are talking here about the phenomenon that the writer and
philosopher Alan Watts called “the taboo against knowing who you are.” According to
the insights from various holotropic states, the split-off units of consciousness
are not necessarily only humans and animals, but also plants and elements of the
inorganic world, discarnate entities, and archetypal beings.

The relationship between Absolute Consciousness and its parts is unique and complex
and cannot be understood in terms of conventional thinking and ordinary logic. Our
common sense is telling us that a part cannot simultaneously be the whole and that
the whole, being an assembly of its parts, has to be larger than any of its
components. And because the whole is an assembly of its constituents, we should be
able to understand it by studying its parts. Until recently, this has been one of
the fundamental assumptions of Western science. In addition, the parts should have
a specific location in the context of the whole and occupy a certain portion of its
overall size. While all that has just been said about the relationship of the whole
to its parts seems to be true and self-evident in our everyday life, none of these
characteristics and limitations apply in an absolute sense to the cosmic game.

In the universal fabric, separate units of consciousness, in spite of their

individuality and specific differences, remain on another level essentially
identical with their source and with each other. They have a paradoxical nature,
being wholes and parts at the same time. Essential information about each of them
is distributed in the entire cosmic field and they, in turn, have potential access
to the information about all of creation. This is most obvious in regard to human
beings where we have direct evidence of these relationships in the form of an
entire spectrum of transpersonal experiences.

In transpersonal states, we have the potential to experience ourselves as anything

that is part of creation, as well as the creative principle itself. The same is
true for other people who can experience themselves as anything and anybody else,
including ourselves. In this sense, each human being is not only a small
constituent part of the universe, but also the entire field of creation. Similar
interconnectedness seems to exist in the animal and botanical kingdom and even in
the inorganic world. Observations concerning the evolution of species and the
paradoxes in quantum physics certainly point in that direction.
This situation is reminiscent of the descriptions found in the ancient Indian
spiritual systems, particularly in Jainism and in Avatamsaka Buddhism. According to
Jain cosmology, the world of creation is an infinitely complex system of deluded
units of consciousness, or jivas, trapped in different aspects and stages of the
cosmic process. Their pristine nature is contaminated by their entanglement in
material reality and, particularly, in biological processes. The Jains associate
these jivas not only with organic life forms, but also with inorganic objects and
processes. Each jiva, in spite of its seeming separateness, remains connected with
all the other jivas and contains the knowledge about all of them.

The Avatamsaka Sutra uses a poetic image to illustrate the interconnectedness of

all things. It is the famous necklace of the Vedic god Indra: “In the heaven of
Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if you look at
one, you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the
world is not merely itself, but involves every other object and, in fact, is
everything else.” Similar concepts can be found in the Hwa Yen school of Buddhist
thought, the Chinese version of the same teaching. Hwa Yen is a holistic view of
the universe that embodies one of the most profound insights the human mind has
ever attained. The essence of this philosophy can be succinctly expressed in a few
words: “One in One, One in Many, Many in One, Many in Many.” The concept of mutual
cosmic interpenetration characteristic for this school is beautifully exemplified
in the following story:

The Empress Wu, who had difficulties understanding the complexity of Hwa Yen
philosophy, asked Fa Tsang, one of the founders of the school, to give her a simple
practical demonstration of cosmic inter-relatedness. Fa Tsang took her to a large
hall, the entire interior of which—the walls, ceiling, and floor—was covered with
mirrors. He first lit a candle in the center of this hall and suspended it from the
ceiling. In the next moment, they were surrounded by myriads of glowing candles of
different sizes reaching to infinity. This was Fa Tsang’s way of illustrating the
relationship of the One to the many.

He then placed in the center of the hall a small crystal with many facets.
Everything around the crystal, including all the countless images of candles, was
now collected and reflected in the small interior of the brilliant stone. In this
way, Fa Tsang was able to demonstrate how in Ultimate Reality the infinitely small
contains the infinitely large and the infinitely large the infinitely small,
without obstruction. Having done this, he pointed out that this static model was
actually very limited and imperfect. It was unable to capture the perpetual,
multidimensional motion in the universe and the unimpeded mutual interpenetration
of Time and Eternity, as well as past, present, and future.

Metaphors for Creation

People who have envisioned in holotropic states the dynamics of the cosmic creative
process and try to describe their insights often lack means of adequate verbal
expression. They tend to resort to various symbolic images, metaphors, and
parallels from everyday life, hoping that this will help to illustrate some of the
experiences and ideas that they are trying to communicate. I will use the same
approach in the following description of the creative process, using as
illustration images drawn from the circulation of water in nature. References to
such natural phenomena are particularly frequent in the accounts from sessions that
contain cosmological visions.

Before the onset of creation, Cosmic Consciousness is a boundless undifferentiated

field with immense creative potential.

Within it, creation begins as a ripple, as a disturbance of the original unity,

that manifests as playful imagining and imaging of various forms. At first, the
created entities maintain their contact with the source and the separation is only
tentative, relative, and incomplete. Using the water metaphor, the original
undivided unity of Absolute Consciousness would have the form of a deep and calm
ocean of unimaginable magnitude. The image that can best illustrate the initial
stage of the process of creation is the formation of waves on the surface of the
ocean.

From one point of view, the waves can be seen and referred to as individual and
separate entities. For example, it is possible to talk about a large, fast, and
green wave, or one that is good or dangerous for surfers. At the same time, it is
quite clear that, in spite of its relative individuality, the wave is also an
integral part of the ocean. The differentiation of the waves from the ocean is
playful, illusory, and incomplete. A sudden breeze can form waves on the surface of
the ocean and when the wind calms down, these waves resume their original full
identity with the ocean.

In the stage I have described so far, the creative source generates images
different from itself, but these retain the connection with the source and
awareness of their essential identity with it. Genuine creation requires that its
products become separate and clearly distinguishable from the creative matrix. It
begins in a true sense only when the connection with the source is severed and
separate identity established. This may at first occur only for a fleeting moment.
The corresponding metaphorical image would be that of a wave breaking in the wind
or at the shore. As the solid body of water explodes into thousands of little
droplets, these assume for an instant separate identity and independent existence,
as they are flying through the air. This situation lasts only a very short time,
until they all fall back and reunite with the ocean.

In the next phase, the separation is much more definite and the split-off units of
consciousness assume their individual identity and independence for a considerable
amount of time. This is the beginning of the partitioning, the “cosmic screenwork”
or cosmic dissociation and forgetting. The original unity with the source is
temporarily lost and the divine identity forgotten. A metaphorical parallel of this
situation would be tidal water that got trapped in a pool on a rocky shore when the
ocean receded during the low tide. This development involves long-term separation
between the maternal waters in the ocean and the water in the pool. Yet during the
next high tide the union will be reestablished and the separated mass of water will
return to the source.

The continuation of the process of individuation results in a situation in which

the separation is complete, convincing, and may appear permanent. A radical
metamorphosis occurs and the split-off units of consciousness assume a new
identity, quite different from the previous one. The original unity is obscured and
concealed, but it is not completely lost. This stage of creation can be illustrated
by a body of water that has evaporated from the ocean and has formed a cloud.
Before becoming a cloud, the water underwent a profound transformation. The new
entity now has a specific and characteristic shape and a life of its own. Yet the
little droplets of water that can form in it betray the source and origin of this
new phenomenon. They can easily condense, precipitate, and start their way to
reunion with the ocean in the form of rain.

In the final phase, the separation is complete and the liaison with the source
appears to be all but lost. The transformation is radical and total and the
original identity is forgotten. The form of this new unit is distinct, very
complex, and solidified. At the same time, the process of multiple divisions has
advanced and the consciousness of the created entity appears to represent only an
infinitesimal part of the original whole. A good example of this stage is the
snowflake that crystallized in the cloud from the water that originally evaporated
from the ocean. The snowflake represents only an infinitesimal fragment of the mass
of water in the ocean and has a very specific individual shape and structure. The
amazing array of forms that the snowflakes assume is a good illustration of the
richness of creation characterizing the phenomenal world. The snowflake bears very
little similarity to the source and in order to be able to reunite, it has to
undergo fundamental changes of its structure and lose its identity.

We could go a step further and think about a block of ice. Here the water is so
radically transmuted and so different from its original form that we would not be
able to recognize its identity with water if we did not have the intellectual
knowledge of the process of freezing and its effects. In sharp contrast to water,
ice is dense, solid, hard, and rigid. Like the snowflake, to return to its original
aquatic condition, it has to undergo a complete annihilation and lose what appear
to be its essential characteristics.

Similar images likening various aspects of creation to water can be found in

mystical literature of all ages. Here is how Rumi describes the Divine and its
works: “That is the Ocean of Oneness, wherein is no mate or consort. Its pearls and
its fish are none other than its waves. … Spirit is truly and always one; but its
manifestations on different planes of creation are different. Just as ice, water,
and vapor are not three things but only three forms of the same thing, similarly
Spirit is one, but its forms are many. In the very highest transcendent realms, it
abides as an extremely fine and subtle entity; but as we descend toward less subtle
regions, this Spirit also takes less subtle forms.”
In the extreme situation, the source is not only lost and forgotten, but its
existence is being denied. It would be difficult to find a fitting image for this
stage of creation that would be related to the circulation of water in nature. The
best example here is the atheist. This is how one of the people with whom I have
worked saw the atheist’s dilemma in a holotropic state of consciousness:

An atheist represents the ultimate expression of cosmic humor. It is a split unit

of divine consciousness that dedicated its temporary existence to a tragicomic
battle for a clearly impossible task. It insists and is determined to prove that
the universe and itself represent just accidental assemblies of matter and that the
creator does not exist. An atheist has completely forgotten that he or she is of
divine origin, does not believe in the existence of God, and can even passionately
and violently attack all the believers. Sri Aurobindo described an atheist as “God
who is playing hide and seek with himself.”

In addition to the images used above, the entire cycle of circulation of water in
nature is often used in its totality to illustrate the character of the cosmic
process. Depending on the weather, the ocean shows a beautiful and intricate play
of waves that represents an entire world in its own right. The ocean water
evaporates and forms clouds, which, in turn, have their own rich inner and external
dynamics. The water in the clouds precipitates and returns to the earth in the form
of rain, hail, or snow. This is the beginning of the way to reunion. The snow or
hail melts, the drops of water merge into trickles and these form creeks, streams,
and large rivers. After multiple confluences, this body of water reaches the ocean
and reunites with its original source.

The Macrocosm and the Microcosm: As Above, So Below

Another area of everyday life that provides useful images illustrating the creative
process is biology, particularly the relationship that exists between cells,
tissues, organs, and the organism as a whole, on the one hand, and organisms,
species, and ecosystems, on the other. This situation can be used to demonstrate
how in the creative process the various units of consciousness are autonomous
individuals in their own right, as well as parts of larger wholes and ultimately of
the entire cosmic fabric.

The cells are structurally separate entities, but functionally they are integral
constituents of tissues and organs. In turn, the tissues and organs are individual
forms of increasingly higher orders, but they also have meaningful roles as parts
of the entire organism. The fertilized egg in a certain sense contains the entire
organism and the embryological development is unfolding of its inner potential.
Similarly, the oak can be seen as an unfolded acorn.
We could also pursue this process in the opposite direction, farther into the
microworld. The cells contain organelles that are made of molecules and the latter
are composed of atoms. The atoms break down into subatomic particles and these, in
turn, into quarks, considered currently the smallest constituents of matter. In
none of the above examples can the parts be understood as separate entities
independent from the system of which they are constituents. They make sense only in
the context of larger wholes and ultimately as parts of the totality of creation.

The human body develops from a single undifferentiated source, the fertilized egg,
by a complex sequence of divisions resulting in a large number and variety of
highly specialized and diversified cells. In its final form, it has a hierarchical
arrangement, where each part is also an integrated whole. A complex system of
neural and biochemical regulations that transcends the anatomical boundaries on all
levels ensures the functional unity of the constituent parts. In addition, each
cell harbors a set of chromosomes containing genetic information about the entire
organism. Genetic engineering, a science that is in its early stage, has already
been able to create from the nucleus of a single cell a clone, an exact replica of
the parental organism. The information about the entire body is thus contained in
each of its parts in a way that makes the comparison with the cosmic creative
process, as we described it earlier, very appropriate.

In the worldview of Tantric science, the relationship between the cosmos and the
human organism is not seen as a mere metaphor or a conceptual aid. Ancient Tantric
texts suggest that the human body literally is a microcosm that reflects and
contains the entire macrocosm. If one could thoroughly explore one’s own body and
psyche, this would bring the knowledge of all the phenomenal worlds (Mookerjee and
Khanna 1977). This is graphically represented in the Purushakara Yantra, the image
of the Cosmic Person. In this figure, the material world in which we live is
situated in the area of the belly, the upper part of the body and the head contain
the different heavenly realms, and the belly and legs harbor the underworlds.

The Buddha described the relationship between the body and the world in these
words: “In truth I say to you that within this fathom-high body lies the world and
the rising of the world and the ceasing of the world.” In the Cabala, the ten
Sefirot, archetypal principles representing various stages of the divine emanation,
are seen as the divine body of Adam Kadmon with the head, arms, legs, and sexual
organs. The human body is a miniature replica of this primordial form. Similar
concepts can also be found in Gnosticism, in the Hermetic tradition, and in other
esoteric systems.

Figure 2.

Purushakara Yantra, or the Cosmic Man Yantra, a grand micro-macro vision of the
universe. This eighteenth-century Tantric painting from Rajasthan, India, depicts
the human being who has fulfilled his/her immense potentiality and become the
entire universe. The seven ascending planes (lokas) represent experiences of
celestial realms, the central plane those of the earthly plane (bhurloka), and the
descending ones subnormal states of consciousness.

Source: Philip Rawson, Tantra: The Indian Cult of Ecstasy (Art and Imagination
Series), plate 20, published by Thames and Hudson Ltd. Reprinted with permission of
the Ajit Mookerjee Collection. Photograph by Jeff Teasdale.

Figure 3.

The Hermetic Cosmic Man . Illustration from a seventeenth-century hermetic text by

Robert Flud, Utriusque cosmi historia, as reproduced in A. Roob’s book Alchemie und
Mystik, Köln, 1996, p. 543, depicting the human being as a microcosm reflecting the
macrocosmos. The concentric circles representing the planetary spheres are related
to the physical structure of the body. The nine angelic spheres point to the
capacity of the individual human to use reason, intellect, and pure mind to achieve
the status of the Cosmic Man and even God.

Source: Reprinted with permission of the Old Print Department of the Central
Library of the Mannheim University.

Figure 4.

Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Universal Man of the Cabalists is depicted here as
holding the zodiac and supporting the entire solar system. The image of Adam
Kadmon, embodying the ten Divine Emanations, the Sephiroth, was seen by the Jewish
mystics as the most perfect reflection and representation of Divinity.

Source: Reprinted from Manly Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages copyright and
with permission of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, CA.

This deep connection between the individual human organism and the cosmos suggested
by various esoteric traditions has been expressed in the famous statements “As
above, so below” or “As without, so within.” The observations from modern
consciousness research have shed new light on this ancient mystical concept that
appears quite absurd from the point of view of materialistic science. Transpersonal
psychology has discovered that in holotropic states it is possible to identify
experientially with just about any aspect of physical reality, past and present, as
well as various aspects of other dimensions of existence. It has confirmed that the
entire cosmos is in a mysterious way encoded in the psyche of each of us and
becomes accessible in deep systematic self-exploration.
The discussion of the hierarchical arrangements in the universe could also be
extended beyond the boundaries of individual organisms, since each life form
constitutes a part in larger groups and systems. Animals form colonies, schools,
flocks, and herds, and belong to families and species. Individual humans are parts
of a family, clan, tribe, culture, nation, gender, race, and so on. Living
organisms—plants, animals, and humans—belong to various ecosystems that have
developed within the biosphere of our planet. In the complex dynamic structure of
the universe, each constituent part is a separate entity, as well as a member of a
larger whole. Individuality and participation in a broader context are
dialectically combined and integrated.

The Part and the Whole

The new relationship that modern science has discovered between the whole and its
parts was explored and systematically described by the British writer and
philosopher Arthur Koestler. In his book Janus, named after the two-faced Roman
god, Koestler coined the term holon, reflecting the fact that everything in the
universe is simultaneously a whole and a part. The root of this word, hol-,
suggests wholeness and integrity (from the Greek holos = whole) and the suffix -on,
used customarily in the names of elementary particles, denotes a part or
constituent. Holons are Janus-faced entities on the intermediate levels of any
hierarchy, which can be described either as wholes or as parts, depending on the
way we look at them, whether from “below” or from “above” (Koestler 1978). The
concept of holons has been recently further developed in a highly sophisticated and
creative way by Ken Wilber (1995).

Holons can accumulate into larger agglomerates. Bacteria, for example, can form a
culture or stars can be assembled into a galaxy. These are social holons comprised
of elements of the same order. Holons can also create emergent holons of a higher
order. Atoms of hydrogen and oxygen can combine into molecules of water,
macromolecules can form cells, and cells can get organized into multicellular
organisms. These are examples of holons of increasingly higher order. What is
important from the point of view of our discussion is that in holotropic states all
the different individual, as well as social, holons have corresponding subjective
states. These states make it possible for us to experientially identify in a very
authentic and convincing way with any aspects of existence that in our ordinary
everyday consciousness we experience as objects separate from us.

We are thus able to experience conscious identification with atoms, molecules, or

specific cells of the body, either as individuals or as ensembles. Besides
experiencing ourselves as other individual human beings, we can also undergo
experiential identification with entire human groups, for example, all mothers,
soldiers, or Christians of the world. We can envision a single wolf or a pack of
wolves and observe them as objects. In addition, we can also identify
experientially with a single wolf, as well as experience the consciousness of an
entire pack of wolves or even of the entire wolf species.
Some of the people who have experienced holotropic states reported that they
experienced consciousness of an ecosystem, of the totality of Life as a cosmic
phenomenon, or of our entire planet. In transpersonal states, all aspects of
existence as they manifest on different levels and domains of reality, can under
certain circumstances become potentially available for conscious experience. This
is a very important observation that brings a strong support for understanding the
universe and existence as a divine play of Absolute Consciousness.

The following account is an excerpt from the session of Kathleen, who participated
in our psychedelic training program of professionals at the Maryland Psychiatric
Research Center. It is an example of a transpersonal experience that encompassed
all life and reflected its struggle for survival. It resulted in a deep sense of
compassion with all living things and a dramatic increase of ecological awareness.

I seemed to have connected in a very profound way with life on earth. At first, I
went through a whole series of identifications with individual animals from various
species, but later the experience became more and more encompassing. My identity
spread not only horizontally in space to include all living forms, but also
vertically in time. I became the Darwinian evolutionary tree in all its
ramifications. However incredible this might sound, I experienced myself as the
totality of life!

I sensed the cosmic quality of the energies and experiences involved in the world
of living forms, the endless curiosity and experimentation characterizing life, and
the drive for self-expression and self-preservation operating on many different
levels. I realized what we have been doing to life and to the earth since we
developed technology. Since technology is also an outgrowth of life, the crucial
question I had to deal with was whether life on this planet would survive.

Is life a viable and constructive phenomenon, or a malignant growth on the face of

the Earth that contains some fatal flaw in its blueprint condemning it to self-
destruction? Is it possible that some basic error occurred when the design for the
evolution of organic forms was originally laid down? Can creators of universes make
mistakes as humans do? It seemed at the moment a plausible, but very frightening
idea, something I had never considered before.

Kathleen struggled for some time with the question whether it is possible that the
creative principle might have made a fundamental error in bringing forth creation
and that it might not be fully in control of the process. She concluded that this
is probably the case and that the Divine might need assistance from humans to
preserve its creation. Having opted for what I have described earlier as the
“kaleidoscope” or “chess-game” theory of creation, Kathleen decided to become an
active partner of the Divine in the battle for preservation of life. Here is the
rest of her session:

Identifying with life, I experienced and explored an entire spectrum of destructive

forces operating in nature and in human beings and saw their dangerous extensions
and projections in modern technology threatening to make the earth inhabitable. In
this context, I became all the countless victims of the military machinery of
modern warfare, prisoners in concentration camps dying in gas chambers, fish
poisoned in polluted streams, plants killed by herbicides, and insects sprayed with
chemicals.

This alternated with moving experiences of smiling infants, charming children

playing in the sand, newly born animals and newly hatched birds in carefully built
nests, wise dolphins and whales cruising the crystal-clear waters of the ocean, and
images of beautiful pastures and forests. I felt profound empathy with life, strong
ecological awareness, and a real determination to join the life-affirming forces on
this planet.

Ideas similar to Koestler’s concept of the holon were expressed in the seventeenth
century in the work of the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von
Leibniz. In his Monadology, Leibniz (1951) described the universe as composed of
elementary units called monads. These monads have many characteristics of the Jain
jivas. As in the Jain worldview, in Leibniz’s philosophy all the knowledge about
the entire universe can be deduced from the information contained in each single
monad.

It is interesting that Leibniz was also the originator of the mathematical

technique that was instrumental in the development of optical holography, a new
field that provided for the first time a solid scientific basis for the concept of
mutual interpenetration. Optical holograms demonstrate very clearly the paradoxical
relations that can exist between the parts and the whole, including the possibility
of retrieving the information about the whole from each of its parts. It is
possible that in creating phenomenal worlds Absolute Consciousness is using the
same principles that find their material expression in optical holography. In any
case, the holographic model is the best conceptual framework we have to date for
the world of transpersonal phenomena.

Creation and the World of Art

In holotropic states, we can realize that existence, human life, and the world
around us constitute a fantastic adventure in consciousness, an amazingly complex
and intricate cosmic drama. This parallels the concepts found in ancient Indian
literature. The Hindu scriptures refer to the divine play of the universe as lila
and suggest that the material reality as we perceive it in our everyday life is a
product of a fundamental cosmic illusion called maya. Theater, film, and television
are artificially created illusory representations of reality. For this reason,
these media and various aspects of related artistic activities represent another
frequent source of metaphorical images that people who have experienced holotropic
states use in describing the process of creation.

The situation of an actor very closely parallels the role each of us plays in the
cosmic drama. While on stage and performing a role, good actors can to a great
extent lose contact with their real identities and become the characters they
represent. For the evening of the performance, they can almost believe they are
Othello, Joan of Arc, Ophelia, or Cyrano de Bergerac. Yet the awareness of their
real identity remains available and is resumed after the curtain has fallen and the
applause of the audience subsides. To a lesser degree, a similar process of
identification with the dramatis personae and temporary loss of one’s own identity
can occur in spectators watching a good movie or a well-performed theater play. The
actor or actress have their basic everyday personalities to which they return when
the play ends. People who have experienced holotropic states often suggest that
something similar happens in the cycles of reincarnation. At the beginning of each
lifetime, we assume a different personality and role and, at the time of death, we
return to a more basic identity before taking on another incarnation.

Particularly interesting from this point of view is the situation of a playwright,

because it can be used to illustrate the complexity of our nature and the problem
of determinism versus free will. Since all the boundaries in the universe are
ultimately arbitrary, we do not possess a fixed identity; each of us is the creator
as well as the creation. The degree of freedom that we have changes dramatically
depending on the aspect of creation and the level of the creative process with
which we identify. This is similar to the situation of the author of a theater play
or a screenplay for a movie. All the characters of a play have their origin in the
imagination of the playwright and are thus initially different aspects of a single
creative mind. For the purpose of a realistic and effective enactment of the drama
the protagonists have to be represented as separate individuals.

This offers the author an opportunity for ambiguous identity in relation to the
play and its characters. In the process of writing, he or she has far-reaching
freedom to create and shape the characters and determine the course of events.
However, the same author can also decide to become one of the players in his or her
drama. William Shakespeare, for example, could decide to play the role of Hamlet or
Richard Wagner to sing the part of Tannhäuser. In such cases, they would be to a
great extent confined and determined by the same scripts that, in another context
and on another level, they more or less freely created. In a similar way, each of
us appears in the divine play in a dual role of creator and actor. A full and
realistic enactment of our role in the cosmic drama requires the suspension of our
true identity. We have to forget our authorship and follow the script.

The problem of ambiguity of our identity and of our role in the cosmic drama
requires a word of caution. In the last few decades this issue has often been
misunderstood and misrepresented in the New Age movement and in popular
spirituality. In holotropic states, it is possible to connect with a level of
consciousness where it seems very plausible that we have actually chosen our
parents and the circumstances of our birth. We can also experience a state of
consciousness in which it seems obvious that we are in essence spiritual beings and
that as such we have made a free decision to incarnate and engage in the cosmic
drama. We can also have a very powerful experience of identification with the
creative principle or God. All these experiences can seem very real and convincing.

However, it would be a serious mistake to draw from such insights any conclusions
concerning our ordinary identity or our embodied self. In this form we certainly
did not make any of the above decisions. If applied to the body-ego, such
statements as “You are God and you have created your universe” are confusing and
misleading. I remember a workshop at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California,
in which the leader authoritatively imposed the above statement on the
participants. One of the women in the group got seriously upset, since she was the
mother of a retarded child. The workshop leader’s statement implied that she had
chosen this predicament and deliberately created this problem. This would have
meant that she, as she experienced herself in her everyday life, was fully
responsible for her child’s misfortune. Situations of this kind involve a serious
confusion of levels and an incorrect use of logic that is technically called “error
in logical typing.”

The Archetypal Beings and Domains

We can now return to the dynamics of the cosmic creative process as it is revealed
in holotropic states of consciousness. I have already described and discussed the
frequent insights suggesting that the Universal Mind creates virtual realities
through a complex combination of multiple divisions and cosmic dissociation and
forgetting. Absolute Consciousness projects itself into countless individual beings
that experience themselves as separate from each other and also alienated from
their source. In constant dynamic interaction with each other, they generate
immensely rich experiential worlds. The material realm which we inhabit and with
which we are intimately familiar seems to be just one of these worlds, the farthest
outpost of this creative activity.

Of special interest is a domain that lies between our everyday reality and the
undifferentiated Absolute Consciousness. It is a mythological realm that has been
extensively studied and described by C. G. Jung and his followers. Unlike the
material reality, it is not available to ordinary sensory perception; it can be
directly experienced only in holotropic states. Jung referred to it as the
archetypal realm of the collective unconscious. The beings inhabiting these realms
seem to be endowed with extraordinary energy and have an aura of sacredness or
numinosity. For this reason, they are usually perceived and described as deities.

The events occurring in this mythic realm unfold in a kind of space and time, but a
space and time that are not identical with our experience of these dimensions on
the material level. Archetypal sequences lack the geographical and historical
integrity that is characteristic for events in material reality. Unlike the
happenings in our world, which can be assigned specific spatial and temporal
coordinates, the mythical sequences cannot be placed into a coherent fabric of
space or time. While it is easy to geographically locate London or assign a
specific historical date to the French Revolution, it is impossible to do the same
with Shiva’s heaven or the battle between the Greek Olympian gods and the Titans.
The stories inspired by the mythical realm usually begin: “Once upon a time, in a
faraway land,” in order to discourage the listener from an attempt to place them
geographically or historically into the familiar world of everyday reality.

However, the lack of fixed spatial and temporal coordinates does not make the
archetypal world ontologically less real. The encounters with mythological beings
and visits to mythic landscapes, as experienced in holotropic states, can be in
every respect as real as events in our everyday life, or more so. The archetypal
realm is not a figment of human fantasy and imagination; it has an independent
existence of its own and a high degree of autonomy. At the same time, its dynamics
seem to be intimately connected with material reality and with human life.

The archetypes are clearly supraordinated to the events in the material world and
govern, form, and inform what is happening in our everyday reality. The insights
from holotropic states of consciousness concerning these connections are similar to
the ideas that have been expressed in various books written by the authors inspired
by Jungian psychology. These writers showed that our personalities, behaviors, and
destinies can be understood in terms of the archetypal divine principles operating
in or through our unconscious (Bolen 1984, 1989) and that in our everyday human
dramas we act out various mythological themes (Campbell 1972).

The following experience of Helen, a 42-year-old anthropologist, illustrates the

way the archetypal world is experienced in holotropic states of consciousness and
the insights this can provide.

The sequence that followed was of such grandeur and magnificence that I still feel
a deep sense of awe just thinking about it. It was a vision of a world that had
some characteristics in common with our everyday reality, yet the amount of energy
it was endowed with and the scale on which it existed was beyond anything I could
previously have imagined. I saw illustrious anthropomorphic figures, male and
female, clad in splendid garments and radiating immense power. It resembled the
ancient Greek descriptions of Mount Olympus where the gods feasted on nectar and
ambrosia. However, this experience by far surpassed anything I had previously
associated with this image.

These suprahuman beings were involved in what resembled social interaction, but
their exchange seemed to be of enormous relevance. I felt that what was happening
there was intimately connected with our everyday reality and was determining the
events in the material world. I remember a particularly impressive detail that can
be used as an illustration of this connection and the dimensions involved. At one
point, I saw a splendid ring on the finger of one of these divine beings with a
stone that seemed to be a cosmic version of a diamond. The reflection from one of
its facets struck me as a blinding flash of light and I realized that it projected
into our world as explosion of an atomic bomb.

Later I thought in connection with this experience of a movie that I had seen some
time ago. I think it was called the Golden Fleece and it featured the adventures of
Jason and the Argonauts. The events in this movie unfolded on two levels. One of
them portrayed the realm of the Olympian gods, their interactions, affairs,
conflicts, clashes, and alliances. Each of these deities had his or her sphere of
influence in the cosmos. The protagonists of the story were favorites of some gods
and targets of wrath of others. The emotions of the gods manifested on the earthly
plane as dynamics of the elements of nature, sudden turns of fortune, or meaningful
human encounters.

In view of this experience and the insights associated with it, I feel apologetic
about the scientistic hubris with which I used to dismiss the cosmologies of
“primitive cultures” as superstition and magical thinking. I realized that this
reflected the naiveté of our society in regard to nonordinary states of
consciousness. It was very clear to me that once we subject the observations from
these states to serious study, our materialistic worldview will have to be
drastically revised. We might not use the terms “deities” and “demons” like the
“primitive” cultures and might replace them with more respectable terms, such as
“archetypal figures.” However, once we become familiar with the archetypal
dimension, we will not be able to ignore or deny its existence and its importance
in the universal scheme of things.

While the above account describes a vision of celestial archetypal regions, other
people experienced visits to domains inhabited by various creatures of darkness, as
we know them from mythological descriptions of hells or underworlds of different
cultures. The following excerpt from a narrative written by Arnold, a forty-year-
old teacher, is an example of such an experience.

The next sequence took me into the world of underground tunnels and to what
appeared to be sewage systems of all the great metropolis of the world—New York,
Paris, London, Tokyo. … It seemed that I was getting intimately acquainted with the
infrastructure of these cities, with parts and aspects that are indispensable for
their existence. I realized to my surprise that there was an entire world there,
hidden from the sight of most people and generally unappreciated. I was sinking
deeper and deeper into a system of dark mazes until I realized that the domain I
was entering did not any more belong to the world of our everyday reality.

Although it certainly felt like the deepest bowels of the earth, it was actually a
mythological realm inhabited by strange archetypal creatures. It seemed to me that
I was seeing the infrastructure of the cosmos, essential for its existence and
proper functioning. Like the underground world of the cities, it was hidden and
unappreciated. It was inhabited by gigantic and monstrous chthonic beings of
fantastic shapes. They were endowed with titanic energies that made one think of
tectonic shifts, earthquakes, and volcanic explosions.

I could not help feeling great appreciation for these homely creatures living their
life in darkness and doing patiently the ungrateful labor of running the engine of
the universe. They clearly welcomed my visit and responded with great joy to my
unspoken compliments. It seemed that they were used to being feared and rejected
and showed almost childlike craving for love and acceptance.

As these experiences indicate, there exist various dimensions of reality that are
not part of the phenomenal world of our everyday life. They seem to represent
different types and levels of experiential realities, different “cosmic channels,”
to use an analogy with the world of modern electronics. We usually take the
material world with all its wonders and complexities for granted and reject the
possibility that there might be other domains of reality. However, if we think
about it, the sheer mystery of existence—the fact that anything exists at all and
that it is possible to experience worlds of any kind—is so stupendous and
overwhelming that it makes the question about the specifics of their nature and
content a trivial one.

From a larger perspective, the experience of a beautiful sunset over the Pacific
Ocean, the vision of the Grand Canyon, or the panorama of downtown Manhattan is not
less miraculous than that of Shiva’s heaven or the Egyptian underworld. If we
accept the existence of a supreme principle that has at its disposal the technology
of consciousness and is able to generate experiences, the fact that it can create
realities with many different characteristics does not present any serious
problems. It would be comparable to the task of a film or TV crew to use the
existing technology and produce movies or programs with mythological themes rather
than stories from everyday life.

The Mystery Play of the Universe

Since the Hindu philosophers refer to the cosmic process as lila, or divine play,
it seems appropriate to illustrate the holotropic insights into the nature of
reality by using the analogy with a movie, which is a modern technological version
of a magic show. The intention of the moviemakers is to create a reasonable
facsimile, a “make-believe” version, of material reality. They use all the
available means necessary to achieve this goal. It is usually very easy for the
spectators to imagine that the scenes unfolding on the screen represent real events
in the material world. In some instances, the impact of a movie on some spectators
can be so strong that they respond to it emotionally as if it were real. This
happens in spite of the fact that they know intellectually that what they are
watching is nothing but a play of electromagnetic waves of different frequencies
within a single undivided field of light.

In holotropic states of consciousness we can discover to our surprise that the same
applies to our experience of everyday reality. What appears to us as a world of
solid objects is a play of vibrations that is essentially empty. Naturally, our
experience of the world is fuller and richer than that of a movie, since it
includes some dimensions that today’s filmmaking technology is incapable of
conveying, such as tactile, olfactory, and gustatory qualities. In his famous
science fiction novel The Brave New World, Aldous Huxley described a future form of
entertainment, the “feelies,” in which this shortcoming was overcome, since the
experiences of the spectators were not limited to the optical and acoustic realms,
but included these other sensory qualities. And contemporary researchers in the
field of virtual reality are already experimenting with specially designed gloves
that would enrich the experience of electronically created visual and acoustic
worlds by contributing the tactile dimension.

I described earlier the experience of the “immanent divine,” in which the material
world is perceived as a dynamic play of cosmic creative energy. This experience
also reveals the undivided unity underlying the world of separation. It shows that
what we encounter in everyday life are not discrete individuals and solid objects,
but integral aspects of a unified energetic field. However absurd this might appear
to a naïve realist, this conclusion is in full agreement with the findings of
modern physicists. They indicate that what we ordinarily perceive as solid matter
is essentially empty. Twentieth-century science has thus provided support for the
startling claim of Hindu sages that our perception of the world as made of dense
material objects is an illusion (maya).

Let us now develop the analogy between filmmaking and the creation of material
reality a step further. By simply watching the movie, we cannot fully understand
the process we are involved in, since some important answers about what is
happening to us cannot be found on the screen. What we see in the movies does not
have independent existence and meaning of its own. The movie is a product of a very
complex process and its essential stages are not included in our immediate
experience of watching it. To really understand the events we are witnessing, we
would have to replace the naïve experience of watching the movie with a systematic
in-depth analysis of the process that creates it.

First, we would have to shift our attention away from the screen, turn around, and
discover the device responsible for the illusions that we are perceiving. We would
detect that its essential component is a powerful source of light that projects the
images on the screen. On closer inspection, we would also find the moving celluloid
strip that determines the forms and colors we are seeing. This situation is
strikingly similar to Plato’s famous simile of the cave that he used in his
dialogue The Republic to describe the illusionary nature of the material world.

In this dialogue Plato (1961b) likens the human condition to a situation in which a
group of individuals is confined to the inside of a subterranean grotto. They are
firmly fettered to the ground in such a way that they can stare only straight
ahead. Behind these prisoners is a bright fire and a low wall above which pupeteers
exhibit human and animal effigies and various implements. The prisoners are
immersed in watching the shadows on the wall, the only aspect of the whole
situation they can actually perceive. Fascinated by the show, they are completely
unaware of the true nature of this situation.

In Plato’s simile, the objects of our familiar material world are likened to
shadows that are cast by a fire on the wall of the cave, while the true nature of
reality remains hidden to us. Plato also suggests that the prisoners in the cave
believe that the echos of the sounds that originate behind them are actually
produced by the shadows. In our movie example, we could similarly identify not only
the source of the images, but also discover the origin of the sounds by tracing
them to the magnetic tape that generates them.

When we continue our exploration, a closer scrutiny of the projection process will
reveal that what we perceive as smooth and continuous movements actually consists
of rapid sequences of discontinuous flickering images. This again parallels the
insights from nonordinary states of consciousness concerning the nature of reality.
I have repeatedly heard reports in this regard from people who had various forms of
holotropic experiences. The same insights can be found in traditional spiritual
sources. For example, according to Tibetan Buddhism, reality is radically
discontinuous. The world is constantly flashing in and out of existence, being
dissolved and recreated from one moment to another. Similarly, we ourselves do not
have continuous existence from birth to death, but die and are reborn all the time.
A modern, scientifically based version of the same concept appears in the
philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1929).

The next step of our in-depth probing of the movie experience would take us outside
of the movie theater altogether. We would discover that the film started as an idea
in somebody’s mind and that all the processes necessary to make a movie were
motivated by the intention to concretize the story in the screenplay and transform
it into a convincing vivid experience. The reality portrayed in the movie does not
have an independent existence of its own. It cannot be fully understood if we take
it out of this larger context. The ultimate reason for the existence of the movie
is the intention to provide a specific kind of experience. According to the
insights from holotropic states, the same is true about our experience of the
material world.

A naïve person, such as a child or a native from a preindustrial culture who has
not had exposure to modern technology, could mistake a well-done movie for reality.
In the future, holographic movies with holophonic sound, holographic television,
and particularly advanced technology of “virtual reality” will make that
distinction even more difficult. However, even at present, the idea that our cosmos
might be a “virtual reality” produced by superior intelligence does not seem as
far-fetched as it would have a hundred or even fifty years ago.
5

The Ways to Reunion with the Cosmic Source

Now I am moving back …. back to the Whole, where I belong … what joy to return. …
Yes, now I know what I am, what I have been from the beginning, what I always will
be …. a part of the Whole, the restless part that desires to return, yet lives to
seek expression in doing, creating, building, giving, growing, leaving more than it
takes, and above all desires to bring back gifts of love to the Whole … the paradox
of total unity and the continuity of the part. I know the Whole. … I am the Whole …
even as a part I am the totality.

—Robert Monroe, The Ultimate Journey

Whoever has parted from his source

Longs to return to that state of union.

—Rumi

Involution and Evolution of Consciousness

The process of creation as it was described in the preceding chapter results in an

immensely rich spectrum of entities on many different levels of reality, ranging
from the undifferentiated Absolute Consciousness through rich pantheons of
archetypal beings to countless individual units constituting the world of matter.
This process of successive divisions combined with increasing separation and
alienation represents only one half of the cosmic cycle. The insights from
holotropic states repeatedly reveal another part of this process consisting of
events in consciousness that reflect a movement in the opposite direction—from the
worlds of plurality and separation toward increasing dissolution of boundaries and
merging into ever larger wholes.

For the sake of brevity, I refer to the descending part of the cosmic process,
representing creation (involution of consciousness), as hylotropic, or oriented
toward the world of matter (from the Greek hyle = matter, and trepein = moving in
the direction of something). In a similar way, I call the ascending aspect of the
cosmic process that mediates return to the original undifferentiated unity
(evolution of consciousness) holotropic, or moving toward wholeness. As I have
already mentioned earlier, this latter term is derived from the Greek holos,
meaning whole, and trepein, as above, aiming for something.

These insights parallel the descriptions and discussions of these two cosmic
movements described in various spiritual and philosophical systems. In the West,
the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (1991), referred to the hylotropic process as
Efflux and to the holotropic movement as Reflux. According to the Neoplatonists,
the cosmos in all its variety of hierarchical gradations is created by a divine
emanation from the supreme One. Humans have a potential access to the highest
intellectual and spiritual realms and can rise to the consciousness of the World
Soul. Plotinus’ ideas became a dominant theme of all Neoplatonic schools, as well
as the writings of Christian mystics and German idealistic philosophers. A very
comprehensive contemporary synthesis of the ideas concerning Descent and Ascent
appears in the work of Ken Wilber (1995).

In the East, similar concepts found its most articulate expression in the writings
of the Indian mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo (1965). Aurobindo argued that
Brahman manifests as the world of matter in a process that he called involution and
then progressively brings about an unfolding of his latent power in the course of
evolution. Involution is a process of self-limitation and increasing density, by
which the universal Consciousness-Force veils itself by stages and creates planes
of existence. In its farthest reaches, it assumes the appearance of the inconscient
material world. In each plane all the powers of consciousness belonging to the
planes above it are involved, so that the full potential of the original and
universal Consciousness-Force is enfolded and hidden even in the Inconscient.

Evolution is the opposite process, by which the Consciousness-Force emerges again

from the apparent cosmic Inconscience and manifests its hidden powers. However, it
is important to emphasize that for Aurobindo evolution is not an exact reverse of
involution. It is not a gradual subtilization and rarefaction plane by plane that
would eventually lead to reabsorption of all creation into the One Unmanifest. It
is a gradual emergence of higher powers of consciousness in the material universe
leading to an ever greater manifestation of the divine Consciousness-Force within
its creation.

According to the insights from holotropic states, the universal process offers not
only an infinite number of possibilities for becoming a separate individual, but
also an equally rich and ingenious range of opportunities for dissolution of
boundaries and fusion that mediate experiential return to the source. The unitive
experiences make it possible for the individual units of consciousness to overcome
their alienation and free themselves from the delusion of their separateness. This
transcendence of what earlier appeared to be absolute boundaries and the resulting
progressive merging creates larger and larger experiential units. In its farthest
reaches, this process dissolves all the boundaries and brings about a reunion with
Absolute Consciousness. The sequences of fusions occurring in many forms and on
many different levels complete the overall cyclical pattern of the cosmic dance.

Varieties of Unitive Experiences

Although the unitive processes can be observed throughout all domains of existence,
they are particularly rich and complex in human beings. Here they can also be
studied most directly and systematically in the form of transpersonal experiences.
Unfortunately, Western psychiatry does not differentiate between mysticism and
psychosis and tends to treat mystical experiences of any kind as manifestations of
mental disease. I have met during my professional career many people who received
pathological labels, tranquilizing medication, and even shock therapy because they
have experienced unity with other other people, nature, cosmos, and God.

Abraham Maslow (1964), the late American psychologist who played an important role
in the founding of both humanistic and transpersonal psychology, interviewed
hundreds of people who had had spontaneous unitive states, or “peak experiences” as
he called them. He was able to show that mystical experiences are not indications
of pathology and do not belong into the handbooks of psychiatry. They often occur
in people who do not have any serious emotional problems and would otherwise be
considered “normal” by standard psychological criteria. Moreover, if these
experiences occur in a supportive setting and are well integrated, they can have
very beneficial consequences and result in better functioning, higher creativity,
and “self-actualization.”

The most frequent triggers of unitive experiences are natural and human-made
creations of extraordinary aesthetic beauty. For some people, it can be the
immensity of the star-filled sky, for others the majesty of giant mountain ranges,
or the awesome stillness of the deserts. People visiting such natural wonders as
the Grand Canyon, giant waterfalls, or some of the famous stalagmite caverns of the
world can feel overwhelmed by their grandeur and experience a mystical rapture. The
ocean, with the elemental power manifesting on its surface and the noble silence of
its depth, is another frequent source of peak experiences. Similarly, such
situations as watching a beautiful sunset, the magic of the aurora borealis, or a
total solar eclipse can trigger profound unitive states of consciousness. However,
it does not necessarily take events on such a grand scale to inspire mystical
awareness. Under the right circumstances, it can be something as “ordinary” as a
spider spinning its web or a hummingbird hovering over a flower and sucking nectar.

Exposure to exquisite artistic creations can have a very similar effect. Composers
deeply engaged in creative work, performing musicians, as well as people in musical
audiences, can occasionally lose their boundaries and literally merge with the
music. They can have a sense of actually becoming music, rather than just listening
to it. Great dancers, while on stage, often reach states where there is no more
difference between the dancer and the dance. European Gothic cathedrals, Moslem
mosques, the Taj Mahal, or Hindu and Buddhist temples, by their monumental beauty,
have been instrumental in inducing mystical states in many thousands of people.
Great sculptures, paintings, and other art objects of all ages and cultures can
have a similar effect on sensitive individuals.

Another area of everyday life that is a frequent source of unitive experiences

deserves special notice, since most of us probably would not associate it with
mystical awareness. Many prominent athletes report that, at the time of their peak
performances, they were in states that resembled mystical raptures. We tend to
attribute stellar performances in various athletic activities to a combination of
special physical endowment, psychological perseverance, unrelenting discipline, and
rigorous training. The inside story from some of the world’s greatest athletes
reveals that the players themselves often see it very differently. They attribute
their extraordinary achievments to special states of consciousness that mediate for
them capacities that border on the miraculous and supernatural (Murphy and White
1978). An important aspect of these states is typically a sense of losing
individual boundaries and merging with various aspects of the environment.

It seems that the mystical raptures triggered by sport activities make it possible
to transcend the boundaries of what we usually consider to be humanly possible. I
have personally witnessed an astonishing example of such an extraordinary
performance associated with a unitive state. It occurred during a monthlong seminar
on Buddhism and Western Psychology that we conducted at the Esalen Institute in Big
Sur, California. A Korean swordmaster whom we invited as guest faculty offered as
part of our program a special demonstration. He asked one of his disciples to lie
down on the grass and placed a napkin and a large watermelon on his naked belly. He
then retreated about fifteen feet and stood for a few minutes in quiet meditation,
his head covered with a tightly fitting bag made of thick black velvet, and holding
in his hand a giant, extremely sharp sword.

Suddenly all the dogs in the area started to howl and the swordsman joined in with
a wild warrior scream. In a cartwheel fashion, he propelled himself in the
direction of his disciple, who was quietly lying on the grass, and with a strong
swing of his sword cut the watermelon on his belly in two pieces. There was a
slight indention from the sword on the napkin, but the disciple was unscathed.
Astounded, the spectators asked how he was able to accomplish such a spectacular
feat. Everybody assumed that he was somehow able to remember and visualize the
environment as he had seen it before he was blindfolded. He smiled and answered:
“No, you meditate and wait until all is one—the swordmaster, the sword, the grass,
the melon, the disciple—and then there is no problem!”

Experiences of mystical union have been beautifully captured in the world

literature. For example, in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Edmund
talks about his mystical raptures he experienced in connection with the ocean:

I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me,
the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became
drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—
actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails
and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the
high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity
and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to
Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way.

And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on
a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green
seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint’s vision of
beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a
second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is
meaning!

Unitive Potential of Death, Sex, and Birth

While unitive experiences happen most likely in emotionally positively charged

situations, they can also occur under circumstances that are highly unfavorable,
threatening, and critical for the individual. In this case, the ego consciousness
is shattered and overwhelmed rather than dissolved and transcended. This happens
during severe acute or chronic stress, at the time of intense emotional and
physical suffering, or when the integrity or survival of the body are seriously
threatened. Deeply depressed people brought by a serious life crisis to the verge
of suicide can suddenly experience a profound spiritual opening and transcend their
suffering. Many others discover the mystical realms during near-death experiences
at the time of accidents, injuries, dangerous diseases, and operations.

Death, an event that ends our individual existence as embodied selves, is a very
logical interface with the transpersonal domain. The events leading to death,
associated with it, and following it are a frequent source of spiritual opening.
Suffering from a terminal illness or being in intimate interaction with people who
are dying, particularly close friends or relatives, can activate one’s own issues
around death and impermanence and be instrumental in a mystical awakening. The
training of monks in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism requires spending considerable
amount of time with dying people. Certain Hindu Tantric traditions involve
meditations in cemeteries, in the burning grounds, and in close contact with
corpses.

In Middle Ages, Christian monks were asked to imagine in their meditations their
own death and to visualize all the stages of decomposition of their bodies until
the final disintegration into ashes. “Remember death!”, “Dust to dust!”, “Death is
certain, the hour uncertain!”, “Thus passes the glory of the world!” were the
mottoes guiding such practice. This was much more than morbid indulgence in death
as some modern Westerners would see it. Experiences of deep encounter with death
can trigger mystical states. By accepting impermanence and our own mortality on a
deep experiential level, we also discover the part of us that is transcendent and
immortal.

Various ancient books of the dead offer detailed descriptions of powerful spiritual
experiences occurring at the time of biological death (Grof 1994). Modern research
in the field of thanatology, a science studying death and dying, has confirmed many
important aspects of these accounts (Ring 1982, 1985). It has shown that
approximately one-third of the people who come close to death experience powerful
visionary states including, among others, a condensed life review, passage through
a tunnel, encounter with archetypal beings, contact with transcendental realities,
and visions of divine light. In many instances, this can involve “veridical” out-
of-body experiences, during which the individual’s disembodied consciousness
accurately perceives what is happening in various close or remote locations.
Survivors of such situations typically undergo a profound spiritual opening,
personality transformation, and radical changes in their life values. In a
fascinating research project that is currently underway, Kenneth Ring (1995) is
studying near-death experiences in congenitally blind people, trying to confirm
that in disembodied states they are able to observe their environment.

Talking about triggers of unitive experiences, we should not forget a particularly

important category—situations that are associated with human reproductive
functions. Many people, both men and women, report that they have experienced
profound mystical states during love-making. In some instances, an intense sexual
experience can actually be instrumental in what is described in ancient Indian
yogic texts as awakening of Kundalini, or Serpent Power. The yogis see Kundalini as
the creative energy of the universe that is feminine in nature. It lies dormant in
the sacral area of the human subtle body until it is activated by a guru, by
meditation practice, or by some other influences. The close connection that exists
between this spiritual energy and the sexual drive plays an essential role in
Kundalini yoga and in Tantric practices.

For women, situations associated with motherhood can become another significant
source of unitive experiences. By conceiving, carrying, and delivering a child,
women directly participate in the proces of cosmic creation. Under favorable
circumstances, the sacred nature of these situations becomes apparent and is
consciously experienced. During pregnancy, birth, and nursing, it is not uncommon
to sense a mystical connection with the fetus or the infant and even with the world
at large. We will return to the relationship between mysticism and the triad
birth/sex/death later in this book.

Additional important triggers of unitive states are powerful mind-altering

technologies that can facilitate and catalyze their occurrence. Holotropic
experiences have played a critical role in the spiritual and ritual life of
humanity and much effort has been exerted throughout centuries to develop ways of
inducing them. I have briefly reviewed in the introduction to this book the
ancient, aboriginal, and modern “technologies of the sacred” and the different
contexts in which they have been used, from shamanism through the rites of passage,
mysteries of death and rebirth, and various forms of spiritual practice to modern
experiential therapies and laboratory consciousness research.

The Immanent and the Transcendent Divine

In holotropic states of consciousness, whether they occur spontaneously or are

induced by the ancient and modern mind-altering techniques, it is possible to
transcend in various ways the individual boundaries of the embodied self. These
experiences offer us the opportunity to become other people, groups of people,
animals, plants, or even inorganic elements of nature and of the cosmos. In this
process, time does not seem to be an obstacle and past and future events can become
as easily available as anything happening at present.

Experiences of this kind convey a very convincing insight that all boundaries in
the material world are illusory and that the entire universe as we know it, in both
its spatial and temporal aspects, is a unified web of events in consciousness. It
becomes very clear that the cosmos is not an ordinary material reality, but a
creation of intelligent cosmic energy or the Universal Mind. These experiences thus
unveil the “immanent Divine,” deus sive natura, or God manifested in and as the
phenomenal world. They also disclose that each of us is essentially commensurate
with the entire web of creation and with all its parts.

While such transpersonal experiences dramatically change our understanding of the

nature of everyday material reality, there are others that reveal dimensions of
existence that are ordinarily completely hidden to our perception. This category
includes discarnate entities, various deities and demons, mythological realms,
suprahuman beings, and the divine creative principle itself. In contrast to the
“immanent Divine,” we can talk here about the “transcendent Divine,” since the
realms and beings that we encounter under these circumstances are not part of our
everyday reality; they belong to a different domain and order of existence.

Experiences of this kind demonstrate that cosmic creation is not limited to our
material world, but manifests on many different levels and in many dimensions.
Similarly, the possibility of unitive experiences is not confined to the material
realm, but extends into other domains. We thus can not only see and encounter the
inhabitants of the archetypal regions, we can actually merge with them and become
them. And in the farthest reaches of our experiential self-exploration, we can
encounter the creative principle itself and recognize our fundamental identity with
it.

The experiences of the immanent Divine reveal the sacred nature of everyday reality
and the unity underlying the world of matter, which for a naïve observer appears to
be made of separate objects. By disclosing that all boundaries within the material
world are arbitrary, these experiences make it clear that each of us is essentially
identical with the entire field of space-time and ultimately with the cosmic
creative energy itself. By comparison, the experiences of the transcendent Divine
do not just show us new ways of understanding and perceiving the familiar world of
our everyday life. They reveal the existence of dimensions of reality that are
ordinarily invisible, or “transphenomenal,” particularly those abounding in
primordial cosmic forms and patterns that C. G. Jung (1956) called archetypes.

As we have seen earlier, the world of archetypes, although normally imperceptible,

is not entirely separate from our everyday material reality. It is intimately
interwoven with it and plays a critical role in creating it. In this way, it
represents a supraordinated dimension that forms and informs the experience of our
everyday life. The archetypal domain thus represents a bridge between the world of
matter and the undifferentiated field of Cosmic Consciousness. For this reason, the
experience of the transcendent divine is more than just the experience of another
“cosmic channel.” It also provides insights into the process by which material
reality is created; it gives us a “glimpse into the cosmic kitchen,” as one of my
clients in Prague called it.

The cosmic play offers many opportunities for experiences that make it possible for
us to temporarily step out of the role we are playing in the universal script,
recognize the illusory nature of everyday reality, and discover the possibility of
reunion with the source. Holotropic states provide an understanding of such unitive
experiences that is diametrically opposite to the position of mainstream
psychiatrists. Rather than being distortions of the correct perception of the
material world caused by a pathological process in the brain, these experiences
offer profound insights into the true nature of reality. They reveal the existence
of phenomena that represent intermediate stages in the process of creation between
the undifferentiated consciousness of the Universal Mind and the specifically human
experience of the material world. Because they involve transcendence of individual
boundaries and expand the sense of one’s identity in the holotropic direction, they
serve as important landmarks on the journey to spiritual awakening.

The Enigma of Space and Time

Before closing our discussion of the cosmic process as an intricate fabric of

hylotropic and holotropic experiences, we have to discuss another important aspect
of cosmic creation, namely its relation to space and time. When we describe the
creative process as a movement from undifferentiated unity to plurality, our
conditioning will very likely lead us to imagine that this process had to begin in
a specific location and to unfold in linear time. However, the critical stages of
this process occur in regions that lie beyond time and space as we know them. As we
have seen, the cosmic creative principle transcends all the distinctions and
polarities whatsoever and that includes space and time.

In our everyday life, everything that we encounter has distinct and definite space
and time coordinates. Our experience of time as linear and space as three-
dimensional is very compelling and convincing. As a result of it, we tend to
believe that these characteristics of time and space are mandatory and absolute. In
holotropic experiences, we can discover to our surprise that there exist many
important alternatives to our usual perception and understanding of these two
dimensions. In visionary states, we can experience not only the present, but also
the past and, occasionally, even the future. The sequences of events can appear to
be circular, they can unfold along spiral trajectories, or actually run backwards.
Time can also stop or be altogether transcended. On the levels on which cosmic
creation occurs, the past, the present, and the future coexist rather than follow
one another and, consequently, all the stages of the process are happening
simultaneously.

The concept and experience of space appear to be equally arbitrary when we are in a
holotropic state. Any number of different spaces in various hierarchical
arrangements can be created in a playful fashion and none of them seems to be more
objective, real, and mandatory than others. The transition from the microcosm to
the macrocosm does not have to occur in a linear fashion. The small and the large
can be freely interchanged in a random and capricious way. Experiential
identification with a single cell can effortlessly become one that involves an
entire galaxy and vice versa. These two dimensions can also coexist in the
experiential space of the same person. Consequently, the baffling paradox of
finiteness versus infinity that we experience in our everyday state of
consciousness is transcended and ceases to exist.

To illustrate the complexities of experiencing time and space in holotropic states,

I will describe one of the most extraordinary adventures in consciousness that I
have experienced during the forty years of my inner explorations. It occurred in a
high-dose psychedelic session that I had at the Maryland Psychiatric Research
Center shortly after my arrival in the United States in 1967. Here is an excerpt
from my account of that session:

Somewhere in the second half of my session, I found myself in a very unusual state
of mind. It was a feeling of serenity, bliss, and simplicity mixed with awe in
regard to the mystery of existence. I sensed that what I was experiencing was
similar to what the early Christians must have experienced. It was a world where
miracles were possible, acceptable, and even plausible. I was pondering about the
problems of time and space and had great difficulty understanding how I could have
ever believed that linear time and three-dimensional space are absolute and
mandatory dimensions of reality.

It appeared to me rather obvious that there are no limits whatsoever in the realm
of spirit and that time and space are arbitrary constructs of the psyche. I
suddenly realized that I do not have to be bound by the limitations of time and
space and can travel in the time-space continuum quite freely and without any
restrictions. This feeling was so convincing and overwhelming that I wanted to test
it by an experiment. I decided to try if I could travel to my parents’ apartment in
Prague, which was many thousand miles away.

After determining the direction and considering the distance, I imagined myself
flying through space to the place of my destination. I had the experience of moving
through space at an enormous speed but, to my disappointment, I was not getting
anywhere. I could not understand why the experiment did not work, since my feeling
that such space travel should be possible was very convincing. All of a sudden, I
realized that I was still under the influence of my old concepts of time and space.
I continued to think in terms of directions and distances and approached the task
accordingly. It occurred to me that the proper approach would be to make myself
believe that the place of my session was actually identical with the place of my
destination. I said to myself: “This is not Baltimore, this is Prague.
Right here and now, I am in my parents’ appartment in Prague.”

When I approached the task in this way, I experienced peculiar and bizarre
sensations. I found myself in a strange, rather congested place full of electric
circuits, tubes, wires, resistors, and condensers. After a short period of
confusion, I realized that my consciousness was trapped in a TV set located in the
corner of the room in my parents’ apartment. I was trying, somehow, to use the
speakers for hearing and the tube for seeing. After a while, I had to laugh since I
realized that this experience was a symbolic spoof ridiculing the fact that I was
still imprisoned by my previous beliefs concerning space, time, and matter.

The only way of experiencing distant locations that I could conceive of and accept
was one that was mediated by television. Such a transmission, of course, is
restricted by the velocity of the electromagnetic waves involved. At the moment
when I realized and firmly believed that my consciousness could transcend any
limitations whatsoever, including the speed of light, the experience changed
rapidly. The television set turned inside out and I found myself walking in the
apartment of my parents in Prague.

At this point, I did not feel any drug effect and the experience was as real as any
other situation in my life. The door of my parents’ bedroom was half open. I looked
in, saw their bodies on the bed, and heard them breathing. I walked to the window
and looked at the clock on the street corner. It showed a six-hour difference from
the time in Baltimore where the experiment took place. In spite of the fact that
this number of hours reflected the actual time difference between the two zones, I
did not find it to be a convincing evidence. Since I intellectually knew the time
difference, my mind could have easily fabricated this experience.

I lay down on the couch in the corner of one of the rooms to reflect on my
experience. It was the same couch on which I had spent my last psychedelic session
before my departure to the USA. My request for permission to travel to the USA on a
fellowship had been initially turned down by the Czech authorities. My last session
in Prague happened at a time when I was waiting for the response to my appeal.

Suddenly, I felt a wave of overwhelming anxiety. A strange and uncanny idea emerged
in my mind with unusual force and persuasiveness: Maybe I had never left
Czechoslovakia and was now coming back from the psychedelic session in Prague.
Maybe the positive response to my appeal, the journey to the USA, joining the team
in Baltimore, and having a session there was just a visionary journey motivated by
strong wishful thinking. I was trapped in an insidious loop, a vicious spatio-
temporal circle, unable to determine my real historical and geographic coordinates.

For a long time, I felt suspended between two realities, both of which were equally
convincing. I could not tell whether I was experiencing an astral projection to
Prague from my session in Baltimore or coming down from a session in Prague in
which I had experienced a trip to the United States. I had to think about the
Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu who awoke from a dream in which he was a butterfly
and for some time could not decide whether he was not actually a butterfly dreaming
of being human.

Meaningful Coincidences and Synchronicities

I would like to discuss in this context another important aspect of holotropic

states that has far-reaching implications for our understanding of time and space.
Transpersonal experiences are often associated with strange meaningful coincidences
that cannot be explained in terms of linear causality. In a universe, as it is
described by materialistic science, all events should obey the law of cause and
effect. Any coincidences that defy explanation in causal terms are then attributed
to the fact that the phenomena involved are too complex and that we lack the
knowledge of all the contributing factors. Because of all these unknown “hidden
variables,” the final outcome can be predicted only statistically, not in specific
detail. However, on occasion, the statistical improbability of certain coincidences
in our everyday life is so staggering that it makes us question the adequacy of
such an interpretation.

A friend of mine recently shared with me a remarkable coincidence that had occurred
in his family. His wife and her sister, who lives in another city, were both woken
up in the course of the same night by the presence of a bat in their bedrooms. They
both responded to this one-time occurrence in their lives in exactly the same way.
Although it happened in the middle of the night, they immediately called their
father, woke him up and related to him this unusual event. As most of us know,
situations violating statistical probabilities are much more frequent than one
would expect. I have personally experienced over the years many extraordinary
coincidences in my own life. One of them was particularly relevant because of its
important consequences and is worth describing.

In 1968 when the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia, I was in the United States on
a scholarship at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After the invasion, I
was asked by the Czech authorities to return immediately, but decided to disobey
and stay in the United States. As a result, I was not able to visit my native
country for almost twenty years. During this time, I could not maintain open
contact with my friends and colleagues in Czechoslovakia. It would have been
politically dangerous for them, because my stay in the United States was considered
illegal. After the liberation of Eastern Europe, the board of the International
Transpersonal Association (ITA), of which I was president, decided to hold its next
meeting in Czechoslovakia and I traveled to Prague to find some potential sites for
this meeting.

After my arrival at the Prague airport, I took a taxi to my mother’s apartment.

After my mother and I had spent some time together and caught up with each other,
she went to see a neighbor to make some arrangements and I was in the apartment
alone. I sat down in an armchair, had a cup of tea, and reflected about my mission.
Because of my long absence, I lost all my contacts, was not familiar with the
situation, and did not have an idea where to start. I contemplated the situation
for about ten minutes, but was not getting very far. Suddenly my train of thoughts
was interrupted by a loud ringing of the doorbell. I answered the door and
recognized Thomas, a younger psychiatrist colleague of mine who in the old days
used to be my close friend. Before my departure to the United States, we shared
some explorations of nonordinary states by sitting for each other in our
psychedelic sessions. He had heard from an aquaintance of his about my visit to
Prague and came to welcome me.

I found out to my astonishment that just as Thomas was leaving his apartment, his
home telephone rang. It was Ivan Havel, a prominent researcher in artificial
intelligence and the brother of the Czech president Václav Havel. He and Thomas
went to the same school and remained close friends ever since. It turned out that
Ivan Havel was also the head of a group of progressive scientists who during the
Communist era had secret underground meetings exploring the new paradigm and
transpersonal psychology.

This group had heard about my work in the lecture of a friend of mine, a Soviet
dissident scientist, Vasily Nalimov. Ivan Havel knew that Thomas and I were friends
and called him to mediate contact between me and the group. Because of this
peculiar set of coincidences, it took me only ten minutes to get access to the
ideal support for the ITA conference—a group of highly competent professionals
vitally interested in the subject and the head of the state, who happened to be a
deeply spiritually oriented statesman. The conference that was held in 1993 under
the aegis of Václav Havel and was very successful.

Probably the most famous case of coincidence is an amusing story about a certain
Monsieur Deschamps and a special kind of plum pudding told by the French astronomer
Flammarion and quoted by Jung. As a boy, Deschamps was given a piece of this rare
pudding by a Monsieur de Fontgibu. For ten years that followed, he had no
opportunity to taste this delicacy until he took a trip to Paris. There he saw the
same pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and asked the waiter for a serving.
However, it turned out that the last piece of the pudding was already ordered—by
Monsieur de Fontgibu, who just happened to be in the same restaurant at that
moment. Many years later, Monsieur Deschamps was invited to a party where this
pudding was served as a special rarity. While he was eating it, he remarked that
the only thing lacking was Monsieur de Fontgibu. At that moment the door opened and
an old man walked in looking very confused. It was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who burst
in on the party by mistake because he had been given a wrong address for the place
he was supposed to go.

The existence of such extraordinary coincidences is difficult to reconcile with the

understanding of the universe developed by materialistic science. It is easier to
imagine that these occurrences have some deeper meaning and that they are playful
creations of cosmic intelligence. This explanation is particularly plausible when
they contain an element of humor, which is often the case. I will use here as an
illustration a true story from the life of the American astronaut Neil Armstrong,
the first man to land on the moon. The astronomical improbability of something like
this happening by chance combined with the exquisite humor of the story makes this
certainly one of the most unique “coincidences” of all time.

Descending from the lunar module, just before his foot touched the surface of the
moon, Neil Armstrong said his famous words: “One small step for man; one giant step
for mankind.” It is much less known that, as he was climbing back from the moon
surface into the lunar module, he muttered another sentence, “Good luck Mr.
Gorski.” After his return to earth, curious reporters inquired what this sentence
meant, but Armstrong refused to reveal it. Some thought it might have been
addressed to a Soviet cosmonaut, but there was no one of that name. After
frustrating efforts of the journalists, the entire affair was forgotten.

Last year, at a party in Florida, someone brought it up again. This time, Neil
Armstrong felt free to disclose the meaning of the sentence since, in the meantime,
Mr. Gorski and his wife had died. When Neil was a boy, the Gorskis were their next-
door neighbors. One day, Neil was playing ball in his backyard with his friends. At
one point, the ball landed in the Gorskis’ garden under the open window of their
bedroom and Neil was appointed to retrieve it. The Gorskis were in the middle of a
heated argument. As Neil was picking up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorski screaming:
“Oral sex? You want oral sex? You’ll get oral sex the day the kid next door walks
on the moon!”

Although coincidences of this kind are extremely interesting in and of themselves,

the work of C. G. Jung added another fascinating dimension to this challenging
phenomenon. The situations discussed above involved highly implausible
concatenations of events in the world of matter. Jung observed and described
numerous instances of astonishing coincidences in which various events in consensus
reality were meaningfully linked to intrapsychic experiences, such as dreams or
visions. He coined for this type of coincidence the term synchronicity.

In his famous work, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung (1960)

defined synchronicity as “a simultaneous occurrence of a psychic state with one or
more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary
subjective state.” Situations of this kind show that our psyche can enter into
playful interaction with what appears to be the world of matter. The fact that this
can happen blurs the boundaries between subjective and objective reality.
Among the many instances of synchronicity in Jung’s own life, one is particularly
famous; it occurred during a therapy session with one of his clients. This patient
was very resistant to treatment and to the notion of transpersonal realities. Up to
the time of this particular event, little or no progress had been made. She had a
dream in which she was given a golden scarab. During the analysis of this dream
Jung heard a sound of something hitting the window. He went to check what happened
and found a shiny rose-chafer beetle on the windowsill trying to get inside. It was
a very rare specimen, the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that can be found in
that latitude. Nothing like that had ever happened to Jung before. He opened the
window, brought the beetle inside, and showed it to the client. This amazing
synchronicity had a profound impact on this patient and became an important turning
point in her therapy.

Synchronicities and Inner Exploration

Synchronistic events are particularly frequent in the lives of people who

experience holotropic states of consciousness in their meditation, psychedelic
sessions, experiential psychotherapy, or spontaneous psychospiritual crises.
Transpersonal and perinatal experiences are often associated with extraordinary
coincidences. For example, when in our inner exploration we are approaching the
experience of the ego death, dangerous situations and accidents can suddenly
accumulate in our life. I am not talking here only about events in which we
ourselves are in some way instrumental, but about those that are caused by other
people or by independent external factors. When we face the ego death and
experience rebirth in our inner process, such situations tend to clear up as
magically as they developed. It seems that we are given the alternative of inner
psychological death versus literal physical damage or destruction.

Similarly, when we have a powerful experience of a shamanic type that involves an

animal spirit guide, this animal can suddenly keep appearing in in our life in
various forms with a frequency that is beyond any reasonable probability. In one of
our six-day training modules, a participating psychologist experienced in her
holotropic breathwork session a powerful shamanic sequence in which an owl played
an important role as her power animal and spirit guide. That same day, she returned
from a walk in the forest with remnants of an owl. When she was driving home after
the module had ended, she noticed by the side of the road a large wounded bird. She
stopped the car and came closer; it was a large owl with a broken wing. The owl
allowed her to pick him up and take him to the car without showing any signs of
resistance. She took care of the bird until he was able to fly and return to his
natural environment.

At the time of inner confrontation with the archetypal images of the Animus, Anima,
Wise Old Man, or Terrible Mother, ideal examples of these figures tend to emerge in
physical form in our everyday life. It also has been the experience of many people
that when they become involved in a project inspired from the transpersonal realms
of the psyche, remarkable synchronicities tend to occur and make their work
surprisingly easy. My experience with the ITA conference in Prague described
earlier would certainly fit into this category.
When we are involved in a systematic inner quest that includes work with holotropic
states, we can expect with reasonable certainty that, sooner or later, we will
encounter extraordinary meaningful synchronicities. Sometimes, we will notice only
occasional individual coincidences, other times, we might be flooded by entire
chains of them. According to their content, they can be very uplifting or
oppressive and terrifying. In either case, they can lead to serious problems in
everyday life if they are convincing and cumulative.

Traditional psychiatry does not distinguish between true synchronicities and

psychotic misinterpretation of the world. Since the materialistic worldview is
strictly deterministic and does not accept the possibility of “meaningful
coincidences,” any intimation of extraordinary synchronicities in the client’s
narrative will be automatically interpreted as delusions of reference, a symptom of
serious mental disease. However, there cannot be any doubt about the existence of
genuine synchronicities, where any person who has access to the facts has to admit
that the coincidences involved are beyond any reasonable statistical probabilities.

Consciousness Research and Modern Physics

Jung was well aware of the fact that the phenomenon of synchronicity was
incompatible with traditional thinking in science. Because of the deeply ingrained
belief in causality as a central law of nature, he hesitated for many years before
he published his observations of events that refused to fit into this mold. He
postponed publication of his work on this subject until he and others had collected
literally hundreds of convincing examples of synchronicity, making him absolutely
sure that he had something valid to report.

Struggling with this phenomenon, Jung became very interested in the developments in
quantum-relativistic physics and in the alternative worldview that it was bringing.
He had many intellectual exchanges with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of
quantum physics, and became familiar with the revolutionary concepts in this field.
Jung was aware of the fact that his own observations appeared much more plausible
and acceptable in the context of the new emerging image of reality. Additional
support for Jung’s ideas came from no less than Albert Einstein, who, during a
personal visit, encouraged Jung to pursue his idea of synchronicity because it was
fully compatible with the new thinking in physics (Jung 1973).

Since the above discussion about the arbitrary and ambiguous nature of time and
space might seem implausible or even impossible to somebody who has not had
transpersonal experiences, it seems appropriate to mention some astonishing
alternatives to our usual understanding of reality that have emerged in the course
of this century in modern physics. The fantastic and seemingly absurd insights from
holotropic states pale considerably when we compare them with the daring
speculations about the microworld and macroworld entertained by many prominent
representatives of modern physics. The most outrageous theories concerning the
nature of reality that have been formulated by quantum physicists, astrophysicists,
and cosmologists are taken seriously when they can be backed by mathematical
equations, while similar concepts are met with criticism and even ridicule if their
source is consciousness research or transpersonal psychology.

According to a leading cosmogenetic theory, there was a situation about 15 billion

years ago when time and space did not exist. They were created together with matter
during the Big Bang, when the universe was born in a cataclysmic explosion of
unimaginable proportions from a dimensionless point, or singularity. And,
conversely, billions of years from now time and space might again cease to exist
when the universe collapses into itself. A similar process is already underway in
our cosmos in those places where dying giant stars rapidly contract, knock
themselves out of existence, and create what the physicists call “black holes.”
Inside the black holes, beyond a certain boundary that the physicists refer to as
the “event horizon,” time, space, and physical laws as we know them do not any more
exist.

At the beginning of this century, in a conceptual breakthrough of unprecedented

proportions, Albert Einstein replaced Newton’s three-dimensional space and linear
time by a four-dimensional space-time continuum. In Einstein’s universe, it is
possible to travel in space-time in a way we ordinarily travel in space. Einstein’s
famous equation suggests that time slows down proportionately to the velocity of a
moving system and stops when the velocity reaches the speed of light. In a system
moving faster than light, time would actually run backwards. Californian physicist
Richard Feynman received a Nobel Prize for his discovery that a particle moving
forward in time is identical with its antiparticle moving backward in time.

Theoretical physicists John Wheeler, Hugh Everett, and Neil Graham became known for
their “many worlds hypothesis,” according to which the universe splits every
instant into an infinite number of universes. In his bestselling book, Kip S.
Thorne (1994), professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of
Technology, seriously discussed the possibility of using in the future “wormholes”
for instant transport to various locations in the universe that lie many light
years away and even for travel back in time. According to David Bohm (1980), a
longtime co-worker of Albert Einstein, the world as we know it represents only one
aspect of reality, its “explicate” or “unfolded order.” Its generating matrix is
the “implicate order,” an ordinarily hidden region in which both space and time are
enfolded.

I have included this brief excursion into the world of modern physics because the
imaginative and creative thinking in this discipline forms such a striking contrast
to the narrow-minded approach of academic psychiatrists and psychologists to the
human psyche and consciousness. It is certainly encouraging to see to what extent
physicists have been able to overcome many deeply ingrained preconceptions in their
search for the understanding of the world of matter. Perhaps the startling
speculations of contemporary physics will help us approach with an open mind the
extraordinary and challenging findings of modern consciousness research.
The Cosmic Dance

We can now try to summarize the insights from holotropic states describing
existence as a fantastic experiential adventure of Absolute Consciousness—an
endless cosmic dance, exquisite play, or divine drama. In producing it, the
creative principle generates from itself and within itself a countless number of
individual images, split units of consciousness, that assume various degrees of
relative autonomy and independence. Each of them represents an opportunity for a
unique experience, an experiment in consciousness. With the passion of an explorer,
scientist, and artist, the creative principle experiments with all the conceivable
experiences in their endless variations and combinations.

In this divine play, Absolute Consciousness finds the possibility to express its
inner richness, abundance, and immense creativity. Through its creations it
experiences myriads of individual roles, encounters, intricate dramas, and
adventures on all imaginable levels. This divine play of plays ranges from
galaxies, suns, orbiting planets, and moons through plants, animals, and humans to
nuclear particles, atoms, and molecules. Additional dramas unfold in the archetypal
realms and other dimensions of existence that are not available to our perception
in our everyday state of consciousness.

In endless cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction Absolute Consciousness

overcomes the feelings of monotony and transcendental boredom. The temporary
negation and loss of its pristine state alternates with episodes of its rediscovery
and reclaiming. The periods that are full of agony, anguish, and despair are
followed by episodes of bliss and ecstatic rapture. When the original
undifferentiated consciousness is regained after it was temporarily lost, it is
experienced as exciting, surprising, fresh, and new. The existence of agony gives a
new dimension to the experience of ecstasy, the knowledge of darkness enhances the
appreciation of light, and the extent of enlightenment is directly proportionate to
the depth of previous ignorance. In addition, with each excursion into phenomenal
worlds followed by return, the Universal Mind is enriched by the experiences of the
different roles involved. By having concretized more of its inner potential, it has
augmented and deepened its self-knowledge.

For this understanding of the cosmic process it is necessary to assume that the
Universal Mind consciously experiences all aspects of creation, both as objects of
observation and as subjective states. It can thus explore not only the entire
spectrum of specifically human perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and sensations, but
also the states of consciousness of all the other life forms of the Darwinian
evolutionary tree. On the level of cellular consciousness, it can experience the
excitement of the sperm race and the fusion of the sperm with the egg during
conception, as well as the activity of the liver cells or neurons in the brain.

Transcending the limits of the animal kingdom and expanding into the botanical
world, Absolute Consciousness can become a giant sequoia tree, experience itself as
a carnivorous plant catching and digesting a fly, or participate in the
photosynthesis in the leaves and germination of seeds. Similarly, the phenomena in
the inorganic world, from interatomic bonds through earthquakes and explosions of
atomic bombs to quasars and pulsars provide interesting experiential possibilities.
And since in its deepest nature our psyche is identical with Absolute
Consciousness, these experiential possibilities are, under certain circumstances,
open to all of us.

When we view reality from the perspective of the Universal Mind, all the usually
experienced polarities are transcended. This applies to such categories as spirit-
matter, stability-motion, good-evil, male-female, beauty-ugliness, or agony-
ecstasy. In the last analysis, there is no absolute difference between subject and
object, observer and the observed, experiencer and the experienced, creator and
creation. All the roles in the cosmic drama have ultimately only one protagonist,
Absolute Consciousness. This is the single most important truth about existence
revealed in the ancient Indian Upanishads. In modern times, it found a beautiful
artistic expression in the poem entitled “Please Call Me by My True Names” by the
Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn:

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply; I arrive in every second

to be a bud on a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope,

the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death

of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on

the surface of the river,

and I am the bird which, when the springs comes,

arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily

in the clear water of a pond,

and I am the grass-snake, who, approaching

in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the Politburo

with plenty of power in my hands,

And I am the the man

who has to pay his debt of blood

to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes

flowers bloom in all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears, so full

it fills all four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

So I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

So I can see that my pain and my joy are one.

Please call me by my true names

So I can wake up and so the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.

The Problem of Good and Evil

Consequently: he who wants to have

Right without wrong,

Order without disorder,

Does not understand the principles

Of heaven and earth.

He does not know how

Things hang together.

—Chuang-tzu, Great and Small

Ethical Issues in Self-Exploration

One of the most important issues that keeps emerging in holotropic states of
consciousness in many different forms and on various levels is the problem of
ethics. At the time when our inner experiences focus on biographical issues, the
ethical questions usually take the form of a strong need to scrutinize our life
from childhood up to the present time and evaluate it from the moral point of view.
This tends to be intimately linked with questions concerning self-image and self-
esteem. As we review our life history, we might feel an urgent need to examine
whether our personality and behavior measure up to moral standards—our own, our
family’s, or our society’s. The criteria here are usually quite relative and
idiosyncratic since they necessarily involve a strong personal, familial, and
cultural bias. We essentially judge our behavior in terms of the values that have
been imposed on us from the outside.

There exists another form of self-judgment in which we evaluate our character and
behavior not by the ordinary everyday criteria, but against the background of the
universal law and the cosmic order. Experiences of this kind occur in holotropic
states of various kinds, but are particularly frequent as part of the life review
in near-death situations. Many people who have come close to death talk about their
encounters with a Being of Light and describe that in its presence they subjected
their lives to merciless reckoning. This strong propensity of the human psyche for
moral self-evaluation is reflected in scenes of divine judgment in eschatological
mythologies of many different cultures.

As our process of self-exploration deepens, we can discover within ourselves highly

problematic emotions and impulses that we were previously completely unaware of—
dark and destructive aspects of our unconscious psyche that C. G. Jung referred to
as the Shadow. This discovery can be very frightening and disturbing. Some of these
dark elements represent our reactions to painful aspects of our history,
particularly traumas in infancy and childhood. In addition, powerful destructive
potential seems to be associated with the perinatal level of our psyche, the domain
of the unconscious that is related to the trauma of birth. The hours of painful and
life-threatening experiences associated with the passage through the birth canal
naturally provoke a corresponding violent response in the fetus. This results in a
repository of aggressive tendencies that we harbor in our unconscious for the rest
of our life, unless we make special effort to confront them and transform them in
some variety of experiential self-exploration.
In view of these disclosures, it becomes clear that the menacing doubles in such
works of art as R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, or Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” do
not represent fictitious literary characters, but the shadow aspects of an average
human personality. Individuals who have been able to look deep into their psyches
often describe that they discovered within themselves destructive potential that
matches that of evil individuals in the category of Genghis Khan, Hitler, or
Stalin. In view of such shattering insights, it is common to experience agonizing
misgivings about our own nature and encounter great difficulties in accepting it.

When the experiential self-exploration moves to the transpersonal level, serious

ethical questions are typically raised about humanity as a whole, about the entire
species of Homo sapiens. Transpersonal experiences often portray dramatic
historical scenes or even offer a comprehensive panoramic review of history. Such
sequences bring powerful evidence that unbridled violence and insatiable greed have
always been extremely powerful driving forces in human life. This brings the
question about the nature of human beings and the proportion of good and evil in
the human species.

Are humans at the core of their being just “naked apes” and is violence wired into
the hardware of the human brain? And how do we explain the aspect of human behavior
that psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1973) called “malignant aggression”—viciousness and
destructivity that surpasses anything known in the animal kingdom? How do we
account for the senseless slaughter in countless wars, for the mass murders of the
Inquisition, for the Holocaust, for Stalin’s Gulag archipelago, for the massacres
in Yugoslavia or Rwanda? It would certainly be difficult to find parallels for
these behaviors in any of the animal species!

The present global crisis certainly does not offer a very uplifting and encouraging
picture of contemporary humanity. Violence in the form of wars, riots, terrorism,
torture, and crime seems to be escalating and the modern weapons have reached
apocalyptic efficacy. Billions of dollars are wasted in the insanity of arms race
worldwide, while millions of people live in poverty and starvation, or die of
diseases for which there are known and inexpensive cures. Several doomsday
scenarios, all of them human-made, threaten to destroy our species and with it all
life on the planet. To the extent to which Homo sapiens is the crown of natural
evolution, as we like to believe, is not only humanity, but also the very
phenomenon of life, flawed in some fundamental way? In holotropic states, these
questions can emerge with agonizing urgency and intensity.

Relativity of the Criteria for Good and Evil

The insights into ethical matters and answers to various moral problems are usually
affected considerably as the process of deep self-exploration moves from one level
of consciousness to another and we gain access to information that was not
available to us before. To some extent, our ethical judgment about everyday matters
can change quite drastically even without insights from higher levels of
consciousness, simply by acquiring new information. With the benefit of hindsight,
seeming blessings can later appear to be major disasters. What at one time was seen
as a beneficial action can often take on a very ominous form as we reach deeper and
more complete understanding of what is involved.

We can use here as an example the discovery of the insecticide DDT shortly after
World War II. Initially, DDT was highly praised as an effective weapon against
diseases transmitted by insects. Thousands of tons of this material were dumped
into the swamps in various parts of the world in an effort to eradicate yellow
fever and malaria, as well as used on a large scale to combat other diseases
transmitted by insects. From a limited perspective, this seemed to be a very worthy
and commendable project. DDT was considered such a positive contribution to
humanity that in 1948 it brought its inventor Paul Müller a Nobel Prize for
physiology and medicine. However, what was once considered the epidemiologists’
dream turned out to be an ecological nightmare.

It was discovered that DDT was not biodegradable and the entire amount of it that
had ever been produced was here to stay. In addition, because of its special
affinity to fats, it showed increasing concentration as it moved up the food chain
through plankton, small fish, large fish, birds, and mammals. In birds it often
reached a concentration that interfered with the capacity to create viable
eggshells. Now we know that DDT is responsible for the extinction of pelicans,
cormorants, peregrines, eagles, and falcons in some locations. In its geographical
spread, it has reached the Arctic and was detected in the fat of the penguins. It
even found its way to human mammary glands and into mothers’ milk. Although it was
taken from the market many years ago, it was recently implicated as a contributing
factor in human breast cancer.

The problem of relativity of good and evil was addressed in an artistic way in
Jean-Paul Sartre’s play The Devil and the Good Lord (Sartre 1960). The chief
protagonist, Goetz, is a vicious and merciless military leader who in his unbridled
ambition commits many crimes and evil deeds. When he sees the horrors of the
pestilence that erupts in the besieged town occupied by his army, he is overwhelmed
by fear of death and promises God to change his behavior if He saves his life.

At that moment, a monk miraculously appears and helps him to escape from the town
through a secret underground passage. Goetz keeps his promise and begins to lead a
life committed to unswerving pursuit of good. However, in its consequences, his new
way of life causes more evil than his previous merciless, evil conquests. This play
was clearly Sartre’s comment on the history of Christianity that is a prime example
as to how merciless enforcement of the message of love can result in evil actions
and cause suffering of unimaginable proportions.

The issue of ethics is further confounded by the differences in the moral codes
from culture to culture. While certain human groups appreciate and cultivate the
human body or even see it as sacred, others believe that anything related to flesh
and physiological functions is a priori corrupt and evil. Some feel casual and
natural about nudity, others require that women cover their entire body including
parts of their face. In some cultural contexts, adultery was punishable by death,
while, according to an old Eskimo custom, the host was expected to offer his wife
in the spirit of hospitality to all male visitors of their home. Both polygamy and
polyandry have been practiced in human cultural history as acceptable social
alternatives. A tribe in New Caledonia used to kill fraternal twins, if one of them
was male and the other female, because they committed incest in the womb. By
comparison, in ancient Egypt and Peru, the law required that in the royal families
the brother married his sister.

In Japan, suicide used to be not only recommended, but practically required in

certain situations that were seen as dishonoring. In China and other places, when
the ruler died, his wives and servants were killed and buried along with him.
According to the Indian custom of sati, the widow was expected to follow her dead
husband into the flames of the funeral pyre. Together with female infanticide, sati
was practiced in India long after it had been outlawed by the British in the
nineteenth century. Ritual human sacrifice was performed in many human groups and
cannibalism was seen as an acceptable practice by some highly cultured groups, such
as the Aztecs and the Maori. From a cross-cultural and transpersonal perspective,
the rigid observance of customs and rules governing various psychobiological and
social practices thus can be seen as a deliberate experiment of cosmic
consciousness in which all possible experiential variations have been
systematically explored.

Evil as an Intrinsic Part of Creation

One of the most difficult ethical challenges that emerges in holotropic states is
to accept the fact that aggression is inextricably woven into the natural order and
that it is not possible to be alive without this being at the expense of another
life form. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch microbiologist and the inventor of the
microscope, summed it up in one sentence: “Life lives on life—it is cruel, but it
is God’s will.” The English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson called nature “red in tooth
and claw.” Writing about the Darwinian worldview, biologist George Williams (1966)
put it even stronger: “Mother Nature is a wicked old witch.” And Marquis de Sade,
who gave sadism its name, used references to this cruelty of nature as a
justification for his own behavior.

Even the most conscientious way of conducting our lives cannot help us to escape
this dilemma. Alan Watts (1969) in his article “Murder in the Kitchen” discussed
from this point of view the problem of meat-eating versus vegetarianism. The fact
that “rabbits scream louder than carrots” did not seem to him a good enough reason
to choose the latter. Joseph Campbell expressed the same idea in his tongue-in-
cheek definition of a vegetarian as “a person who is not sensitive enough to hear a
tomato scream.” Since life has to feed on life, whether it is of animal or
vegetable nature, Watts recommended as a solution an approach found in many native
cultures, both in communities of hunters/gatherers and agricultural societies.
These groups use rituals that express gratitude for the eaten one and humble
acceptance of their own participation in the food chain in both roles.
Ethical issues and decisions become particularly complex when the relevant insights
and information come from levels of consciousness that are not ordinarily easily
available, particularly those that include the spiritual dimension. Introducing
spiritual criteria into situations of everyday life can become paralyzing if it
occurs in an extreme form and is not tempered by practical considerations.

We can mention here as an example an episode from the life of the famous German
physician, musician, philanthropist, and philosopher Albert Schweitzer. One day, he
was treating in his jungle hospital in Lambarene an African native suffering from a
serious septic condition. While he was standing by his body with a syringe filled
with an antibiotic, he suddenly had to ask himself what gave him the right to
destroy millions of lives of micro-organisms to save one human life. He was
questioning by what criteria we assume the right to see human life as superior to
that of all the other species.

Joseph Campbell was once asked how we can reconcile our spiritual worldview with
the need to make practical decisions in everyday life, including killing to save
life. He described as an example the situation of a small child who is in imminent
danger of being bitten by a snake. When we intervene under these circumstances,
killing the snake does not mean saying “No” to the snake as an integral part of the
universal scheme, as a meaningful element of the cosmic order. It is not denying
the right of the snake to exist as part of creation and does not necessarily mean
that we do not appreciate its existence. This intervention is our reaction to a
specific local situation, not a gesture of ultimate cosmic relevance.

Divine Roots of Evil

As we discover the existence of the world of archetypes and realize that its
dynamics is instrumental in shaping the events in the material world, the focus of
ethical considerations shifts from the personal and cultural levels to the
transpersonal domain. The critical issue here is the fundamental dichotomy in the
archetypal realm. We become aware of the fact that the pantheon of archetypal
beings includes both benefic and malefic principles and forces or, using the
terminology of pre-industrial cultures, blissful and wrathful deities. From this
perspective, it is they who are responsible for the events in the material world.
However, sooner or later it becomes clear that these entities themselves are not
autonomous. They are creations or manifestations of a yet higher principle that
transcends them and governs them. At this point, the moral inquiry finds a new
focus; it is directed to the creative principle itself.

This naturally gives rise to an entirely new series of questions. Is there one
creative source that transcends polarities and is responsible for both good and
evil? Or is the universe a battlefield where two cosmic forces, one essentially
good and the other evil, engage in a universal combat, in the way it has been
portrayed in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeanism, and Christianity? If so, which of these
two principles is more powerful and will ultimately prevail? If God is good and
just, omniscient and omnipotent, as we are told by mainstream Christianity, how do
we explain the amount of evil in the world? How is it possible that millions of
children are killed in a bestial way or die of starvation, cancer, and infectious
diseases long before they could possibly commit any sins? The usual explanation
offered by Christian theology, suggesting that God punishes these individuals in
advance because He foresees that they would grow up into sinners, certainly is not
very convincing.

In many religions, the concept of karma and reincarnation helps to explain how and
why something like this can happen. It also accounts for the horrendous inequities
among adults and the differences in their destinies. As we will explore later in
this book, similar concepts existed also in early Christianity, particularly in its
Gnostic form. Gnostic Christianity was condemned as a heresy by the ecclesiastical
Church in the second century and, in the fourth century, was severely persecuted
with the assistance of Emperor Constantine. Ideas concerning reincarnation of the
same soul were banned from Christianity in A.D. 553 at a special congress in
Constantinople. This left Christianity with the formidable problem of an
omnipotent, just, and benevolent Creator of a world that is full of inequity and
evil. The belief in reincarnation can provide answers to some most immediate
questions concerning the dark side of existence, but does not address the problem
of the origin of the karmic chain of causes and effects.

In holotropic states of consciousness, fundamental ethical questions concerning the

nature and origin of evil, the reason for its existence, and its role in the fabric
of creation emerge spontaneously and with great urgency. The problem of the
morality of the creative principle that is directly responsible for all the
suffering and horrors of existence, or that permits and tolerates evil, is truly a
formidable one. The ability to accept creation as it is, including its shadow side
and one’s own role in it, is one of the most challenging tasks we can encounter
during an in-depth philosophical and spiritual quest. It is, therefore, interesting
to review how these problems appear to those individuals who encounter them on
their inner journey.

The experiences of identification with Absolute Consciousness or with the Void

involve transcendence of all polarities, including the opposites of good and evil.
They contain the entire spectrum of creation from the most beatific to the most
diabolical aspects, but in an unmanifested form, as a pure potential. Since ethical
considerations are applicable only to the world of manifest phenomena, which
involves polarities, the problem of good and evil is intimately connected with the
process of cosmic creation. For the purpose of our discussion, it is important to
realize that ethical values and norms are themselves parts of creation and thus do
not have an absolute independent existence of their own. In the ancient Indian
sacred text, the Katha Upanishad, we can read:

As the sun, the eye of the whole world,

Is not sullied by the external faults of the eyes,

So the one Inner Soul of all things

Is not sullied by the evil in the world, being

external to it.

The Role of Evil in the Universal Scheme

Final understanding and philosophical acceptance of evil always seems to involve

the recognition that it has an important or even necessary role in the cosmic
process. For example, deep experiential insights into ultimate realities that
become available in holotropic states might reveal that evil is an essential
element in the universal drama. Since cosmic creation is creatio ex nihilo,
creation out of nothing, it has to be symmetrical. Everything that emerges into
existence has to be counterbalanced by its opposite. From this perspective, the
existence of polarities of all kinds is an absolutely indispensable prerequisite
for the creation of the phenomenal worlds. This fact had its parallel in the
speculations of some modern physicists about matter and antimatter, suggesting that
in the very first moments of the universe, particles and antiparticles were present
in equal numbers.

We have seen earlier that one of the “motives” for creation seems to be the “need”
of the creative principle to get to know itself, so that “God can see God” or “Face
can behold Face.” To the extent to which the divine creates to explore its own
inner potential, not expressing the full range of this potential would mean
incomplete self-knowledge. And if Absolute Consciousness is also the ultimate
Artist, Experimenter, and Explorer, it would compromise the richness of the
creation to leave out some significant options. Artists do not limit their topics
to those that are beautiful, ethical, and uplifting. They portray any aspects of
life that can render interesting images or promise intriguing stories.

The existence of the shadow side of creation enhances its light aspects by
providing contrast and gives extraordinary richness and depth to the universal
drama. The conflict between good and evil in all the domains and on all the levels
of existence is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for fascinating stories. A
disciple once asked Sri Ramakrishna, the great Indian visionary, saint, and
spiritual teacher: “Swamiji, why is evil in the world?” After a short deliberation,
Ramakrishna replied succinctly: “To thicken the plot.” This answer might appear
cynical in view of the nature and scope of suffering in the world, seen in a
concrete form of millions of children dying of starvation or various diseases, the
insanity of wars throughout history, countless sacrificed and tortured victims, and
the desolation of natural disasters. However, a mental experiment can help us to
get a different perspective.
Let us for a moment imagine that we can eliminate from the universal scheme
anything that is generally considered bad or evil, all the elements that we feel
should not be part of life. Initially, it might seem that this would create an
ideal world, a true paradise on earth. However, as we proceed, we see that the
situation is much more complex. Suppose we start with the elimination of diseases,
something that certainly belongs to the dark side of existence, and imagine that
they have never existed. We soon discover that this is not an isolated intervention
that selectively eradicates an evil aspect of the world. This interference has a
profound effect on many positive aspects of life and creation that we hold in great
esteem.

Together with the diseases we eliminate the entire history of medicine—medical

research and the knowledge it imparts, the discovery of the causes of dangerous
illnesses, as well as miraculous cures for them, such as vitamins, antibiotics, and
hormones. There are no more miracles of modern medicine—life-saving operations,
organ transplants, and genetic engineering. We lose all the great pioneers of
science, like Virchow, Semmelweiss, and Pasteur, the heroes who dedicated their
entire lives to a passionate search for answers to medical problems. There is also
no need for the love and compassion of all those who take care of ailing people,
from physicians and nurses to a variety of good Samaritans. We lose Mother Teresa
together with the reason to award her a Nobel Prize. Here go the shamans and
indigenous healers with their colorful rituals and knowledge of medicinal herbs,
the miracles in Lourdes, and the Filipino psychic surgeons!

Another obviously dark and evil aspect of creation is the existence of oppressive
regimes, totalitarian systems, genocide, and wars. When we focus our cosmic
sanitation efforts on this area, we eliminate a significant part of human history.
In this process, we lose all the heroic acts of freedom fighters of all times who
sacrificed their lives for just causes and for the liberty of their countries and
compatriots. There are no more triumphs of victory over evil empires and the
intoxication of newly achieved freedom. We have to remove from the world the
fortified castles of all historical periods and countries, as well as museums
documenting the ingenuity of weapon-making, the mastery of defense, and the
richness of military attires. Naturally, the elimination of violence from the
cosmic drama will have profound reverberations in the world of art. The libraries,
art museums, music collections, and movie archives would shrink considerably when
we remove from them all the pieces of art inspired by violence and the fight
against it.

The absence of metaphysical evil would drastically reduce the need for religion,
since God without a powerful adversary would become a guaranteed commodity that
would be taken for granted. Everything related to ritual and the spiritual life of
humanity would now be missing from the universal scheme and none of the historical
events inspired by religion have ever happened. Needless to say, we would also lose
some of the best works of art—literature, music, paintings, sculptures, and movies—
inspired by the conflict between the divine and the demonic. The world would be
without its glorious Gothic cathedrals, Moslem mosques, synagogues, and Hindu and
Buddhist temples, as well as other architectural gems inspired by religion.

If we continued further with this process of purging the universal shadow, creation
would lose its immense depth and richness and we would eventually end up with a
very colorless and uninteresting world. If this kind of reality were portrayed in a
Hollywood movie, we probably would not find it worth seeing and the movie theaters
would be empty. A widely used manual for successful screenplay writing stresses the
importance of tension, conflict, and drama as necessary prerequisites for a
successful movie. It actually specifically warns that portraying “life in a happy
village” would guarantee a certain flop and box office disaster.

The filmmakers, who have a free choice to select any themes for their movies, do
not usually choose sweet uneventful stories with a happy ending. They typically
include suspense, danger, difficulties, serious emotional conflicts, sex, violence,
and evil. And, of course, the creators of movies themselves are significantly
influenced by the taste and demands of the audiences. To the extent to which God
created humans according to his/her image, as we are told, it should not be
surprising that cosmic creation follows the same principles that govern creative
activity and entertainment in our world.

In the process of deep experiential self-exploration, we discover that creation is

dichotomized on all the levels where we encounter forms and separate phenomena.
Absolute Consciousness and the Void exist beyond the world of phenomena and thus
transcend all polarities. Good and Evil as separate entities come into existence
and manifest in the initial stages of creation when the dark and the light aspect
of the Divine emerge from the undifferentiated matrix of the Void and Absolute
Consciousness. While these two aspects of existence represent polar opposites and
are antagonistic toward each other, they are both necessary elements in creation.
In a complex and intricate interplay, they generate the countless characters and
events on many different levels and in many dimensions of reality that constitute
the cosmic drama.

Two Faces of God

In holotropic states, we can directly experience not only the unified creative
principle, as I described earlier, but also separately either its benevolent or its
malevolent form as two discrete entities. When we encounter the benevolent form of
God, we selectively tune into the positive aspects of creation. At this point, we
are not aware of the shadow side of existence and we see the cosmic play in its
entirety as being essentially radiant and ecstatic. Evil appears to be ephemeral or
entirely absent from the universal scheme of things.

The best approximation to the understanding of the nature of this experience is to

describe it in terms of the ancient Indian concept of Sacchidananda. This composite
Sanskrit word consists of three separate roots: sat meaning existence or being;
chit, which translates as awareness; and ananda, which signifies bliss. All we can
say about this experience is that we are identified with a radiant, boundless, and
dimensionless principle, or state of being, that seems to be endowed with infinite
existence, has infinite awareness or wisdom, and experiences infinite bliss. It
also possesses an infinite capacity to create forms and experiential worlds out of
itself.

This experience of Sacchidananda, or Existence-Awareness-Bliss, has its counterpart

—a cosmic principle that epitomizes all the negative potential of the Divine. It
represents a negative mirror image or an exact polar opposite of the basic
attributes of Sacchidananda. We can think here of the introductory scene from
Goethe’s Faust, in which Mephistopheles introduces himself to Faust: “I am the
spirit that negates” (“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint”). When we look at the
phenomena that we consider bad or evil, we will see that they fall into three
distinct categories, each of which represents the negation of one of the basic
characteristics or attributes of Sacchidananda.

The first of the three basic qualities of the positive Divine is sat, or infinite
existence. The corresponding category of evil is related to the concepts and
experiences related to limited existence, termination of existence, and
nonexistence. Here belongs the impermanence that rules the phenomenal world and the
inevitable prospect of final annihilation of everything. This includes our own
demise, the death of all living organisms, and the ultimate destruction of the
earth, the solar system, and the universe. We can think here of the dismay of
Gautama Buddha, when during his rides outside of his father’s palace he discovered
the facts of disease, old age, and death. In our own tradition, medieval Christian
clergy coined many laconic phrases reminding the population of this aspect of
existence: “Dust to dust, and to dust thou will return,” “Remember death,” “This is
how passeth the glory of the world,” or “Death is certain, its hour uncertain.”

The second important aspect of Sacchidananda is chit, or infinite awareness,

wisdom, and intelligence. The corresponding category of evil is related to various
forms and levels of limited awareness and ignorance. It covers a wide range of
phenomena from harmful consequences of lack of knowledge, inadequate information,
and misunderstanding in matters of everyday life to self-deception and basic
ignorance about the nature of existence on a high metaphysical level (avidya). This
type of ignorance was described by the Buddha and some other spiritual teachers as
one of the important roots of suffering. The form of knowledge that can penetrate
the veil of this ignorance and lead to liberation from suffering is called in the
East prajñaparamita, or transcendental wisdom.

The third category of phenomena experienced as bad or evil includes elements that
represent negation of another major characteristic of Sacchidananda, the element of
unlimited bliss, or ananda. The experiences belonging here and their causes reflect
the dark side in the most direct, obvious, and explicit way, because they interfere
with an ecstatic experience of existence. They involve an entire range of difficult
emotions and unpleasant physical sensations that are direct opposites of divine
pleasure, such as physical pain, anxiety, shame, sense of inadequacy, depression,
and guilt.

The evil demiurgic principle, the negative mirror image of Sacchidananda mentioned
earlier, can be experienced in a purely abstract form or as a more or less concrete
manifestation. Some people describe it as Cosmic Shadow, an immense field of
ominous energy, endowed with consciousness, intelligence, destructive potential,
and monstrous determination to cause chaos, suffering, and disaster. Others
experience it as an anthropomorphic figure of immense proportions representing the
all-pervading universal evil, or the Dark God. The encounter with the shadow side
of existence can also take a more culture-bound form of specific deities, as
exemplified by Satan, Lucifer, Ahriman, Hades, Lilith, Moloch, Kali, or Coatlicue.

I will use here as an illustration an excerpt from the report of Jane, a thirty-
five-year-old psychologist, who experienced in her training session a shattering
confrontation with the dark side of existence that culminated in an encounter with
a horrifying personification of universal evil.

It seemed to me that I had lived my life up to this point with rosy glasses on my
eyes that prevented me from seeing the monstrosity of existence. I saw countless
images of various forms of life in nature being attacked and devoured by others.
The entire chain of life, from the lowest organisms to the most highly developed
ones, suddenly appeared as a brutal drama in which the small and weak get eaten by
the large and strong. This dimension of nature was so striking and overbearing that
I could hardly see any other aspects, such as the beauty of animals or ingenuity
and creative intelligence of the life force. It was a shattering illustration of
the fact that the very basis of life is violence; life cannot survive without
feeding on itself. A herbivore is just a more hidden and mitigated example of
predatory existence in this biological holocaust. The sentence “nature is criminal”
that the Marquis de Sade used to justify his own behavior suddenly made new sense.

Other images took me on a tour of human history and provided clear evidence that it
has been dominated by violence and greed. I saw the vicious combats of the cavemen
using primitive clubs, as well as the mass slaughter caused by increasingly
sophisticated weapons. Visions of the Mongolian hordes of Genghis Khan, sweeping
through Asia senselessly killing and burning villages, were followed by the horrors
of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and the African Apartheid. And yet other images
portrayed the insatiable acquisitiveness and insanity of our technological society
that threatens to destroy all life on this planet!

The ultimate irony and cruel joke in this dismal portrait of humanity appeared to
be the role of the world’s great religions. It was clear that these institutions
promising to mediate contact with the divine have often actually been a channel for
evil. From the history of Islam spread by sword and spear through the Christian
crusades and atrocities of the Inquisition to more recent religiously motivated
cruelties, religion has been part of the problem rather than its solution.

Up to this point in the session, Jane had to witness a selective display of the
shadow aspects of life, both in nature and in human society, without getting any
insights concerning the causes of greed and violence. In a later phase, the
experience took her directly to what seemed to be the metaphysical source of all
evil in the world.

Suddenly the experience changed and I came face to face with the entity responsible
for all I had seen. It was the image embodying the quintessence of timeless Evil,
an incredibly ominous towering figure, radiating unimaginable power. Although I had
no concrete measure, it seemed immense, possibly the size of entire galaxies.
Although it was generally anthropomorphic and I could roughly recognize specific
part of its body, it had no concrete form.

It was composed of rapidly changing dynamic images that flowed in holographic

interpenetration. They portrayed various forms of evil and appeared in appropriate
parts of the anatomy of this God of Evil. Thus the belly contained hundreds of
images of greed, gluttony, and disgust, the genital area scenes of erotic
perversion, rape, and sexual murder, the arms and hands violence committed by
swords, daggers, and firearms. I felt awe and indescribable terror. The names
Satan, Lucifer, and Ahriman emerged in my mind. But these were ridiculously meek
labels for what I was experiencing.

The Separating Power of Evil

Some of the people who had experienced personal encounter with the Cosmic Evil had
some interesting insights about its nature and function in the universal scheme of
things. They saw that this principle is intricately woven into the fabric of
existence and that it permeates in increasingly concrete forms all the levels of
creation. Its various manifestations are expressions of the energy that makes the
split-off units of consciousness feel separate from each other. It also alienates
them from their cosmic source, the undifferentiated Absolute Consciousness. It thus
prevents them from the realization of their essential identity with this source and
also of their basic unity with each other.

From this point of view, evil is intimately linked with the dynamism to which I
referred earlier as “partitioning,” “screen-work,” or “forgetting.” Since the
divine play, the cosmic drama, is unimaginable without individual protagonists,
without dictinct separate entities, the existence of evil is absolutely essential
for the creation of the world as we know it. This understanding is in basic
agreement with the notion found in some Christian mystical scriptures according to
which the fallen angel Lucifer (literally, “Light-Bearer”), as a representative of
polarities, is seen as a demiurgic figure. He takes humanity on a fantastic journey
into the world of matter. Approaching this problem from another perspective we can
say that, in the last analysis, evil and suffering are based on a false perception
of reality, particularly the belief of sentient beings in their separate individual
self. This insight forms an essential part of the Buddhist doctrine of anatta or
Anatman (no-self).

The insight that evil is a separating force in the universe also helps to
understand certain typical experiential patterns and sequences in holotropic
states. Thus, ecstatic experiences of unification and consciousness expansion are
often preceded by shattering encounters with the forces of darkness, in the form of
evil archetypal figures, or passing through demonic screens. This is regularly
associated with extreme emotional and physical suffering. The most salient example
illustrating this connection is the process of psychospiritual death and rebirth,
in which experiences of agony, terror, and annihilation by wrathful deities are
followed by a sense of reunion with the spiritual source. This connection seems to
have found a concrete expression in the Japanese Buddhist temples, such as the
splendid Todaiji in Nara, where one has to pass by terrifying figures of wrathful
guardians before entering the inside of the temple and facing the radiant image of
the Buddha.

One in Many, Many in One

Any attempt to apply ethical values to the process of cosmic creation has to take
into consideration an important fact. According to the insights presented in this
book, all boundaries that we ordinarily perceive in the universe are arbitrary and
ultimately illusory. The entire cosmos is in its deepest nature a single entity of
unimaginable dimensions, Absolute Consciousness. As we saw earlier, in the
beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hahn, all the roles in the cosmic drama have, in the
last analysis, only one protagonist. In all the situations that involve the element
of evil, such as hatred, cruelty, violence, misery, and suffering, the creative
principle is playing a complicated game with itself. The aggressor is identical
with the attacked, the dictator with the oppressed, the rapist with the raped, and
the murderer with his victim. The infected patient is not different from the
bacterial agents that invaded her and caused the disease, or from the doctor who
applies the antibiotic to stop the infection.

The following excerpt from a session of Christopher Bache, the professor of

philosophy and religion whose description of the experience of the Void I cited
earlier, is a very vivid illustration of the shattering realization of our
essential identity with the creative principle:

At the center came forward the theme of sex. At first sex emerged in its pleasant
form as mutual delight and erotic satisfaction, but soon it changed into in its
violent form, as attack, assault, injury, and hurt. The forces of sexual assault
were building in the crisscrossing fields of humanity as well. I was facing these
brutal forces, and behind my back was a child. I was trying to protect this child
from them, to hold them back and prevent them from reaching it. The horror
intensified as the child became my precious three year old daughter. It was she and
it was all children of the world simultaneously.

I kept trying to protect her, to hold back the attack that was pushing through me,
and yet I knew that eventually I would fail. The longer I held the forces in check,
the more powerful they became. The “I” here was not just a personal “I” but
thousands and thousands of people. The horror was beyond anything I can describe.
Glancing over my shoulder I could feel the field of frightened innocence, but now
there was another element added to it—a strain of mystical embrace. Superimposed
upon the child was the Primal Female, the Mother Goddess herself. She beckoned me
to embrace her, and I knew instinctively that there could be no greater sweetness
than the one found in her arms.

In holding myself back from violent sexual assault, I was also holding myself back
from the mystical embrace of the Goddess, yet I could not bring myself to rape and
kill my child no matter how sweet the promise of redemption. The frenzy continued
to build until eventually I began to turn. Still holding back the terrible
onslaught of killing, I was now facing my victim and being torn apart by the forces
of passion on one side and protection on the other. My victim was at once my
helpless, innocent, fragile daughter and the Primal Woman inviting me to a sexual
embrace of cosmic proportions.

After a long period of agonizing battle against the horifying onslaught of violent
impulses, Chris was gradually able to surrender to them and let them play
themselves out. The resolution of this excruciating situation came when he was able
to discover that behind the separate protagonists of these violent scenes was only
one entity—himself as the creative principle.

No matter how hard I fought what was happening, I was being drawn to unleash the
fury. In horror and blind thirst I was turning to attack, to rape, to kill, and yet
I continued to fight what was happening with every ounce of my strength. The
struggle drove me to deeper and deeper levels of intensity until suddenly something
broke open, and I came to the shattering realization that I was turning to kill and
rape myself. This breakthrough was very multidimensional and confusing. The
intensity of my struggle drove me beyond a breaking point where I suddenly
confronted the reality that I was both the raping killer and the victim.
Experientially I knew that we were the same. In looking into my victim’s eyes, I
discovered that I was looking into my own face. I sobbed and sobbed. “I’m doing it
to myself.”

This was not a karmic inversion, a flip into a former life where victim and
victimizer changed places. Rather, it was a quantum jump to an experiential level
that dissolved all dualities into a single, encompassing flow. The “I” I now became
was not in any way personal, but an underlying oneness that subsumed all persons.
It was collective in the sense of including all human experience, but utterly
simple and undivided. I was one. I was aggressor and victim. I was rapist and
raped. I was killer and killed. I was doing it to myself. Through all of history, I
have been doing it to myself.

The pain of human history was my pain. There were no victims. Nothing was outside
of me doing this to me. I was responsible for everything that I was experiencing,
for everything that had ever happened. I was looking into the face of my creation.
I did this. I am doing this. I chose for all this to happen. I chose to create all
these horrible, horrible worlds.

The Forms of Emptiness and the Emptiness of Forms

In any metaphysical discussion concerning the existence of evil, we have to take

into consideration another important factor. Careful analysis of the nature of
reality, whether experiential, scientific, or philosophical, will reveal that the
material world and all the events in it are essentially void. The texts of various
Buddhist schools offer meditational practices through which we can discover the
emptiness of all material objects and the absence of a separate self in our own
being. By following the instructions for spiritual practice, we can reach
experiential confirmation of the basic tenet of Buddhism—that form is emptiness and
emptiness is form.

This statement, which appears paradoxical or even absurd to our everyday state of
consciousness, reveals a profound truth about reality that has been confirmed by
modern science. In the first decades of this century, physicists conducted
systematic research exploring the composition of matter all the way to a subatomic
level. They discovered in this process that what they had earlier considered to be
solid matter turned out to be increasingly empty. Eventually, anything even
remotely resembling solid “stuff” completely disappeared from the picture and was
replaced by abstract probabilistic equations.

What the Buddhists discovered experientially and modern physicists experimentally

is in essential agreement with the metaphysical speculations of Alfred North
Whitehead (1967), one of the greatest philosophers of this century. Whitehead calls
the belief in enduring existence of separate material objects the “fallacy of
misplaced concreteness.” According to him, the universe is composed of countless
discontinuous bursts of experiential activity. The basic element of which the
universe is made is not enduring substance, but moment of experience, called in his
terminology actual occasion. This term applies to phenomena on all the levels of
reality, from subatomic particles to human souls.
As the above discussion suggests, none of the events from our everyday life, and,
for that matter, none of the situations that involve suffering and evil, are
ultimately real in the sense we usually think about them and experience them. To
illustrate this, I will return to the movie analogy that I used earlier. When we
are watching a movie or a television show, what we see as separate protagonists are
actually various aspects of one and the same undivided field of light. We have the
choice to interpret our perceptions as a complex real-life drama or realize that we
are witnessing a dance of electromagnetic and acoustic waves of various frequencies
that are carefully orchestrated and synchronized for a specific effect. While an
unsophisticated person or a child might mistake the movie for reality, a typical
moviegoer is well aware of the fact that he or she is participating in a virtual,
make-believe reality.

The reason we decide to interpret the play of light and sound as a real story and
the progonists as separate entities is that we are interested in the experience
that results from such a strategy. We actually make a voluntary choice to go to the
movie theater and agree to pay the entrance fee, because we actively seek the
experiences involved. And while we decide to react to the situation as if it were
real, we are, on another level, aware that the characters in the movie are
fictional and that the protagonists are actors who volunteered to participate.
Particularly important from the point of view of our discussion is the knowledge of
the moviegoers that the persons killed in the movie did not really die.

According to the insights decribed in this book, the human predicament closely
parallels that of the moviegoer. We made, on another level of reality, the decision
to incarnate, because we were attracted by the experiences that material existence
provides. The separate identity of the protagonists in the cosmic drama, including
our own, is an illusion and the matter of which the universe seems to be made is
essentially empty. The world in which we live does not really exist in the form in
which we perceive it. The spiritual scriptures of the East compare our everyday
experience of the world to a dream from which we can awaken. Frithjof Schuon (1969)
put it very succinctly: “The universe is a dream woven of dreams: the self alone is
awake.”

In the cosmic drama, as in a movie or a theater play, nobody is killed or dies,

since a larger and deeper identity is assumed or resumed after a particular role
ends. In a certain sense, the protagonists and the drama do not exist at all, or
they exist and do not exist at the same time. From this point of view, to blame the
Universal Mind for the existence of evil in the world would be equally absurd as to
sentence a movie director for the crimes or murders committed on the screen.
Naturally, there is one important difference between sentient beings and the
protagonists in the movies. Even if the beings in the material world are not what
they appear to be, the experiences of physical pain and emotional suffering
associated with their role are real. This, of course, is not the case as far as the
movie actors are concerned.

This way of looking at creation can be very disturbing, in spite of the fact that
it is based on very convincing personal experiences in holotropic states and is
also generally compatible with scientific findings about the nature of reality. The
problems become obvious as we start thinking about the practical consequences that
such a perspective has for our life and our everyday conduct. At first sight,
seeing the material world as “virtual reality” and comparing human existence to a
movie seems to trivialize life and make light of the depth of human misery. It
might appear that such a perspective denies the seriousness of human suffering and
fosters an attitude of cynical indifference, where nothing really matters.
Similarly, accepting evil as an integral part of creation and seeing its relativity
could easily be seen as a justification for suspending any ethical constraints and
for unlimited pursuit of egotistical goals. It might also seem to sabotage any
effort to actively combat evil in the world.

However, the situation in this regard is much more complex than it might appear at
a superficial glance. First of all, practical experience shows that the awareness
of the emptiness behind all forms is not at all incompatible with genuine
appreciation and love for all creation. Transcendental experiences leading to
profound metaphysical insights into the nature of reality actually engender
reverence toward all sentient beings and responsible engagement in the process of
life. Our compassion does not require objects that have material substance. It can
just as easily be addressed to sentient beings who are units of consciousness.

The awareness of the emptiness underlying the world of forms can help us
significantly in coping with difficult life situations. At the same time, it does
not in any way make existence less meaningful or interfere with our ability to
enjoy the beautiful and pleasant aspects of life. Deep compassion and admiration
for creation is in no way incompatible with the realization that the material world
does not exist in the form in which we experience it. After all, we can have an
intense emotional reaction to powerful works of art and profoundly empathize with
their characters! And, unlike in the works of art, in life all the experiences of
the protagonists are real!

Impact of the Holotropic Process on Ethical Values and Behavior

Before we can fully appreciate the ethical implications that deep transcendental
insights can have for our behavior, we have to take into consideration some
additional factors. Experiential exploration that makes such profound insights
available typically reveals important biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal
sources of violence and greed in our unconscious. Psychological work on this
material leads to a significant reduction of aggression and to an increase of
tolerance. We also encounter a large spectrum of transpersonal experiences in which
we identify with various aspects of creation. This results in deep reverence for
life and empathy with all sentient beings. The same process through which we are
discovering the emptiness of forms and the relativity of ethical values thus also
significantly reduces our proclivity to immoral and antisocial behavior and teaches
us love and compassion.
We develop a new system of values that is not based on conventional norms,
precepts, commandments, and fear of punishment, but on our knowledge and
understanding of the universal order. We realize that we are an integral part of
creation and that by hurting others we would be hurting ourselves. In addition,
deep self-exploration leads to the experiential discovery of reincarnation and of
the law of karma. This brings us awareness of the possibility of serious
experiential repercussions of harmful behaviors, even those that escape societal
retributions.

Plato was clearly aware of the profound moral implications of our beliefs
concerning the possibility of life continuing beyond the biological demise. In Laws
(Plato 1961a) he has Socrates say that disconcern for the postmortem consequences
of our deeds would be “a boon to the wicked.” In advanced stages of spiritual
development, a combination of the decrease of aggression, decline of egocentric
orientation, sense of oneness with sentient beings, and the awareness of karma
become important factors governing our everyday conduct.

It is interesting to mention in this context C. G. Jung and the crisis he

experienced when he became aware of the relativity of all ethical norms and values.
At that point, he seriously questioned whether, from a higher perspective, it
really matters at all what behavior we choose and whether we follow ethical
precepts. After some deliberation, he finally found a satisfying personal answer to
this problem. He concluded that, since there are no absolute criteria for morality,
every ethical decision is a creative act that reflects our present stage of
consciousness development and the information that is available to us. When these
factors change, we may retrospectively see the situation differently. However, that
does not mean that our original decision was wrong. What is important is that we
did the best we could do under the circumstances.

Although in advanced transpersonal experiences we can transcend evil, its existence

appears to be very real in our everyday life and in various other experiential
realms, particularly in the archetypal domain. In the world of religion, we often
encounter tendencies to portray evil as something that is separate from the Divine
and alien to it. Holotropic experiences lead to an understanding that one of my
clients called “transcendental realism.” It is an attitude that accepts the fact
that evil is an intrinsic part of creation and that all realms that contain
separate individuals will always have both a light and a shadow side. Since evil is
inextricably woven into the cosmic fabric and indispensable for the existence of
experiential worlds, it cannot be defeated and eradicated. However, while we cannot
eliminate evil from the universal scheme of things, we can certainly transform
ourselves and develop radically different ways of coping with the dark side of
existence.

In deep experiential work we realize that we have to experience in our life a

certain amount of physical and emotional pain and discomfort that is intrinsic to
incarnate existence in general. The First Noble Truth of the Buddha reminds us that
life means suffering (duhkha) and it specifically refers to situations and
circumstances that are responsible for our misery—birth, old age, disease, dying,
association with what we do not like, separation from what is dear to us, and not
getting that which we wish for. In addition, each of us experiences suffering that
is specific for us and reflects our destiny and karmic past.
While we cannot avoid suffering, we can have a certain influence on its timing and
the form it takes. My observations from the work with holotropic states indicate
that when we confront the dark side of existence in a focused and condensed form in
deliberately planned sessions, we can significantly reduce its various
manifestations in our everyday life. There are some other ways in which systematic
self-exploration can help us to cope with suffering and with the experience of the
difficult aspects of existence. After we have learned to endure the extreme
intensity of the experiences in holotropic states, our baseline and threshold for
suffering undergo profound changes and the trials and tribulations of everyday life
are much easier to bear.

We also discover that we are not body egos or what the Hindus call name and form
(namarupa). In the course of our self-exploration, we experience radical shifts in
our sense of identity. In holotropic states, we can identify with anything from an
insignificant speck of protoplasm in a vast material universe to the totality of
existence and Absolute Consciousness itself. Whether we see ourselves as helpless
victims of overwhelming cosmic forces or the co-authors of our life scripts will
naturally have a far-reaching impact on the degree of suffering we experience in
life or, conversely, on the amount of delight and freedom we enjoy.

Evil Archetypes and the Future of Humanity

Before closing this chapter, I would like to mention some interesting insights from
holotropic states concerning the relationship between evil, the future of humanity,
and survival of life on our planet. We are all painfully aware of the severe and
dangerous global crisis that we are facing as we are about to enter into the next
millennium. We clearly cannot continue acting as we have in the past throughout
most of human history and hope to survive. It has become imperative to find ways to
curb human violence, to dismantle weapons of mass destruction, and to secure peace
in the world. Equally important is to stop industrial pollution of the air, water,
and soil and to reorient our economy to renewable sources of energy. Another
important task is to eliminate poverty and hunger in the world and to provide
treatment for all the people suffering from curable diseases.

Many of us are deeply concerned about this situation and have a sincere desire to
avert it and to create a better world. It is obvious that the situation in the
world is critical and it is hard to imagine any easy remedial actions that would
correct it. The difficulty in finding solutions is usually attributed to the fact
that the current global crisis is extremely complex and involves an intricate web
of problems that have economic, political, ethnic, military, psychological, and
other dimensions. The solutions, if they were possible, are seen as corrections of
the deviant trends in these different areas.
In holotropic states, we discover that this problem has also a disturbing
metaphysical dimension. We become aware of the fact that what is happening in our
world is not determined solely by material causes. In the last analysis, it is a
direct reflection of the dynamics in the archetypal domain. The forces and entities
operating in this domain are strongly polarized; the pantheon of archetypal figures
includes both benevolent and malefic deities. The archetypal principles—good,
neutral, and evil—represent an integral part of creation and indispensable elements
in the cosmic game. For this reason, it is not possible to eliminate evil from the
universal scheme of things. Half of the archetypal pantheon cannot be simply “put
out of business.”

In view of these insights, it becomes obvious that if we want to improve the

situation in the world and reduce the influence of evil elements on our everyday
affairs, we have to find less destructive and less dangerous forms of expression
for the archetypal forces responsible for them. It is imperative to create
appropriate contexts that would make it possible to honor these archetypal forces
and to offer them alternative outlets that would enhance instead of destroy life.
Occasionally, holotropic states bring interesting ideas suggesting what these
activities and institutions would look like.

The primary strategy for reducing the impact of the potentially destructive
archetypal forces in our world would be to find for them safe channels of
expression in holotropic states of consciousness. This could include programs of
systematic spiritual practice of different orientations, various experiential forms
of psychotherapy mediating access to perinatal and transpersonal experiences, and
centers offering supervised psychedelic sessions. Of great importance would also be
a return to socially sanctioned ritual activities comparable to those that existed
in all ancient and aboriginal cultures. Modern versions of rites of passage would
make it possible to consciously experience and integrate various difficult
destructive and self-destructive energies that would otherwise have a disturbing
effect on society. Additional interesting alternatives would be dynamic new art
forms and entertainment modalities using the technology of virtual reality.

These transformative technologies could be complemented by various outward-oriented

activities serving the same purpose. Thus the powerful and potentially destructive
explosive energies that are currently expressed in internecine wars could be
partially channeled through a large scale globally integrated space program or
other similar technical projects. Another possibility would be competitive events
of various kinds, from sports tournaments to racing events involving modern
technology. Some of the energy could also be channeled through sophisticated
amusement parks, elaborate carnivals, and pageants similar to the festivities of
the ancient and medieval royalty, aristocracy, gentry, and general population. If
there is any validity in the above insights, the task of developing these new forms
certainly represents an interesting challenge.

Birth, Sex, and Death: The Cosmic Connection

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

—Joseph Hall

Man puts himself at once on the level of the beast if he seeks to gratify lust
alone, but he elevates his superior position when, by curbing the animal desire, he
combines with the sexual functions ideas of mortality, of the sublime, and of the
beautiful.

—Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Intimate Links between Birth, Sex, and Death

In the chapter exploring the ways to reunion with the cosmic source, I briefly
mentioned three aspects of human life that have a particularly close connection
with the transpersonal domain: birth, sex, and death. As we saw, all three of them
represent important gateways to transcendence and unique opportunities for cosmic
reunion. This is true whether our encounter with one of these areas occurs in a
symbolic way in the process of deep experiential self-exploration or in situations
of our everyday life.

Delivering women and people participating in the delivery as assistants or

observers can experience a powerful spiritual opening. This is particularly true if
birth does not occur in the dehumanized context of a hospital, but under
circumstances where it is possible to experience its full psychological and
spiritual impact. Similarly, having a close personal brush with death or spending
intimate time with dying people can be a powerful catalyst for mystical
experiences. And love-making with a highly compatible partner can be a profoundly
spiritual event and, on occasion, even initiate an ongoing process of consciousness
evolution. The close connection between sexuality and spirituality is the basis of
Eastern Tantric practices.

Besides their intimate link with spirituality, birth, sex, and death also show a
significant experiential overlap with each other. For many women, an uncomplicated
delivery under favorable conditions can be the strongest sexual experience of their
life. Conversely, a powerful sexual orgasm in women, as well as men, can
occasionally take the form of psychospiritual rebirth. The orgasm can also be so
overpowering that it can be subjectively experienced as dying. The connection
between sexual orgasm and death is reflected in the French language that refers to
it as “small death” (“la petite mort”). And dying, particularly if it is associated
with choking, can have a strong sexual component.
Equally close is the relationship between birth and death. In advanced stages of
pregnancy, many women have dreams that contain the motifs of death and destruction.
Childbirth is a potentially life-threatening event for the mother, as well as the
child. And delivery can be associated with strong fears of dying, even if it is not
particularly difficult and does not endanger life. The reverse is also true; the
near-death experiences share certain elements with birth, particularly the frequent
sense of passing through a tunnel or funnel and emerging into light.

In the work with holotropic states, we can get deep insights into the nature of
these experiential connections between birth, sex, and death. In the unconscious
psyche, these three crucial areas of our life are so intimately linked and
interwoven that it is impossible to experience one of them without touching upon
the other two. This comes as a surprise, because in our everyday life we usually
think about these three areas as separate and discuss them in different contexts.
Birth is something that marks the beginning of our life and involves an infant.
Death, unless it is a result of a serious disease or accident, is associated with
old age and thus with the final stage of our life. Sexuality, in the full sense of
the word, belongs to an intermediate period of our life characterized by physical
maturity.

Birth, Sex, and Death in the Perinatal Process

This conventional view of the relationship between birth, sex, and death undergoes
profound changes when our process of deep experiential self-exploration moves
beyond the level of memories from childhood and infancy and reaches back to birth,
to the perinatal domain of the psyche. We start encountering emotions and physical
sensations of extreme intensity, often surpassing anything we previously considered
humanly possible. At this point, the experiences become a strange mixture of the
themes of birth and death. They involve a sense of a severe, life-threatening
confinement and a desperate and determined struggle to free ourselves and survive.
This intimate relationship between birth and death on the perinatal level reflects
the fact that birth is a potentially life-threatening event. The child and the
mother can actually lose their lives during this process and children might be born
severely blue from asphyxiation, or even dead and in need of resuscitation.

The reliving of various aspects of biological birth can be very authentic and
convincing and often replays this process in photographic detail. This can occur
even in people who have no intellectual knowledge about their birth and lack
elementary obstetric information. We can, for example, discover through direct
experience that we had a breech birth, that a forceps was used during our delivery,
or that we were born with the umbilical cord twisted around the neck. We can feel
the anxiety, biological fury, physical pain, and suffocation associated with this
terrifying event and even accurately recognize the type of anesthesia used when we
were born. This is often accompanied by various postures and movements of the head
and body that accurately recreate the mechanics of a particular type of delivery.
All these details can be confirmed if good birth records or reliable personal
witnesses are available.
The strong representation of birth and death in our psyche and the close
association between them might surprise traditional psychologists and
psychiatrists, but is actually logical and easily understandable. The delivery
brutally terminates the intrauterine existence of the fetus. He or she “dies” as an
aquatic organism and is born as an air-breathing, physiologically and even
anatomically different, form of life. And the passage through the birth canal is
itself a difficult and potentially life-threatening situation.

It is not so easy to understand, why the perinatal dynamics also regularly includes
a sexual component. And yet, when we are reliving the final stages of birth in the
role of the fetus, this is typically associated with an unusually strong sexual
arousal. The same is true for delivering women, who can experience a mixture of
fear of death and intense sexual excitement. This connection seems strange and
puzzling, particularly as far as the fetus is concerned, and certainly deserves a
few words of explanation.

There seems to be a mechanism in the human organism that transforms extreme

suffering, especially when it is associated with suffocation, into a particular
form of sexual arousal. This experiential connection can be observed in a variety
of situations other than birth. People who had tried to hang themselves and were
rescued in the last moment typically describe that, at the height of suffocation,
they felt an almost unbearable sexual arousal. It is known that males executed by
hanging typically have an erection and even ejaculate. The literature on torture
and brainwashing describes that inhuman physical suffering often triggers states of
sexual ecstasy. In a less extreme form, this mechanism operates in various
sadomasochistic practices that include strangulation and choking. In the sects of
flagellants, who regularly engage in self-inflicted torture, and in religious
martyrs, subjected to unimaginable torments, extreme physical pain at a certain
point changes into sexual arousal and eventually results in ecstatic rapture and
transcendental experiences.

Dynamics and Symbolism of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs)

So far, we have focused primarily on the emotional and physical aspects of the
birth experiences. However, the experiential spectrum of the perinatal domain of
the unconscious is not limited to elements that can be derived from the biological
processes involved in childbirth. It also involves rich symbolic imagery that is
drawn from the transpersonal realms. The perinatal domain is an important interface
between the biographical and the transpersonal levels of the psyche. It represents
a gateway to the historical and archetypal aspects of the collective unconscious in
the Jungian sense. Since the specific symbolism of these experiences has its origin
in the collective unconscious, and not in the individual memory banks, it can come
from any geographical and historical context, as well as any spiritual tradition of
the world, quite independently from our racial, cultural, educational, or religious
background.
Identification with the infant facing the ordeal of the passage through the birth
canal seems to provide access to experiences of people from other times and
cultures, of various animals, and even mythological figures. It is as if by
connecting with the experience of the fetus struggling to be born, one reaches an
intimate, almost mystical, connection with the consciousness of the human species
and with other sentient beings who are or have been in a similar difficult
predicament.

Experiential confrontation with birth and death seems to result automatically in a

spiritual opening and discovery of the mystical dimensions of the psyche and of
existence. As I mentioned before, it does not seem to make a difference whether
this encounter with birth and death occurs in actual life situations, such as in
delivering women and in the context of near-death experiences, or is purely
symbolic. Powerful perinatal sequences in psychedelic and holotropic sessions or in
the course of spontaneous psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies) seem to
have the same effect.

Biological birth has three distinct stages. In the first one, the fetus is
periodically constricted by uterine contractions without having any chance of
escaping this situation, since the cervix is firmly closed. Continued contractions
pull the cervix over the fetus’ head until it is sufficiently dilated to allow the
passage through the birth canal. Full dilation of the cervix marks the transition
from the first to the second stage of delivery, which is characterized by the
descent of the head into the pelvis and its gradual, difficult propulsion through
the birth pathways. And finally, in the third stage, the newborn emerges from the
birth canal and, after the umbilical cord is cut, he or she becomes an anatomically
independent organism.

At each of these stages, the baby experiences a specific and typical set of intense
emotions and physical sensations. These experiences leave deep unconscious imprints
in the psyche that later in life play an important role in the life of the
individual. Reinforced by emotionally important experiences from infancy and
childhood, the birth memories can shape the perception of the world, profoundly
influence everyday behavior, and contribute to the development of various emotional
and psychosomatic disorders. In holotropic states, this unconscious material can
surface and be fully experienced. When our process of deep self-exploration takes
us back to birth, we discover that reliving each stage of delivery is associated
with a distinct experiential pattern, characterized by a specific combination of
emotions, physical feelings, and symbolic images. I refer to these patterns of
experience as basic perinatal matrices (BPMs).

First Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM I)

The first perinatal matrix (BPM I) is related to the intrauterine experience
immediately preceding birth and the remaining three matrices (BPM II–BPM IV) to the
three clinical stages of delivery described above. Besides containing elements that
represent a replay of the original situation of the fetus at a particular stage of
birth, the basic perinatal matrices also include various natural, historical, and
mythological scenes with similar experiential qualities drawn from the
transpersonal realms. In what follows, I will briefly outline the specific
connections between the perinatal dynamics and the transpersonal domain.

I would like to emphasize that the connections between the experiences of the
consecutive stages of biological birth and various symbolic images associated with
them are very specific and consistent. The reason they emerge together is not
understandable in terms of conventional logic. However, that does not mean that
these associations are arbitrary and random. They have their own deep order that
can best be described as “experiential logic.” What this means is that the
connection between the experiences characteristic for various stages of birth and
the concomitant symbolic themes are not based on some formal external similarity,
but on the fact that they share the same emotional feelings and physical
sensations.

While experiencing the episodes of undisturbed embryonal existence (BPM I), we

often encounter images of vast regions with no boundaries or limits. Sometimes we
identify with galaxies, interstellar space, or the entire cosmos other times we
have the experience of floating in the ocean or of becoming various aquatic
animals, such as fish, dolphins, or whales. The undisturbed intrauterine experience
can also open into visions of nature—safe, beautiful, and unconditionally
nourishing, like a good womb (Mother Nature). We can see luscious orchards, fields
of ripe corn, agricultural terraces in the Andes, or unspoiled Polynesian islands.
The experience of the good womb can also provide selective access to the archetypal
domain of the collective unconscious and open into images of paradises or heavens
as they are described in the mythologies of different cultures.

When we are reliving episodes of intrauterine disturbances, or “bad womb”

experiences, we have a sense of dark and ominous threat and we often feel that we
are being poisoned. We might see images that portray polluted waters and toxic
dumps. This reflects the fact that many prenatal disturbances are caused by toxic
changes in the body of the pregnant mother. The experience of the toxic womb can be
associated with visions of frightening demonic figures from the archetypal realms
of the collective unconscious. Reliving of more violent interferences during
prenatal existence, such as an imminent miscarriage or attempted abortion, is
usually connected with a sense of universal threat or with bloody apocalyptic
visions of the end of the world.

Second Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM II)

When the experiential regression reaches the onset of biological birth, we

typically feel that we are being sucked into a gigantic whirlpool or swallowed by
some mythical beast. We might also experience that the entire world or even cosmos
is being engulfed. This can be associated with images of devouring or entangling
archetypal monsters, such as leviathans, dragons, giant snakes, tarantulas, and
octopuses. The sense of overwhelming vital threat can lead to intense anxiety and
general mistrust bordering on paranoia. We can also experience a descent into the
depths of the underworld, the realm of death, or hell. As mythologist Joseph
Campbell so eloquently described, this is a universal motif in the mythologies of
the hero’s journey (Campbell 1968).

Reliving the fully developed first stage of biological birth when the uterus is
contracting, but the cervix is not yet open (BPM II), is one of the worst
experiences a human being can have. We feel caught in a monstrous claustrophobic
nightmare, are suffering agonizing emotional and physical pain, and have a sense of
utter helplessness and hopelessness. Our feelings of loneliness, guilt, absurdity
of life, and existential despair can reach metaphysical proportions. We lose
connection with linear time and become convinced that this situation will never end
and that there is absolutely no way out. There is no doubt in our mind that what is
happening to us is what the religions refer to as Hell—unbearable emotional and
physical torment without any hope for redemption. This can actually be accompanied
by archetypal images of devils and infernal landscapes from different cultures.

When we are facing the dismal situation of no exit in the clutches of uterine
contractions, we can experientially connect with sequences from the collective
unconscious that involve people, animals, and even mythological beings who are in a
similar painful and hopeless predicament. We identify with prisoners in dungeons,
inmates of concentration camps or insane asylums, and with animals caught in traps.
We might experience the intolerable tortures of sinners in hell or of Sisyphus
rolling his boulder up the mountain in the deepest pit of Hades. Our pain can
become the agony of Christ asking God why He has abandoned him. It seems to us that
we are facing the prospect of eternal damnation. This state of darkness and abysmal
despair is known from the spiritual literature as the Dark Night of the Soul. From
a broader perspective, in spite of the feelings of utter hopelessness that it
entails, this state is an important stage of spiritual opening. If it is
experienced to its full depth, it can have an immensely purging and liberating
effect on those who experience it.

Third Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM III)

The experience of the second stage of birth, the propulsion through the birth canal
after the cervix opens and the head descends (BPM III), is unusually rich and
dynamic. Facing the clashing energies and hydraulic pressures involved in the
delivery, we are flooded with images from the collective unconscious portraying
sequences of titanic battles and scenes of bloody violence and torture. It is also
during this phase that we are confronted with sexual impulses and energies of a
problematic nature and unusual intensity.
I have already described earlier that sexual arousal is an important part of the
experience of birth. This places our first encounter with sexuality into a very
precarious context, into a situation where our life is threatened, where we are
suffering pain as well as inflicting pain, and where we are unable to breathe. At
the same time, we are experiencing a mixture of vital anxiety and primitive
biological fury, the latter being an understandable reaction of the fetus to this
painful and life-threatening experience. In the final stages of birth, we can also
encounter various forms of biological material—blood, mucus, urine, and even feces.

Because of these problematic connections, the experiences and images that we

encounter in this phase typically present sex in a grossly distorted form. The
strange mixture of sexual arousal with physical pain, aggression, vital anxiety,
and biological material leads to sequences that are pornographic, aberrant,
sadomasochistic, scatological, or even satanic. We can be overwhelmed by dramatic
scenes of sexual abuse, perversions, rapes, and erotically-motivated murders.

On occasion, these experiences can take the form of participation in rituals

featuring witches and satanists. This seems to be related to the fact that reliving
this stage of birth involves the same strange combination of emotions, sensations,
and elements that characterizes the archetypal scenes of the Black Mass and of the
Witches’ Sabbath (Walpurgi’s Night). It is a mixture of sexual arousal, panic
anxiety, aggression, vital threat, pain, sacrifice, and encounter with ordinarily
repulsive biological materials. This peculiar experiential amalgam is associated
with a sense of sacredness or numinosity that reflects the fact that all this is
unfolding in close proximity to a spiritual opening.

This stage of the birth process can also be associated with countless images from
the collective unconscious portraying scenes of murderous aggression, such as
vicious battles, bloody revolutions, gory massacres, and genocide. In all the
violent and sexual scenes that we encounter at this stage, we alternate between the
role of the perpetrator and that of the victim. This is the time of a major
encounter with the dark side of our personality, Jung’s Shadow, which we discussed
in the chapter on good and evil. As this perinatal phase is culminating and
approaching resolution, many people envision Jesus, the Way of the Cross, and
crucifixion, or even actually experience full identification with Jesus’ suffering.
The archetypal domain of the collective unconscious contributes to this phase
heroic mythological figures and deities representing death and rebirth, such as the
Egyptian god Osiris, the Greek deities Dionysus and Persephone, or the Sumerian
goddess Inanna.

Fourth Perinatal Matrix (BPM IV)

The reliving of the third stage of the birth process, of the actual emergence into
the world (BPM IV), is typically initiated by the motif of fire. We can have the
feeling that our body is consumed by searing heat, have visions of burning cities
and forests, or identify with victims of immolation. The archetypal versions of
this fire can take the form of the cleansing flames of Purgatory or of the
legendary bird Phoenix, dying in the heat of his burning nest and emerging from the
ashes reborn and rejuvenated. The purifying fire seems to destroy in us whatever is
corrupted and prepare us for spiritual rebirth. When we are reliving the actual
moment of birth, we experience it as complete annihilation and subsequent rebirth
and resurrection.

To understand why we experience the reliving of biological birth as death and

rebirth, one has to realize that what happens to us is much more than just a replay
of the original event of childbirth. During the delivery, we are completely
confined in the birth canal and have no way of expressing the extreme emotions and
sensations involved. Our memory of this event thus remains psychologically
undigested and unassimilated. Much of our later self-definition and our attitudes
toward the world are heavily contaminated by this constant deep reminder of the
vulnerability, inadequacy, and weakness that we experienced at birth. In a sense,
we were born anatomically but have not really caught up emotionally with the fact
that the emergency and danger are over. The “dying” and the agony during the
struggle for rebirth reflect the actual pain and vital threat of the biological
birth process. However, the ego death that immediately precedes rebirth is the
death of our old concepts of who we are and what the world is like, which were
forged by the traumatic imprint of birth.

As we are purging these old programs from our psyche and body by letting them
emerge into consciousness, we are reducing their energetic charge and curtailing
their destructive influence on our life. From a larger perspective, this process is
actually very healing and transforming. And yet, as we are nearing its final
resolution, we might paradoxically feel that, as the old imprints are leaving our
system, we are dying with them. Sometimes, we not only experience the sense of
personal annihilation, but also the destruction of the world as we know it.

While only a small step separates us from the experience of radical liberation, we
have a sense of all-pervading anxiety and impending catastrophy of enormous
proportions. The impression of imminent doom can be very convincing and
overwhelming. The predominant feeling is that we are losing all that we know and
that we are. At the same time, we have no idea what is on the other side, or even
if there is anything there at all. This fear is the reason that at this stage many
people desperately resist the process if they can. As a result, they can remain
psychologically stuck in this problematic territory for an indefinite period of
time.

The encounter with the ego death is a stage of the spiritual journey when we might
need much encouragement and psychological support. When we succeed in overcoming
the metaphysical fear associated with this important juncture and decide to let
things happen, we experience total annihilation on all imaginable levels. It
involves physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical
defeat, ultimate moral failure, and even spiritual damnation. During this
experience, all reference points, everything that is important and meaningful in
our life, seems to be mercilessly destroyed.
Immediately following the experience of total annihilation—“hitting cosmic bottom”—
we are overwhelmed by visions of light that has a supernatural radiance and beauty
and is usually perceived as sacred. This divine epiphany can be associated with
displays of beautiful rainbows, diaphanous peacock designs, and visions of
celestial realms with angelic beings or deities appearing in light. This is also
the time when we can experience a profound encounter with the archetypal figure of
the Great Mother Goddess or one of her many culture-bound forms.

The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth is a major step in the

direction of the weakening of our identification with the “skin-encapsulated ego”
and reconnecting with the transcendental domain. We feel redeemed, liberated, and
blessed and have a new awareness of our divine nature and cosmic status. We also
typically experience a strong surge of positive emotions toward ourselves, other
people, nature, God, and existence in general. We are filled with optimism and have
a sense of emotional and physical well-being.

It is important to emphasize that this kind of healing and life-changing experience

occurs when the final stages of biological birth had a more or less natural course.
If the delivery was very debilitating or confounded by heavy anesthesia, the
experience of rebirth does not have the quality of triumphant emergence into light.
It is more like awakening and recovering from a hangover with dizziness, nausea,
and clouded consciousness. Much additional psychological work might be needed to
work through these additional issues and the positive results are much less
striking.

Perinatal Process and the Collective Unconscious

From what I have described, we can see that the perinatal domain of the psyche
represents an experiential crossroad of critical importance. It is not only the
meeting point of three absolutely crucial aspects of human biological existence—
birth, sex, and death—but also the dividing line between life and death, the
individual and the species, and the psyche and the spirit. Full conscious
experience of the contents of this domain of the psyche with good subsequent
integration can have far-reaching consequences and lead to spiritual opening and
deep personal transformation.

People usually begin the process of intensive experiential self-exploration for

very personal reasons—either for therapeutic purposes or for their own emotional
and spiritual growth. However, certain aspects of perinatal experiences strongly
suggest that what is happening here is an event that in its significance transcends
by far the narrow interests of the individual. The intensity of the emotions and
physical sensations involved and the frequent identification with countless other
people throughout history give these experiences a distinctly transpersonal
quality.
The following excerpt from an account of a powerful session involving a holotropic
state of consciousness, beautifully captures the nature of perinatal experiences,
their intensity, and the degree to which they engage the collective unconscious of
humanity. (Bache 1997)

I was surprised and caught off guard by how terribly painful this session was. It
was not personal and had little to do with my biological birth. The pain I was
suffering was clearly related to the birthing of the species first, and my birthing
second. My experiential boundaries stretched to include the entire human race and
all of human history, and this “I” was caught up in a horror that I am incapable of
describing with any accuracy. It was a raging insanity, a surging kaleidoscopic
field of chaos, pain, and destruction. It was as if the entire human race had
gathered from all corners of the globe and gone absolutely stark raving mad.

People were attacking each other with a rabid savagery augmented by science fiction
technology. There were many currents crossing and crisscrossing in front of me,
each composed of thousands of people—some killing in multiple ways, some being
killed, some fleeing in panic, others being rounded up, others witnessing and
screaming in terror, others witnessing and having their hearts broken by a species
gone mad—and “I” was all their experiences. The magnitude of the deaths and the
insanity is impossible to describe. The problem is finding a frame of reference.
The only categories I have available to me are simplistic approximations that can
give only a vague sense of it.

This kind of suffering comprises all of human history. It is at once species-

specific and archetypal. It comprises the wildest science fiction worlds of horror
beyond our imagination. It involves not only human beings but billions and billions
of pieces of matter in agonizing galactic explosions. Horror beyond any scope. It
is a convulsing of the human species, a convulsing of the universe. Floating
through it were scenes of tragic suffering caused by nature and human indifference.
Thousands of starving children from around the globe, their bodies bloated in
death, their eyes staring out blankly at a humanity that was killing them through
systemic ecological abuse and human neglect. Lots of violence between men and women
—rape, beating, intimidation, retaliation—cycles and cycles of destruction.

The extraordinary nature of perinatal experiences raises some interesting and

important questions. Why is it that in the process of deep self-exploration we
reach a phase when we transcend our individual boundaries and connect with the
collective unconscious and the history of our species? Why does this involve such
intimate connection with death and with the reliving of birth? How and why is this
process so closely associated with sexuality? What role does the frequent
participation of the archetypal elements play in these experiences? And finally,
what is the function and meaning of this process and how is it related to
spirituality and consciousness evolution?

I would like to refer here to the work of Christopher Bache (1996), who has made an
interesting attempt to clarify the problem of the presence of collective suffering
at the perinatal level and the role of the individual in the spiritual awakening of
the species. Bache pointed out that the key to the understanding of the perinatal
process is the fact that its function is to liberate us from the confines of
separate unenlightened existence and awaken in us the realization of our true
nature, our essential identity with the creative principle. Like the Roman god
Janus, the perinatal domain has a dual nature. It will show us a very different
face, depending on the direction from which we look at it, whether from the point
of view of the body-ego or our transpersonal Self.

Seen from the personal perspective, the perinatal domain appears to be the basement
of our individual unconscious, a repository of undigested fragments of those
experiences that most seriously challenged our survival and body integrity. From
this angle, we perceive the perinatal process, and the violence that it entails,
above all as a threat to our individual existence. From the transpersonal
perspective, the identification with the body-ego appears to be the product of
fundamental ignorance, a dangerous illusion that is responsible for the fact that
we live our lives in an unfulfilling, destructive, and self-destructive way. Once
we understand this fundamental truth of existence, we see the perinatal
experiences, in spite of their violent and painful nature, as radical and drastic,
but loving, attempts to liberate us spiritually by demolishing the prison of our
false identity. We are not being annihilated, but birthed to a higher reality where
we reconnect with our true nature.

Individual Transformation and Healing of Species Consciousness

We know from the practice of experiential therapy that it is possible to purge from
our unconscious undigested memories of emotional and physical pain from our
infancy, childhood, and later life by fully experiencing them. This, together with
ensuing positive experiences that become available in this process, frees us from
the distorting influence of past traumas that make our daily life inauthentic and
unsatisfactory. Christopher Bache suggests that, in a similar way, perinatal
experiences might play an important role in the healing of the traumatic past of
the human species.

Is it not possible, he asks, that the memory of the violence and insatiable greed
that is woven into the fabric of human history, causes disturbances in the
collective unconscious that contaminate humanity’s present? Why could not the
healing impact reach beyond the individual person, as our consciousness expands
beyond the body-ego? Is it not conceivable that by experiencing the pain that
countless generations of people inflicted on each other in the course of human
history, we are actually clearing the collective unconscious and contributing to a
better planetary future?
Spiritual literature offers great examples of individual suffering that has
redeeming influence on the world. In the Christian tradition, it is Jesus Christ,
who died on the cross for the sins of humanity. This is vividly reflected in the
mythological theme of the Harrowing of Hell depicting Jesus, at the time between
death on the Cross and his resurrection, descending into Hell and liberating
sinners from its jaws by the power of his suffering and sacrifice. The Hindu
tradition accepts the possibility that very advanced yogis can significantly
positively influence the situation in the world and the collective problems of
humanity by confronting them internally in deep meditation, without actually
physically leaving their caves.

Mahayana Buddhism has the beautiful archetypal image of the Bodhisattva who reaches
enlightenment, but refuses to enter nirvana and makes a sacred commitment to
continue reincarnating until all sentient beings are liberated. The Bodhisattva’s
determination to take on the suffering of incarnate existence in order to help
others is expressed in his powerful vow:

Sentient beings are numberless;

I vow to save them all.

Delusions are inexhaustible;

I vow to end them all.

The gates of Dharma are manifold;

I vow to enter them all.

The Buddha way is supreme.

I vow to complete it.

Dying Before Dying

Many people who have experienced holotropic states describe the perinatal level of
the psyche as a gate between the transcendental realm and material reality, a
passageway that functions in both directions. At the time of our biological birth,
when we emerge into the material world, we “die” to the transcendental dimension
and, conversely, our physical demise can be seen as birth into the world of spirit.
However, the spiritual birth does not have to be associated with the death of the
body. It can occur at any time in the course of deep self-exploration or even
during a spontaneous psychospiritual crisis (spiritual emergency). It is then a
purely symbolic event, an “ego death,” or “dying before dying,” which does not
involve any biological damage. Abraham à Sancta Clara, a seventeenth-century German
Augustinian monk, summed it up in one sentence when he wrote: “The man who dies
before he dies, does not die when he dies.”

This “dying before dying” has played an important role in all shamanic traditions.
By undergoing death and rebirth in their initiatory crises, shamans lose the fear
of death and become familiar and comfortable with its experiential territory. As a
result, they can later visit this realm on their own terms and mediate similar
experiences for others. In the mysteries of death and rebirth, which were
widespread in the Mediterranean area and other parts of the ancient world,
initiates experienced a profound symbolic confrontation with death. In this
process, they lost the fear of death and developed an entirely new set of values
and strategy of life.

The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth (“second birth,” “birth from
water and spirit,” becoming a dvija) has played an important role in many religious
traditions. All pre-industrial cultures attributed great significance to these
experiences from a personal as well as collective perspective and developed safe
and effective ways to induce them in various ritual contexts. Modern psychiatry
sees the same experiences as pathological phenomena and indiscriminately suppresses
them when they occur spontaneously in contemporary individuals. This unfortunate
strategy has been a significant contributing factor in Western civilization’s loss
of spirituality.

Sexuality: Way to Liberation or Pitfall on the Spiritual Path?

Sex shows a similar inherent ambiguity as birth and death. Depending on

circumstances, it can mediate deep unitive states or deepen separation and
alienation. Which of these two modes will manifest in a particular case will depend
on the circumstances and on the attitude of the individuals involved. If the
partners who are interacting sexually do not feel love and respect for each other
and are driven only by instinctual impulses or by the need for power and
domination, having intercourse will very likely intensify their feelings of
separation and alienation. If the sexual union occurs between two partners who are
personally mature and have not only good biological compatibility, but also deep
emotional resonance and mutual understanding, love-making can result in a profound
spiritual experience. Under these circumstances, they can transcend their
individual boundaries and experience feelings of oneness with each other and, at
the same time, have a sense of reunion with the cosmic source.

This spiritual potential of sex is the basis of the ancient Indian Tantric
practices. Pañchamakara is a complex Tantric ceremony that involves ingestion of
powerful Ayurvedic herbal mixtures combining aphrodisiac and psychedelic
properties. An intricate, highly stylized ritual procedure helps the partners
identify with the archetypal principles of the feminine and masculine. It
culminates in a ritualized sexual union maintained for a long period of time
(maithuna).

With special training, participants are able to suppress the biological orgasm and
the extended sexual arousal then triggers a mystical experience. In the course of
this ritual event, the partners transcend their everyday identities. In full
identification with archetypal beings, Shiva and Shakti, they experience a sacred
marriage, a divine union with each other and with the cosmic source. In Tantric
symbolism, various aspects of sexuality and reproductive functions, such as genital
union, menstrual flux, pregnancy, and delivery, not only have literal biological
meaning, but also refer to various higher levels of the cosmic creative process.

Practical Implications of the Insights from Consciousness Research Concerning

Birth, Sex, and Death

The observations described in this chapter have important practical implications.

They strongly indicate that changes of our attitudes to the triad birth/sex/death
and of our practices related to them could have a profound influence not only on
the quality of our personal life, but also on the future of the human species and
our planet. We have seen that the memories of prenatal existence, birth, and early
postnatal events leave deep imprints in our unconscious and exert a profound
influence on our life. It is, therefore, imperative that in the future we do
whatever is possible to improve the conditions under which children are conceived,
develop as embryos, are born, and are treated after delivery.

This should begin with education of the young generation providing the necessary
sexual information without irrational moral and religious distortions and
unrealistic injunctions, prohibitions, and expectations. However, it would not be
sufficient to offer unbiased technical data about reproductive functions. It is
essential that we raise the image of sex, which is currently seen as a purely
biological affair and often portrayed in its worst manifestations, to that of a
spiritually based activity. Another important task is to bring awareness to the
fact that the fetus is a conscious being. This would increase the responsibility in
regard to conceiving a child and bring attention to the importance of the emotional
and physical condition of the pregnant mother. It would also make a big difference,
if the education in postadolescence could include elements increasing
psychospiritual maturity for future parenthood.

The delivery typically activates the mother’s own perinatal unconscious, which can
interfere with the birth process, both emotionally and physiologically. It would,
therefore, be ideal if women could do their own deep experiential work before
becoming pregnant to eliminate these potentially disturbing elements from their
unconscious. Special attention should then be given to the delivery itself. This
would include good psychological and technical preparation for delivery, natural
conditions for childbirth, and loving postnatal care with adequate physical contact
between the infant and the mother. There are good reasons to believe that the
circumstances of birth play an important role in creating a disposition for future
violence and self-destructive tendencies or, conversely, for loving behavior and
healthy interpersonal relationships.

The French obstetrician Michel Odent (1995) has shown how this perinatal
imprinting, which has the potential to sway our emotional life in the direction of
love or hatred, can be understood from the history of our species. The birth
process has two different aspects and each of them involves specific hormones. The
stressful activity of the mother during the delivery itself is primarily associated
with the adrenaline system. The adrenaline mechanisms also played an important role
in the evolution of the species as mediators of the aggressive and protective
instincts of the mother at times when birth was typically occurring in open natural
environments. They made it possible for females to rapidly shift from delivering to
fight or flight when an attack by a predator made it necessary.

The other task associated with birth, which is equally important from the
evolutionary point of view, is the creation of the bond between the mother and the
newborn. This process involves the hormone oxytocine, which induces maternal
behavior in animals and humans, and endorphins that foster dependency and
attachment. Prolactine, the hormone that is instrumental in nursing, has similar
effects. The busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals induces anxiety and
unnecessarily engages the adrenaline mechanisms. It conveys and imprints the
picture of a world that is potentially dangerous. Like the jungle setting in the
primordial times, such a situation calls for aggressive responses. Conversely, a
quiet, safe, and private environment creates an atmosphere of safety that engenders
affectionate patterns of relating. Radical improvement of birth practices could
have a far-reaching positive influence on the emotional and physical well-being of
the human species and assuage the insanity of its behavior that is currently
threatening to destroy the very basis of life on this planet.

The prenatal and perinatal history also has important implications for our
spiritual life. As we have seen earlier, incarnation and birth represent separation
and alienation from our true nature, which is Absolute Consciousness. Positive
experiences in the womb and after birth are the closest contacts with the Divine
that we can experience during our embryonal life or in infancy. The “good womb” and
“good breast” thus represent experiential bridges to the transcendental level.
Conversely, negative and painful experiences that we encounter in the intrauterine
period, during birth, and in the early postnatal period send us deeper into the
state of alienation from the divine source.

When our prenatal and early postnatal experiences are predominantly positive, we
tend to maintain throughout our life a natural connection with the cosmic source.
We can sense the divine dimension in nature and in the cosmos and are able to enjoy
to a great degree the incarnate existence. Conversely, when our early development
was just a series of continuing traumas, the loss of connection with the spiritual
source can be so complete that our existence in the material world is a painful
ordeal full of emotional torment.
I should also mention that sometimes an extremely severe trauma can result in a
situation where consciousness splits from the body and is catapulted into the
transpersonal realm. This can establish an escape route that is regularly used as a
defense mechanism in later difficult life situations. This form of spiritual
connection can help to protect us from excessive pain, but it does not enhance the
quality of life, since this mechanism is not well integrated with the rest of the
personality.

Substantial changes are also necessary in our attitude toward death. We have seen
that death has a powerful and important representation in our unconscious. Its
deepest manifestations are transpersonal in nature and have the form of wrathful
archetypal figures and karmic records of life-threatening situations from other
incarnations. The memories of vital threats in the womb, during delivery, and after
birth represent additional important sources of fear of death. For many of us, this
is complemented by memories of serious traumas that we experienced later in life.
The menacing specter of death that we harbor in our unconscious interferes with our
everyday existence and makes our life in many ways inauthentic. In technological
societies, the predominant reactions to this situation are massive denial and
avoidance that are in their consequences destructive and self-destructive on an
individual as well as a collective level.

It is essential for the future of humanity that we break through this denial and
come to terms with the problem of impermanence and of our mortality. There exist
ancient and modern methods of deep self-exploration that can help us to confront
the fear of death, bring it fully into consciousness, and overcome it. We have
already seen how “dying before dying” can open for us the channels to the
transcendental dimension of existence and initiate a journey that can eventually
lead to the discovery of our true identity. In this process, we can experience
emotional and psychosomatic healing and our life becomes more satisfying and
authentic. This profound psychospiritual transformation can raise our consciousness
to an entirely different level and make our life less taxing and more rewarding.

It is important to be aware of the existence and nature of this process and to

provide guidance and support for people who experience it unintentionally in near-
death situations or spontaneous psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies).
Another important step is to make available, on a large scale, various ancient and
modern methods of deep self-exploration that make it possible to undergo this
process deliberately. Preindustrial and ancient societies had certain procedures in
the form of rites of passage and mysteries of death and rebirth that were designed
specifically for this purpose. Thanks to the ancient knowledge that, in the last
several decades, has been rediscovered by consciousness research, transpersonal
psychology, and thanatology, we have now the possibility of substantially improving
the emotional quality of our life, as well as our death.

People, who have during their lifetime experientially confronted birth and death
and connected with the transpersonal dimension, have good reasons to believe that
their physical demise will not mean the end of their existence. They have
personally experienced in a very convincing way that their consciousness transcends
the boundaries of their physical body and is capable of functioning independently
of it. As a result, they tend to see death as a transition into a different state
of existence and an awe-inspiring adventure in consciousness rather than final
defeat and annihilation. Naturally, this attitude can in itself substantially
change the approach to death and the experience of dying. In addition, people who
are involved in deep self-exploration have the opportunity to gradually come to
terms with many difficult aspects of their unconscious that we otherwise have to
deal with in the final period of our life.

The insights from the work with holotropic states also have important implications
for the way we practically approach the final stages of life, our own as well as
those of other people. When we believe that the critical dimension of our existence
is consciousness and not matter, we will be concerned about the nature and quality
of our experience of dying and death rather than a mechanical prolongation of life
at all costs. In the work with other people who are dying, we will put emphasis on
the quality of communication and will offer meaningful psychospiritual support. We
will complement, and in some instances replace, the technological wizardry of
modern medicine with genuine human care. If the information conveyed by the Bardo
Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is correct, the way we approach death and
experience it is of critical importance. If we are adequately prepared, this time
is a unique opportunity to achieve instant spiritual liberation. According to the
Tibetan teachings, even if we do not succeed, the quality of our preparation for
death or the lack thereof will determine the nature of our next incarnation.

The Mystery of Karma and Reincarnation

For I have already at times been a boy and a girl, and a bush and a bird and a mute
fish in the salty waves.

—Empedocles

Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer

him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that
man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance
into life.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Crosscultural Perspective on Reincarnation

According to Western materialistic science, our lifespan is limited to the period
between our conception and our biological death. This assumption is a logical
consequence of the conviction that we are essentially our bodies. Since the body
perishes and decomposes at the time of biological death, it seems obvious that at
this point we cease to exist. This perspective is in conflict with the beliefs of
all the great religions and spiritual systems of the ancient and pre-industrial
cultures who have seen death as an important transition, rather than the final end
of any form of existence. Most Western scientists dismiss or even ridicule the
belief that our existence can continue beyond death. They attribute this idea to
lack of education, to superstition, or to primitive wishful thinking of people who
are unable to face and accept the grim reality of impermanence and death.

In pre-industrial societies, the belief in life after death is not limited to a

vague notion that there might be a Beyond.

Mythologies of many cultures offer very specific descriptions of what happens after
we die. They provide intricate maps of the posthumous journey of the soul and
depict various abodes—heavens, paradises, and hells—that harbor discarnate beings.
Of particular interest is the belief in reincarnation, according to which the
individual units of consciousness keep returning to earth and experience entire
chains of embodied existences. Some spiritual systems combine the belief in
reincarnation with the law of karma, suggesting that the merits and debits from
previous lifetimes determine the quality of subsequent incarnations. Various forms
of the belief in reincarnation show a wide distribution over geographical space and
historical time. They have developed, often independently, in cultures separated by
many thousands of miles and by many centuries.

The concept of reincarnation and karma is the cornerstone of many Asian religions—
Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, the Tibetan Vajrayana,
Japanese Shintoism, and Chinese Taoism. Similar ideas can be found in such
historically, geographically, and culturally diverse groups as various African
tribes, American Indians, Pre-Columbian cultures, Polynesian kahunas, practitioners
of the Brazilian umbanda, the Gauls, and the Druids. In ancient Greece, several
important schools of thought subscribed to this doctrine, among them the
Pythagoreans, the Orphics, and the Platonists. The concept of reincarnation was
adopted by the Essenes, the Pharisees, the Karaites, and other Jewish and semi-
Jewish groups. It also formed an important part of the cabalistic theology of
medieval Jewry. This list would not be complete without mentioning the
Neoplatonists and Gnostics and in modern times the Theosophists, Anthroposophists,
and certain spiritualists.

Although the belief in reincarnation is not a part of modern Christianity, similar

concepts existed also among the early Christians. According to St. Jerome (A.D.
340–420), reincarnation was given an esoteric interpretation that was communicated
to a select elite. It appears that the belief in reincarnation was an integral part
of Gnostic Christianity, best known from the scrolls discovered in 1945 at Nag
Hammadi. In the Gnostic text called Faith Wisdom or Pistis Sophia (1921) Jesus
teaches his disciples how failures in one life are transferred to another. Thus,
for example, people who use curses against others will in their new life be
“continually troubled in their hearts,” while arrogant and immoderate persons might
be reborn in a deformed body and be looked down upon by others.
The most famous Christian thinker speculating about the pre-existence of souls and
world cycles was Origen (A.D. 186–253), one of the greatest Church Fathers of all
times. In his writings, particularly in the book De Principiis, or On First
Principles (Origenes Adamantius 1973), he expressed his opinion that certain
scriptural passages could only be explained in the light of reincarnation. His
teachings were condemned by the Second Council of Constantinople convened by
Emperor Justinian in A.D. 553 and became a heretical doctrine. The verdict read:
“If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls and shall submit to the
monstrous doctrine that follows from it, let him be anathema!” However, some
scholars believe that they can detect traces of the teachings in the writings of
St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and even St. Francis of Assisi.

How can we explain that so many cultural groups in the course of history have held
this extraordinary belief and that they formulated complex and intricate
theoretical systems describing it? How is it possible that they were all in
agreement about an issue that is alien to the Western industrial civilization and
that is considered utterly absurd by Western materialistic science? The usual
explanation is that these differences reflect our superiority in the scientific
understanding of the universe and of human nature. However, closer examination
reveals that the real reason for this difference is the tendency of Western
scientists to adhere to their belief system and to ignore, censor, or distort all
observations that are in conflict with it. More specifically, this attitude
reflects the reluctance of Western psychologists and psychiatrists to pay attention
to the experiences and observations from holotropic states of consciousness.

Empirical Evidence for Reincarnation

The concept of reincarnation and karma is not a “belief” in the usual sense of the
word, meaning an ungrounded and arbitrary theoretical and emotional position that
is not supported by facts.

For the Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and other groups for whom it constitutes an
important part of their religion, reincarnation is not a matter of belief. It is an
eminently empirical issue, based on very specific experiences and observations.
This is also true for open-minded and knowledgeable Western consciousness
researchers. They are not naïve, ignorant, and unfamiliar with the philosophical
position and worldview of materialistic science, as their critics like to portray
them.

Many of these researchers have good academic training and impressive credentials.
The reason for their position is that they have made some important observations
concerning reincarnation for which their academic training failed to provide
adequate explanations. In many instances, they also had extraordinary personal
experiences that they could not easily dismiss. According to Christopher Bache, a
researcher who has thoroughly reviewed the literature on reincarnation and
encountered past life experiences in his own inner search, the evidence in this
area is so rich and remarkable that scientists who do not think the problem of
reincarnation deserves serious study are either uninformed or “boneheaded” (Bache
1990).

Let us take a brief look at the existing evidence that one should be familiar with
before making any judgments concerning reincarnation. The nature of this evidence
is described in a mythological language in a passage written by Sholem Ash (1967),
a twentieth-century Hassidic scholar: “Not the power to remember, but its very
opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence. If the
lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these souls, between their
exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness. According to the
Jewish view, we make the transition under the overlordship of the Angel of
Forgetfulness. But it sometimes happens that the Angel of Forgetfulness himself
forgets to remove from our memories the records of the former world; and then our
senses are haunted by fragmentary recollections of another life. They drift like
torn clouds above the hills and valleys of the mind, and weave themselves into the
incidents of our current existence.”

Modern researchers have amassed a large amount of observations suggesting partial

lifting of the veil of forgetfulness that Sholem Ash talks about. Many of them
studied and described vivid past life experiences that occur spontaneously in
everyday life or in the course of various therapeutic sessions involving holotropic
states of consciousness. Others collected additional information about
reincarnation by guiding people to specific areas of their psyche with the use of
hypnosis or some other approaches. There have also been interesting attempts at
experimental verification of the authenticity of such guided past life experiences
(Wambach 1979). And finally, there are certain intriguing data from the Tibetan
spiritual tradition that provide valuable insights into this area from yet another
angle.

Children Remember Past Lives

Among the most interesting phenomena related to the problem of reincarnation are
spontaneous past life experiences in children. Reports from many different
countries of the world indicate that, occasionally, small children remember and
describe their previous life in another body, another time and place, and with
other people. These memories can present many problems in the lives of these
children and their parents. They are often associated with various “carry-over
pathologies,” such as phobias, unusual idiosyncrasies, and strange reactions to
certain people, places, and situations. There exist reports of child psychiatrists
who treated and described cases of this kind. Access to these memories usually
appears around the age of three and gradually disappears between the ages of five
and eight.
Ian Stevenson, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville, has conducted meticulous studies of over three thousand of such
cases and reported about them in his books (Stevenson 1966, 1984, 1987).
Stevenson’s cases were not only from “primitive,” “exotic” cultures with an a
priori belief in reincarnation, but also from Western countries, including Great
Britain and the United States. Being a cautious and conservative researcher,
Stevenson reported only several hundred of them, because many have not met the high
standards he had set for his research. Only the cases with the best scientific
evidence were included. Stevenson eliminated many of the observations, because the
family benefited from the behavior of their children financially, in terms of
social prestige, or public attention. Additional reasons for not including certain
cases were inconsistent testimony, false memory (cryptomnesia), witnesses of
questionable character, or indication of fraud.

The findings of Stevenson’s research are remarkable. Although he had eliminated in

all the reported cases the possibility that these children could have obtained the
information through the conventional channels, he was able to confirm their
stories, often with incredible details. In some cases, he actually took the
children into the village or town that they had remembered from their previous
life. Although they had never been there in their current lifetime, they were
familiar with the topography of the village and were able to find the home they had
allegedly lived in. They even recognized the members of their “family” and the
villagers and knew their names. Possibly the strongest evidence in support of the
reincarnation hypothesis was the incidence of striking birthmarks that specifically
reflected injuries and other events from the remembered life; this could be
confirmed by independent research (Stevenson, 1997).

Past Life Memories in Adults

Spontaneous, vivid reliving of past life memories in adults occurs most frequently
during episodes of psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies). However, various
degrees of remembering can also happen in more or less ordinary states of
consciousness in the circumstances of everyday life. Mainstream psychiatrists are
aware of the existence of past life experiences, but they treat them routinely as
indications of serious psychopathology, usually by suppressive pharmacological
medication. The leading theories of personality in contemporary psychology are
firmly anchored in the materialistic paradigm and thus naturally subscribe to the
“one-timer view.”

Past life experiences can be facilitated by a wide variety of techniques that

mediate access to deep levels of the psyche, such as meditation, hypnosis, use of
psychedelic substances, and stays in a sensory isolation tank. They can emerge
during body work and in sessions of experiential psychotherapy, for example, in the
course of rebirthing, holotropic breathwork, or primal therapy. I have heard of
many instances where past life episodes appeared unsolicited in sessions with
therapists who had a very conventional theoretical framework and did not believe in
reincarnation, or even those who were violently opposed to the concept. The
emergence of karmic material is also completely independent of the experiencer’s
previous philosophical and religious belief system.

In a fully developed past life experience, we find ourselves involved in an

emotionally highly charged situation that is happening in another historical period
and in another location. Our sense of personal identity is preserved, but it is
experienced in relation to another person and another time and place. These
experiences often involve other people with whom we have an intense relationship in
this lifetime. The emotional quality of these episodes is usually very negative.
Sometimes, they are associated with physical pain, panic anxiety, deep sadness, or
guilt feelings. Other times, it is consuming hatred, murderous anger, or insane
jealousy. However, in some instances, these sequences can reflect great emotional
fulfillment and happiness. They portray passionate love affairs, devoted
friendships, or spiritual partnerships.

The most characteristic aspect of past life experiences is a convinced feeling that
the situation we are facing is not new. We clearly remember that it happened to us
before, that we once actually were this other person in one of our previous lives.
This sense of reliving something that one has seen before (déjà vu) or experienced
before (déjà vécu) in a previous incarnation is very basic and cannot be analyzed
any further. It is comparable to the ability to distinguish in everyday life our
memories of events that actually happened from our dreams, daydreams, and
fantasies. It would be difficult to convince a person, who is relating to us a
memory of something that happened last week, that the event did not really occur
and that he or she is just imagining it. Past incarnation memories have a similar
subjective quality of authenticity and reality.

Unique Features of Past Life Phenomena

Past life experiences have some extraordinary characteristics for which they
deserve serious attention of researchers studying consciousness and the human
psyche. Considered in their totality, these features leave no doubt that karmic
sequences represent unique phenomena sui generis and not simply fantasies or
figments of pathological imagination. Past life experiences occur on the same
continuum with accurate memories from adolescence, childhood, infancy, birth, and
intrauterine existence, phenomena that can often be reliably verified. Sometimes
they appear simultaneously or alternate with biographical material from our current
life (Grof 1988, 1992).

Another interesting feature of past life experiences is that they are often
intimately connected with important issues and circumstances in our present life.
When karmic sequences emerge fully into consciousness, either spontaneously or in
the context of deep experiential psychotherapy, they can provide illuminating
insights into various previously incomprehensible and puzzling aspects of our
everyday existence. This includes a wide variety of emotional, psychosomatic, and
interpersonal problems for which conventional forms of psychotherapy failed to
provide explanation.

Experiences of past life memories typically provide more than just new
understanding of these problems. This process can also often result in alleviation
or complete disappearance of various difficult symptoms, such as various phobias,
psychosomatic pains, or asthma. It can also be instrumental in healing of
troublesome relationships with other people. Past life experiences can thus
contribute significantly to the understanding of psychopathology and play an
essential role in successful therapy. Therapists who refuse to work with these
experiences because they reject the concept of reincarnation are depriving their
patients of a very effective therapeutic mechanism.

The persons who experience karmic phenomena often gain accurate insights into the
time and culture involved, concerning social structure, beliefs, rituals, customs,
architecture, costumes, weapons, and other aspects of life. In many instances the
nature and quality of this information makes it unlikely that these people could
have acquired it through the conventional channels. Occasionally, past life
experiences render information about specific historical events.

Verification of Past Life Memories

The criteria for verification of past life memories are the same as those that we
use when we relive events from infancy and childhood of the present lifetime. We
try to get as many details of the retrieved memory as possible and then search for
independent evidence corroborating or disproving its content. Unfortunately, in
many past life experiences, this information is not specific enough to allow
independent verification. Other times, the quality of the information is adequate,
but it is impossible to find sufficiently specific and detailed historical sources
that would make the verification procedure possible.

Most past life memories in adults do not permit the same degree of verification as
Stevenson’s spontaneous memories in children, which are typically more recent. To
appreciate the challenge associated with such an endeavor, it is important to
consider that even our memories from this lifetime do not always lend themselves
easily to objective verification. Psychotherapists are well aware of the problems
associated with the attempts to evaluate the veracity of memories from childhood
and infancy retrieved in verbal or regressive therapy. Naturally, the task to
verify past life experiences is incomparably more difficult than similar efforts
concerning material from the present lifetime. Even if such experiences contain
very specific details, which is not always the case, objective evidence is
incomparably harder to come by, since the material is much older and often involves
other countries and cultures.

In spite of all these difficulties, there are some rare instances in which all the
necessary criteria are met. The result of such independent research can be truly
extraordinary. Over the years, I have been able to make in my work several
observations, in which the content of past life experiences could be corroborated
in remarkable detail. In all these cases, I have not been able to find a natural
explanation for the phenomena involved. There is no doubt in my mind that the
information conveyed by these experiences came through extrasensory channels. I
have also heard similar stories from other researchers.

In my previous publications (Grof 1975, 1988), I have described two such case
histories. The first one involved a neurotic patient undergoing psychedelic
therapy. She experienced in four consecutive sessions many episodes from a life of
a seventeenth-century Czech nobleman. This man had been publicly executed in the
Old Town Square in Prague together with twenty-six other prominent aristocrats.
This public execution was an effort of the Hapsburgs to break the moral of the
Czechs after they had defeated the Czech king in the battle of the White Mountain.
In this case, the patient’s father conducted, unbeknownst to her, independent
genealogical research of the family’s pedigree, which confirmed that they were
descendents of one of these unfortunate men.

The second example was a man who relived in his primal work and later in his
holotropic breathwork sessions during our monthlong seminar at the Esalen Institute
a number of episodes from the war between England and Spain in the sixteenth
century. They revolved around the mass slaughter of Spanish soldiers by the British
in the besieged fortress of Dunanoir on the western coast of Ireland. During these
sessions, he experienced himself as a priest who accompanied these soldiers and was
killed with them. At one point, he saw on his hand a seal ring with engraved
initials and drew a picture of it.

In his later historical research, he was able to confirm the veracity of this
entire episode that he previously had not known anything about. One of the
documents he found in historical archives gave the name of the priest who had
accompanied the Spanish soldiers on their military expedition. To his and our
surprise, the initials of this name were identical with those that were carved on
the seal ring he had seen in his session and captured in a detailed drawing.

A striking aspect of past life experiences is their frequent association with

remarkable synchronicities involving other people and situations. The protagonists
in our past life memories often are important persons from our present life, such
as parents, children, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, or superiors. It seems to
make sense that an intense past life experience could result in dramatic changes in
our own feelings and behavior toward the person who was an important part of our
karmic scenario. However, these experiences also often show unexplainable
mysterious synchronistic links with specific changes in the lives of other persons
whom we identified as protagonists in our past life memory. These persons could be
hundreds or thousands of miles away from the place where our experience happens and
have absolutely no knowledge that it takes place. Yet they can independently
undergo, at exactly the same time, a dramatic complementary change in their
feelings and attitude toward us.
The Karmic Triangle

I will use here an example from my own life to illustrate this remarkable
phenomenon. Over the years, I have observed many similar occurrences involving
other people. The episode I am about to describe happened shortly after my arrival
in the United States. My emigration to the United States in 1967 brought about
radical changes in my personal, professional, political, and cultural environment.
I arrived in Baltimore with some fifty pounds of luggage. Over half of the total
content of my luggage was the documentation of my psychedelic research in Prague
and the rest were my personal belongings. This was all that was left of my old life
in Europe. It was a new beginning for me on all imaginable levels. While I
thoroughly enjoyed the inspiring team of my professional colleagues at Spring
Grove, the undreamed of freedom of expression, and all the novel things I was
discovering in the world around me, I did not have much success in creating a
satisfactory personal life.

All the women in my social sphere who were of appropriate age for me and shared my
interests seemed to be married or otherwise committed. It was a frustrating
situation since I was at a stage of life when I felt a deep need for partnership.
My friends and colleagues at Spring Grove seemed to be even more concerned about
this situation than I was myself and exerted great effort to remedy it. They
searched for potential partners for me and kept inviting them for various social
occasions. This resulted in a few frustrating and somewhat awkward situations, but
did not bear any fruit. And then this situation suddenly changed in the most
unexpected and very radical way.

A difficult relationship of a fellow therapist, Seymour, had abruptly ended and my

friends invited his ex-girlfriend Monica for dinner. When Monica and I first met, I
immediately felt a strong attraction to her and had a sense of instant deep
connection. It was not difficult for me to fall in love with her. She was of
European origin like myself, single, beautiful, and bright. Her unusual charm, wit,
and facility with words quickly made her the center of attention of every party she
attended. I felt rapidly drawn into the relationship and was unable to be objective
and realistic about it.

I did not see any problem in the fact that Monica was considerably younger than
myself. I also chose to ignore her stories about her extremely traumatic childhood
and tumultuous interpersonal history that I would have normally seen as serious
warning signs. I was able to reassure myself that all these were details, nothing
that we would not be able to work out. Had I been able to be analytic under the
circumstances, I would have recognized that I had met what C. G. Jung called an
anima figure. Monica and I started dating and had a passionate and unusually stormy
relationship.

Monica’s moods and behavior seemed to change from one day to another, or even from
hour to hour. Waves of intense affection toward me alternated with episodes of
aloofness, evasiveness, and withdrawal. The situation seemed to be further
complicated by two unusual circumstances. Since my arrival in Baltimore, I lived in
a studio that had been at one time rented by Monica’s ex-boyfriend Seymour and she
used to visit him there. She was now coming to the same apartment to see a
different man. In addition, Monica’s brother Wolfgang hated me since the very first
time we had met. He and Monica had an unusually strong relationship that seemed to
have distinct incestuous features. Wolfgang was violently opposed to my
relationship with Monica and treated me like a rival.

I was very committed to make the relationship work, but nothing I was able to do
had any influence on the crazy rollercoster ride we seemed to be taking together. I
felt like I was alternately exposed to hot and cold showers. I found it very
frustrating but, at the same time, my attraction to Monica had a strange magnetic
quality and I was unable to terminate this confusing and unfulfilling relationship.

I desperately needed some insight into the baffling dynamic I was caught in. Our
institute had a program offering mental health professionals the opportunity to
have up to three psychedelic sessions. The members of our therapeutic team were
eligible for this program. In an effort to reach some clarity in my relationship
with Monica, I applied for an LSD session just as our difficulties were reaching
their peak. The following is an excerpt from that session, describing my first
introduction to the world of past life experiences and to the law of karma:

In the middle of this session I suddenly had a vision of a dark rock of irregular
shape that looked like a giant meteorite and seemed extremely ancient. The sky
opened up and a lightning bolt of immense intensity hit its surface and started to
burn into it some mysterious arcane symbols. Once these strange hieroglyphs were
carved into the surface of the rock, they continued to burn and emit blinding
incandescent light. Although I was unable to decipher the hieroglyphs and read
them, I sensed they were sacred and I could somehow understand the message they
were conveying. They revealed to me that I had had a long series of lives preceding
this one and that, according to the law of karma, I was responsible for my actions
in these lives, although I could not remember them.

I tried to refuse responsibility for things of which I did not have any memory, but
was not able to resist the enormous psychological pressure forcing me to surrender.
Finally, I had to accept what clearly was an ancient universal law against which
there was no recourse. Once I yielded, I found myself holding in my arms Monica,
just as I remembered holding her on the previous weekend. We were floating in air
in an archetypal pit of immense size, slowly descending in an extended spiral. I
felt instinctively that this was the Abyss of Ages and that we were traveling back
in time.
The descent took forever; it seemed it would never end. Finally we reached the
bottom of the pit. Monica disappeared from my arms and I found myself walking in a
hall of an ancient Egyptian palace, dressed in ornate clothes. All around me on the
walls were beautiful reliefs accompanied by carved hieroglyphs. I could understand
their meaning in the same way I would understand the message of the posters pasted
on a Baltimore billboard. On the other side of the large hall, I saw a figure that
was slowly approaching me. I knew that I was the son of an aristocratic Egyptian
family and that the man approaching me was my brother in that lifetime.

As the figure came closer, I recognized it was Wolfgang. He stopped about ten feet
from me and looked at me with immense hatred. I realized that in this incarnation
Wolfgang, Monica, and I were siblings. I was the first born and as such I had
married Monica and received many other privileges that came with that status.
Wolfgang felt deprived and experienced agonizing jealousy and strong hatred toward
me. I saw clearly that this was the basis of a destructive karmic pattern that then
repeated itself in many variations throughout ages.

I stood in the hall facing Wolgang and feeling his deep hatred toward me. In an
attempt to resolve this painful situation, I tried to send him a telepathic
message: “I do not know which form I am in and how I got here. I am a time traveler
from the twentieth century, where I took a powerful mind-altering drug. I am very
unhappy about the tension that exists between us and want to do anything to resolve
it.” I stretched my arms into a very open position and sent him the following
message: “Here I am, this is all I have! Please, do anything you need to do to
liberate us from this bondage, to set both of us free!”

Wolfgang seemed very excited about my offer and accepted it. His hatred seemed to
take the form of two intense rays of energy resembling powerful laser beams that
burned my body and caused me extreme pain. After what seemed an extremely long time
of excruciating torture, the beams gradually lost their power and eventually
completely faded. Wolfgang and the hall disappeared and I found myself holding
Monica again in my arms.

This time we ascended through the same Abyss of Ages, moving forward in time. The
walls of this archetypal pit were opening into scenes from different historical
periods showing Monica, Wolfgang, and myself in many previous lifetimes. All of
them depicted difficult and destructive triangular situations, in which we
seriously hurt each other. It seemed that a strong wind, a “karmic hurricane,” was
blowing through centuries, dissipating the pain of these situations and releasing
the three of us from a fatal painful bondage.
When this sequence ended and I returned fully into the present, I was in a state of
indescribable bliss and ecstatic rapture. I felt that even if I would not achieve
anything else during the rest of my days, my life had been productive and
successful. Resolution and release from one powerful karmic pattern seemed a
sufficient accomplishment for one lifetime!

Monica’s presence in my experience was so intense that I was convinced she had to
feel the impact of what was happening with me. When we saw each other the next
week, I decided to find out what was her experience in the afternoon when I had the
session. At first, I deliberately did not tell her anything about my session,
trying to avoid any possibility of suggestion. I simply asked her what she did
between 4 and 4.30 p.m. when I was experiencing the Egyptian karmic sequence in my
session. “Strange that you should ask me,” she answered, “it was probably the worst
time of my entire life!”

She then proceeded to describe a dramatic showdown she had had with her superior
that ended by her storming out of the office. She was sure she had lost her job,
felt desperate, and ended up in a nearby bar drinking heavily. At one point, the
door of the bar opened up and a man walked in. Monica recognized Robert, a man with
whom she had had a sexual relationship at the time she met me. Robert was very rich
and gave her many expensive gifts, including a new car and a horse.

Unbeknownst to me, Monica continued the relationship with him after we started
dating, not being able to make a choice between the two of us. When she now saw
Robert entering the bar, she walked to him and wanted to give him a hug and a kiss.
Robert made an evasive maneuver and shook her hand instead. Monica noticed that he
was accompanied by an elegant woman. Clearly perplexed, Robert introduced her to
Monica; it happened to be his wife. For Monica this was a shock, since during their
entire relationship Robert had pretended that he was single.

At this point, Monica felt that the ground disappeared from under her feet. She
left the bar and ran to her car, the one that Robert had given her. Severely drunk
and in heavy rain, she raced down the beltway reaching the speed of over 90 miles
per hour, determined to end it all. Too much had happened that day and she did not
care any more! It turned out that exactly at the time when I reached the resolution
of the karmic pattern in my session, my image emerged in Monica’s mind. She started
thinking about me and about our relationship. Realizing that she still had somebody
in her life she could rely on, she calmed down. She slowed down the car, drove it
off the beltway, and parked it at the curbside. When she sobered up to the point
that she could drive safely, she returned home and went to bed.

The day after this discussion with Monica, I received a phone call from Wolfgang,
who asked for an appointment with me. This was an absolutely unexpected and
surprising development, since Wolfgang had never called me before, let alone asked
for a meeting. When he arrived, he told me that he came to see me about a very
intimate and embarassing matter. It was a problem that is called in psychoanalysis
the prostitute-Madonna complex. He had had a number of causal and superficial
sexual relationships in his life, including many one-night stands, and never had
had any problems developing and maintaining erection. Now he felt that he had found
the woman of his dreams and, for the first time in his life, was deeply in love.
However, he was unable to have sex with her and experienced repeated painful
failures.

Wolfgang was desperate and afraid that he would lose this relationship unless he
did something about his impotence. He told me that he was too embarassed to talk
about his problem with a stranger. He thought about discussing the issue with me,
but rejected the idea, because he had strong negative feelings toward me. At one
point, his attitude toward me suddenly changed radically. His hatred dissolved as
if by magic and he decided to call me and seek help. When I asked him when this had
happened, I found out that it exactly coincided with the time when I had completed
the reliving of the Egyptian sequence.

A few weeks later, I retrieved the missing piece of the Egyptian story. I did a
hypnotic session with Pauline McCririck, a psychoanalyst from London. The following
is an excerpt from my account of this experience.

I lay in the sand of a hot sun-scorched desert. I felt agonizing pain in my belly
and my entire body was in spasms. I knew I had been poisoned and was going to die.
I realized from the context that the only people who could have poisoned me had to
be Monica and her lover. By the Egyptian law, she had to marry me as her oldest
brother, but her affection belonged to another man. I had found out about their
affair and had attempted to interfere with their relationship. The realization that
I had been betrayed and poisoned filled me with blind anger. I died alone in the
desert with my entire being filled with hatred.

The reliving of this situation brought another interesting insight. I seemed to

remember that in this Egyptian lifetime, I was actively involved in the mysteries
of Isis and Osiris and knew their secrets. I felt that the poison and the hatred
intoxicated my mind and obscured everything else, including this knowledge. This
made it impossible for me to take advantage of the secret teachings at the time of
my death. For the same reason, my connection with this arcane knowledge was
brutally severed.

I suddenly saw that much of my present life had been dedicated to an unrelenting
search for these lost teachings. I remembered how excited I had been every time I
had come across some information that was directly or indirectly related to this
area. In the light of this insight, my work with psychedelics revolving around
psychospiritual death and rebirth seemed to be a rediscovery and modern
reformulation of the processes involved in the ancient mysteries.
In a subsequent meditation, I was unexpectedly flooded with a fugue of images
representing highlights of my experiences with Monica and Wolfgang, some of them
from real life, others from my sessions. The intensity and speed of this review
rapidly increased until it reached an explosive climax. In an instant, I felt a
deep sense of resolution and peace. I knew that the karmic pattern was now fully
resolved. Monica and I remained friends for the rest of my stay in Baltimore. The
tension and chaos disappeared from our interactions and neither of us felt any
compulsion to continue an intimate relationship. We both understood that we were
not meant to be partners in our present lifetime.

Reincarnation and Karma in Tibetan Buddhism

There exists another interesting piece of the puzzle of reincarnation. It is the

information we have about certain Tibetan teachings and practices concerning the
degree to which it is possible to actually influence the process of death and
reincarnation. Tibetan literature describes that certain highly developed spiritual
masters are able to choose the time of their death and predict or select the time
and place of their next incarnation. Others have developed the capacity to maintain
continuity of consciousness during their passage through the bardos, intermediate
states between death and the next incarnation.

Conversely, according to these reports, accomplished Tibetan monks can use certain
specific clues, received in dreams and meditations, as well as various external
omens, to locate and identify the child who is the reincarnation of a tulku or a
Dalai Lama. Eventually, the child is found, brought to the monastery, and exposed
to a series of tests during which it has to correctly identify from several sets of
similar objects those that belonged to the deceased. Some aspects of this practice
could, at least theoretically, be subjected to a rather rigorous testing following
Western standards.

Reincarnation: Fact or Fiction?

We can now summarize the objective evidence that forms the basis of the widespread
“belief” in reincarnation and karma. The term belief is actually inappropriate when
applied to this area. Properly understood, it is a theoretical system of thought, a
conceptual framework that is trying to provide explanation for a large number of
unusual experiences and observations. In holotropic states, spontaneous or induced,
it is not only possible but very common to experience episodes from the lives of
people in various historical periods and different countries of the world. When we
experience these sequences, we feel completely identified with these individuals.
In addition, we have a convinced feeling that we actually once were these persons
and lived their lives. These experiences are typically very vivid and can engage
all our senses.

In terms of their content, past life experiences transcend racial and cultural
boundaries and can take place in any country of the world and at any time of human
history or prehistory. They often provide detailed information about the countries,
cultures, and times involved. In many instances, this information by far surpasses
our previous knowledge of these matters and our general educational background. On
occasion, the sequences from past lives can feature animal protagonists. For
example, we can experience a situation in which we were killed by a tiger or
trampled to death by an elephant. Over the years, I have also witnessed some past
life experiences with only one protagonist, such as episodes where the experiencer
died in an avalanche or was crushed by a falling tree. The therapeutic potential of
past life experiences and the synchronicities associated with them are additional
remarkable features of these phenomena. These are the facts that we have to know
before we attempt to pass a judgment concerning the “belief” in reincarnation and
karma.

These extraordinary characteristics of past life experiences have been repeatedly

confirmed by independent observers. However, all these impressive facts do not
necessarily constitute a definitive “proof” that we survive death and reincarnate
as the same separate unit of consciousness, or the same individual soul. This
conclusion is just one possible interpretation of the existing evidence. This is
essentially the same situation that we encounter in science, where we have certain
facts of observation and look for a theory that would explain them and put them
into a coherent conceptual framework.

One of the basic rules in modern philosophy of science is that a theory should
never be confused with the reality that it describes. The history of science
clearly shows that there always exists more than one way to interpret the available
data. In the study of past life phenomena, as in any other area of exploration, we
have to separate facts of observation from the theories that try to make sense of
them. For example, the falling of objects is a fact of observation, whereas the
theories trying to explain why it happens have changed several times in the course
of history and undoubtedly will change again.

The existence of past life experiences with all their remarkable characteristics is
an unquestionable fact that can be verified by any serious researcher who is
sufficiently open-minded and interested to check the evidence. It is also clear
that there is no plausible explanation for these phenomena within the conceptual
framework of mainstream psychiatry and psychology. On the other hand, the
interpretation of the existing data is a much more complex and difficult matter.
The popular understanding of reincarnation as a repeated cycle of life, death, and
rebirth of the same individual is a reasonable conclusion from the available
evidence. It certainly is far superior to the attitude of traditional psychologists
and psychiatrists, who ignore all the available evidence and rigidly adhere to the
established ways of thinking. However, it is not difficult to imagine some
alternative interpretations of the same data. Naturally, none of these explanations
is congruent with the materialistic paradigm.
At least two such alternatives can already be found in the spiritual literature. In
the Hindu tradition, the belief in reincarnation of separate individuals is seen as
a popular and unsophisticated understanding of reincarnation. In the last analysis,
there is only one being that has true existence and that is Brahman, or the
creative principle itself. All separate individuals in all the dimensions of
existence are just products of infinite metamorphoses of this one immense entity.
Since all the divisions and boundaries in the universe are illusory and arbitrary,
only Brahman really incarnates. All the protagonists in the divine play of
existence are different aspects of this One. When we attain this ultimate
knowledge, we are able to see that our past incarnation experiences represent just
another level of illusion or maya. To see these lives as “our lives” requires
perception of the karmic players as separate individuals and reflects ignorance
concerning the fundamental unity of everything.

In his book Lifecycles, Christopher Bache (1990) discusses another interesting

concept of reincarnation found in the books by Jane Roberts (1973) and in the works
of other authors. Here the emphasis is neither on the individual unit of
consciousness nor on God, but on the Oversoul, an entity that lies in between the
two. If the term soul refers to the consciousness that collects and integrates the
experiences of an individual incarnation, the Oversoul or Soul is the name given to
the larger consciousness that collects and integrates the experiences of many
incarnations.

According to this view, it is the Oversoul that incarnates, not the individual unit
of consciousness.

Bache points out that if we are extensions of our former lives, we clearly are not
the summation of all the experiences that they have contained. The purpose that the
Oversoul has for incarnating is to collect specific experiences. A full involvement
in a particular life requires severing the connection with the Oversoul and
assuming discrete personal identity. At the time of death, the separate individual
dissolves in the Oversoul, leaving only a mosaic of unassimilated difficult
experiences. These then become assigned to the life of other incarnated beings in a
process that can be compared to dealing a hand of cards in a card game.

In this model, there is no true continuity between the lives of the individuals
that incarnate at diffferent times. By experiencing undigested parts of other
lives, we are not dealing with our personal karma, but actually clearing the field
of the Oversoul. The image that Bache uses to illustrate the relationship between
the individual soul and the Oversoul is that of a nautilus shell. Here each chamber
represents a separate unit and reflects a certain period in the life of the
mollusk, but it is also integrated into a larger whole.

We have so far discussed three different ways of interpreting the observations

related to past life phenomena. The incarnating units were, respectively, the
individual unit of consciousness, Absolute Consciousness, and the Oversoul.
However, we have not exhausted all the possibilities of alternative explanations
that could account for the observed facts. Because of the arbitrary nature of all
boundaries in the universe, we could just as easily define as the incarnating
principle a unit larger than the Oversoul, for example, the field of consciousness
of the entire human species or that of all life forms.

We could also take our analysis a step further and explore the factors that
determine the specific choice of the karmic experiences that are assigned to the
incarnating unit of consciousness. For example, some people with whom I have worked
had convincing insights that an important factor in the selection process might be
the relationship between karmic patterns and the time and place of a particular
incarnation with its specific astrological correlates. This notion is in general
agreement with the observations from psychedelic sessions, holotropic breathwork,
and spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crises. They show that in all these
situations the content and timing of nonordinary states are closely correlated with
planetary transits (Tarnas, in press).

Holotropic Experiences and Their Influence on Our Belief System

To get a more comprehensive perspective on the subject of reincarnation, let us

explore the changes in our beliefs that occur during systematic inner work
involving holotropic states. Our belief or disbelief in reincarnation, as well as
our understanding of what might survive death, reflect the nature and level of the
experiences we have had. A typical member of the Western industrial civilization
believes that he or she is a physical body. This clearly limits individual
existence to a lifespan that reaches from conception to the moment of death. As we
saw, this “one-timer” approach is in conflict with the perspective of many other
human groups throughout history. In our culture, it is strongly endorsed by an
unlikely alliance of materialistic science and the Christian Church. The problem of
reincarnation is one of the rare areas where both of these institutions reach
complete agreement.

Personal experiences of past life memories that we encounter in meditation,

experiential psychotherapy, psychedelic sessions, or “spiritual emergency” can be
extremely authentic and convincing. They can bring about a drastic change in our
worldview and open us up to the concept of reincarnation, not as a belief, but as
an experiential reality. Consequently, the emphasis in our self-exploration tends
to change considerably. Previously, we might have felt that it was all-important to
work through our traumas from childhood, infancy, and birth, because we realized
that they were a source of difficulties in our present life. After the discovery of
the karmic realm, we become more concerned about attaining release from traumatic
karmic patterns, because they have the potential to contaminate not one lifetime,
but many consecutive ones.

At this stage, we often continue having additional past life experiences that can
be very rich in accurate detail and be associated with remarkable synchronicities.
We thus keep obtaining convincing evidence about the reality and authenticity of
this way of understanding existence. We do not think about ourselves any more as
Alan Watts’ “skin-encapsulated egos.” Instead of identifying with one specific
individual who lives from conception to death, we now have a much larger concept of
who we are.

Our new identity is that of a being whose existence spans many lifetimes; some of
them have already passed, others still await us in the future. To see ourselves in
this way, we have to transcend our previous belief that our lifespan is temporally
limited to the period between conception and death. At the same time, we have to
continue believing in the absolute nature of spatial boundaries that separate us
from other people and from the rest of the world. We think about ourselves as open-
ended chains of lifetimes and see our karmic partners in the same way.

If we continue our inner journey, additional holotropic experiences can show us

that even spatial boundaries are ultimately illusory and can be dissolved. This
creates an entirely new perspective on the problem of reincarnation. We have now
transcended the concept of karma, as it is usually understood, because we have
reached a level where there are no more separate individuals. And the existence of
discrete characters is a necessary prerequisite for any karmic interaction. At this
point, we identify with the unified field of cosmic creative energy and with
Absolute Consciousness. From this perspective, the past life dramas represent just
another level of illusion, the play of maya. It becomes clear that all lives have
ultimately only one protagonist and that, in the last analysis, they are all empty
of substance.

We now do not believe in karma any more, certainly not in the same sense as we did
before. This form of disbelief is of an entirely different kind and order than the
attitude of a materialistic skeptic and atheist. We still remember the time when we
lived in a completely constricted state of consciousness and rejected the idea of
reincarnation as utterly ridiculous and absurd. We are also aware of the fact that
powerful and compelling experiences can move us to a level of consciousness where
reincarnation is not a concept, but lived reality. And we know that even this stage
can be transcended when our process of inner self-exploration confronts us with
experiences that make us understand the relativity of all boundaries and the
fundamental emptiness of all forms.

Neither a categorical denial of the possibility of reincarnation, nor the belief in

its objective existence are true in an absolute sense. All the three approaches to
this problem mentioned above are experientially very real and each of them reflects
a certain level of insight into the universal scheme of things. In the last
analysis, only the existence of the creative principle itself is real. Both the
world in which reincarnation seems impossible and the one where it seems to be an
undeniable fact are virtual realities created by orchestration of experiences. For
this reason, the cosmic game can include scripts that from our limited everyday
perspective might appear to be incompatible and in conflict with each other. In the
Universal Mind and its divine play they can coexist without any problem.

9
The Taboo against Knowing Who You Are

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

—Teilhard de Chardin: The Phenomenon of Man

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing boy.

—William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”

The Perfect Illusion

In holotropic states, we can transcend the boundaries of the embodied ego with
which we usually identify and have convincing experiences of becoming other people,
animals, plants, and even inorganic parts of nature or various mythological beings.
We discover that the separation and discontinuity that we usually perceive within
creation are arbitrary and illusory. And when all the boundaries dissolve and we
transcend them, we can experience identification with the creative source itself,
either in the form of Absolute Consciousness or the Cosmic Void. We thus discover
that our real identity is not the individual self, but the Universal Self.

If it is true that our deepest nature is divine and that we are identical with the
creative principle of the universe, how do we account for the intensity of our
belief that we are physical bodies existing in a material world? What is the nature
of this fundamental ignorance concerning our true identity, this mysterious veil of
forgetting that Alan Watts called “the taboo against knowing who you are”? (Watts
1966). How is it possible that an infinite and timeless spiritual entity creates
from itself and within itself a virtual facsimile of a tangible reality populated
by sentient beings who experience themselves as separate from their source and from
each other? How can the actors in the world drama be deluded into believing in the
objective existence of their illusory reality?

The best explanation I have heard from the people with whom I have worked is that
the cosmic creative principle traps itself by its own perfection. The creative
intention behind the divine play is to call into being experiential realities that
would offer the best opportunities for adventures in consciousness. To meet this
requirement, they have to be convincing and believable in all details. We can use
here as an example works of art such as theater plays or movies. These can
occasionally be enacted and performed with such perfection that they make us forget
that the events we are witnessing are illusory and react to them as if they were
real. Also, a good actor and actress can sometimes lose their true identity and
temporarily merge with the characters they are impersonating.

The world in which we live has many characteristics that Absolute Consciousness in
its pure form is missing, such as plurality, polarity, density, physicality,
change, and impermanence. The project of creating a facsimile of a material reality
endowed with these properties is executed with such artistic and scientific
perfection that the split-off units of the Universal Mind find it entirely
convincing and mistake it for reality. In the extreme expression of its artistry,
represented by the atheist, the Divine actually succeeds in bringing forth
arguments not only against its involvement in creation, but against its very
existence.

One of the important ploys that help to create the illusion of an ordinary material
reality is the existence of the trivial and ugly. If we all were radiant ethereal
beings, drawing our life energy directly from the sun and living in a world where
all the landscapes would look like the Himalayas, the Grand Canyon, and unspoiled
Pacific islands, it would be too obvious to us that we are part of a divine
reality. Similarly, if all the buildings in our world looked like Alhambra, the Taj
Mahal, Xanadu, or the cathedral in Chartres, and we were surrounded by
Michelangelo’s sculptures and listen to Beethoven’s or Bach’s music, the divine
nature of our world would be easily discernible.

The fact that we have physical bodies with all their secretions, excretions, odors,
imperfections, and pathologies, as well as a gastrointestinal system with its
repulsive contents, certainly effectively obscures and confuses the issue of our
divinity. Various physiological functions like vomiting, burping, passing gas,
defecating, and urinating, together with the final decomposition of the human body
further complicate the picture. Similarly, the existence of unattractive natural
scenes, junkyards, polluted industrial areas, foul-smelling toilets with obscene
graffiti, urban ghettoes, and millions of funky houses make it very difficult to
realize that our life is a divine play. The existence of evil and the fact that the
very nature of life is predatory makes this task almost impossible for an average
person. For educated Westerners, the worldview created by materialistic science is
an additional serious hurdle.

It is certainly easier to associate divinity with beauty than with ugliness.

However, in a larger context, including ugliness into the universal scheme makes
the spectrum of existence fuller and richer and helps to disguise the divine nature
of creation. The image of the hideous can be executed with great perfection and to
be able to do it constitutes an interesting challenge. When we realize that the
complex nature of Cosmic Consciousness includes, among others, certain
characteristics that we find on our level reflected in artists and scientists, the
tendency to explore the entire spectrum of possibilities, including the ugly and
disgusting, suddenly does not seem very surprising.

The world of art, including painting, literature, and movies, can hardly be accused
of onesidedly favoring the beautiful and uplifting. Similarly, scientists certainly
do not shy away from exploring any aspect of existence and many of them do not
hesitate to pursue their passionate quest even if their discoveries have dismal and
ugly consequences for our world. Once we realize the origin and purpose of the
cosmic drama, the usual criteria for perfection and beauty have to be drastically
revised. One of the important tasks on the spiritual journey is to be able to see
the divine not only in the extraordinary and ordinary, but also in the lowly and
ugly.

According to our usual criteria, Albert Einstein is a genius who certainly towers
high above his fellow humans, let alone above a primate like a chimpanzee. However,
from a cosmic perspective, there is no hierarchical difference between Einstein and
an ape, since they are both perfect specimens of what they were intended to be.
Within a Shakespeare play, a king is certainly superior to his court jester.
However, the status of Lawrence Olivier as an actor does not oscillate depending on
which of them he plays, as long as he delivers a perfect performance. Similarly,
Einstein is God impeccably impersonating Albert Einstein and a chimpanzee is God
playing perfectly the role of a chimpanzee.

Ordinarily, possessing a reasonable esthetic sense, we would admire the work of

Michelangelo or Vincent van Gogh and not feel much appreciation for kitsch. This
would make perfect sense if we were comparing ordinary human efforts that have such
drastically different results. However, the true originators of these works were
not the embodied selves of the authors but the Absolute Consciousness and the
cosmic creative energy working through them with a specific purpose. If the
creative intention was not to produce a great piece of art, but quite specifically
to add the phenomenon of kitsch to the cosmic game, this project was perfect in its
own way.

The same can be said about an ugly toad, a creature that was included in the
universal scheme for a specific purpose by the same source that was capable of
creating swallowtail butterflies. peacocks, and gazelles. It is the absolute
perfection of creation, understood in this sense, that seems to be responsible for
the “taboo against knowing who we are.” The virtual reality simulating a material
universe is worked out with such an acute sense for miniscule detail that the
result is absolutely convincing and believable. The units of consciousness cast as
the protagonists in the countless roles of this play of plays get entangled and
caught in the complex and intricate web of its illusionary magic.

Creative Play of the Demiurges

The insights into the nature and dynamics of the cosmic game do not have to emerge
on the level of the supreme creative principle. Gail, a minister who participated
in our training program for professionals at the Maryland Psychiatric Research
Center, had in her psychedelic session an interesting sequence that portrayed
cosmogony as a competitive creative game of four demiurgic suprahuman entities.
Although her experience is very unusual, since it involves several demiurgic beings
rather than one creative principle, I will include it here. It illustrates with
exceptional clarity many of the issues related to the problem of incarnation of
spiritual beings and the “taboo against knowing who you are.” Here is the
corresponding excerpt from her session:

I found myself in a dimension that seemed to lie beyond space and time as we know
it. What comes to my mind when I think about it now is the concept of hyperspace
used by modern physicists. However, such a technical term would not describe the
profound feeling of sacredness, the awesome sense of numinosity associated with my
experience. I realized that I was a suprahuman being of immense proportions,
possibly one that transcended all limitations, or one that existed before any
limitations were known. I did not have any form, being just pure consciousness with
superb intelligence suspended in Absolute Space. Although there was no source of
light there, I cannot say I was in complete darkness.

I shared this space with three other beings. Although they were purely abstract and
amorphous like myself, I could clearly feel their separate presence and communicate
with them in a complex telepathic fashion. We amused each other by various
brilliant intellectual games; fireworks of extraordinary ideas were being thrown
back and forth. The complexity, intricacy, and level of imagination involved in
these games by far surpassed anything known among humans. It was all pure
entertainment, l’art pour l’art, since in the form we were, none of it had any
practical implications.

I have to think in this context about whales who float in the ocean with their
enormous brains and are endowed with intelligence that matches or surpasses ours.
Since nature does not create and maintain organs and functions that are not being
used, the mental activity of the cetaceans has to be comparable to that of humans.
Yet. because of their anatomy, they have only minimal capacity to give any tangible
physical expression to what is going on in their minds. I once read a speculation
of a researcher who suggested that the whales may be spending most of their time
entertaining each other using their amazing voices that carry in the ocean over
distances of hundreds of miles. Do they tell each other stories and communicate
artistic creations? Do they have philosophical dialogues or play sophisticated
games? Or are they like Indian or Tibetan yogis who in their deep meditations, in
the solitude of their caves and cells, experience connection with the entire
history of the cosmos and other realities?

After this introduction, describing the general ambience and context of her
experience and reflecting on the disembodied existence as a purely spiritual being,
Gail focused on the part of her session that has immediate relevance for our
discussion about the “taboo against knowing who we are.”

One of the beings came up with an intriguing idea. It suggested that it would be
possible to create a game involving a reality with many different creatures of
various sizes and forms. They would appear to be dense and solid and exist in a
world filled with objects of different shapes, textures, and consistencies. The
beings would come into existence, evolve, have complex interactions and adventures
with each other, and then cease to exist. There would be groups of creatures of
various orders, each existing in two forms—male and female—that would complement
each other and participate in reproduction.

This reality would be bound by distinct space and time coordinates. Time would show
a mandatory flow from the past through the present to the future and later events
would appear to be caused by the preceding ones. There would be vast historical
periods, each different from the others. One would have to travel to get from one
place to another and there would be many different ways to do it. A variety of
rigid limitations, rules, and laws would govern all the events in this world, as it
is with all the games. Entering this reality and assuming different roles in it
would provide exquisite entertainment of a very unique type.

The three spiritual beings were intrigued, but incredulous, and expressed serious
doubts about the suggested project. As exciting as it sounded, it seemed unlikely
that it could be implemented. How could an unlimited spiritual being existing in
the world of all possibilities be made to believe that it is confined to a solid
body of a strange shape, with a head, trunk, and extremities, and that it
critically depends on the ingestion of other dead creatures and the presence of a
gas called oxygen? How could it be convinced that it has a limited intellectual
capacity and that its ability to perceive is constrained by the range of something
like the sensory organs. It seemed too fantastic to be seriously considered! In
what follows, Gail describes how the demiurgic beings resolved the problem.
A heated intellectual exchange ensued. The originator of this plan responded to all
our objections, insisting that the project was perfectly feasible. He/she was
convinced that sufficient complexity and intriguing nature of the script,
consistent association of specific situations with compelling experiences, and
careful covering of all the loopholes was all that was necessary. It would trap the
participant into an intricate net of illusions and trick him/her into believing in
the reality of the game. We were getting increasingly fascinated by all the
possibilities and finally became convinced that this unusual project was viable. We
agreed to enter the game of incarnation excited by the promise of extraordinary
adventures in consciousness.

This experience has somehow resolved whatever concerns I have ever had regarding
the matter of karma. It left me with a firm conviction that I am in essence a
spiritual being and that the only way I could have possibly gotten involved in the
cosmic drama was through a free decision. The choice to incarnate involves
voluntary acceptance of a large number of limitations, rules, and laws, as it
always does when we decide to play a game. From this perspective, it does not make
sense to blame anybody for anything that happens in our life. The fact that, on a
higher level, we have a free choice whether or not we enter the cosmic game creates
a metaframework that redefines everything that occurs within it.

Vicissitudes and Pitfalls of the Return Journey

There exists another important reason why it is so difficult to free ourselves from
the illusion that we are separate individuals living in a material world. The ways
to reunion with the divine source are fraught with many hardships, risks, and
challenges. The divine play is not a completely closed system; it offers the
protagonists the possibility to discover the true nature of creation, including
their own cosmic status. However, the ways leading out of self-deception to
enlightenment and to reunion with the source present serious problems and most of
the potential loopholes in creation are carefully hidden. This is absolutely
necessary for the maintenance of stability and balance in the cosmic scheme. These
vicissitudes and pitfalls of the spiritual path represent an important part of the
“taboo against knowing who we are.”

All the situations that provide opportunities for spiritual opening are typically
associated with a variety of strong opposing forces. Some of the obstacles that
make the way to liberation and enlightenment extremely difficult and dangerous are
intrapsychic in nature. Here belong terrifying experiences that can deter less
courageous and determined seekers, such as encounters with dark archetypal forces,
fear of death, and the specter of insanity. Even more problematic are various
interferences and interventions that come from the external world. In the Middle
Ages, many people who had spontaneous mystical experiences were risking torture,
trial, and execution by the Holy Inquisition. In our time, stigmatizing psychiatric
labels and drastic therapeutic measures replaced accusations of witchcraft,
tortures, and autosda-fé. Materialistic scientism of the twentieth century has
ridiculed and pathologized any spiritual effort, no matter how well founded and
sophisticated.

The authority that science enjoys in modern society makes it difficult to take
spirituality seriously and pursue the path of spiritual discovery. In addition, the
dogmas and activities of mainstream religions tend to obscure the fact that the
only place where true spirituality can be found is inside the psyche of each of us.
At its worst, organized religion can actually function as a grave impediment for
any serious spiritual search, rather than an institution that can help us connect
with the Divine.

The technologies of the sacred developed by various aboriginal cultures have in the
West been dismissed as products of magical thinking and primitive superstitions of
the savages. The spiritual potential of sexuality that finds its expression in
Tantra is by far outweighed by the pitfalls of sex as a powerful animal instinct.
The advent of psychedelics that have the capacity to open wide the gates to the
transcendental dimension was soon followed by irresponsible secular misuse of these
compounds and the threats of insanity, chromosomal damage, and legal sanctions.

Failed Experiment in Astral Projection

We are so deeply imbedded in our belief in an objectively existing and predictable

material world that a sudden collapse of our familiar reality and violation of the
“taboo against knowing who we are” can be associated with indescribable
metaphysical terror. I will illustrate this point by completing the story about my
“astral projection” from Baltimore to Prague that I introduced earlier (p. 89–91).
I interrupted my account at the point where I felt trapped in a space-time loop,
not knowing in which of these two cities I actually was. Here is the rest of this
extraordinary adventure in consciousness:

I felt that I needed a much more convincing proof of whether or not what I was
experiencing was “objectively real” in the usual sense. I finally decided to
perform a test—to take a picture from the wall and later check in the
correspondence with my parents if something unusual had happened at that time in
their apartment. I reached for the picture, but before I was able to touch the
frame, I was overcome by an increasingly alarming feeling that it was an extremely
risky and dangerous undertaking. I suddenly felt under the attack of evil forces
and perilous black magic. It seemed to me that what I was about to do was a
hazardous gamble, in which the price was my soul.
I paused and made a desperate effort to understand what was happening. Images from
the world’s famous casinos were flashing in front of my eyes—Monte Carlo, Lido in
Venice, Las Vegas, Reno—I saw roulette balls spiraling at intoxicating speeds, the
levers of the slot machines moving up and down, and dice rolling on the green
surface of the tables during a game of craps. There were circles of players passing
around cards, groups of gamblers involved in baccarat, and crowds watching the
flickering lights of the keno panels. This was followed by scenes of secret
meetings of statesmen, politicians, army officials, and topnotch scientists.

I finally got the message and realized that I had not yet overcome my egocentrism
and was not able to resist the temptation of power. The possibility of transcending
the limitations of time and space appeared to me to be intoxicating and dangerously
seductive. If I could exert control over time and space, an unlimited supply of
money appeared to be guaranteed, together with everything that money can buy. All I
would have to do under those circumstances was to go to the nearest casino, stock
market, or lottery office. No secrets would exist for me if I could have mastery
over time and space. I would be able to eavesdrop on summit meetings of political
leaders and have access to top-secret discoveries. This would open undreamed-of
possibilities for directing the course of events in the world.

I understood the dangers involved in my experiment. I remembered passages from

different spiritual books warning against toying with supernatural powers before we
overcome the limitations of our egos and reach spiritual maturity. There was
something that appeared even more relevant. I found out that I was extremely
ambivalent in regard to the outcome of my test. On the one hand, it seemed
extremely enticing to be able to liberate myself from the slavery of time and
space. On the other hand, it was obvious that a positive outcome of this test would
have far-reaching and serious consequences. It clearly could not be seen as an
isolated experiment revealing the arbitrary nature of space and time.

If I could get confirmation that it was possible to manipulate the physical

environment at a distance of several thousand miles, my whole universe would
collapse as a result of this one experiment, and I would find myself in a state of
utter metaphysical confusion. The world as I had known it would not exist any more.
I would lose all the maps I relied on and felt comfortable with. I would not know
who, where, and when I was and would be lost in a totally new, frightening
universe, the laws of which would be alien and unfamiliar to me. If I had these
powers, there would likely be many others who would have them too. I would have no
privacy anywhere and doors and walls would not protect me anymore. My new world
would be full of potential dangers of unforeseeable kind and unimaginable
proportions.
I could not bring myself to carry out the experiment and decided to leave the
problem of the objectivity and reality of the experience unresolved. This made it
possible for me to toy with the idea that I had been able to transcend time and
space. At the same time, it left open the possibility to see the entire episode as
a peculiar deception caused by a powerful psychedelic substance. The idea that the
destruction of reality as I knew it was objectively verified beyond any reasonable
doubt was simply too frightening.

The moment I gave up the experiment, I found myself back in the room in Baltimore
where I took the substance and within a couple of hours my experience stabilized
and congealed into the familiar “objective reality.” I never forgave myself for
having wasted such a unique and fantastic experiment. However, the memory of the
metaphysical terror involved in this test makes me doubt that I would be more
courageous if I were given a similar chance in the future.

The Secrets of False Identity

We can now sum up the insights from holotropic states concerning the “taboo against
knowing who we are.” On all the levels of creation, with the exception of the
Absolute, the participation in the cosmic game requires that the units of
consciousness forget their true identity, assume a separate individuality, and
perceive and treat other protagonists as fundamentally different from themselves.
The creative process generates many domains with different characteristics and each
of them offers unique opportunities for exquisite adventures in consciousness. The
experience of the world of gross matter and the identification with a biological
organism existing in this world is just an extreme form of this universal process.

The mastery with which the creative principle is able to portray the different
realms of existence seems to make the experiences of the roles involved so
believable and convincing that it is extremely difficult to detect their illusory
nature. In addition, the possibilities of overcoming the illusion of separation and
experiencing reunion are associated with extreme difficulties and complex
ambiguities. In essence, we do not have a fixed identity and can experience
ourselves as anything on the continuum between the embodied self and Absolute
Consciousness. The extent and degree of free choice, that we have as protagonists
on the different levels of the cosmic game, decreases as consciousness descends
from the Absolute to the plane of material existence and increases in the course of
the spiritual return journey. Since by our true nature we are unlimited spiritual
beings, we enter the cosmic game on the basis of a free decision and get trapped by
the perfection with which it is executed.

10
Playing the Cosmic Game

Two birds beautiful of wing, friends and comrades, cling to a common tree, and one
eats the sweet fruit, the other regards him and eats not.

—Rig Veda

How little do we know that which we are!

How less what we may be!

—George Gordon Lord Byron

The Three Poisons of Tibetan Buddhism

We have now explored in some detail the large and encompassing vision of creation
and the exalted image of human nature that have emerged from the work with
holotropic states. As we are nearing the end of our story, it seems appropriate to
examine the practical implications of this information for our everyday life. How
does systematic self-exploration using holotropic states influence our emotional
and physical well-being, our personality, worldview, and system of values? Can the
new discoveries give us any specific guidelines that would help us to derive
maximum benefit from what we have learned? Can we use the new knowledge in a way
that would make our life more fulfilling and rewarding?

Spiritual teachers of all ages seem to agree that pursuit of material goals, in and
of itself, cannot bring us fulfillment, happiness, and inner peace. The rapidly
escalating global crisis, moral deterioration, and growing discontent accompanying
the increase of material affluence in the industrial societies bear witness to this
ancient truth. There seems to be general agreement in the mystical literature that
the remedy for the existential malaise that besets humanity is to turn inside, look
for the answers in our own psyche, and undergo a deep psychospiritual
transformation.

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 adequately 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.” It is the capacity to conduct our life in such a
way that it reflects deep philosophical and metaphysical understanding of reality
and of ourselves. This, of course, raises questions about the nature of the
psychospiritual transformation that is necessary to achieve this form of
intelligence, the direction of the changes that we have to undergo, and the means
that can facilitate such development.

A very clear and specific answer to this question can be found in different schools
of Mahayana Buddhism. We can use here as the basis for our discussion the famous
Tibetan screen-painting (thangka) portraying the cycle of life, death, and
reincarnation. It depicts the Wheel of Life held in the grip of the horrifying Lord
of Death. The wheel is divided into six segments representing the different lokas,
or realms into which we can be born. The celestial domain of gods is shown as being
challenged from the adjacent segment by the jealous warrior gods, or asuras. The
region of hungry ghosts is inhabited by pretas, pitiful creatures representing
insatiable greed. They have giant bellies, enormous appetites, and the mouths the
size of a pinhole. The remaining sections of the wheel depict the world of human
beings, the realm of wild beasts, and hell. Inside the wheel are two concentric
circles. The outer one shows the ascending and descending paths along which souls
travel. The innermost circle contains three animals—a pig, a snake, and a rooster.

Figure 5.

The Tibetan Wheel of Life, held in the grip of the Lord of Death. In the middle are
three animals symbolizing the forces perpetuating the cycles of death and rebirth:
cock (lust), snake (aggression), and pig (ignorance). On their right side is the
dark path with descending victims of bad karma and on the left side the light
ascending path of the good karma. The six large segments of the wheel represent the
realms of existence into which one can be born: realm of the gods, realm of the
warrior deities, realm of the hungry ghosts, hell, the animal realm, and the realm
of the human beings. The pictures on the rim of the wheel represent the chain of
causation leading to rebirth.

Copyright © The British Museum. Reprinted with permission of the photographic

service of the museum.

The animals in the center of the wheel represent the “three poisons” or forces
that, according to Buddhist teachings, perpetuate the cycles of birth and death and
are responsible for all the suffering in our life. The pig symbolizes the ignorance
concerning the nature of reality and our own nature, the snake stands for anger and
aggression, and the rooster depicts desire and lust leading to attachment. The
quality of our life and our ability to cope with the challenges of existence depend
critically on the degree to which we are able to eliminate or transform these
forces that run the world of sentient beings. Let us now look from this perspective
at the process of systematic self-exploration involving holotropic states of
consciousness.
Practical Knowledge and Transcendental Wisdom

The most obvious benefit that we can obtain from deep experiential work is access
to extraordinary knowledge about ourselves, other people, nature, and the cosmos.
In holotropic states, we can reach deep understanding of the unconscious dynamics
of our psyche. We can discover how our perception of ourselves and of the world is
influenced by forgotten or repressed memories from childhood, infancy, birth, and
prenatal existence. In addition, in transpersonal experiences we can identify with
other people, various animals, plants, and elements of the inorganic world.
Experiences of this kind represent an extremely rich source of unique insights
about the world we live in.

In this process, we can gain considerable amount of knowledge that can be useful in
our everyday life. However, the ignorance symbolized in the Tibetan thangkas by the
pig is not the absence or lack of knowledge in the ordinary sense. It does not mean
simply inadequate information about various aspects of the material world. The form
of ignorance that is meant here (avidya) is a fundamental misunderstanding and
confusion concerning the nature of reality and our own nature. The only remedy for
this kind of ignorance is transcendental wisdom (prajñaparamita). From this point
of view, it is very important that the inner work involving holotropic states
offers more than just increase of our knowledge about the universe. It is also a
unique way of gaining insights about issues of transcendental relevance, as we have
seen throughout this book.

Biographical, Perinatal, and Transpersonal Roots of Aggression

Let us now look from the same perspective at the second “poison,” the human
propensity to aggression. The nature and scope of human aggression cannot be
explained simply by references to our animal origin. Seeing humans as “naked apes”
whose aggression is the result of some factors that we share with animals, such as
base instincts, genetic strategies of “selfish genes,” or signals from the
“reptilian brain,” does not take into account the nature and degree of human
violence. Animals exhibit aggression when they are hungry, defend their territory,
or compete for sex. The violence exhibited by humans, which Erich Fromm called
“malignant aggression” (Fromm 1973), has no parallels in the animal kingdom.

Mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists attribute the specifically human

aggression to a history of frustrations, abuse, and lack of love in infancy and
childhood. However, explanations of this kind fall painfully short of accounting
for extreme forms of individual violence, such as serial murders of the Boston
Strangler or Geoffrey Dahmer type, and particularly for mass societal phenomena
like Nazism and Communism. Difficulties in the early histories of individuals are
of little help in understanding psychological motives for bloody wars, revolutions,
genocide, and concentration camps, phenomena that involve large numbers of people.
Self-exploration using holotropic states throws an entirely new light on the
problem of these forms of human violence. Probing the depth of our psyche, we
discover that the roots of this problematic and dangerous aspect of human nature
are much deeper and more formidable than academic psychologists have ever imagined.

There is no doubt that traumas and frustrations in childhood and infancy represent
important sources of aggression. However, this connection barely scratches the
surface of the problem. Deep systematic inner work sooner or later reveals
additional significant roots of human violence in the trauma of biological birth.
The vital emergency, pain, and suffocation experienced for many hours during our
delivery generate enormous amounts of anxiety and murderous aggression that remain
stored in our psyche and body. This repository of fundamental mistrust and
hostility toward the world constitutes a significant aspect of the dark side of
human personality that C. G. Jung called the Shadow.

As we saw earlier, the reliving of birth in holotropic states is typically

accompanied by images of inconceivable violence, both individual and collective.
This includes experiences of mutilation, murder, and rape, as well as scenes of
bloody wars, revolutions, racial riots, and concentration camps. Lloyd deMause
(1975), a pioneer in the field of psychohistory, a discipline that applies the
methods of depth psychology to sociopolitical events, studied speeches of political
and military leaders, as well as posters and caricatures from the time of wars and
revolutions. He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech,
metaphors, and images related to biological birth that he found in this material.

Military leaders and politicians of all ages, referring to a critical situation or

declaring war, typically use terms that describe various aspects of perinatal
distress. They accuse the enemy of choking and strangling us, squeezing the last
breath out of our lungs, or confining us, and not giving us enough space to live
(Hitler’s Lebensraum). Equally frequent are allusions to quicksand, dark caves,
tunnels, and confusing labyrinths, dangerous abysses into which we might be pushed,
and the threat of engulfment or drowning.

Similarly, the leaders’ promises of victory tend to come in the form of perinatal
images. They pledge that they will rescue us from the darkness of a treacherous
labyrinth and guide us to the light on the other side of the tunnel. They vow that
after the oppressor is overcome, everybody will again breathe freely. I have shown
in another context the deep similarity between the paintings and drawings depicting
perinatal experiences and the symbolism of posters and caricatures from the time of
wars and revolutions (Grof 1996).

However, even explanations recognizing perinatal sources of aggression do not

adequately account for the nature, scope, and depth of human violence. Its deepest
roots reach far beyond the boundaries of the individual, into the transpersonal
domain. In holotropic states, they take the form of wrathful deities, devils, and
demons and of complex mythological themes, such as the Apocalypse or Ragnarok, the
Twilight of the Gods. I have given earlier in this book several examples of these
dark archetypal forces operating in the depth of our psyche. Additional potential
repositories of aggression on the transpersonal level are past life memories and
phylogenetic matrices reflecting our animal past.

As we have seen, the study of holotropic states discloses a very shattering and
discouraging image of human nature and of the scope and depth of aggression that
our flesh is heir to. However, while it reveals the enormity of the problem, it
also offers entirely new perspectives and hopes. It shows that there are unusually
powerful and effective ways of dealing with human violence. In deep experiential
work that reaches the perinatal and transpersonal levels, enormous amounts of
aggression can be safely expressed, worked through, and transformed in a relatively
short time. This work also throws new light on the nature of aggression and its
relation to the human psyche. According to these insights, aggression is not
something that reflects our true nature, but rather a screen that separates us from
it.

When we succeed in penetrating this dark veil of elemental instinctual forces, we

discover that the innermost core of our being is divine rather than bestial. This
revelation is in full agreement with the famous passage from the Indian Upanishads
that I have quoted earlier. The message of these ancient scriptures is very clear:
“Tat tvam asi” (Thou art That)—“in your deepest nature you are identical with the
Divine.” In my experience, responsible work with holotropic states can bring very
encouraging practical results. Deep inner self-exploration leads regularly to a
major reduction of aggression and of self-destructive tendencies, as well as an
increase of tolerance and compassion. It also tends to foster reverence for life,
empathy for other species, and ecological sensitivity.

Psychospiritual Sources of Insatiable Greed

This brings us to the third “poison” of Tibetan Buddhism, a powerful force that
combines the qualities of lust, desire, and insatiable greed. Together with
“malignant aggression,” these qualities are certainly responsible for some of the
darkest chapters in human history. Western psychologists link various aspects of
this force to the libidinal drives described by Sigmund Freud. From this
perspective, insatiable greed would be explained in terms of unresolved oral issues
from the time of nursing. Similarly, excessive preoccupation with money would be
associated with repressed anal impulses and sexual extremes would reflect a phallic
fixation. The craving for power was most thoroughly described in the psychology of
Freud’s renegade disciple Alfred Adler, who saw it as a compensation for feelings
of inferiority and inadequacy.

The insights from holotropic states considerably enrich this picture. They reveal
additional deep sources of this aspect of human nature on the perinatal and
transpersonal levels of the psyche. When our process of experiential self-
exploration reaches the perinatal level, we typically discover that our existence
up to that point has been largely inauthentic. We realize, to our surprise and
astonishment, that our entire life strategy has been misdirected. It becomes clear
to us that much of what we have been striving for has been strongly dictated by the
unconscious emotions and driving energies that were imprinted in our psyche and
body at the time of our birth.

The memory of the frightening and highly uncomfortable situation to which we were
exposed at the time of our delivery stays alive in our system. It exerts a very
powerful influence on us throughout our life, unless it is brought fully into
consciousness and worked through in systematic experiential self-exploration. Much
of what we do in life and how we do it can be understood in terms of belated
efforts to cope with this incomplete gestalt of birth and the fear of death
associated with it.

When this traumatic memory is close to the surface of our psyche, it causes
feelings of dissatisfaction with our present situation. In and of itself, this
discomfort is unspecific and amorphous, but it can be projected on a large spectrum
of issues. We can attribute it to our unsatisfactory physical appearance or
inadequate resources and lack of material possessions. It might seem to us that the
reason for our dissatisfaction is our low social status and lack of influence in
the world. We can feel that the source of our discontent is insufficient power and
fame, inadequate knowledge or skills, and any number of other things.

Whatever might be the reality of the present circumstances, the situation never
seems satisfactory and the solution always appears to lie in the future. Like the
fetus stuck and struggling in the birth canal, we feel a strong need to get to a
situation that is better than the present one. As a result of this compelling drive
toward some future accomplishment, we never live fully in the present and our life
feels like a preparation for something better to come.

Our fantasy reacts to this feeling of existential discomfort by creating an image

of a future situation that would bring satisfaction and would correct the perceived
deficiencies and shortcomings. The existentialists talk about this mechanism as
“auto-projecting” into the future. Consistent application of this strategy results
in a life pattern that people refer to as “treadmill” or “rat-race” type of
existence—pursuing fantasized mirages of future happiness, while not being able to
fully enjoy what is available in the present. This misguided, inauthentic, and
unrewarding approach to existence can be practiced throughout the entire lifetime
until death brings the “moment of truth” and mercilessly reveals its emptiness and
futility.

Auto-projecting into the future as a means of correcting existential

dissatisfaction is a “loser strategy” whether or not we achieve the desired goals.
It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding and misperception of our needs. For
this reason, it can never bring us the fulfillment we expect from it. When we are
not able to reach the goals we envision, we attribute our continuing
dissatisfaction to our failure to reach the alleged corrective measures. When we
succeed in attaining these goals, this typically does not bring what we hoped for
and our feelings of discomfort are not relieved. In addition, we are not able to
correctly diagnose why we continue feeling dissatisfied. We do not realize that we
are pursuing a fundamentally wrong strategy of existence, one that cannot bring us
fulfillment no matter what its results are. We usually attribute the failure to the
fact that the goal was not sufficiently ambitious or that the specific choice of
the goal was wrong.

This pattern often leads to a reckless irrational pursuit of various grandiose

goals that is responsible for many problems in our world and results in much human
suffering. This strategy lacks any connection to the realities of life and can thus
be acted out on many different levels. Since it never brings true fulfillment, it
does not make much difference whether the protagonist is a pauper or a billionaire
in the category of Aristotle Onassis or Howard Hughes. Once our basic survival
needs are satisfied, the quality of our life experience has much more to do with
our state of consciousness than with external circumstances.

Misguided efforts to achieve satisfaction by pursuit of external goals can actually

bring paradoxical results. I have worked with people who after decades of hard work
and struggle finally reached the goal, about which they had dreamed their entire
life, and the next day became severely depressed. Joseph Campbell described this
situation as “getting to the top of the ladder and finding out that it stands
against the wrong wall.” This frustrating pattern can be considerably weakened by
bringing fully into consciousness the memory of birth, confronting the fear of
death connected with it, and experiencing psychospiritual rebirth. By connecting
experientially to the memory of the prenatal or postnatal situation rather than the
imprint of the birth struggle, we significantly reduce the unrelenting
preoccupation with future achievements and are able to draw much more satisfaction
from the present.

However, the roots of our dissatisfaction and existential malaise reach even deeper
than the perinatal level. In the last analysis, the insatiable craving that drives
human life is transcendental in nature. In the words of Dante Alighieri (1989), the
great Italian poet of the early Renaissance, “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.” In the
most general sense, the deepest transpersonal roots of insatiable greed can best be
understood in terms of Ken Wilber’s concept of the Atman Project (Wilber 1980).

Wilber explored and described the specific consequences of the basic tenet of
perennial philosophy, which asserts that our true nature is divine. This essence of
our existence has been called by different names—God, the Cosmic Christ, Keter,
Allah, Buddha, Brahman, the Tao, and many others. Although the process of creation
separates and alienates us from our cosmic source, our divine identity, the
awareness of this connection is never completely lost. The deepest motivating force
in the human psyche on all the levels of our development is the craving to return
to the experience of our divinity. However, the constraining conditions of the
incarnate existence do not allow the experience of full spiritual liberation in and
as God.
We can use here as an illustration a story about Alexander the Great, a person
whose unique secular accomplishments would be difficult to match. He came as far in
achieving a divine status in the material world as any human being can possibly
hope for. This was actually expressed in one of the attributes that was commonly
associated with his name—Divine Alexander. The story goes as follows:

After an unparalleled series of military victories through which he had aquired

vast territories lying between his native Macedonia and India, Alexander finally
reached India. There he heard about a yogi who had unusual powers, or siddhis,
among others the ability to see the future. Alexander decided to pay him a visit.
When he arrived to the yogi’s cave, the sage was immersed in his regular spiritual
practice. Alexander inpatiently interrupted his meditation, asking him if he indeed
had the power to see the future. The yogi nodded in silence and returned to his
meditation. Alexander interrupted him again with another urgent question: “Can you
tell me if my conquest of India will be successful?” The yogi meditated for a while
and then slowly opened his eyes. He gave Alexander a long gentle look and said
compassionately: “What you will ultimately need is about six feet of ground.”

It would be difficult to find a more poignant example for our human dilemma—our
desperate effort to seek realization of our divinity through material means. The
only way we can attain our full potential as divine beings is through an inner
experience. This requires death and transcendence of our separate selves, dying to
our identity as a “skin-encapsulated ego.” Because of our fear of annihilation and
because of our grasping onto the ego, we have to settle for Atman substitutes or
surrogates. These change as we go through life and are always specific for a
particular stage.

For a fetus and the newborn, the Atman substitute is the bliss experienced in a
good womb and on a good breast. For an infant it is satisfaction of basic
physiological drives and of the need for security. By the time we attain the adult
age, the Atman project reaches enormous complexity. The Atman surrogates now cover
a wide spectrum and include, besides food and sex, also money, fame, power,
appearance, knowledge, and many other things. At the same time, we all have a deep
sense that our true identity is the totality of cosmic creation and the creative
principle itself. For this reason, substitutes of any degree and scope will always
remain unsatisfactory. The ultimate solution for the insatiable greed is in the
inner world, not in secular pursuits of any kind and scope. Only the experience of
one’s divinity in a non-ordinary state of consciousness can ever fulfill our
deepest needs.

The Persian mystical 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). Thomas Traherne, the seventeenth-century English poet and clergyman, who was
an ardent exponent of the way of life he called “felicity,” reached the same
realization when he had a profound mystical experience. Here is an excerpt from his
account describing this event:
The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine. The skies were
mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine, and I the
only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor
divisions; but all proprieties and divisions were mine; all treasures and the
possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the
dirty devices of this world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little
child again that I may enter into the kingdom of God.

Walking the Mystical Path with Practical Feet

If we accept that the material universe as we know it is not a mechanical system

but a virtual reality created by Absolute Consciousness through an infinitely
complex orchestration of experiences, what are the practical consequences of this
insight? And what influence does the awareness that our being is commensurate with
that of the cosmic creative principle have on our system of values and on the way
we conduct our life? These are questions of great theoretical and practical
relevance, not only for each of us as individuals, but for all humanity, and for
the future of life on this planet. In trying to answer them, we will again look at
the insights of people who have experienced holotropic states of consciousness.

For many religions, the recipe for dealing with the hardships of life is to play
down the importance of the earthly plane and to focus on the transcendental realms.
Some of these creeds recommend a shift in attention and emphasis from the material
world to other realities. They suggest prayer and devotion as a way of
communicating with various higher realms and superior beings. Others offer and
underscore direct experiential access to transcendental realms by means of
meditation and other forms of personal spiritual practice. The religious systems
with this orientation portray the material world as an inferior domain that is
imperfect, impure, and conducive to suffering and misery. From their point of view,
reality appears to be a valley of tears and incarnate existence a curse or a
quagmire of death and rebirth.

These creeds and their officials offer their dedicated followers the promise of a
more desirable domain or a more fulfilling state of consciousness in the Beyond. In
more primitive forms of popular beliefs, these are various forms of abodes of the
blessed, paradises, or heavens. These become available after death for those who
meet the necessary requirements defined by their respective theology. For more
sophisticated and refined systems of this kind, heavens and paradises are only
stages of the spiritual journey and its final destination is dissolution of
personal boundaries and union with the divine, or extinguishing the fire of life
and disappearance into the nothingness (nirvana).
According to the Jain religion, we are in our deepest nature pristine monads of
consciousness (jivas) and are contaminated by our entanglement in the world of
biology. The goal of the Jain practice is to drastically reduce our participation
in the world of matter, free ourselves from its polluting influence, and regain our
pristine status. Another example is the original form of Buddhism called Theravada
or Hinayana (the Small Vehicle). This school of Buddhism is an austere monastic
tradition that offers the teaching and spiritual discipline necessary for achieving
personal enlightenment and liberation. Its ideal is the arhat, the saint or sage at
the highest stage of development, living as a hermit in seclusion from the world.
Similar emphasis on personal liberation (moksa) can also be found in the Hindu
Vedanta.

However, other spiritual orientations embrace nature and the material world as
containing or embodying the Divine. Thus the Tantric branches of Jainism, Hinduism,
and Buddhism have a distinctly life-affirming and life-celebrating orientation.
Similarly, the Buddhist Mahayana (the Great Vehicle) teaches that we can reach
liberation in the middle of everyday life if we free ourselves from the three
“poisons”—ignorance, aggression, and desire. When we succeed, samsara, or the world
of illusion, birth, and death, becomes nirvana. Various Mahayana schools emphasize
the crucial role of compassion as an important expression of spiritual realization.
Their ideal is the Bodhisattva, who is interested not only in his own
enlightenment, but also in the liberation of all other sentient beings.

Let us take a look at this dilemma using the insights from holotropic states. What
can we gain from moving away from life and escaping from the material plane into
transcendental realities? And, conversely, what is the value of embracing
wholeheartedly the world of everyday reality? Many spiritual systems define the
goal of the spiritual journey as dissolution of personal boundaries and reunion
with the Divine. However, those people who have actually experienced in their inner
explorations identification with Absolute Consciousness, realize that defining the
final goal of the spiritual journey as the experience of oneness with the supreme
principle of existence involves a serious problem.

They become aware of the fact that the undifferentiated Absolute Consciousness/Void
represents not only the end of the spiritual journey, but also the source and the
beginning of creation. The Divine is the principle offering reunion for the
separated, but also the agent responsible for the division and separation of the
original unity. If this principle were complete and self-fulfilling in itself,
there would not be any reason for it to create and the other experiential realms
would not exist. Since they do, the tendency of Absolute Consciousness to create
clearly expresses a fundamental “need.” The worlds of plurality thus represent an
important complement to the undifferentiated state of the Divine. In the
terminology of the Cabala, “people need God and God needs people.”

The overall scheme of the cosmic drama involves a dynamic interplay of two
fundamental forces, one of which is centrifugal (hylotropic or matter-oriented) and
the other centripetal (holotropic or aiming for wholeness) in relation to the
creative principle. The undifferentiated Cosmic Consciousness shows an elemental
tendency to create worlds of plurality that contain countless separate beings. We
have discussed earlier some of the possible “reasons” or “motives” for this
propensity to generate virtual realities. And conversely, the individualized units
of consciousness experience their separation and alienation as painful and manifest
a strong need to return to the source and reunite with it. Identification with the
embodied self is fraught, among others, with the problems of emotional and physical
suffering, spatial and temporal limitations, impermanence, and death.

We can experience this dynamic conflict in its full form when our self-exploration
in holotropic states takes us to the brink of the ego death. At this point, we
oscillate and are torn between these two powerful forces. One part of us, the
holotropic one, wishes to transcend the identification with the body-ego and
experience dissolution and union with a larger whole. The other part, the
hylotropic one, is driven by the fear of death and by the self-preservation
instinct to hold onto our separate identity. This conflict is extremely difficult
and can represent a serious obstacle in the process of psychospiritual
transformation. It ultimately requires that we surrender and sacrifice our familiar
identity without knowing what will replace it on the other side, if anything at
all.

Even if our present way of being in the world is not particularly comfortable, we
might anxiously hold onto it when the alternative is unknown. Yet we sense deep
within ourselves that our existence as a separate embodied self in the material
world is, in and of itself, inauthentic and cannot satisfy our innermost needs. We
feel a strong pull to transcend our boundaries and reclaim our true identity. It
helps to know intellectually, before we get involved in systematic inner work, that
experiencing the ego death is a symbolic experience and does not entail real death
and annihilation. However, the fear of dying and surrendering the ego is so
overwhelming and convincing that, when we are experiencing it, it is difficult to
trust this knowledge and find it comforting.

If it is true that our psyche is governed by these two powerful cosmic forces, the
hylotropic and the holotropic, and that these two are in a fundamental conflict
with each other, is there an approach to existence that can adequately cope with
this situation? Since neither separate existence nor undifferentiated unity is
fully satisfactory, what is the alternative? Is it at all possible under these
circumstances to find a solution, a life strategy that would address this paradox?
Can we find an eye in the hurricane of these conflicting cosmic tendencies where we
can rest in peace? Can we find satisfaction in a universe whose fabric is woven by
forces that oppose each other?

Clearly, the solution is not to reject embodied existence as inferior and worthless
and try to escape from it. We have seen that experiential worlds, including the
world of matter, represent not only an important and valuable, but absolutely
necessary, complement to the undifferentiated state of the creative principle. At
the same time, our efforts to reach fulfillment and peace of mind will necessarily
fail, and possibly backfire, if they involve only objects and goals in the material
realm. Any satisfactory solution will thus have to embrace both the earthly and the
transcendental dimensions, both the world of forms and the Formless.

The material universe as we know it offers countless possibilities for

extraordinary adventures in consciousness. As embodied selves, we can witness the
spectacle of the heavens with its billions of galaxies, breathtaking sunrises and
sunsets, waxing and waning of the moon, or the wonder of the lunar and solar
eclipses. We can watch fantastic displays of clouds, the gentle beauty of the
rainbows, and the shimmering luster of the aurora borealis. On the surface of the
earth, nature has created an endless variety of landscapes, from great oceans,
rivers and lakes to giant mountain ranges, silent deserts, and the cold beauty of
the Arctic. Together with the astonishing variety of life forms in the animal and
botanical kingdoms, these provide endless opportunities for unique experiences.

Only in the physical form and on the material plane can we fall in love, enjoy the
ecstasy of sex, have children, listen to Beethoven’s music, or admire Rembrandt’s
paintings. Where else than on earth can we listen to the song of a nightingale or
taste baked Alaska? We could add to our list the joys of sports, traveling, playing
musical instruments, painting, and countless others. The material world offers
infinite possibilities for research of the organic and inorganic realms, of the
surface of the earth, of the depth of the ocean, and of the far reaches of the
cosmic space. The opportunities for the explorations of the micro- and the
macroworld are virtually unlimited. In addition to the experiences of the present,
there is also the adventure of probing the mysterious past, from the ancient
civilizations and the antidiluvian world to the events during the first
microseconds of the Big Bang.

Benefits from Self-Exploration and Spiritual Practice

To participate in the phenomenal world and to be able to experience this rich

spectrum of adventures requires a certain degree of identification with the
embodied self and acceptance of the world of matter. However, when our
identification with the body-ego is absolute and our belief in the material world
as the only reality unshatterable, it is impossible to fully enjoy our
participation in creation. The specters of personal insignificance, impermanence,
and death can completely overshadow the positive side of life and rob it of its
zest. We also have to add to it our frustration associated with repeated futile
attempts to realize our full divine potential within the constraints imposed on us
by the limitations of our bodies and of the material world.

To find the solution to this dilemma, we have to turn within. Repeated experiences
of holotropic states tend to loosen our belief that we are a “skin-encapsulated
ego.” We continue to identify with the body-ego for pragmatic purposes, but this
identification becomes more tentative and playful. If we have sufficient
experiential knowledge of the transpersonal aspects of existence, including our own
true identity and cosmic status, everyday life becomes much easier and more
rewarding. As our inner search continues, we also sooner or later discover the
essential emptiness behind all forms. As the Buddhist teachings suggest, knowledge
of the virtual nature of the phenomenal world and its voidness can help us achieve
freedom from suffering. This includes the recognition that belief in any separate
selves in our life, including our own, is ultimately an illusion. In Buddhist
texts, the awareness of the essential emptiness of all forms and the ensuing
realization that there are no separate selves is referred to as anatta, literally
“no-self.”

Jack Kornfield, a psychologist and Vipassana Buddhist teacher, describes his first
encounter with the concept of anatta during his meeting with the late Tibetan
spiritual teacher Kalu Rinpoche. Trying to get as much as possible from his
encounter with this remarkable human being, Jack asked him with the eagerness of a
zealous beginner: “Please, could you describe for me in a few sentences the very
essence of the Buddhist teachings?” Kalu Rinpoche replied: “I could do it, but you
would not believe me and it would take you many years to understand what I mean.”
Jack politely insisted: “Please, can you tell me anyway? I would like to know.”
Kalu Rinpoche’s answer was brief and succinct: “You do not really exist.”

Awareness of our divine nature and of the essential emptiness of all things that we
discover in our transpersonal experiences, form the foundations of a metaframework
that can help us considerably to cope with the complexity of everyday existence. We
can fully embrace the experience of the material world and enjoy all that it has to
offer—the beauty of nature, human relationships, love-making, family, works of art,
sports, culinary delights, and countless other things.

However, no matter what we do, life will bring obstacles, challenges, painful
experiences, and losses. When things get too difficult and devastating, we can call
on the large cosmic perspective that we have discovered in our inner quest. The
connection with higher realities and the liberating knowledge of anatta and the
emptiness behind all forms makes it possible to tolerate what otherwise might be
unbearable. With the help of this transcendental awareness we might be able to
experience fully the entire spectrum of life or “the whole catastrophy,” as Zorba
the Greek called it.

Systematic self-exploration using holotropic experiences can also help us to

enhance and refine our sensory perception of the world. This “cleansing of the
doors of perception” as Aldous Huxley called it, referring to William Blake’s poem,
makes it possible to fully appreciate and enjoy all the possibilities of the
adventures in consciousness associated with embodied existence. A general increase
in zest is most dramatic during mystical states and during the hours or days
immediately following them. Here it is often so intense that we can speak of an
“afterglow.” In a more mitigated form, this increase in zest and a generally
enhanced quality of life represent lasting aftereffects of such mystical
revelations.

A person whose experience of life is limited to the hylotropic mode of

consciousness and who has not had experiential access to the transcendental and
numinous dimensions of reality will find it very difficult to overcome deep-seated
fear of death and find deeper meaning in life. Under these circumstances, much of
the daily behavior is motivated by the needs of the false ego and significant
aspects of life are reactive and inauthentic. For this reason, it is essential to
complement everyday practical activities with some form of systematic spiritual
practice that provides experiential access to the transcendental realms.
In pre-industrial societies, the opportunity for transcendental experiences existed
in many different forms—from shamanic rituals, rites of passage, and healing
ceremonies to ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, mystical schools, and the
meditation practices of the great religions of the world. In recent decades, the
Western world has seen a significant revival of various ancient spiritual
practices. In addition, representatives of modern depth psychology have developed
effective new approaches facilitating spiritual opening. These tools are available
to all those who are interested in psychospiritual transformation and consciousness
evolution.

C. G. Jung, the forefather of transpersonal psychology, described in his writings a

life strategy that addresses both the secular and the cosmic dimensions of
ourselves and of existence. He suggested that we should complement our everyday
activities in the external world by systematic self-exploration, by an inner search
reaching into the deepest hidden recesses of our psyche. By directing our attention
inward, we can connect with the Self, a higher aspect of our being, and benefit
from its guidance. In this way, we can draw on the immense resources of the
collective unconscious that contain the wisdom of ages.

According to Jung, we should not orient ourselves in life only on the basis of the
external aspects of the situations we are facing. Our decision-making should be
based on a creative synthesis of our pragmatic knowledge of the material world and
the profound wisdom drawn from the collective unconscious during systematic inner
self-exploration. This suggestion of the great Swiss psychiatrist is in general
agreement with the conclusions that many people with whom I have worked over the
years have drawn from their holotropic explorations.

I have seen repeatedly that the pursuit of this strategy can lead to a more
fulfilling, enjoyable, and creative way of life. It makes it possible to be fully
in the world of everyday reality and yet be aware of the numinous dimensions of
existence and of our own divine nature. The ability to reconcile and integrate
these two aspects of life belongs to the loftiest aspirations of the mystical
traditions. Thus Sheik Al-’Alawi describes the Supreme Station, the highest stage
of spiritual development in the Sufi tradition, as the state of being inwardly
drunk with the Divine Essence and yet outwardly sober.

Individual Transformation and Planetary Future

The potential benefits of this approach to existence transcend the narrow interests
of the individuals who practice it. This strategy applied on a sufficiently large
scale could have important implications for human society and our future. In the
last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis
of unprecedented proportions. Modern science has developed effective measures that
could solve most of the urgent problems in today’s world—combat the majority of
diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and
replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy.

The problems that stand in the way are not of an economical or technological
nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality
and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species. Because of the
untamed forces in the human psyche, unimaginable resources are being wasted in the
absurdity of the arms race, power struggle, and pursuit of “unlimited growth.”
These elements of human nature also prevent a more appropriate distribution of
wealth among individuals and nations, as well as a reorientation from purely
economic and political concerns to ecological priorities that are critical for
survival of life on this planet.

Diplomatic negotiations, administrative and legal measures, economic and social

sanctions, military interventions, and other similar efforts have so far had very
little success. As a matter of fact, they have often produced more problems than
they solved. It is becoming increasingly clear, why they had to fail. It is
impossible to alleviate this crisis by application of the strategies rooted in the
same ideology that created it in the first place. In the last analysis, the current
global crisis is of a psychospiritual nature. It is therefore hard to imagine that
it could be resolved without a radical inner transformation of humanity and its
rise to a higher level of emotional maturity and spiritual awareness.

Considering the paramount role of violence and greed in human history, the
possibility of transforming modern humanity into a species of individuals capable
of peaceful coexistence with their fellow men and women regardless of race, color,
and religious or political conviction, let alone with other species, certainly does
not seem very plausible. We are facing the formidable challenge of instilling
humanity with profound ethical values, sensitivity to the needs of others,
voluntary simplicity, and a sharp awareness of ecological imperatives. At first
glance, this task might appear too unrealistic and utopian to offer any real hope.

However, the situation is not as hopeless as it might appear. As we saw earlier,

profound transformation of this kind is exactly what happens in the course of
systematic inner work using holotropic states, whether it is meditational practice,
powerful experiential forms of therapy, or responsible supervised work with
psychedelic substances. Similar changes can also be observed in people who
experience spontaneous psychospiritual crises and have the privilege of a good
support system and sensitive guidance.

A strategy of existence integrating deep inner work with inspired action in the
external world could thus become an important factor in resolving the global
crisis, if it were practiced on a sufficiently large scale. Inner transformation
and accelerated consciousness evolution could significantly improve our chances for
survival and for peaceful coexistence. I have collected and systematically
described the insights from the study of holotropic states hoping that those people
who will choose this path or are walking it already will find them useful and
helpful during their own journey.
A Recipe for Planetary Healing: Lessons from a Native American Ceremony

I would like to close this chapter by relating an experience of profound healing

and transformation that occurred many years ago in a group of people with whom I
shared a holotropic state of consciousness. Although it happened almost a quarter
of a century ago, I still feel very moved and tearful whenever I think and talk
about it. This event showed me the depth of the problems we are facing in our world
where for many centuries hatred has been passed from one generation to another.
However, it also gave me hope and trust in the possibility of lifting this curse
and dissolving the barriers that separate us from each other.

After I came to the United States in 1967, I participated in government-sponsored

research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center exploring the potential of
psychedelic therapy. One of our projects at the center was a training program for
mental health professionals. It made it possible to administer up to three high-
dose LSD sessions to psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers for
educational purposes. One of our subjects in this program was Kenneth Godfrey, a
psychiatrist from the Veterans Administration Hospital in Topeka, Kansas. I was the
guide in his three psychedelic sessions and we became very close friends.

When I was still in Czechoslovakia, I read about the Native American Church, a
syncretistic religion combining Indian and Christian elements and using as a
sacrament the Mexican psychedelic cactus peyote. I became very interested in having
a personal experience of a peyote ceremony that would make it possible for me to
compare therapeutic use of psychedelics with their ritual use. After my arrival in
the United States, I was looking for such an opportunity, but without success. It
turned out that both Ken and his wife were of Native American origin and had good
connections with their people. When we were parting after Ken’s third session, I
asked him if he could mediate for me participation in a peyote ceremony and he
promised to try. Several days later, he called me on the phone and told me that a
road chief, who was a good friend of his, had invited me and several other people
from our staff to join a peyote ceremony of the Patawatome Indians.

The following weekend five of us flew from Baltimore to Topeka, Kansas. The group
consisted of our music therapist Helen Bonny, her sister, psychedelic therapist Bob
Leihy, professor of religion Walter Houston Clark, and myself. We rented a car at
the Topeka airport and drove from there deep into the Kansas prairie. There, in the
middle of nowhere, stood several teepees, the site of the sacred ceremony. The sun
was setting and the ritual was about to begin. Before we could join the ceremony,
we had to be accepted by the other participants, all of whom were Native Americans.
We had to go through a process that resembled a dramatic encounter group.

With intense emotions, the native people brought up the painful history of the
invasion and conquest of North America by white intruders—the genocide of American
Indians and rapes of their women, the expropriation of their land, the senseless
slaughter of the buffalo, and many other atrocities. After a couple of hours of
dramatic exchange, the emotions quieted down and, one after the other, the Indians
accepted us into their ceremony. Finally, there was only one person who had
remained violently opposed to our presence—a tall, dark, and sullen man. His hatred
toward white people was enormous. It took a long time before he finally reluctantly
agreed that we could join the group. It happened only after much pressure from his
own people, who were unhappy about further delays of the ceremony.

Finally everything was settled, at least on the surface, and we all gathered in a
large teepee. The fire was started and the sacred ritual began. We ingested the
peyote buttons and passed the staff and the drum. According to the Native American
custom, whoever had the staff could sing a song or make a personal statement; there
was also the option to pass. The man who was so reluctant to accept us sat directly
across from me. It was clear that he did not really wholeheartedly participate in
the ceremony. Every time the staff and drum made the circle and came to him, he
very angrily passed them on. My perception of the environment was extremely
sensitized by the influence of peyote. This man became a sore point in my world and
I found looking at him increasingly painful. His hatred seemed to radiate from his
eyes and fill the entire teepee.

The morning came and, shortly before sunrise, we were passing the staff and the
drum for the last time. Everybody said a few words summing up his or her
experiences and impressions from the night. Walter Houston Clark’s speech was
exceptionally long and very emotional. He expressed his deep appreciation for the
generosity of our Native American friends, who had shared with us their beautiful
ceremony. Walter specifically stressed the fact that they accepted us in spite of
everything we had done to them—invaded and stolen their land, killed their people,
raped their women, and slaughtered the buffalo. At one point of his speech, he
referred to me—I do not remember exactly in what context—as “Stan, who is so far
from his homeland, his native Czechoslovakia.”

When Walter mentioned Czechoslovakia, the man who had resented our presence all
through the night suddenly became strangely disturbed. He got up, ran across the
teepee, and threw himself on the ground in front of me. He hid his head in my lap
and held my body in a firm embrace, crying and sobbing loudly. After about twenty
minutes, he quieted down, returned to his place, and was able to talk. He explained
that the evening before the ceremony he had seen us all as “pale faces” and thus
automatically enemies of Native Americans. After hearing Walter’s remark, he
realized that, being of Czechoslovakian origin, I had nothing to do with the
tragedy of his people. He thus hated me throughout the sacred ceremony without
justification.

The man seemed heart-broken and desolate. After his initial statement came a long
silence during which he was going through an intense inner struggle. It was clear
that there was more to come. Finally, he was able to share with us the rest of the
story.

During World War II, he had been drafted into the U.S. Air Force and, several days
before the end of the war, he personally participated in a rather capricious and
unnecessary American air-raid on the Czech city of Pilsen, known for its beer and
its automobile factory. Not only had his hatred toward me been unjustified, but our
roles were actually reversed; he was the perpetrator and I was the victim. He
invaded my country and killed my people. This was more than he could bear.

After I had reassured him that I did not harbor any hostile feelings toward him,
something remarkable happened. He went to my remaining four friends from Baltimore,
who were all Americans. He apologized for his behavior before and during the
ceremony, embraced them, and asked them for forgiveness. He said that this episode
had taught him that there would be no hope for the world if we all carried in us
hatred for the deeds commited by our ancestors. And he realized that it was wrong
to make generalized judgments about racial, national, and cultural groups. We
should judge people on the basis of who they are, not as members of the group to
which they belong.

His speech was a worthy sequel to the famous letter of Chief Seattle to European
colonizers. He closed it with these words: “You are not my enemies, you are my
brothers and sisters. You did not do anything to me or my people. All that happened
a long time ago in the lives of our ancestors. And, at that time I might actually
have been on the other side. We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong
to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges
and do not work together, we will all die.”

By this time, most people in the group were in tears. We all felt a sense of deep
connection and belonging to the human family. As the sun was slowly rising in the
sky, we partook in a ceremonial breakfast. We ate the food that throughout the
night had been placed in the center of the teepee and was consacrated by the
ritual. Then we all shared long hugs, reluctantly parted, and headed back home. We
carried with us the memory of this invaluable lesson in interracial and
international conflict resolution that will undoubtedly remain vivid in our minds
for the rest of our lives. For me, this extraordinary synchronicity experienced in
a holotropic state of consciousness generated hope that, sometime in the future, a
similar healing will happen in the world on a global scale.

11

The Sacred and the Profane

We do not understand much of anything, from the “big bang” all the way down to the
particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to make
our way through in the centuries ahead.

—Lewis Thomas
Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted
counts.

—Albert Einstein

Spirituality and Religion in Modern Society

The understanding of human nature and of the cosmos shared by modern technological
societies is significantly different from the worldviews found in the ancient and
pre-industrial cultures. To some extent, this is a natural result of historical
progress and should be expected. Over the centuries, scientists from different
disciplines have systematically explored various aspects of the material world and
accumulated an impressive amount of information that was not available in the past.
They have vastly complemented, corrected, and replaced earlier concepts about
nature and the universe. However, the most striking difference between the two
worldviews is not in the amount and accuracy of data about material reality. It is
a fundamental disagreement concerning the sacred or spiritual dimension of
existence.

All the human groups of the pre-industrial era were in agreement that the material
world which we perceive and in which we operate in our everyday life is not the
only reality.

Their worldviews, although varying in details, described the cosmos as a complex

system of hierarchically arranged levels of existence. In this understanding of
reality, which Arthur Lovejoy (1964) called the Great Chain of Being, the world of
gross matter was the last link. Higher domains of existence included in pre-
industrial cosmologies harbored deities, demons, discarnate entities, ancestral
spirits, and power animals. Ancient and pre-industrial cultures had a rich ritual
and spiritual life that revolved around the possibility of achieving direct contact
with these ordinarily hidden dimensions of reality and receiving from them
important information, assistance, or even intervention in the course of material
events.

The everyday activities of the societies sharing this worldview were based not only
on the information received through the senses, but also on the input from these
ordinarily invisible realms. Anthropologists with traditional Western education
were often baffled by what they called the “double logic” of the aboriginal
cultures that they studied. While the natives clearly showed great practical
intelligence, possessed extraordinary skills, and were able to produce ingenious
implements for survival and sustenance, they combined their pragmatic activities,
such as hunting, fishing, and building shelters, with strange, often complex and
elaborate rituals. In these they appealed to various entities and realities that
for the anthropologists were imaginary and nonexistent.
These differences in the worldviews find their strongest expression in the area of
death and dying. The cosmologies, philosophies, and mythologies, as well as
spiritual and ritual life, of the pre-industrial societies, contain a very clear
message that death is not the absolute and irrevocable end of everything, that life
or existence in some form continues after the biological demise. The eschatological
mythologies of these cultures are in general agreement that a spiritual principle,
or soul, survives the death of the body and experiences a complex series of
adventures in consciousness in other realities.

The posthumous journey of the soul is sometimes described as a travel through

fantastic landscapes that bear some similarity to those on earth, other times as
encounters with various archetypal beings, or as a progression through a sequence
of nonordinary states of consciousness. In some cultures the soul reaches a
temporary realm in the Beyond, such as the Christian purgatory or the lokas of
Tibetan Buddhism, in others an eternal abode—heaven, hell, paradise, or the sun
realm. Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in metempsychosis
or reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another
physical lifetime on earth.

All pre-industrial societies seemed to agree that death was not the ultimate defeat
and end of everything, but a transition to another form of existence. The
experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of
reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped. The dying
people were familiar with the eschatological cartographies of their cultures,
whether these were shamanic maps of the funeral landscapes or sophisticated
descriptions of the Eastern spiritual systems, such as those found in the Bardo
Thödol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Bardo Thödol deserves a special notice in this context. This important text of
Tibetan Buddhism represents an interesting contrast to the exclusive pragmatic
emphasis on productive life and denial of death characterizing the Western
industrial civilization. It describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for
spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that
determines our next incarnation, if we do not achieve liberation. From this
perspective, it is possible to see the experiences in the bardos, or intermediate
states between lives, as being in a way more important than incarnate existence. In
view of this fact, it is absolutely essential that we prepare ourselves for this
journey by systematic practice during our lifetime.

These descriptions of the sacred dimensions of reality and the emphasis on

spiritual life are in sharp conflict with the belief system that dominates the
industrial civilization. Our worldview has been to a great extent shaped by
materialistically oriented science, which assert that we live in a universe where
only matter is real. Theoreticians of various scientific disciplines have
formulated an image of reality according to which the history of the universe is
the history of developing matter. Life, consciousness, and intelligence are seen as
more or less accidental and insignificant epiphenomena of this development. They
appeared on the scene after billions of years of evolution of passive and inert
matter in a trivially small part of an immense universe. Clearly, the understanding
of human nature and of the universe based on such premises is in principle
incompatible with any form of spiritual belief. When we subscribe to this image of
reality, spirituality appears to be an illusory, if not delusional, approach to
existence.

This seeming incompatibility of science and spirituality is quite remarkable.

Throughout history, spirituality and religion had played a critical and vital role
in human life, until their influence was undermined by the scientific and
industrial revolution. Science and religion represent extremely important parts of
human life, each in its own way. Science is the most powerful tool for obtaining
information about the world we live in and spirituality is indispensable as a
source of meaning in our life. The religious impulse has certainly been one of the
most compelling forces driving human history and culture. It is hard to imagine
that this would be possible, if ritual and spiritual life were based on entirely
unfounded fantasies and fallacies. To exert such a powerful influence on the course
of human affairs, religion has to reflect a very fundamental aspect of human
nature, in spite of the fact that it has often been expressed in very problematic
and distorted ways.

If the worldview created by materialistic science really were a true, full, and
accurate description of reality, then the only group in the entire history of
humanity that has ever had adequate understanding of the human psyche and of
existence would be the intelligentsia of technological societies subscribing to
philosophical materialism. All the other perspectives and worldviews, including the
great mystical traditions of the world and the spiritual philosophies of the East,
would by comparison appear to be primitive, immature, and deluded systems of
thought. This would include the Vedanta, various schools of yoga, Taoism,
Vajrayana, Hinayana, and Mahayana Buddhism, Sufism, Christian mysticism, the
Cabala, and many other sophisticated spiritual traditions that are products of
centuries of in-depth explorations of the human psyche and consciousness.

Naturally, since the ideas described in this book are in basic congruence with
various schools of the perennial philosophy, they would fall into the same
category. They could be dismissed as irrational, ungrounded, and unscientific and
the evidence on which they are based would not even be seriously considered. It
seems therefore important to clarify the relationship between religion and science
and to find out if these two critical aspects of human life are truly incompatible.
And if we find out that there is a way of bringing the two of them together, it
would be essential to define the conditions under which they can be integrated.

The belief that religion and science have to be mutually incompatible reflects a
fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of both. Correctly understood, true
science and authentic religion are two important approaches to existence that are
complementary and do not in any way compete with each other. As Ken Wilber very
appropriately pointed out, there cannot really be a conflict between genuine
religion and true science. If there seems to be such a conflict, we are very likely
dealing with “bogus religion” and/or “bogus science” (Wilber 1983).

Much confusion in this area is based on serious misconceptions concerning the

nature and function of science, resulting in improper use of scientific thinking.
An additional source of unnecessary problems is a misunderstanding concerning the
nature and function of religion. For the purpose of our discussion, it is essential
to distinguish true science from scientism and to clearly differentiate between
spirituality and organized religion.

Scientific Theory and Scientific Method

Modern philosophy of science has clarified the nature, function, and proper use of
theories in the exploration of various aspects of the universe. It exposed the
errors that allowed materialistic monism to dominate Western science and indirectly
also the worldview of the industrial civilization. In retrospect, it is not
difficult to see how this has happened. The Newtonian image of the physical world
as a fully deterministic mechanical system was so successful in its practical
applications that it became a model for all the other scientific disciplines. To be
scientific became synonymous with thinking in mechanistic terms.

An important result of the technological triumphs of physics was strong support for
philosophical materialism, a position that Newton himself did not hold. For him,
the creation of the universe was inconceivable without divine intervention, without
the superior intelligence of the Creator. Newton believed that God created the
universe as a system governed by mechanical laws. For this reason, once it had been
created, it could be studied and understood as such. Newton’s followers kept the
image of the universe as a deterministic supermachine, but disposed of the notion
of an intelligent creative principle as an unnecessary and embarassing leftover
from the irrational dark ages. Sensory data about material reality became the only
permissible source of information in all branches of science.

In the history of modern science, the image of the material world based on
Newtonian mechanics entirely dominated the thinking in biology, medicine,
psychology, psychiatry, and all the other disciplines. This strategy reflected the
basic metaphysical assumption of philosophical materialism and was its logical
consequence. If the universe is essentially a material system and physics is a
scientific discipline that studies matter, physicists are the ultimate experts
concerning the nature of all things and the findings in other areas should not be
allowed to be in conflict with the basic theories of physics. Determined
application of this type of logic resulted in systematic suppression or
misinterpretation of findings in many fields that could not be brought into
consonance with the materialistic worldview.

This strategy was a serious violation of the basic principles of modern philosophy
of science. Strictly speaking, scientific theories apply only to observations on
which they are based and from which they were derived. They cannot be automatically
extrapolated to other disciplines. Conceptual frameworks articulating the
information available in a certain area cannot be used to determine what is and is
not possible in some other domain and to dictate what can and cannot be observed in
the corresponding scientific discipline. Theories about the human psyche should be
based on observations of psychological processes, not on the theories that
physicists have made about the material world. But this is exactly the way
mainstrean scientists have used in the past the theoretical framework of
seventeenth-century physics.

The practice of illicit generalization of the worldview of physicists to other

fields has been only part of the problem. Another serious but common error that
further complicates the situation is the tendency of many scientists not only to
adhere to outdated theories and generalize them to other fields, but to mistake
them for accurate and definitive descriptions of reality. As a result, they tend to
reject any data that are incompatible with their theoretical framework, rather than
seeing them as a reason to change their theories. This confusion of the map with
the territory is an example of what is known in modern logic as “error in logical
typing.” Gregory Bateson, a brilliant generalist and seminal thinker who spent much
time studying this phenomenon, once facetiously stated that when a scientist
continues making errors of this type, he or she might one day eat in a restaurant
the menu instead of the dinner.

A basic characteristic of a true scientist is not uncritical adherence to

materialistic philosophy and unshakeable loyalty to the stories about the universe
promulgated by mainstream science. What characterizes a true scientist is
commitment to unbiased rigorous application of the scientific method of exploration
to all the domains of reality. This means systematic collection of observations in
specifically defined situations, repeated experimentation in any domain of
existence that makes application of such a strategy possible, and comparing of the
results with others working under similar circumstances.

The most important criterion of the adequacy of a particular theory is not whether
it conforms with the views held by the academic establishment, pleases our common
sense, or seems plausible, but whether it it congruent with the facts of systematic
and structured observation. Theories are indispensable tools for scientific
reasearch and progress. However, they should not be confused with an accurate and
exhaustive description of how things are. A true scientist sees his or her theories
as the best available conceptualization of the currently available data and is
always open to adjusting or changing them if they cannot accommodate new evidence.
From this perspective, the world view of materialistic science has become a
straitjacket that inhibits further progress instead of facilitating it.

Science does not rest on a particular theory, no matter how convincing and self-
evident it might appear. The image of the universe and scientific theories about it
have changed many times in the history of humanity. What characterizes science is
the method of obtaining information and of validating or disproving theories.
Scientific research is impossible without theoretical formulations and hypotheses.
Reality is too complex to be studied in its totality, and theories reduce the range
of observable phenomena to a workable size. A true scientist uses theories, but is
aware of their relative nature and is always ready to adjust them or abandon them
when new evidence emerges. He or she does not exclude from rigorous scrutiny any
phenomena that can be scientifically studied, including controversial and
challenging ones, such as nonordinary states of consciousness and transpersonal
experiences.
In the course of the twentieth century, physicists themselves have radically
changed their understanding of the material world. Revolutionary discoveries in the
subatomic and astrophysical realms have destroyed the image of the universe as an
infinitely complex, fully deterministic mechanical system made of indestructible
particles of matter. As the exploration of the universe shifted from the world of
our everyday reality, or the “zone of the middle dimensions,” to the miscroworld of
subatomic particles and to the megaworld of distant galaxies, physicists discovered
the limitations of the mechanistic worldview and transcended them.

The image of the universe that had dominated physics for almost three hundred years
collapsed under the avalanche of the new observations and experimental evidence.
The commonsense Newtonian understanding of matter, time, and space was replaced by
the strange wonderland of quantum-relativistic physics full of baffling paradoxes.
Matter in the everyday sense of “solid stuff” completely disappeared from the
picture. The neatly separated dimensions of absolute space and time fused into
Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time continuum. And the consciousness of the
observer had to be recognized as an element that plays an important role in
creating what earlier appeared to be purely objective and impersonal reality.

Similar breakthroughs have also occurred in many other disciplines. Information and
systems theories, Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphogenetic fields, the holonomic
thinking of David Bohm and Karl Pribram, Ilya Prigogine’s explorations of
dissipative structures, the chaos theory, and Ervin Laszlo’s unified interactive
dynamics are just a few salient examples of these new developments. These new
theories show increasing convergence and compatibility with the mystical worldview
and with the findings of transpersonal psychology. They also provide a new opening
for the ancient wisdom that materialistic science rejected and ridiculed.

The narrowing of the gap between the worldview of hard sciences and that of
transpersonal psychology is certainly a very exciting and encouraging phenomenon.
However, it would be a serious mistake for psychologists, psychiatrists, and
consciousness researchers to let their conceptual thinking be restricted and
controlled by the theories of the new physics instead of the old one. As I
mentioned earlier, each discipline has to base its theoretical constructs on the
observations from its own field of inquiry. The criterion for the validity of the
scientific findings and concepts in a certain area is not their compatibility with
the theories in another field, but the rigor of the scientific method with which
they were obtained.

The Worldview of Materialistic Science: Fact and Fiction

In general, Western science has been extremely successful in finding the laws
governing the processes in the material world and in learning to control them. Its
efforts to provide answers concerning some fundamental questions of existence, such
as how the world came into being and developed into its present form, have been
much less spectacular and impressive. To get a proper perspective on this
situation, it is important to realize that what we know as the “scientific
worldview” is an image of the universe that rests on a host of daring metaphysical
assumptions. These are often presented and seen as facts that have been proven
beyond any reasonable doubt, while in reality they stand on a very shaky ground,
are controversial, or are inadequately supported by evidence.

In any case, the answers that materialistic science offers for the most basic
metaphysical questions are not more logical or less fantastic than those found in
perennial philosophy. Thus in regard to the origin of the universe, there are many
competing cosmological theories. The most popular of them asserts that everything
began some 15 billion years ago in the Big Bang when all the matter in the
universe, as well as time and space, emerged into existence from a dimensionless
point or singularity. The rival theory of continuous creation portrays an eternally
existing universe without a beginning and an end, in which matter is continuously
created out of nothing. Neither of these alternatives represents exactly a
rational, logical, and easy to imagine solution to this fundamental question of
existence.

Equally bold and problematic are the theories of materialistic scientists

concerning the biological realm. The phenomenon of life, including the DNA and its
capacity of self-reproduction, allegedly spontaneously emerged from random
interactions of inorganic matter in the chemical ooze of the primordial ocean. The
evolution from primitive unicellular organisms to the extraordinary variety of
species constituting the animal and plant life on our planet then resulted from
random mutations of the genes and natural selection. And probably the most
fantastic assertion of materialistic science is that consciousness appeared
sometime late in the evolutionary process as a product of neurophysiological
processes in the central nervous system.

When we subject the above concepts to rigorous scrutiny based on modern philosophy
of science, systematic application of the scientific method, and logical analysis
of the data, we will discover that they are hardly sober facts and that in many
instances they lack adequate support by the facts of observation. The theory
suggesting that the material constituting the universe with its billions of
galaxies spontaneously exploded into existence from a dimensionless singularity
certainly does not satisfy our reason. We are left with many burning questions,
such the source of the material that emerged in the Big Bang, the cause and trigger
of the event, the origin of the laws governing it, and many others. The idea of the
eternally existing universe in which matter is continuously created out of nothing
is equally staggering in its own way. The same is true about the remaining
scientific theories describing the origin of our universe.

We are told that the cosmos essentially created itself and that its entire history
from the hydrogen atoms to Homo sapiens did not require guiding intelligence and
can be adequately understood as resulting from material processes governed by
natural laws. This is not a very believable assumption, as many physicists
themselves realize. Stephen Hawking, considered by some the greatest living
physicist, admitted that “the odds against a universe like ours emerging out of
something like the Big Bang are enormous.” And Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson
once commented: “The more I examine the universe and the details of its
architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have
known we were coming” (Smoot and Davidson 1993).

Reconstructive studies of the early processes during the first few minutes of the
existence of the universe have revealed an extraordinary and astonishing fact. Had
the initial conditions been only somewhat different, for example, had one of the
fundamental constants of physics been altered by a few percent in either direction,
the resulting universe would not have been able to support life. In such a
universe, humans would never have come into being to function as its observers.
These coincidences are so numerous and unlikely that they inspired the formulation
of the so-called Anthropic Principle (Barrow and Tipler 1986). This principle
strongly suggests that the universe might have been created with the specific
intention or with the purpose of bringing forth life and human observers. This
points to participation of superior cosmic intelligence in the process of creation
or at least allows interpretation in those terms.

The failure of the Darwinian theory to explain evolution and the extraordinary
richness of life forms simply as a result of mechanically operating natural forces
is becoming increasingly obvious. The problems and loopholes of Darwinism and neo-
Darwinism have been summarized in Phillip Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial (1993).
While evolution itself is a well-established fact, it is highly unlikely that it
could have occurred without the guidance of higher intelligence and that it has
been—to borrow Richard Dawkins’ famous term—the work of a “blind watchmaker”
(Dawkins 1986). There are too many facts in evolution that are incompatible with
such an understanding of nature.

Random mutations in the genes that represent the basic explanatory principle of the
neo-Darwinian theory of evolution are known to be in most instances harmful and are
an unlikely source of advantageous changes in the organism. Moreover, emergence of
a new species would require a highly improbable combination of a number of very
specific mutations. An example is the evolutionary transition from reptiles to
birds that required, among other things, simultaneous development of feathers,
light hollow bones, and a different skeletal structure. In many instances, the
transitional forms leading to new organs would not offer evolutionary advantage (as
exemplified by a partially developed eye), or would even represent a liability
(such as an incompletely formed wing).

To make things even more complicated for Darwinians, nature has often supported the
emergence of forms that clearly represent an evolutionary disadvantage. For
example, the beautiful tail of the peacock clearly makes the male more vulnerable
to predators. The Darwinians argue that this is outweighed by the fact that
beautiful tail attracts the females and increases the opportunities for copulation
and transmission of genes. This appears to be a desperate effort to save the
materialistic perspective at the price of conceding that peahens might have quite
extraordinary aesthetic and artistic sensibilities. As Phillip Johnson (1993)
pointed out, this situation is certainly more compatible with the concept of
intelligent divine creation than with the Darwinian theory that gives all credit to
blind material forces: “It seems to me that the peacock and the peahen are just the
kind of creatures a whimsical creator might favor, but that an ‘uncaring mechanical
process’ like natural selection would never permit to develop.”
Important challenges against the Darwinian interpretation of evolution can also be
drawn from the analysis of paleontological findings. In spite of enormous
investments of time and energy, the existing fossil record has so far failed to
fill in the missing links between species. Its general profile has not as yet been
able to support a single transition from one species to another. The “Cambrian
explosion,” a sudden appearance of new multicellular organisms with widely
differing body plans within a geologically negligible period of 10 million years
(“the biological Big Bang”) clearly demands a mechanism other than natural
selection for its explanation.

More importantly, all the above arguments against Darwinism and neo-Darwinism focus
only on the level of anatomy and physiology. They are superficial and negligible as
compared to the problems that have emerged from biochemical understanding of
various life processes. Modern science has shown that the secret of life is on the
molecular level. Until recently, evolutionary biologists could be unconcerned with
the molecular details of life, because very little was known about them. The
complexity and intricacy of the molecular arrangements responsible for the
structures and mechanisms underlying life processes is so spectacular that it
represents a mortal blow for the Darwinian theory. In his recent book Darwin’s
Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Michael J. Behe (1996) clearly
demonstrated the failure of Darwinian thinking to account for the molecular
structure and dynamics of life. The power of his argument is so devastating that it
makes the problem of anatomy and fossil records irrelevant to the question of
evolution.

The statistical improbability of life emerging out of random chemical processes is

astronomical, as was clearly demonstrated by scientists of the stature of the
world-famous astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the
structure of DNA. The existence of over 200,000 proteins that have highly
specialized biochemical and physiological functions in living organisms represents,
in and of itself, an insurmountable problem. Fred Hoyle (1983) found the solution
to this dilemma in embracing the theory of panspermia, according to which
microorganisms are distributed throughout the universe and were brought to our
planet by interstellar travel, possibly in the tail of a comet. Hoyle concluded
that life is “a cosmological phenomenon, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the
universe itself.”

Francis Crick (1981) went even farther. According to him, to avoid damage by the
extreme interstellar conditions, the microorganisms must have traveled in the head
of a spaceship sent to earth by a higher civilization that had developed elsewhere
some billions of years ago. Life on our planet started when these organisms began
to multiply. Hoyle’s and Crick’s approach does not, of course, solve the mystery of
the origin of life; it simply defers it to another time and location. Both of them
avoid the problem how life came into existence in the first place.

Information theorist H. Yockey (1992), who had attempted to assess the mathematical
probability of the spontaneous origin of life, concluded that the information
needed to begin life could not have developed by chance. He suggested that life be
considered a given, like matter or energy. On the basis of the existing scientific
evidence, it is highly implausible that the origin of life on our planet and the
development of the rich plethora of species are the result of random mechanical
forces. It is hard to imagine that they occurred without the intervention and
participation of superior cosmic intelligence.

This brings us to the most critical point of our discussion, the claim of
materialistic science that matter is the only reality and that consciousness is its
product. This thesis has often been presented with great authority as a scientific
fact that has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. However, when it is
subjected to closer scrutiny, it becomes obvious that it is not and never was a
serious scientific statement, but a metaphysical assumption masquerading as one. It
is an assertion that cannot be proved and thus lacks the basic requirement for a
scientific hypothesis, namely testability.

Consciousness and Matter

The gap between matter and consciousness is so radical and profound that it is hard
to imagine that consciousness could simply emerge as an epiphenomenon out of the
complexity of material processes in the central nervous system. We have ample
clinical and experimental evidence showing deep correlations between the anatomy,
physiology, and biochemistry of the brain, on the one hand, and conscious
processes, on the other. However, none of these findings proves unequivocally that
consciousness is actually generated by the brain. The origin of consciousness from
matter is simply assumed as an obvious and self-evident fact based on the belief in
the primacy of matter in the universe. In the entire history of science, nobody has
ever offered a plausible explanation how consciousness could be generated by
material processes, or even suggested a viable approach to the problem.

The attitude that Western science has adopted in regard to this issue resembles the
famous Sufi story. On a dark night, a man is crawling on his knees under a
candelabra lamp. Another man sees him and asks: “What are you doing? Are you
looking for something? “The man answers that he is searching for a lost key and the
newcomer offers to help. After some time of unsuccessful joint effort, the helper
is confused and feels the need for clarification. “I don’t see anything! Where did
you lose it?” he asks. The response is very surprising; the owner of the key points
his finger to a dark area outside of the circle illuminated by the lamp and
mumbles: “Over there!” The helper is puzzled and inquires further: “So why are you
looking for it here and not over there?” “Because it is light here and I can see.
Over there, I would not have a chance!”

In a similar way, materialistic scientists have systematically avoided the problem

of the origin of consciousness, because this riddle cannot be solved within the
context of their conceptual framework. There have been instances where some
researchers claimed to have found the answer to the brain-consciousness problem,
but these efforts do not withstand a closer scrutiny. The most recent example of
this kind is the widely publicized book The Astonishing Hypothesis by the British
physicist and biochemist Francis Crick (1994), Nobel laureate and co-discoverer
with James Watson of the chemical structure of the DNA. As we read his book, “the
astonishing hypothesis” turns out to be nothing more than a restatement of the
basic metaphysical assumption of materialistic science: “You, your joys and your
sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free
will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and
their associated molecules.”

In the specific treatment of the problem, Crick first simplifies the problem of
consciousness by reducing it to the process of visual perception. He then proceeds
to review a long list of experiments showing that the act of visual perception is
associated with the activities in the retina and in the neurons that belong to the
optical system. This is nothing new; it has long been known that seeing an object
involves chemical and electric changes in the retina, in the optical tract, and in
the suboccipital cortex. More refined and detailed study and analysis of these
processes do not contribute anything to the solution of the basic mystery: What is
it that is capable of transforming chemical and electric changes in the cerebral
cortex into a conscious experience of a reasonable facsimile of the observed
object?

What materialistic science wants us to believe is that it is possible that the

brain itself has the capacity to somehow translate these chemical and electric
changes into a conscious subjective perception of the observed material object. The
nature of the process and mechanism capable of carrying out this operation eludes
any scientific analysis. The assertion that something like this is possible is a
wild and unsubstantiated conjecture based on a metaphysical bias rather than a
scientific statement supported by solid evidence. Crick’s book lists impressive
experimental evidence of correlations between consciousness and the
neurophysiological processes, but it avoids the central and critical issue. We are
back to the Sufi story mentioned earlier.

The idea that consciousness is a product of the brain naturally is not completely
arbitrary. Like Crick, its proponents usually refer to the results of many
neurological and psychiatric experiments and to a vast body of very specific
clinical observations from neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry, to support
their position. When we challenge this deeply ingrained belief, does it mean that
we doubt the correctness of these observations? The evidence for a close connection
between the anatomy of the brain, neurophysiology, and consciousness is
unquestionable and overwhelming. What is problematic is not the nature of the
presented evidence but the interpretation of the results, the logic of the
argument, and the conclusions that are drawn from these observations.

While these experiments clearly show that consciousness is closely connected with
the neurophysiological and biochemical processes in the brain, they have very
little bearing on the nature and origin of consciousness. There actually exists
ample evidence suggesting exactly the opposite, namely that consciousness can under
certain circumstances operate independently of its material substrate and can
perform functions that reach far beyond the capacities of the brain. This is most
clearly illustrated by the existence of out-of-body experiences (OOBEs). These can
occur spontaneously, or in a variety of facilitating situations that include
shamanic trance, psychedelic sessions, hypnosis, experiential psychotherapy, and
particularly near-death situations.

In all these situations consciousness can separate from the body and maintain its
sensory capacity, while moving freely to various close and remote locations. Of
particular interest are “veridical OOBEs,” where independent verification proves
the accuracy of perception of the environment under these circumstances. There are
many other types of transpersonal phenomena that can mediate accurate information
about various aspects of the universe that had not been previously received and
recorded in the brain.

Let us now take a closer look at the relevant clinical observations and laboratory
experiments, as well as the interpretations of the evidence provided by traditional
science. There is no doubt that various processes in the brain are closely
associated and correlated with specific changes in consciousness. A blow on the
head leading to brain concussion or compression of the carotid arteries limiting
the oxygen supply to the brain can cause loss of consciousness. A lesion or tumor
in the temporal lobe of the brain is often associated with very characteristic
changes of consciousness that are strikingly different from those observed in
persons with a pathological process in the prefrontal lobe. The differences are so
distinct that they can help the neurologist to identify the area of the brain
afflicted by the pathological process. Sometimes a successful neurosurgical
intervention can correct the problem and the conscious experience returns to
normal.

These facts are usually presented as conclusive evidence that the brain is the
source of human consciousness. At first glance, these observations might appear
impressive and convincing. However, they do not hold up when we subject them to
closer scrutiny. Strictly speaking, all that these data unequivocally demonstrate
is that changes in the brain function are closely and quite specifically connected
with changes in consciousness. They say very little about the nature of
consciousness and about its origin; they leave these problems wide open. It is
certainly possible to think about an alternative interpretation that would use the
same data, but come to very different conclusions.

This can be illustrated by looking at the relationship between the TV set and the
TV program. The situation here is much clearer, since it involves a system that is
human-made and incomparably simpler. The final reception of the TV program, the
quality of the picture and of the sound, depends in a very critical way on proper
functioning of the TV set and on the integrity of its components. Malfunctions of
its various parts result in very distinct and specific changes of the quality of
the program. Some of them lead to distortions of form, color, or sound, others to
interference between the channels. Like the neurologist who uses changes in
consciousness as a diagnostic tool, a television mechanic can infer from the nature
of these anomalies which parts of the set and which specific components are
malfunctioning. When the problem is identified, repairing or replacing these
elements will correct the distortions.

Since we know the basic principles of the television technology, it is clear to us

that the set simply mediates the program and that it does not generate it or
contribute anything to it. We would laugh at somebody who would try to examine and
scrutinize all the transistors, relays, and circuits of the TV set and analyze all
its wires in an attempt to figure out how it creates the programs. Even if we carry
this misguided effort to the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level, we will have
absolutely no clue why, at a particular time, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, a Star Trek
sequence, or a Hollywood classic appear on the screen. The fact that there is such
a close correlation between the functioning of the TV set and the quality of the
program does not necessarily mean that the entire secret of the program is in the
set itself. Yet this is exactly the kind of conclusion that traditional
materialistic science drew from comparable data about the brain and its relation to
consciousness.

Western materialistic science has thus not been able to produce any convincing
evidence that consciousness is a product of the neurophysiological processes in the
brain. It has been able to maintain its present position only by resisting,
censoring, and even ridiculing a vast body of observations indicating that
consciousness can exist and function independently of the body and of the physical
senses. This evidence comes from parapsychology, anthropology, LSD research,
experiential psychotherapy, thanatology, and the study of spontaneously occurring
nonordinary states of consciousness. All these disciplines have amassed impressive
data demonstrating clearly that human consciousness is capable of doing many things
that the brain (as understood by mainstream science) could not possibly do.

Science and Religion

The authority that materialistic science enjoys in modern society has made atheism
the most influential ideology in the industrial world. Although in the last decades
this trend seems to be reversing, the number of people who seriously practice
religion and think of themselves as “believers” has certainly decreased
considerably with scientific progress. Because of the spell that materialistic
science exerts on industrial societies, even believers often find it difficult to
avoid the undermining and discrediting influence that Western science has had on
religion. It is very common for people with religious upbringing to reject religion
of any kind when they receive scientific education, because they start seeing any
spiritual inclination as primitive and undefendable.

Organized religion, bereft of its experiential component, has largely lost the
connection to its deep spiritual source and as a result has become empty,
meaningless, and increasingly irrelevant in our life. In many instances, live and
lived spirituality based on profound personal experience has been replaced by
dogmatism, ritualism, and moralism. The most belligerent partisans of mainstream
religion insist on literal belief in the exoteric versions of spiritual texts that
appear childish and blatantly irrational to the educated modern mind. This is
further confounded by the untenable positions that religious authorities maintain
in regard to some important issues of modern life. For example, denying women the
right of ministry violates democratic values and dwelling on the prohibition of
contraception in face of such dangers as AIDS and overpopulation is absurd and
highly irresponsible.

If we consider the descriptions of the universe, nature, and human beings developed
by materialistic science, it is clear that they are in sharp contrast with the
accounts offered by the scriptures of the great religions of the world. Taken
literally and judged by the criteria of various scientific disciplines, the stories
of the creation of the world, origin of humanity, immaculate conception, death and
rebirth of divine personages, temptation by demonic forces, and judgment of the
dead belong to the realm of fairy tales or handbooks of psychiatry. And it would be
very difficult to reconcile such concepts as Cosmic Consciousness, reincarnation,
or spiritual enlightenment with the basic tenets of materialistic science. However,
it is not impossible to bridge the gap between science and religion if both are
correctly understood.

As we have seen, much confusion in this area is caused by serious misconceptions

concerning the nature and function of science and scientific theories. What is
presented as a scientific refutation of spiritual realities is often based on
scientistic argumentation rather than science. An additional source of unnecessary
problems concerning religion is a serious misunderstanding and misinterpretation of
the spiritual symbolism in sacred scriptures. This approach is characteristic of
fundamentalist movements in mainstream religions.

When scientism and fundamentalism collide, neither side seems to realize that many
of the passages in spiritual scriptures around which the controversy revolves
should not be understood as references to concrete personages, geographical places,
and historical events, but as accounts of transpersonal experiences. Scientific
descriptions of the universe and the stories in religious texts do not relate to
the same realities, they do not compete for the same terrain. As mythologist Joseph
Campbell pointed out in his inimitable style, “the immaculate conception is not a
problem for gynecologists and the promised land is not a piece of real estate.”

The fact that modern astronomers have not found the images of God and angels on the
photographs made by even the best of telescopes is not a scientific proof that they
do not exist. Similarly, our knowledge that the inside of the earth consists of
liquid iron and nickel does not in any way disprove the existence of the underworld
and hell. Spiritual symbolism accurately portrays events and realities that we
experience in holotropic states of consciousness and does not refer to occurrences
in the material world of our everyday reality. Aldous Huxley made this very clear
in his excellent essay “Heaven and Hell” (Huxley 1959). The only field that is
capable of approaching the problem of spirituality scientifically is thus
consciousness research focusing on systematic and unbiased exploration of
nonordinary states of consciousness.

Many scientists use the conceptual framework of contemporary science in a way that
resembles a fundamentalist religion more than it does science. They mistake it for
a definitive description of reality and authoritatively implement it to censor and
suppress all observations that challenge its basic assumptions. The worldview of
materialistic science is clearly incompatible with the theologies of organized
religions and the authority that science enjoys in our society certainly works in
favor of its position. Since most people in our culture are not aware of the
difference between religion and spirituality, the destructive influence of this
kind of “science” affects not only religion, but extends to spiritual activity of
any kind. If we want to achieve clarity concerning the basic issues involved in
this conflict, it is essential to make a clear distinction not only between science
and scientism, but also between religion and spirituality.

Spirituality and Religion

The failure to differentiate between spirituality and religion is probably the most
important source of misunderstanding concerning the relationship between science
and religion. Spirituality is based on direct experiences of nonordinary dimensions
of reality and does not necessarily require a special place or an officially
appointed person mediating contact with the Divine. It involves a special kind of
relationship between the individual and the cosmos and is, in its essence, a
personal and private affair. The mystics base their convictions on experiential
evidence. They do not need churches or temples; the context in which they
experience the sacred dimensions of reality, including their own divinity, are
their bodies and nature. And instead of officiating priests, they need a supportive
group of fellow seekers or the guidance of a teacher who is more advanced on the
inner journey than they are themselves.

At the cradle of all great religions were visionary experiences of their founders,
prophets, saints, and even ordinary followers. All major spiritual scriptures—the
Vedas, the Upanishads, the Buddhist Pali canon, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of
Mormon, and many others are based on direct personal revelations. Once religion
becomes organized, it often completely loses the connection with its spiritual
source and becomes a secular institution exploiting the human spiritual needs
without satisfying them. Instead, it creates a hierarchical system focusing on the
pursuit of power, control, politics, money, possessions, and other secular
concerns.

Organized religion is institutionalized group activity that takes place in a

designated location—a temple or a church—and involves a system of appointed
officials who may or may not have had personal experiences of spiritual realities.
Religious hierarchy tends to actively discourage and suppress direct spiritual
experiences in its members, because they foster independence and cannot be
effectively controlled. When this happens, genuine spiritual life continues only in
the mystical branches, monastic orders, and ecstatic sects of the religions
involved.

There is no doubt that the dogmas of organized religions are generally in

fundamental conflict with science, whether this science uses the Newtonian-
Cartesian model or is anchored in the emerging paradigm. However, the situation is
very different in regard to spiritual experiences. In the last twenty-five years,
systematic study of these experiences has become the main focus of a special
discipline called transpersonal psychology. Spiritual experiences, like any other
aspect of reality, can be studied scientifically; they can be subjected to careful,
open-minded research. There is nothing unscientific about unbiased and rigorous
study of these phenomena and of the challenges they represent for a materialistic
understanding of the world. The critical question in this regard is the nature and
the ontological status of mystical experiences. Do they reveal deep truths about
some basic aspects of existence or are they products of superstition, fantasy, or
mental disease?

The main obstacle in the study of spiritual experiences is the fact that
traditional psychology and psychiatry are dominated by a materialistic philosophy
and lack genuine understanding of religion and spirituality. In their emphatic
rejection of religion, they do not make a distinction between primitive folk
beliefs or the fundamentalists’ literal interpretations of sacred scriptures, on
the one hand, and sophisticated mystical traditions or Eastern spiritual
philosophies, on the other. Western materialistic science has indiscriminately
rejected any spiritual concepts and activities, including those based on centuries
of systematic introspective exploration of the psyche. Many of the great mystical
traditions developed specific technologies for inducing spiritual experiences and
combined observation and theoretical speculation in a way that resembled modern
science.

An extreme example of this lack of discrimination is Western science’s rejection of

Tantra, a system that offers an extraordinary spiritual vision of existence in the
context of a comprehensive and sophisticated scientific worldview. Tantric scholars
developed a profound understanding of the universe that has been in many ways
validated by modern science. It included sophisticated models of space and time,
the concept of the Big Bang, and such elements as a heliocentric system,
interplanetary attraction, spherical shape of the earth and planets, and entropy.

Additional achievments of Tantra included advanced mathematics and the invention of

the decimal count with a zero. Tantra also had a profound psychological theory and
experiential method, based on maps of the subtle or energy body involving psychic
centers (chakras) and conduits (nadis). It has developed highly refined abstract
and figurative spiritual art and a complex ritual (Mookerjee and Khanna 1977).

Psychiatric Perspective on Religion

From the point of view of Western academic scientists, the material world
represents the only reality and any form of spiritual belief reflects lack of
education, primitive superstition, magical thinking, or regression to infantile
patterns of functioning. The belief in any form of existence after death is not
only refuted, but often ridiculed. From a materialistic perspective, it seems
absolutely clear and unquestionable that the death of the body, particularly the
brain, is the end of any form of conscious activity. Belief in the posthumous
journey of the soul, an afterlife, or reincarnation is nothing but a product of
wishful thinking of people who are unable to accept the obvious biological
imperative of death.

People who have direct experiences of spiritual realities are in our culture seen
as mentally ill. Mainstream psychiatrists make no distinction between mystical
experiences and psychotic experiences and see both categories as manifestations of
psychosis. The kindest judgment about mysticism that has so far come from official
academic circles was the statement of the Committee on Psychiatry and Religion of
the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry entitled “Mysticism: Spiritual Quest or
Psychic Disorder?” This document published in 1976 conceded that mysticism might be
a phenomenon that lies between normalcy and psychosis.

In the present climate, even the suggestion that spiritual experiences deserve
systematic study and should be critically examined appears absurd to conventionally
trained scientists. Showing serious interest in this area, in and of itself, can be
considered a sign of poor judgment and blemishes the researcher’s professional
reputation. In actuality, there exists no scientific “proof” that the spiritual
dimension does not exist. The refutation of its existence is essentially a
metaphysical assumption of Western science, based on an incorrect application of an
outdated paradigm. As a matter of fact, the study of holotropic states, in general,
and transpersonal experiences, in particular, provides more than enough data
suggesting that postulating such a dimension makes good sense (Grof 1985, 1988).

At the cradle of all great religions of the world were powerful personal
experiences of the visionaries who initiated and sustained these creeds—the divine
epiphanies of the prophets, mystics, and saints. These experiences, revealing the
existence of sacred dimensions of reality, were the inspiration and vital source of
all religious movements. Gautama Buddha, meditating under the Bo tree, had a
dramatic visionary experience of Kama Mara, the master of the world illusion, of
his three seductive daughters trying to distract him from his spiritual quest, and
of his menacing army attempting to intimidate him and prevent him from reaching
enlightenment. He successfully overcame all these obstacles and achieved
illumination and spiritual awakening. On another occasion, the Buddha also
envisioned a long chain of his previous incarnations and experienced a profound
liberation from karmic bonds.

Mohammed’s “miraculous journey,” a powerful visionary state during which archangel

Gabriel escorted Mohammed through the seven Moslem heavens, Paradise, and Hell, was
the inspiration for the Koran and for the Islamic religion. In the Judeo-Christian
tradition, the Old Testament offers a dramatic account of Moses’ experience of
Yahwe in the burning bush and the New Testament describes Jesus’ temptation by the
devil during his stay in the desert. Similarly, Saul’s blinding vision of Christ on
the way to Damascus, St. John’s apocalyptic revelation in his cave on the island
Patmos, Ezechiel’s observation of the flaming chariot, and many other episodes
clearly are transcendental experiences in nonordinary states of consciousness. The
Bible describes many additional instances of direct communication with God and the
angels. The descriptions of the temptations of St. Anthony and of the visionary
experiences of other saints and Desert Fathers are well-documented parts of
Christian history.
Western psychiatrists interpret such visionary experiences as manifestations of
serious mental diseases, although they lack adequate medical explanation and the
laboratory data supporting this position. Mainstream psychiatric literature
contains articles and books that discuss what would be the most appropriate
clinical diagnoses for the great figures of spiritual history. St. John of the
Cross has been called a “hereditary degenerate,” St. Teresa of Avila dismissed as a
hysterical psychotic, and Mohammed’s mystical experiences have been attributed to
epilepsy.

Many other religious and spiritual personages, such as the Buddha, Jesus,
Ramakrishna, and Sri Ramana Maharshi have been seen as suffering from psychoses,
because of their visionary experiences and “delusions.” Similarly, some
traditionally trained anthropologists have argued whether shamans should be
diagnosed as schizophrenics, ambulant psychotics, epileptics, or hysterics. The
famous psychoanalyst Franz Alexander, known as one of the founders of psychosomatic
medicine, wrote a paper in which even Buddhist meditation is described in
psychopathological terms and referred to as “artificial catatonia” (Alexander
1931).

Religion and spirituality have been extremely important forces in the history of
humanity and civilization. Had the visionary experiences of the founders of
religions been nothing more than products of brain pathology, it would be difficult
to explain the profound impact they have had on millions of people over the
centuries and the glorious architecture, paintings, sculptures, and literature they
have inspired. There does not exist a single ancient or pre-industrial culture in
which ritual and spiritual life did not play a pivotal role. The current approach
of Western psychiatry and psychology thus pathologizes not only the spiritual but
also the cultural life of all human groups throughout centuries except the educated
elite of the Western industrial civilization that shares the materialistic
worldview.

The official position of psychiatry in regard to spiritual experiences also creates

a remarkable split in our own society. In the United States, religion is officially
tolerated, legally protected, and even righteously promoted by certain circles.
There is a Bible in every motel room, politicians pay lipservice to God in their
speeches, and collective prayer is a standard part of the presidential inauguration
ceremony. However, in the light of materialistic science, people who take seriously
religious beliefs of any kind appear to be uneducated, suffering from shared
delusions, or emotionally immature.

And if somebody in our culture has a spiritual experience of the kind that inspired
every major religion in the world, an average minister will very likely send him or
her to a psychiatrist. It has happened on many occasions that people who had been
brought to psychiatric facilities because of intense spiritual experiences were
hospitalized, subjected to tranquilizing medication or even shock treatments, and
received psychopathological diagnostic labels that stigmatized them for the rest of
their lives.
Holotropic States of Consciousness and the Image of Reality

The differences between the understanding of the universe, nature, human beings,
and consciousness developed by Western science and that found in the ancient and
pre-industrial societies is usually explained in terms of superiority of
materialistic science over superstition and primitive magical thinking of native
cultures. Careful analysis of this situation reveals that the reason for this
difference is not the superiority of Western science, but the ignorance and naïvité
of industrial societies in regard to holotropic states of consciousness.

All pre-industrial cultures held these states in high esteem and spent much time
and energy trying to develop effective and safe ways of inducing them. They
possessed deep knowledge of these states, systematically cultivated them, and used
them as the major vehicle of their ritual and spiritual life. The worldviews of
these cultures reflected not only the experiences and observations made in the
everyday state of consciousness, but also those from deep visionary states. Modern
consciousness research and transpersonal psychology have shown that many of these
experiences are authentic disclosures of ordinarily hidden dimensions of reality
and cannot be dismissed as pathological distortions.

In visionary states, the experiences of other realities or of new perspectives on

our everyday reality are so convincing and compelling that the individuals who have
had them have no other choice than to incorporate them into their worldview. It is
thus systematic experiential exposure to nonordinary states of consciousness, on
the one side, and the absence thereof, on the other, that sets the technological
societies and pre-industrial cultures ideologically so far apart. I have not yet
met a single individual who has had a deep experience of the transcendental realms
and continues to subscribe to the worldview of Western materialistic science. This
development is quite independent of the level of intelligence, type and degree of
education, and professional credentials of the individuals involved.

Holotropic States of Consciousness and Human History

In this book, we have explored in some detail holotropic states of consciousness,

their nature, content, and profound effect on the worldview, hierarchy of values,
and strategy of existence. What we have learned from the study of holotropic
experiences throws an entirely new light on the spiritual history of humanity. It
shows that spirituality is a critical dimension of the human psyche and existence
and takes authentic religion based on direct experience out of the context of
pathology, where it has been relegated by materialistic science.
All the cultures in human history except the Western industrial civilization have
held holotropic states of consciousness in great esteem. They induced them whenever
they wanted to connect with their deities, other dimensions of reality, and with
the forces of nature. They also used them for diagnosing and healing, cultivation
of extrasensory perception, and artistic inspiration. They spent much time and
energy trying to develop safe and effective ways of inducing them. As I described
in the introduction to this book, these “technologies of the sacred,” mind-altering
techniques developed in ancient and aboriginal cultures for ritual and spiritual
purposes, ranged from shamanic trance-inducing methods of various indigenous
cultures to so-phisticated practices of various mystical traditions and Eastern
spiritual philosophies.

The practice of holotropic states can be traced back to the dawn of human history.
It is the most important characteristic feature of shamanism, the oldest religion
and healing art of humanity. Holotropic states are intimately connected with
shamanism in several important ways. The career of many shamans begins with
spontaneous episodes of visionary states, or psychospiritual crises, that the
anthropologists call, with a typical Western bias, “shamanic illness.” Others are
initiated into the shamanic profession by practicing shamans through similar
experiences induced by powerful mind-altering procedures, particularly drumming,
rattling, chanting, dancing, or psychedelic plants. Accomplished shamans are able
to enter holotropic states at will and in a controlled way. They use them for
healing, extrasensory perception, exploration of alternate dimensions of reality,
and other purposes. They can also induce them in other members of their tribes and
provide for them the necessary guidance.

Shamanism is quite ancient, probably at least thirty to forty thousand years old;
its deepest roots can be traced far back into the Paleolithic era. The walls of the
famous caves in southern France and northern Spain, such as Lascaux, Font de Gaume,
Les Trois Frères, Altamira, and others, are decorated with beautiful images of
animals. Most of them represent species that actually roamed the Stone Age
landscape—bisons, wild horses, stags, ibexes, mammoths, wolves, rhinos, and
reindeer. However, others like the “Wizard Beast” in Lascaux are mythical creatures
that clearly have magical and ritual significance. And in several of these caves
are paintings and carvings of strange figures combining human and animal features,
who undoubtedly represent ancient shamans.

The best known of these images is the “Sorcerer of Les Trois Frères,” a mysterious
composite figure combining various male symbols. He has the antlers of a stag, eyes
of an owl, tail of a wild horse or wolf, human beard and penis, and paws of a lion.
Another famous carving of a shaman in the same cave complex is the “Beast Master”
presiding over the Happy Hunting Grounds teeming with beautiful animals. Also well
known is the hunting scene on the wall in Lascaux. It shows a wounded bison and a
lying figure of a shaman with an erect penis. The grotto known as La Gabillou
harbors a carving of a shamanic figure in dynamic movement whom the archeologists
call “The Dancer.” In addition, on the clay floor of one of the caves, the
discovers found footprints in circular arrangement suggesting that its inhabitants
conducted dances, similar to those that are still being performed by many
aboriginal cultures for the induction of trance states.
Figure 6.

The Sorcerer of Les Trois Frères . A composite figure combining various male
symbols—the antlers of a stag, the eyes of an owl, the tail of a wild horse or
wolf, a human beard, and the paws of a lion.

Source: Reprinted from The Way of the Animal Powers by Joseph Campbell. Used by
permission of Harper Collins Publishers, Inc. © Copyright 1989 by Harper and Row.

Figure 7.

Beast Master . An engraved figure from Les Trois Frères cave representing the
“Animal Master,” a half-animal, half- human shamanic figure standing in the middle
of the “Happy Hunting Ground” surrounded by wild animals.

Source: Reprinted from The Way of the Animal Powers by Joseph Campbell. Used by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. © Copyright 1989 by Harper and Row.

Figure 8.

Hunting Scene (Lascaux). A hunting scene from the Lascaux cave representing an
eventrated bison bull and a man with bird-like features and an erect penis, very
likely a shaman in a trance. Near him is a bird perched on a staff.

Source: Reprinted from The Way of the Animal Powers by Joseph Campbell. Used by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc © Copyright 1989 by Harper and Row.

Figure 9.

The Dancer. A dynamic shamanic figure from the cave called La Gabillou.

Source: Reprinted from The Way of the Animal Powers by Joseph Campbell. Used by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. © Copyright 1989 by Harper and Row.

Shamanism is not only ancient, it is also universal; it can be found in North and
South America, in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The
fact that so many different cultures throughout human history have found shamanic
techniques useful and relevant suggests that the holotropic states engage what the
anthropologists call the “primal mind”— a basic and primordial aspect of the human
psyche that transcends race, sex, culture, and historical time. Shamanic techniques
and procedures have survived until this very day in cultures that have escaped the
profound influence of the Western industrial civilization.

The ritual and spiritual life in most native societies is practically synonymous
with inducing holotropic states of consciousness in the context of healing rituals
and various other sacred ceremonies held for a variety of purposes and occasions.
Of special importance are the so-called rites of passage, first defined and
described by the Dutch anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1960). These are powerful
rituals that have been performed in various pre-industrial cultures at the time of
important biological and social transitions, such as circumcision, puberty,
marriage, birth of a child, menopause, and dying.

Like the shamanic procedures, the rites of passage use powerful mind-altering
technologies. The initiates have profound holotropic experiences that revolve
around psychospiritual death and rebirth. This is then interpreted as dying in the
old role and being born into the new one. Thus, for example, in one of the most
important of such ceremonies, the puberty rite, the psychological death and rebirth
of the adolescents is understood as death of boys and girls and birth of adult men
and women. An important function of similar rituals is also to provide experiential
access to the transcendental realm, validate the group’s cosmology and mythology,
and establish or maintain the individual’s connection with other realities.

Holotropic states of consciousness also played a critical role in the ancient

mysteries of death and rebirth, sacred and secret procedures in which initiates
experienced powerful psychospiritual transformation. These mysteries were based on
mythological stories about deities symbolizing death and transfiguration. In
ancient Sumer, it was Inanna and Tammuz, in Egypt Isis and Osiris, and in Greece
the deities Attis, Adonis, Bacchus, and Persephone. Their Mesoamerican counterparts
were the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, or the Plumed Serpent, and the Hero Twins of the Mayan
Popol Vuh. These mysteries were particularly popular in the Mediterranean area and
in the Middle East, as exemplified by the Sumerian and Egyptian temple initiations,
the Mithraic mysteries, or the Greek Korybantic rites, Bacchanalia, and the
mysteries of Eleusis.

An impressive testimony for the power and impact of the experiences involved is the
fact that the Eleusinian mysteries were conducted regularly and without
interruption for a period of almost two thousand years and kept attracting
prominent people from the entire ancient world. The cultural importance of the
mysteries for the ancient world becomes evident when we realize that among their
initiates were many famous and illustrious figures of antiquity. The list of
neophytes included the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Epictetus, the military
leader Alcibiades, the playwrights Euripides and Sophocles, and the poet Pindaros.
The famous statesman Cicero, who participated in these mysteries, wrote a exalted
report about their effects and their impact on the ancient civilization in his book
De Legibus (Cicero 1987).
In the telestrion, the giant initiation hall in Eleusis, three thousand neophytes
at a time experienced profound psychospiritual transformation. The exposure of such
large numbers of people, including prominent philosophers, artists, and statesmen,
to powerful holotropic states had to have an extraordinary impact on Greek culture
and thus on the history of European culture in general. It is truly astonishing
that this important aspect of the ancient world has remained largely unrecognized
and unacknowledged by historians.

The specifics of the mind-altering procedures involved in these secret rites have
remained for the most part unknown, although it is likely that the sacred potion
kykeon that played a critical role in the Eleusinian mysteries was a concoction
containing alkaloids of ergot similar to LSD (Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck 1978) and
that psychedelic materials were also involved in the Bacchanalia and other types of
rites. Whatever “technologies of the sacred” were used in Eleusis, their effects on
the psyche of the initiates had to be profound to keep the interest and attention
of the ancient world alive for a period of almost two millennia.

Holotropic states have also played an important role in the great religions of the
world. I mentioned earlier the visionary experiences of the founders that served as
the vital source and inspiration for all the major religions. While these initial
experiences were more or less spontaneous and elemental, many of these religions
developed in the course of their history sophisticated procedures specifically
designed to induce mystical experiences. Here belong, for example, different
techniques of yoga, meditations used in VipassanA, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism, as
well as spiritual exercises of the Taoist tradition and complex Tantric rituals. We
could also add various elaborate approaches used by the Sufis, the mystics of
Islam. They regularly used in their sacred ceremonies, or zikers, intense
breathing, devotional chants, and trance-inducing whirling dance.

From the Judeo-Christian tradition, we can mention here the breathing exercises of
the Essenes and their baptism involving half-drowning, the Christian Jesus prayer
(hesychasm), the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and various Cabalistic and
Hassidic procedures. Approaches designed to induce or facilitate direct spiritual
experiences are characteristic of the mystical branches of the great religions and
of their monastic orders.

Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective
technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness. The knowledge of these
powerful tools reaches far back, to the dawn of human history. In Chinese medicine,
reports about psychedelic plants can be traced back more than 3,000 years. The
legendary divine potion referred to as haoma in the ancient Persian Zend Avesta and
as soma in India was used by the Indo-Iranian tribes several millennia ago and was
probably the most important source of the Vedic religion and philosophy.

Preparations from different varieties of hemp have been smoked and ingested under
various names (hashish, charas, bhang, ganja, kif, marijuana) in the Oriental
countries, in Africa, and in the Caribbean area for recreation, pleasure, and
during religious ceremonies. They have represented an important sacrament for such
diverse groups as the Brahmans, certain Sufi orders, ancient Scythians, and the
Jamaican Rastafarians.

Ceremonial use of various psychedelic materials also has a long history in Central
America. Highly effective mind-altering plants were well known in several Pre-
Hispanic Indian cultures—among the Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecs, and Mazatecs. The most
famous of these are the Mexican cactus peyote (Lophophora williamsii), the sacred
mushroom teonanacatl (Psilocybe mexicana), and ololiuqui, seeds of different
varieties of the morning glory plant (Ipomoea violacea and Turbina corymbosa).
These materials have been used as sacraments until this day by the Huichol,
Mazatec, Chichimeca, Cora, and other Mexican Indian tribes, as well as the Native
American Church.

The famous South American yajé or ayahuasca is a decoction from a jungle liana
(Banisteriopsis caapi) and various other plant additives. The Amazon area is also
known for a variety of psychedelic snuffs. Aboriginal tribes in Africa ingest and
inhale preparations from the bark of the eboga shrub (Tabernanthe iboga). They use
them in small quantities as stimulants and in larger dosages in initiation rituals
for men and women. The above list represents only a small fraction of psychedelic
compounds that have been used over many centuries in ritual and spiritual life of
various human groups all over the world.

Holotropic States in the History of Psychiatry

Holotropic states of consciousness played a very important role in the development

of depth psychology and psychotherapy. Most books describing the early history of
this movement trace its beginnings to the Austrian physician and mystic Franz Anton
Mesmer. Although Mesmer himself attributed the changes in consciousness experienced
by his patients to “animal magnetism,” his famous Paris experiments were
forerunners of the extensive psychological work with clinical hypnosis. Jean-Martin
Charcot’s hypnotic sessions with hysterical patients conducted in the Paris
Salpetrière and the research in hypnosis carried out in Nancy by Hippolyte Bernheim
and Ambroise Auguste Liébault played an important role in the professional
development of Sigmund Freud.

During his study journey to France, Freud visited both Charcot and the Nancy group
and learned to use hypnosis. He employed this skill in his initial explorations of
the unconscious of his patients. But holotropic states had a critical role in the
history of psychoanalysis in yet another way. Freud’s early analytical speculations
were inspired by his work with a hysterical patient whom he treated jointly with
his friend Joseph Breuer. This client, to whom Freud refers in his writings as Miss
Anna O., experienced spontaneous episodes of holotropic states in which she
repeatedly psychologically regressed into her childhood. The opportunity to witness
the reliving of traumatic memories that occurred in these states and the
therapeutic effects of this process had a deep influence on Freud’s thinking.
For a variety of reasons, Freud later radically changed his strategies. He
abandoned the use of hypnosis and shifted his emphasis from direct experience to
free association, from actual trauma to Oedipal fantasies, and from conscious
reliving and emotional abreaction of unconscious material to transference dynamics.
In retrospect, these changes were unfortunate; they limited and misdirected Western
psychotherapy for the next fifty years (Ross 1989). As a consequence of this
development, psychotherapy in the first half of this century was practically
synonymous with talking—face to face interviews, free associations on the couch,
and the behaviorist deconditioning.

As psychoanalysis and other forms of verbal psychotherapy gained momentum and

reputation, the status of direct experiential access to the unconscious changed
dramatically. Holotropic states that had been earlier seen as being potentially
therapeutic and capable of providing valuable information about the human psyche
became associated with pathology. Since that time, the prevailing practice in the
treatment of these states, when they occur spontanously, has been to suppress them
with all available means. It took many years before professionals began to
rediscover the value of holotropic states and of direct emotional experience.

Holotropic States and Modern Consciousness Research

The renaissance of professional interest in holotropic states began in the early

1950s, shortly after the discovery of LSD-25, with the advent of psychedelic
therapy. It continued few years later with new revolutionary developments in
psychology and psychotherapy. A group of American psychologists and psychiatrists
who were deeply dissatisfied with behaviorism and Freudian psychoanalysis felt and
expressed the need for a new orientation in their fields. Abraham Maslow and
Anthony Sutich responded to this call and launched a new branch of psychology that
they called humanistic psychology. Within a short time, this movement became very
popular.

Humanistic psychology provided the context for the development of a broad spectrum
of innovative therapies. While traditional psychotherapies used primarily verbal
means and intellectual analysis, these new so-called experiential therapies
emphasized direct experience and expression of emotions. They also used various
forms of body work as an integral part of the process. The best known among them,
Fritz Perls’ Gestalt therapy (Perls 1976), has since become very popular and is
widely used, particularly outside the academic circles.

In spite of these radical departures from mainstream therapeutic strategies, most

of the experiential therapies still relied to a great degree on verbal
communication and required that the client stay in the ordinary state of
consciousness. However, some of the new approaches were so powerful that they were
able to profoundly change the state of consciousness of the clients. Besides
psychedelic therapy, this included some of the noe-Reichian techniques, primal
therapy, rebirthing, holotropic breathwork, and a few others.

Although these new experiential methods have not yet been accepted by mainstream
academic circles, their development and use started a new chapter in the history of
psychotherapy. They are closely related to ancient and aboriginal psychospiritual
technologies that have played a critical role in the ritual, spiritual, and
cultural history of humanity. If, in the future, they are accepted and their value
recognized, they certainly have the potential to revolutionize the theory and
practice of psychiatry.

In the second half of this century, significant contributions to the technology of

inducing holotropic states have come not only from clinical work, but also from
laboratory research. Biochemists have been able to identify the active alkaloids of
many psychedelic plants and produce them in the laboratory. The most famous among
them are mescaline from peyote, psilocybine from the Mexican magic mushrooms, and
ibogaine from the African eboga shrub. Less known but important are harmaline from
ayahuasca, tetra-hydro-cannabinol (THC) from hashish, and the tryptamine
derivatives found in the South American snuffs and in the skin secretions of
certain toads.

Chemical research has also added to this already rich psychedelic armamentarium the
extremely potent semisynthetic LSD-25 and a large number of synthetic substances,
particularly MDA, MDMA (Ecstacy or Adam), 2-CB, and other amphetamine derivatives.
This made it possible to conduct systematic clinical and laboratory research of the
effects of these compounds on a large scale and to study the physiological,
biochemical, and psychological processes involved.

A very effective way of inducing holotropic states is sensory isolation or

deprivation, which involves a significant reduction of meaningful sensory stimuli.
Its extreme form involves total immersion in a large, completely dark, and
acoustically isolated tank and a custom-made waterproof mask with an airpipe.
Similarly, sleep deprivation and even dream deprivation can profoundly change
consciousness. Dream deprivation without sleep deprivation can be achieved by
waking experimental subjects every time their rapid eye movements (REM) indicate
they are dreaming. There also exist laboratory devices that make it possible to
learn lucid dreaming.

Another well-known mind-altering laboratory procedure is biofeedback, a method that

allows to guide the individual by electronic signals into specific experiential
realms characterized by preponderance of certain frequencies of brainwaves. A
rapidly growing market now offers a rich spectrum of mind-altering devices that can
induce holotropic states of consciousness by combining in various ways acoustic,
optical, and kinesthetic stimulation. The account of new avenues in consciousness
research would not be complete without mentioning thanatology, a discipline
focusing on the study of near-death experiences (NDEs). Thanatological research has
been the source of some of the most remarkable observations in the entire
transpersonal field.
The renaissance of interest in holotropic states that we have witnessed in the last
few decades has generated an extraordinary amount of revolutionary data.
Researchers of different areas of consciousness research have amassed impressive
evidence that seriously challenges the theories of materialistic science concerning
the nature of consciousness. It leaves little doubt that the current scientific
worldview that assumes primacy of matter and sees consciousness as its derivative
cannot be adequately supported by facts of observation.

As a matter of fact, the observations from transpersonal psychology directly

contradict the current image of consciousness as a byproduct of neurophysiological
processes in the brain. The existence of the “veridical out-of-body experiences” in
near-death situations would alone be sufficient to topple this leading myth of
materialistic science. These experiences show that disembodied consciousness is
capable under certain circumstances of accurately perceiving the environment
without the mediation of senses.

What is probably most remarkable in the present situation is the degree to which
academic circles have managed to ignore and suppress all the new evidence that
shatters the most fundamental metaphysical assumptions of materialistic science.
The recognition of the limitations of the existing conceptual frameworks to
assimilate the new revolutionary data prompted Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich,
the two founders of humanistic psychology, to launch yet another psychological
discipline that has become known as transpersonal psychology. This field studies
the entire spectrum of human experience including the holotropic states and
represents a serious attempt to integrate science and spirituality.

Conclusions

The main purpose for writing this final chapter was to establish that the cosmology
described in this book is not incompatible with the findings of science, but with
the philosophical conclusions that were inappropriately drawn from these findings.
What the experiences and observations described in this book challenge is not
science, but materialistic monism. I hope that I have been able to show that the
materialistic worldview rests on a number of questionable metaphysical assumptions
that are not adequately supported by facts and scientific evidence.

What characterizes true science is open-minded and open-ended application of the

scientific method of inquiry to any domain of reality that allows it, no matter how
absurd this undertaking might appear from a traditional perspective. I believe that
pioneers in various areas of modern consciousness research have done exactly that.
They have studied with great courage a wide spectrum of holotropic experiences and
amassed in the process vast amounts of fascinating data. Many of the phenomena they
have observed represent a crucial challenge to deeply ingrained beliefs that have
long been falsely considered to be established scientific facts.
The more than four decades that I have spent in consciousness research have
convinced me that the only way the proponents of materialistic science can maintain
their present worldview is by systematically censoring and misinterpreting all the
data concerning holotropic states. They have certainly successfully used this
strategy in the past, whether the source of the challenging data was historical
study, comparative religion, anthropology, or various areas of modern consciousness
research. This certainly is true about parapsychology, psychedelic therapy, and
experiential psychotherapies. Thanatology and the work with laboratory mind-
altering techniques are additional examples.

I am convinced that this strategy cannot be continued indefinitely. It is becoming

increasingly evident that the basic assumptions that represent the cornerstones of
materialistic monism are at present not adequately supported by scientific data. In
addition, the amount of evidence from consciousness research that has to be
suppressed and ignored is rapidly growing. It is not enough to show that the claims
of transpersonal psychology are incompatible with the worldview of materialistic
science. To silence the conceptual challenges, it would be necessary to demonstrate
that the observations from transpersonal psychology and consciousness research,
including those described in this book, can be adequately accounted for and
explained in the context of the materialistic paradigm.

I seriously doubt that mainstream materialistic critics would be more successful in

accomplishing this task than the researchers in the transpersonal field have been
themselves. I have the privilege of knowing most of them personally. They all have
traditional academic backgrounds and had exerted great effort to find conventional
explanations for their findings before they decided to seek a radical alternative.
I know from my own experience that it was the disturbing and painful inadequacy of
the old paradigm to account for the data and not iconoclastic zeal and delight that
was responsible for the origins of transpersonal psychology.

It is important to emphasize that the cosmology described in this book is not in

conflict with the facts and observations of any scientific discipline. What is
being questioned and challenged is the appropriateness of the philosophical
conclusions drawn from these observations. The ideas in this book do not change any
of the specifics described by materialistic science. They simply provide an
overarching metaframework for the phenomena constituting consensus reality.
According to the materialistic worldview, the universe is a mechanical system that
essentially created itself and consciousness is an epiphenomenon of material
processes. The findings of transpersonal psychology and consciousness research
strongly suggest that the universe might be a creation of superior cosmic
intelligence and consciousness an essential aspect of existence.

There exist no scientific findings that demonstrate the priority of matter over
consciousness and the absence of creative intelligence in the universal scheme of
things. Adding the insights from consciousness research to the findings of
materialistic science provides a more complete understanding of many important
aspects of the cosmos for which we currently have unsatisfactory and unconvincing
explanations. These include such fundamental questions as the creation of the
universe, the origin of life on our planet, the evolution of species, and the
nature and function of consciousness.

In addition, this new perspective on reality includes as its integral part the rich
spectrum of holotropic experiences and related phenomena. This is a large and
important domain of existence for which materialistic science has failed to provide
reasonable and convincing rational explanations. After repeated frustrating
attempts, I have myself given up hope that I would be able to explain my
experiences and observations in the context of the conceptual framework that I
received during my academic training. If any of the critics of transpersonal
psychology succeed in presenting a convincing, sober, and down-to-earth
materialistic explanation of the extraordinary world of holotropic experiences, I
will be the first one to welcome it and congratulate them.

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Index
A

Absolute, the. See Consciousness, Absolute

absolute nothingness. See Void

Adler, Alfred

aesthetic appreciation

enhanced in holotropic states

aggression, destruction and violence. See also murder; violence

malignant

perinatal experience and

roots of

birth trauma and

separates people from their true nature

Al-C Alawi, Sheik

Alexander, Franz
Alexander the Great

Alighieri, Dante

animal past lives, persons with

animals, identification with

annihilation, experiences of. See also death

during moment of birth

anthropocentrism

anxiety. See fear

archetypes. See also collective unconscious; specific archetypes

as bridging material and spiritual worlds

in holotropic breathwork

in holotropic states

perinatal access to

Arrien, Angeles
art. See also drama creation and

Asch, Sholem

astral projection, experiment in

astrology

atheists’ dilemma as seen in holotropic states

Aurobindo, Sri

auto-projecting into future

Azriel of Gerona

Bache, Christopher

Bardo Thödol. See Tibetan teachings

Barrow, J. D.

Bateson, Gregory

Behe, Michael J.
Being of Light

belief. See also holotropic states; reincarnation; worldview

changed by transcendental experience

birth. See also perinatal experience

anesthesia during

annihilation experiences during

as biographical-transpersonal interface

as gateway to collective unconscious

guidelines for

imprinting during

mother’s experience during

fear of death and

as sexual

as spiritual

as unitive
preparation for

as psychospiritual dividing line

reliving of

death and rebirth during

death motifs in

resistance to

sexual arousal during

spiritual impact of

spiritual

trauma of

destructive aggression rooted in

effects of

Black Mass, perinatal experience and

Blake, William

bliss. See Sacchidananda

Bodhisattva

body-ego. See also skin-encapsulated ego

overidentification with

transcending boundaries of

Bohm, David

Bolen, J. S.

boundaries. See also under body-ego

absence of

in intrauterine experience

arbitrariness of physical

transcending of individual

during sex

BPMs. See perinatal matrices

Brahman. See also creative principle

brain, consciousness and the

brainwashing, sexual ecstasy during

Brave New World (Huxley)

Buchanan, John

Buddha

Buddhism. See also Tibetan teachings

Byron, George Gordon

Cabala

Campbell, Joseph

Capra, Fritjof

causality, linear

synchronicities transcending

Charcot, Jean-Martin

Chardin, Teilhard de
children, past life memories of

choking. See suffocation

Christianity

origins in spiritual experiences

Chuang-tzu

Cicero

claustrophobic experiences, perinatal

coincidences. See synchronicities and coincidences

collective unconscious. See also archetypes

perinatal experiences and

compassion

connectedness. See interconnectedness of all things

consciousness. See also holotropic states

of the ecosystem
in holotropic states

gap between matter and

involution and evolution of

modern physics and research on

Consciousness, Absolute. See also creation; divine; Universal Mind

experiences of

identification with

material world as creation of

revelations about

contradictions, in holotropic states. See also polarities

creation

dynamics of

partitioning of Absolute Consciousness

revealtions about

metaphors for
phases of

pregnant Void as source of

reasons for

as experiment

as longing of Absolute Consciousness

as overflow of abundance of Absolute Consciousness

role of consciousness in

creative principle. See also Brahman

transcends distinctions and polarities

transcends space and time

Crick, Francis

crucifixion, perinatal experience and

darkness/dark side motif

perinatal experience and

uncovered in holotropic states

Darwinian theory, failures of

Dass, Ram

Davidson, K.

Dawkins, Richard

death. See also annihilation; dying before dying; suicidal depression; terminal
illness

archetypes of

during birth regression

attitudes toward. See also reincarnation, beliefs about

of ego

prior to rebirth

encounters with

as mystical/spiritual opening

mystical states and

experienced during moment of birth

experienced in holotropic states

fear of

during childbirth and delivery

loss of via ritual death and rebirth

interface with transpersonal domain

near-death experiences

as catalyst for mystical experience

elements of birth in

reckoning in

sexual component of

psychospiritual

death motifs

perinatal
during reliving of birth

deities and demons

experienced in holotropic states

déjà vécu

déjà vu, past life memories and

deMause, Lloyd

depression, suicidal

resolved through spiritual openings

determinism vs. free will

devil archetype. See also deities and demons; satanic imagery

perinatal roots of. See also hell motif

Dionysus

Divine, immanent/transcendent

divine, the. See also Consciousness, Absolute

identification with
religions and

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

drama

fictional

life as a

drugs, psychedelic

dying before dying

in shamanic traditions

Dyson, Freeman

Eckhart, Meister

ecosystem consciousness

in holotropic states

ecstasy. See also Sacchidananda

Einstein, Albert

empathy. See compassion; identification

Empedocles

emptiness, forms of. See also Void

engulfment experiences

during reliving of birth

environmental crises. See global crisis

epistemology. See also belief

ethical decisions, as creative acts

ethics

felt in holotropic states

as part of creation

relativity of

Everett, Hugh

evil. See also deities and demons; suffering

archetypes of. See also hell motif

future of humanity and

how to deal with

divine roots of

holotropic experiences and

as intrinsic part of creation

reasons for

religions’ view of

separating power of

transcended in transpersonal experiences

universality of

experience. See also specific experiences

creation of one’s own

levels of
F

false vs. true identity

fear, perinatal roots of. See also under death

fictional literature. See also drama

filmmaking, creation of material reality and

fire motif, perinatal roots of

Flud, Robert

formlessness. See Void

free will vs. determinism

Freud, Sigmund. See also psychoanalysis

holotropic states in Anna O. case

Fromm, Erich

future of humanity, evil archetypes and

G
Gennep, Arnold van

global crisis

individual transformation and

lessons from Native American ceremony

metaphysical dimension of

God. See also atheists; Consciousness, Absolute; deities and demons; Divine

experiences of

two faces of

Godfrey, Kenneth

Goleman, D.

Graham, Neil

greed, insatiable

spiritual and perinatal sources of

Grof, Christina

Grof, Paul
Grof, Stanislav

astral projection experiment

holotropic experiences of

life experiences of

research of

guilt, perinatal experience and

Hahn, Thich Nhat

Hall, Joseph

Hall, Manly

hallucinogenic drugs. See drugs, psychedelic

Harner, Michael

he-Lavan, David Ben Abraham

Hell motif, perinatal roots of

helplessness, during birth experiences

hero’s journey motif, perinatal roots of

Hinduism

Hines, B.

Hitler, Adolf

Hofmann, Albert

holons

holotropic breathwork

holotropic states. See also “peak experiences”; shamanic experiences; transpersonal

experiences

atheist’s dilemma as seen in

belief changes following

case material of

characteristics

ethical values and behavior influenced by

experiences in

aesthetic appreciation enhanced

archetypes

contradictions coexisting

dark unconscious material uncovered

death and rebirth

deities and demons

ecosystem consciousness

ethical concerns

evil

of other persons’ lives

reliving birth

sexuality

unitive

violence
induction methods. See also drugs, psychedelic; “peak experiences,” triggers for

insights and revelations from. See also specific topics

into Absolute Consciousness

archetypal

into creation, dynamics of

into creation of one’s own reality

mythological

philosophical and spiritual

as inspiration for religions

myths about

pathologizing of

role in history of psychiatry

role in religion

space and time and

suppression of
taboos against

terminology for

verbal limitations in describing

visionary

holotropic vs. hylotropic processes

Hoyle, Fred

humanistic psychology

Huxley, Aldous

hylotropic vs. holotropic processes

identification

with Absolute Consciousness

with animals

with body-ego
with the divine

with microscopic entities

perinatal, with Jesus’ crucifixion

identity

false

secrets of

loss of

perinatal experience and

idolatry

Inanna

intelligence, spiritual

interconnectedness of all things

introspection. See self-exploration

J
Jain religion

Jesus, crucifixion of perinatal identification with

Johnson, Philip E.

joy. See ecstasy; Sacchidananda

Jung, Carl G.. See also archetypes

Kabir

karma. See past life memories; reincarnation

Katha Upanishad

Khanna, M.

Koestler, Arthur

Kornfield, Jack

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von

Kundalini
L

language, limitations of

Lao-tzu

Laszlo, Ervin

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von monadology of

life after death. See reincarnation

linear causality, synchronicities transcending

Locke, John

loneliness, perinatal experience and

Long Day’s Journey into Night (O’Neill)

Lovejoy, Arthur O.

LSD. See drugs, psychedelic

Lucifer
M

Maharshi, Sri Ramana

Malekulans

Maslow, Abraham

masochism. See under pain

material world

materialistic science. See science, materialistic

maya

McCririck, Pauline

McDermott, Robert

Mesmer, Franz Anton

Metzner, Ralph

microcosm and macrocosm

monadology, of Leibniz

Monroe, Robert
Mookerjee, A.

morality. See ethics

motherhood, unitive experiences in. See also birth

murder

erotically motivated

perinatal experience and

Murphy, M.

music, triggering peak experiences

mystical states. See Consciousness, Absolute; holotropic states; “peak

experiences”; shamanic experiences

mythology

perinatal roots of

revelations from holotropic states

N
Native American ceremony, lessons from

near-death experiences. See under death

Newton, Isaac

nothingness. See Void

nursing, unitive experiences during

ocean, mystical raptures and

Odent, Michel

old age, attitudes toward

O’Neill, Eugene

orgasm

experienced as dying

as psychospiritual rebirth

Origen (Origenes Adamantius)

Osiris

out-of-body experiences

near-death

Oversoul

Pagels, Heinz

pain. See also evil; suffering

transformed into sexual arousal

transformed into transcendental experience

Pañchamakara

paranoia, perinatal

part-whole relationships in universe. See also microcosm and macrocosm

past life experiences

experiencing others’ lives

past life memories

of animal past lives

in children

déjà vu experience and

unique features of

verification of

ways to access

“peak experiences”

beneficial effects of

triggers for

beautiful creations

peak athletic performance

perinatal experience. See also birth

access to archetypal domain

of Hitler
insatiable greed rooted in

as psychospiritual dividing line

as purposeful

sadomasochism and

satanic imagery and

as spiritual opening

symbolism of aggression and

synchronicities and coincidences and

timelessness during childbirth terror

transpersonal realm and

perinatal matrices, basic (BPMs)

BPM I

absence of boundaries in

access to archetypal domain in

images of paradise in
oceanic feeling in

toxic womb experience in

BPM II

death motifs in

engulfment/devouring experiences in

helplessness during

as stage in spiritual opening

BPM III

death and rebirth motifs in

sexual component in

violence in

BPM IV

fire motif in

Perls, Fritz

Persephone
physics, modern. See also Einstein

consciousness research and

Plato

play

cosmic

mystery play of universe

Plotinus

poetry, transcendental experience in

polarities, transcending of. See also contradictions

pornography, perinatal experience and

pregnancy, experiences during. See also birth

dreams of death and destruction

unitive

pregnant Void. See Void, pregnant

primal mind

primal therapy

psychedelic drugs. See under drugs

psychiatry

role of holotropic states in history of

Western, materialistic worldview of

psychoanalysis, history of holotropic states and

psychoanalytic treatment

intellectualism of

psychotherapy. See also birth, reliving of

experiential, purposes of

intellectualism of

role of past life memories in

psychotic episodes

mystical states confused with

Q

quantum physics. See physics, modern

Ramakrishna, Sri

rape, perinatal experience and

Rawson, Philip

reason, inadequacies of

rebirth, experience of

ego death prior to

in holotropic states

during moment of birth

perinatal experience and motif of

regression. See also birth, reliving of; holotropic states

past life

reincarnation

animal past lives and

beliefs about. See also death, attitudes toward

religions and

evidence for

in Tibetan Buddhism

religion(s). See also idolatry; spiritual practice; worldview

divorces evil from the divine

idolatry in

inspired by spiritual experiences

role of holotropic states in

science and

spiritual experience suppressed in

vs. spirituality
resurrection, experienced during moment of birth

Ring, Kenneth

Rinpoche, Kalu

Roberts, Jane

Roob, A.

Ross, C.

Rumi, Jalaluddin

Sacchidananda

sadomasochism. See also under pain

perinatal experience and

Sancta Clara, Abraham à

Sartre, Jean-Paul

satanic imagery. See also deities and demons; devil archetype

perinatal

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Schuon, Frithjof

science

materialistic, worldview of

changed by transcendental experiences

metaphysical assumptions of

Western psychiatry and

religion and

scientism vs.

spirituality and

scientific theory vs. scientific method

self-exploration

benefits from

synchronicities and
self-image. See also identity

perinatal experience and

selfishness. See greed

sensory deprivation

sex

mystical states during

sexual abuse, perinatal experience and

sexual arousal

during birth regression

orgasm

pain transformed into

sexual perversion, perinatal experience and

sexuality

as boundary transcending

in holotropic states
perinatal origins

spirituality and. See also Tantric practices

as unifying or alienating

Shadow. See darkness/dark side motif

shamanic experiences

shamanism

Sheldrake, Rupert

skin-encapsulated ego. See also body-ego

Smith, H.

Smoot, G.

Socrates

soul. See Oversoul

space and time

dimensionality of
holotropic states and

transcended by creative principle

Sparks, Cary

Sparks, Tav

spiritual beliefs. See also belief; religion(s); worldview

as based on direct experience

spiritual emergencies

spiritual experiences. See holotropic states; specific experiences

spiritual intelligence

spiritual practice, benefits from

spirituality. See also religion(s) vs. religion

sports, triggering mystical experiences

St. Jerome

St. Teresa

Steindl-Rast, Brother David

Stevenson, Ian

suffering. See also evil

suffocation, sexual arousal during

suicidal depression

resolved by spiritual openings

supreme principle of universe. See Consciousness, Absolute

Sutich, Anthony

Sutra, Avatamsaka

Sutra, Prajñaparamita

synchronicities and coincidences

inner exploration and

transpersonal and perinatal experiences and

Tantric painting
Tantric practices

Tantric science

Tao Te Ching (Lao-tzu)

Taoism

Tarnas, Rick

Tart, Charles

terminal illness, spiritual awakenings during

therapy. See psychotherapy

Thomas, Lewis

Thorne, Kip S.

Tibetan teachings. See also Buddhism

Tibetan Wheel of Life

timelessnes

during childbirth terror

Tipler, F. J.
Traherne, Thomas

transpersonal experiences. See also Consciousness, Absolute; holotropic states

synchronicities and coincidences in

as transcending evil

unitive experience

mother’s experience of childbirth as

Universal Mind. See also Consciousness, Absolute

universe, mystery play of

Upanishad, Mundaka

Vaughan, Frances

violence. See also murder

birth trauma and

experienced in holotropic states

visionary holotropic states

Void, pregnant

experiences of

as source of creation

vulnerability, perinatal experience and

Walsh, Roger

Wambach, H.

water. See ocean

Watson, James

Watts, Alan

Western science. See under science

Wheeler, John

White, R. A.

Whitehead, Alfred North

Wilber, Ken

Williams, George C.

witches, perinatal experience and

Wolf, Fred Alan

Wordsworth, William

worldview. See also under science, materialistic

attitudes toward death and

lifestyles and

perinatal experience and

Yantra, Purushakara
Yockey, H.