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The experiential worlds of Stanislav Grof, M.D., #2: NDE realities

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The first book I read by Stanislav and Christina Grof was Beyond death: The gates of  consciousness (1980, Thames & Hudson). It is a concise and gorgeously illustrated look across time and different ethnic and religious groups at the astonishing similarities in their concepts of death and the afterlife. It was an eye-opener.

This post is taken from notes I made during my first reading of the book, with page numbers as notations. Some are quotes, others are paraphrases; all are, it seems to me still, very much worth taking in. [Read more…] about The experiential worlds of Stanislav Grof, M.D., #2: NDE realities

NDE, psyche, Stanislav Grof, and the nature of reality

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We have now spent several months—about six of them, in fact—digging around the concept of hell. I have pointed out that although it is deeply embedded in our culture, the Dante’s Inferno view of hell is not biblical. I have observed that hell does not register as a location on any GPS system. I have quoted theological views suggesting that hell may be something other than after-death punishment for bad behavior.

But the fact remains that whether or not we consider hell to be politically correct, or a belief we agree with, or a concept we despise, some people experience near-death and similar events that act very much like the traditional descriptions of hell.

Where do we go from here?

Today we are going to the fifty years of exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness conducted by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his partner (and wife) Christina Grof. Over their five decades of research, the Grofs have built what he refers to as “a useful source of data about the human psyche and the nature of reality.”

Exactly where we wish to go!

a useful source of data about the human psyche and the nature of reality

The quotes below are brief excerpts from a lengthy article.  A link to the complete article appears at the end of this post. 

Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research

Stanislav Grof, M.D.

… My primary interest is to focus on experiences that have healing, transformative, and evolutionary potential and those that represent a useful source of data about the human psyche and the nature of reality. I will also pay special attention to those aspects of these experiences that reveal the existence of the spiritual dimensions of existence. For this purpose, the term non-ordinary 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.

…I would, therefore, like to narrow our discussion to a large and important subgroup of non-ordinary states of consciousness for which contemporary psychiatry does not have a specific term. Because I feel strongly 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 means literally “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 article. It suggests that in our everyday state of consciousness 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 dramatic 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 it is not grossly impaired as it is in the delirant conditions. We are experiencing invasion 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, have ‘each foot in a different world.’

…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, murderous anger, utter despair, consuming guilt, and other forms of unimaginable emotional suffering that matches the descriptions of the tortures of hell in the great religions of the world.

The content of holotropic states is often spiritual or mystical. We can experience sequences of psychological death and rebirth and a broad spectrum of transpersonal phenomena, such as 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 landscapes. Holotropic experiences of this kind are 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 ritual and spiritual life of humanity from shamanism and sacred ceremonies of aboriginal tribes to the great religions of the world.

…Holotropic states tend to engage something like an “inner radar,” bringing into consciousness automatically the contents from the unconscious that have the strongest emotional charge, are most psychodynamically relevant at the time, and are available for processing at that particular time.

…On the one hand, they appear on the same experiential continuum as the biographical and perinatal experiences and are thus coming from within the individual psyche. On the other hand, they seem to be tapping directly, without the mediation of the senses, into sources of information that are clearly far beyond the conventional reach of the individual.

… These observations indicate that we can obtain information about the universe in two radically different ways: besides the conventional possibility of learning through sensory perception and analysis and synthesis of the data, we can also find out about various aspects of the world by direct identification with them in a holotropic state of consciousness. Each of us thus appears to be a microcosm containing in a holographic way the information about the macrocosm

… The existence and nature of transpersonal experiences violates some of the most basic assumptions of mechanistic science. They imply such seemingly absurd notions as relativity and arbitrary nature of all physical boundaries, non-local connections in the universe, communication through unknown means and channels, memory without a material substrate, nonlinearity of time, or consciousness associated with all living organisms, and even inorganic matter. Many transpersonal experiences involve events from the microcosm and the macrocosm, realms that cannot normally be reached by unaided human senses, or from historical periods that precede the origin of the solar system, formation of planet earth, appearance of living organisms, development of the nervous system, and emergence of homo sapiens.

… If they are allowed to run their full course and are properly integrated, they represent a healing mechanism of extraordinary power.

…[A]ll that Freudian psychoanalysis has discovered about the human psyche represents at best the exposed part of the iceberg, while vast domains of the unconscious resisted Freud’s efforts and remained hidden even for him. Mythologist Joseph Campbell, using his incisive Irish humor, put it very succinctly: “Freud was fishing, while sitting on a whale.”

…According to Jung, the psyche is not a product of the brain; it is a cosmic principle (anima mundi) that permeates all of existence and our individual psyche partakes in this cosmic matrix. The intellect is just a partial function of the psyche, which makes it possible for us to orient ourselves in practical situations and solve everyday problems; it is incapable to fathom and manipulate the psyche.

… From the point of view of Western science, the material world represents the only reality and any form of spiritual belief is seen as reflecting lack of education, primitive superstition, magical thinking, or regression to infantile patterns of functioning. Direct experiences of spiritual realities are then relegated to the world of gross psychopathology, serious mental disorders. Western psychiatry makes no distinction between a mystical experience and a psychotic experience and sees both as manifestations of mental disease. In its rejection of religion, it does not differentiate primitive folk beliefs or fundamentalists’ literal interpretations of scriptures from sophisticated mystical traditions and Eastern spiritual philosophies based on centuries of systematic introspective exploration of the psyche. It pathologizes spirituality of any kind and together with it the entire spiritual history of humanity.

the psyche is not a product of the brain; it is a cosmic principle (anima mundi) that permeates all of existence

…Spirituality involves a special relationship between the individual and the cosmos and is in its essence a personal and private affair. At the cradle of all great religions were visionary (perinatal and/or transpersonal) experiences of their founders, prophets, saints, and even ordinary followers. All major spiritual scriptures – the Vedas, the Buddhist Pali Canon, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and many others are based on revelations in holotropic states of consciousness.

…As we have seen, the observations from the research of holotropic states … require a drastic revision of our thinking in [psychiatry and psychology]. However, many of them are of such a fundamental nature that they transcend the narrow frame of these disciplines and challenge the most basic metaphysical assumptions of Western science and its Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. They seriously undermine the belief that consciousness is a product of neurophysiological processes in the brains and thus an epiphenomenon of matter; they strongly suggest that it is a primary attribute of all existence.

[To read the entire 30+-paged article, which includes a description of Grof’s convictions about the perinatal nature of non-ordinary states of consciousness, go here.]

On the reality of near-death experiences

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Here’s the latest thing to think about:

Are near-death experiences real? A  recent study at the University of Liège (Belgium) compared the characteristics of memories of near-death experience with those of memories after coma without NDE, and after both actual and imagined events. Although the samples were small, the findings are surprisingly strong. The memories of NDEs included significantly more detail, a greater sense of personal involvement, and far higher emotional content than any of the other memories, including those of actual events.

The researchers observe that NDEs have too many vivid characteristics to be considered imagined events; they acknowledge the NDEs as real perceptions. However, the research conclusion is that as the NDEs did not occur in reality,  they probably result from a physiological dysfunction and are actually hallucinatory.

An article at the website (IANDS.org) of the International Association for Near-Death Studies is entitled, “Study finds NDE memories are not of imagined events.” The author, who is not credited, describes the Liege study briefly and clearly, and responds:

The researchers’ conclusions are based on two assumptions that are inconsistent with other evidence from NDEs: (1) that the perceived events do not occur in reality and (2) that NDE phenomena are determined neurophysiologically. Therefore, other interpretations are possible.

The first assumption, that perceived events in an NDE do not occur in reality, is not consistent with the veridical [truthful] perceptions that are reported by NDErs. In fact, nearly all “apparently nonphysical veridical perceptions” (AVPs) are verified when checked. Janice Holden (2009) reported that of 93 veridical perception cases in the NDE literature, 92% were completely accurate, 6% were accurate with some errors and only one case was completely erroneous.

Furthermore, previously unknown veridical information received during the “transcendent” part of the NDE (e.g. meeting deceased relatives) is frequently later verified. For example, a man saw and interacted with an apparently deceased person and later found out the man was his biological father who had died in the holocaust (van Lommel, 2010, pp. 32-33).

You can read the entire IANDS article (it’s not long) here.

Regular readers of this blog will probably have guessed the direction my comments will take: We need some new vocabulary.

To believe that “NDE phenomena are determined neurophysiologically” is a logical assumption from within the prevailing materialistic view of most academic researchers and their audience. For anyone who has grown up surrounded only by the materialist worldview, that is a foregone conclusion. The only “real” there is, is physical.

Say that an NDE is occurring for an individual who is lying unconscious directly in front of us. The person is obviously, physically present, in the real world; we can see her. But whatever is going on with her is invisible; we cannot see what she is seeing, or measure or authenticate its events as observers. We are not part of what will later be reported; any landscapes or deceased family members are with her, not with us. Remember, “It’s all in your mind” means, “It isn’t real.” From the logical, materialist perspective, that NDE is by its nature unreal.

Ironically, something of the same thought process creeps into the arguments put forward by NDE experiencers and apologists who continue to report elements of near-death experience as if they were physically real. And so we get statements like, “a man saw and interacted with an apparently deceased person and later found out the man was his biological father.” This is how NDEs are reported, and how sympathetic researchers talk about them, as if they were physical events. 

Leaving aside the curious question of how one identifies a person as being “apparently deceased,” other than his looking like a zombie, the problem is simple: In common speech, a person/“a man” is a creature, a personality encased in a physical body. We can know an individual’s personality, but we cannot see it, for without a body it is invisible. We may intuit the existence of an individual’s spirit, untied to a body; but that is generally also invisible. A body, being physical, must inhabit some location in the time/space universe, where the only place currently known to be inhabited by bodies is either Earth or in a space capsule. And obviously, despite the movies, there is no known place on Earth populated by resurrected bodies.

It is my belief that the experiencer did not see a person; he did not interact with a man. What he saw was a meaningful image, a perception of a person. What he saw was not the physicality of his biological father but an image, a perception, a message–like a dream image but moreso, from a related neighborhood where symbol carries the weight of being.

That much is simple. What is not simple is the cry of the experiencer, “It was so real! It was realer than real!” And that is the way the experience registers. The far deeper problem is that we have no specialized vocabulary in which to express the reality of the non-physical “something” which he saw and with which he interacted in such a vividly memorable way that even materialist researchers recognize that it was clearly not imagined. Make no mistake: the “something” is phenomenologically real, though it has no corporal existence.

So researchers must logically reject the physicality of NDEs; yet we continue to contribute to the confusion by speaking of NDEs as if they were occurring on some physical plane, as if they relied on a kind of planetary travel. Until we can find a way to make the distinction, researchers will continue to believe, in all good faith, that NDEs must be hallucinatory, and family members and health care professionals will continue to believe that experiencers have suffered some physiological dysfunction. The least we can do, it seems to me, is to be meticulous about referring to the visual objects in NDEs as perceptions rather than as physical entities.

I am convinced that we do experiencers, the research, and the entire field of near-death studies a great disservice by speaking the language of materialism to discuss non-physical reality. Until we can do otherwise, we will continue to mislead ourselves and our hearers about how veridicality works, and where it is these experiences take place, and what they actually mean.

Universal Knowledge: the Akashik, Jung, and the Unconscious Mind

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With the recent post about Tibetan delogs [here], this ongoing discussion of distressing near-death experiences shifted its exploration of the Western idea of hell to a wider setting. Today it widens yet again, this time not geographically but conceptually, with a guest post by Micah Hanks from the blog Mysterious Universe.

A prolific writer and researcher, Micah addresses a variety of unexplained phenomena in the more esoteric realms of the strange and unusual as well as cultural phenomena, human history, and the prospects of our technological future as a species influenced by science. He is the author of several books, including Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule; is an executive editor for Intrepid Magazine; writes for a variety of other publications, including Mysterious Universe; and produces a weekly podcast that follows his research at his popular website, www.gralienreport.com. Hanks lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina.

This article originally appeared on Mysterious Universe and is reprinted here with permission.

Universal Knowledge: the Akashic, Jung, and
the Unconscious Mind

 Micah Hanks

My interest in the myths, symbols, and the unusual aspects of life often leads me into some fairly strange sub-adventures that underlie my day-to-day life. There are even certain points where I begin to feel that there is something of a continuum between them, and that particular themes will begin to emerge over and over again, until they finally command my attention. And interestingly, these sorts of instances often will yield the most fruit in terms of insights I am able to come away with regarding odd bits of esoterica.

One such instance involves a rather strange series of events surrounding the historic figure known as John Dee, a scientist, advisor, and spy for Queen Elizabeth I, in addition to having undertaken a variety of magical workings in his day. Knowing my interest in (and aptitude for) matters involving symbology, a woman had contacted me a while ago to ask whether I might know the meaning behind a certain strange little symbol: it resembled a stick man, with what resembled horns protruding from the head. Indeed, I did recognize the symbol, and within a few minutes, after initially mistaking it for being associated with the magician Aleister Crowley, I managed to confirm that it was the Monas Hieroglyphica of John Dee. In doing so, I also managed to spark a strange debate about the origins of symbols and information that the human mind seems capable of accessing at times… a process which some feels has ties to the otherworldly.

monas-300x300Once it was revealed that I had given the correct answer (which was posted on a Facebook group where others were attempting to solve the same riddle), I was subsequently contacted by a woman who wished to know how I had deciphered the symbol. She then told me she was a psychic, specializing in remote viewing, and wondered if I too, as she had done, managed to decipher the riddle “by consulting with the Akashic Record.” For the moment, I had somehow managed to give the impression that I was in touch with some kind of extra-bodily universal intelligence… but where, in fact, did my knowledge of the Hieroglyphica come from?

I found this question rather strange, and while I had to admit that I had not knowingly been in direct contact with a nonphysical “library”, of sorts, which stored universal knowledge, I had been intrigued by symbols like Dee’s Monas (pictured right) for quite some time, and had merely stumbled across the image at some point. But the question of whether I had been able to consult with “Akashic Records” was somewhat synchronistic all the same, since I had only recently been contacted by a friend, who after reading my book The UFO Singularity, asked me whether I thought artificial intelligence in the future might be able to solve the UFO riddle by accessing the Akashic Records.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, the so-called “Akashic Records” refers to a concept found in the mythos surrounding many spiritualist and religious teachings, believed to contain “all knowledge of human experience and all experiences,” along with the complete history of the cosmos. This information is “written”, woven, or encoded into the very fabric reality, a state sometimes referred to as the ”aether.” The name itself is derived from the old Sanskrit “akasha,” a word used to express similar aether-like concepts of an all encompassing “substance” that permeates all creation.

Edgar Cayce, the great “sleeping prophet,” was actually said to have attained his knowledge of ancient lost civilizations by directly accessing the Akashic Records while in a trance state, though this was not asserted by Cayce himself, but revealed later in the first book in an odd series, called The Law of One, where it is stated that Cayce obtained the information (here again, this “answer” is channeled in similar fashion), revealing that humans occasionally access such realms of knowledge that exist beyond the mind alone. The relevant passage reads as follows:

“We have explained before that the intelligent infinity is brought into intelligent energy from eighth density or octave. The one sound vibratory complex called Edgar used this gateway to view the present, which is not the continuum you experience but the potential social memory complex of this planetary sphere. The term your peoples have used for this is the ‘Akashic Record’ or the ‘Hall of Records’.”

But the notion that humans may be capable of accessing information they would otherwise not be capable of attaining is mirrored in the study of psychology as well, particularly in the works of Carl Jung. In his essay, Confrontation with the Unconscious, he notes the appearance of an archetype he calls “Philemon,” which was an older male figure he refers to as a guide throughout his various imaginary visions. At one point, Jung begins to recognize the information imparted to him by Philemon as seeming to emanate from someplace other than his own mind:

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him. and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.

It is a very strange notion indeed, that some aspects of human existence may be rooted within a complex collective unconsciousness, as Jung supposed; even more strange and perplexing is the idea that the human mind might even draw information from elsewhere… places or planes of thought and imagination that exist beyond the mind itself. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve done this myself, especially in my modest ability to reflect upon seeing, at one point, John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica; let alone do I acknowledge that there are components within the mind that, in scientific terms, might be capable of extending beyond the physical. But the prevalence of this concept in various cultures and traditions, along with allusions to similar processes expressed by Jung, do provide some compelling and challenging notions about the inner workings of the human mind.

Still discussing, with a questionnaire about distressing NDEs

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This post is a quick look back over the shoulder to last week’s post, “Why keep discussing distressing NDEs.” Today’s consists of two brief bullet points, either of which could lead you to hours of thought.

  • The comments on last week’s post have been exceptionally rich and thought-provoking—small essays from a half-dozen or so readers reminding us why this blog and the book Dancing Past the Dark exist. If you have not yet seen the comments, please do not pass Go before you go back and read them. I am unendingly grateful for the depth and thoughtfulness of these sharings. You’ll find them here.
  • On a related theme, faithful reader Dave Woods posted his belief that a valuable thread would be responses from experiencers about what they have taken away from a distressing NDE. I agree completely. So, here are five questions, his original two and three I’ve added:
  1. Do you believe you learned anything from your dNDE? Yes/No/Not sure
  2. If Yes, what did you learn from it?
  3. If you are not able to say you learned something from your distressing NDE, please say something about its effects on your life and thinking.
  4. After having a dNDE, some experiencers are confused and haunted by it for the rest of their lives, and others are not.  If you are not still troubled by the experience, why not?
  5. If you are still deeply troubled by the NDE, what is it that continues to confuse and haunt you?

If you have had a distressing NDE, I hope you will add your voice to the responses.  You may post in the comments below or send me an email at nanbush12 (at) gmail.com.

Remember to look at last week’s comments!

Why keep discussing distressing NDEs?

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Over the past few months, a pattern has been emerging in the comments to these blog posts and in my emails. I have been seeing expressions of discomfort and even anger about this discussion of distressing NDEs, based on the idea that the NDEs represent institutional and/or cultural abuse. The vocabulary includes words such as “falsity,” “manipulation,” “intimidation,” “coercion,” “judgmentalism,” “control.” One respected reader wonders why the discussion even needs to be continued, why it gives the forces of oppression such attention rather than outright denunciation.

Let me say again: “For several months now, these blog posts have been steps on a journey to get down underneath all the preconceptions and assumptions, all the theories and doctrines, and ask, ‘What is bedrock?’ Is it possible to get beyond overlays of supposition to something so simple I am able to trust it? Can we begin to see near-death experiences through lenses other than doctrinal or disbelieving?” [Read more…] about Why keep discussing distressing NDEs?