The Holotropic Mind

by Stanislav Grof

  Racial and Collective Experiences

  Racial and collective experiences go a step beyond ancestral memories. Racial experiences can involve people outside one's immediate family or blood line, extending out to any members of the same race. This process can reach beyond racial lines to other racial groups and to collective memories of humanity as a whole. I mentioned earlier that psychiatry traditionally looks upon our psyches as being affected only by what we have experienced first hand, through our physical senses or as a result of our own interpretations of these experiences. However, our observations of hundreds of people who have reported ancestral, racial, and collective experiences support Carl Gustav Jung's assertion that our psyches are also deeply affected by a collective unconscious that gives us access to a vast warehouse of memories encompassing all of human experience from the beginning of time.

  During a holotropic training we conducted in California, a European psychiatrist reported the experience which follows. As you read this description, bear in mind that this woman had absolutely no intellectual knowledge of Native American history. Yet, her experience was strikingly reminiscent of the Cherokee Tear Trail and other events in the lives of American Indians during the Indian Removal Act. Here is what she reported.

  Suddenly everything seemed cold, abysmal, and hopeless. I felt an enormous force moving me far beyond the boundaries of my present life, to a remote historical period. My ordinary self seemed to have shrunk to the size of a photon and then temporarily vanished. I became another person—an old, small, and incredibly wrinkled Indian woman with rich braids of greasy hair.

  I saw a vast open plane and on it an assembly of thousands of Indians. They sat in groups or clans, surrounding a circle of their elders, who were calm, determined, and motionless. They expected from their people an answer: if they choose Death or the Journey. Those who had chosen death receded into radially arranged long and low cottages. When the decision process had ended, the elders imparted death on their brothers and sisters using poisoned darts. These accepted it calmly as if it were a sacred fulfillment of their lives. When the last of them had died, the women got up and danced the dance of reconciliation with death; it included sowing and sprouting of kernels. Following this, the men stood up and performed the dance of strength, peace, and reconciliation with death.

  Having completed the rituals described above, those who participated in the dance of reconciliation got up and began to leave. The woman who had this experience said that her "entire being was permeated by sadness and grief for which there are no words." With slow rocking movements, she started chanting, a quiet, monotonous chant that expressed what she was feeling. She continued:

  Inside, I cried and wept over the death of thousands of my people—children, old ones, and men and women of all ages. I saw a long procession of them, walking over the mountains, exhausted, starved, desperate, hopeless, and dying on the way. While being an old, internally empty Indian woman, I also felt like an ancient barren mountain. Completely motionless, I followed them until they disappeared from my sight; however, in some sense, I was still with them, in their endless journey forward and nowhere, in life and death.

  People experiencing racial and/or collective episodes may find themselves participating in dramatic though usually brief sequences that take place in more or less remote historical periods, cultures, and countries. These are typically associated with specific insights concerning relationships between people, the social structure, religious practices, moral codes, art, and the technology of the historical periods involved. Sometimes we observe complex gestures, postures, and symbolic movements of the person who is having racial or collective experiences. Time and time again, objective observers with a knowledge of the countries or peoples the subject is experiencing will confirm that these movement patterns are appropriate and characteristic of the peoples and times being experienced.

  In both therapy and workshop sessions, we have seen people assume complex postures (asanas) and gestures (mudras) from ancient Yogic traditions even though they have had no prior knowledge or experience with this spiritual practice. In many instances, people experienced themselves participating in practices belonging to cultures that were, in their ordinary states of consciousness, completely unknown to them. With no previous knowledge or training they engaged in movements characteristic of the! Kung Bushman trance dance, the whirling of the dervishes from the Sufi tradition, ritual dances performed in Java or Bali, and symbolic gestures of the Indian Kathakali that express themes from Hindu mythology, as they are performed along the Malabar coast.

  On occasion, people experiencing other lives speak in languages—sometimes obscure, archaic ones—of which they have no knowledge in their ordinary lives. In some instances, the authenticity of the languages used has been confirmed through audio recordings made of sessions where this phenomenon occurred. In other cases, the vocal performances had all the elements of a language, but we were unable to decipher what was being said. This does not necessarily mean that the vocal production was not an authentic language of some ethnic group. Linguists agree that it is extremely difficult to identify all of the thousands of languages and dialects spoken on this planet. However, the fact that we have been able to positively confirm a large number of such instances dispels doubt about the authenticity of this phenomenon. Occasionally, however, the sounds are quite clearly inarticulate gibberish or what is known in certain groups as "speaking in tongues."

  Ancestral and racial experiences often bring deeper insight into the symbolic meanings of cultural practices, even when the people involved had no previous interest or knowledge of them. Our follow-up research to verify the accuracy of such experiences has time and again shown them to be accurate, though they often involve information that would be available only to scholars and other committed specialists.

  I have witnessed, for example, a person who had no background whatsoever in ancient cultures describe details of Egyptian funeral practices, based on his vivid past life experiences. He has passed along, in great detail, information such as the esoteric meaning and form of special amulets and sepulchral boxes, the meaning of the colors chosen for funeral cones, the technology of embalmment, and the purpose of specific ritualized practices. Having experienced himself as an embalmer in ancient Egypt, he was able to describe the size and quality of the mummy bandages, materials used in preparing the mummy cloth, and the shape and symbolism of the four Canopic jars used to hold specific organs taken from the body. Our followup research revealed that details he had reported about the symbolic figures on each jar, as well as the specific contents of each, were found to be accurate, though this was not knowledge that was generally available to the public.

  The Mystery of Karma and Reincarnation

  For most of us born and raised in the Western European traditions, the notion of past lives and karma seems alien, if not bizarre and childish. However it is difficult to overlook the fact that for thousands of years religious writings from a great many societies have discussed past lives, reincarnation, and karma and have described the impact of these on our present lives. From the viewpoint of these writings, none of us comes into life with a "clean slate." Rather our present lives are part of a continuum that can extend far back into many previous lifetimes, and will most likely extend forward into many more. In non-ordinary states of consciousness memories of past lives are woven into a tapestry of experience that includes present life memories around birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

  We are well aware that contemporary Christianity and traditional science denounce or even ridicule such beliefs. However, research in transpersonal psychology continues to provide ample evidence that this area of study is a veritable treasure trove of insights into the nature of the human psyche. So convincing is the evidence in favor of past life influences that one can only conclude that those who refuse to consider this to be an area worthy of serious study must be either uninformed or excessively narrowminded.

  Over t
he years my observation of people who have had past life experiences while in non-ordinary states of consciousness has convinced me of the validity of this fascinating area of research. I would like to share with you some examples that both convince us that past life phenomena are extremely relevant and that our knowledge of them can help us resolve conflicts and live better lives in the present.

  In the mid-1960s, while heading a psychedelic research and treatment program for cancer patients at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, I had the opportunity to work with an unskilled laborer whom I will call Jesse. He was admitted to our program with an advanced skin cancer that had spread to his internal organs. Jesse was virtually illiterate and had no knowledge whatsoever of karma, reincarnation, or any other beliefs associated with Eastern thought. In fact, under normal circumstances it might have been assumed that his strict Catholic upbringing would have made these subjects taboo for him.

  Jesse had been losing his struggle against cancer, knew he was going to die, and was deeply troubled and anxious as a result. He agreed to undergo psychedelic therapy as a way of attempting to come to terms with his anxieties. In the beginning his focus was on his guilt about the way he had lived his life. He had been raised as a Catholic, had married and divorced, and for the past several years had lived out of wedlock with another woman. He firmly believed in the Church doctrine that in the eyes of God he would always be married to his first wife, making his present situation adulterous and sinful.

  In his sessions he had visions of war scenes and monsters, of great junkyards strewn with corpses, skeletons, rotting offal, and garbage spreading foul odors. His own body lay there, wrapped in stinking bandages, eaten away by cancer. Then a gigantic ball of fire appeared and all this mess was dumped onto the purifying flames where it was rapidly consumed. Though Jesse's flesh was destroyed, he realized that his soul survived and he found himself at the judgment of the dead, with God weighing his good and evil deeds. In the end, Jesse's positive deeds outweighed the negative ones and he felt tremendously freed of his burdens. At this point he heard celestial music and started to understand the meaning of his experience.

  He became aware of a powerful message flowing through him, through nonverbal channels that seemed to permeate his entire being. The message was: "When you die, your body will be destroyed, but you will be saved; your soul will be with you all the time. You will come back to earth, you will be living again, but you do not know what you will be on the next earth."

  As a result of this experience Jesse's pain was greatly alleviated and the acute anxiety he had been suffering disappeared. He emerged with a deep belief in the possibility of reincarnation, a concept that was in conflict with his own religious tradition. Jesse died peacefully five days later, perhaps a little earlier than he otherwise would have. It was as if his mind had been freed to surrender in his struggle against his inevitable death. It was almost as if he was hurrying to go on to what he had called "the next earth."

  In Jesse's work with me, there had never been any discussion of reincarnation or the survival of the soul after physical death. On his own, or with a little help from sources that neither he nor I had previously recognized, he had come up with a rather complex view of what occurs after death, a vision that gave him profound security in the last days of his life.

  While Jesse's experience might be dismissed as a wishful fantasy, others contain remarkable details that might be verified. Although I have had a number of my own past life experiences, none was more vivid or more convincing than one that was associated with my first tour of Russia. This experience illustrates how these past events can be interwoven with our most recent individual history and how we might employ the extraordinary healing potentials of these memories.

  In 1961 I took part in an organized group tour of Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. We were assigned official Intourist guides and all our sight-seeing was closely supervised; unsupervised sight-seeing was strictly prohibited. Just before our departure, I had learned about Pechorskaya Lavra, a Russian Orthodox monastery in Kiev located in ancient catacombs inside a mountain. This place was the spiritual center of the Ukraine and I had heard that the Bolsheviks had spared it because they feared a civilian uprising. When I first heard about this place I felt a strange and powerful emotional attraction to it and a desire to visit it.

  In Kiev I learned that Pechorskaya Lavra was not on our itinerary, and I felt myself becoming very restless. Recognizing that I was doing so at great risk, I decided to visit Pechorskaya Lavra on my own. I spoke fluent Russian so I was able to get a cab, which took me to the monastery. I walked through a maze of catacombs lined with the mummies of all the monks who had lived and died there for several centuries. Their skinny hands, covered with skin that the years had turned to brown parchment, were clasped as if in prayer. Narrow corridors opened out into caves, decorated with powerful icons and dimly illuminated by candle light. Through clouds of heavy smoke, fragrant with incense, I saw groups of chanting monks with long beards, who appeared to be deep in trance.

  As I made my way slowly through the catacombs, I was myself in an unusual state of consciousness; I had the distinct feeling that I knew this place intimately. I could anticipate every turn, every new encounter. Then I came upon a mummy whose hands were in a strange position; they were not clasped in prayer like the others. I experienced a wave of emotion that came from the depth of my being. I had never before felt anything even remotely similar to what I was feeling at that time. I ended my excursion and returned to my hotel, relieved to find that my absence had gone unnoticed by my Intourist guides.

  Following my return from Russia, I continued to be preoccupied with memories of the catacombs, especially with my strange reactions to the mummy I had seen there with the unclasped hands. However, I quickly became immersed in my research and somehow the experience faded from my memory. Then, many years later, when I was working at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, the director of the institute brought in Joan Grant and her husband Dennys Kelsey, a European couple known for their innovative hypnotic therapy. During their four-week visit to our center our staff members had the opportunity to experience personal sessions with the couple.

  Joan, a French woman, had the ability to put herself into a hypnotic trance and experience episodes from other times and places that had the quality of past life memories. She was the author of several books based on this extraordinary ability. Dennys was a British psychiatrist and hypnotist. In their work together they hypnotized the clients and asked them to go as far back in memory as they needed to go to resolve the source of their problem. Often people found the original source of their conflicts in past lives. Joan had the ability to tune into the clients' experiences with them and guide them to resolutions of their problems.

  The issue I wanted to work on with them had to do with a conflict I sometimes felt between sensuality and spirituality. In general, I had great zest for life and enjoyed all the pleasures that human existence offers. But occasionally I experienced a compelling desire to withdraw from the world, to dedicate my life wholly to spiritual practice. Dennys hypnotized me and instructed me to go back in time to the place where this problem began. Suddenly I was a Russian boy standing in a large garden and facing a palatial house, which I realized was my home. I heard Joan speaking to me, as if from a great distance: "Look at the balcony!" Without wondering how she knew I was looking at a house with a balcony at that moment, I did just as she said. I saw an old woman with crippled and contorted hands sitting on the balcony in a rocking chair. I knew that this was my grandmother, and I felt a wave of love and compassion for her.

  Suddenly the scene shifted. I was in the street of a nearby village, feeling that the simple but colorful peasant life of the moujiks was an exciting escape from the rigid lifestyle of my wealthy family. I realized that I had come to this place on numerous occasions. Then I saw myself in the dark, primitive workshop of a blacksmith. A giant, muscular man, half-naked and covered wi
th hair, stood in front of a glowing furnace. He was pounding with a huge hammer on a piece of red-hot iron, which he was shaping on the anvil. All of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my eye. My entire face contorted in a painful spasm and tears poured down my cheeks. With horror, I realized that I had been hit in the face by a piece of red-hot iron and that I was badly burned.

  I experienced the emotional pain of a ghastly disfigured adolescent, with the agony of sexual longings that could not be satisfied and the sting of repeated rejection as a result of my repugnant scars. In despair, I made the decision to become a monk, ending up at Pechorskaya Lavra. Over the years my hands became severely disfigured. Was this the result of arthritis or a hysterical reaction modeled after my beloved grandmother's disease?