The Holotropic Mind

by Stanislav Grof

  In view of the new cartography of human consciousness, we begin to look upon studies by anthropologists and historians in a new light. Equipped with this knowledge of perinatal experiences, transpersonal experiences, and psychoid phenomena, we find new meanings in ancient rites of passage, healing ceremonies, and the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth. We can take as an example the rites of passage, ceremonies that were so much a part of human life before the Industrial Age; they marked and aided the progress of important biological or social transitions, such as the birth of a child, circumcision, puberty, marriage, death, or tribal migration. Most of these ceremonies involved non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by any of a number of techniques. Initiates taking part in these rituals often experienced death and rebirth, as well as profound connections in the transpersonal realm. Various healing ceremonies, for individuals, entire tribes, or even the entire cosmos, also typically used mind-altering techniques, through which links were made between participants and higher powers in nature or the universe.

  In many advanced cultures, people were able to have similar experiences by exploring the sacred mysteries of death and rebirth. These were transformation rites based on specific mythologies and representing important elements of life in ancient civilizations. In Babylonia, for example, death and rebirth rites were held in the name of Ishtar and Tammuz; in Egypt they were performed in the name of Isis and Osiris. Ancient Greece and Asia Minor had the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionysian rites, the mysteries of Attis and Adonis, and others. In antiquity, many important cultural and political figures were initiates of these mysteries. This included the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the playwright Euripides, and military leader Alcibiades. In all these traditions, participants had the experience of transcending everyday realities and exploring realities quite outside the realm of ordinary consciousness.

  Traditional psychiatry has never adequately explained these forms of experience, their universality, and their cultural as well as psychological importance. The opportunity to scientifically observe non-ordinary states of consciousness with people from our own culture has provided us with some brand new clues into the meaning of the ancient journeys into other realities. It is now clear that these ancient practices were neither pathological phenomena nor the products of primitive superstition; rather, they were legitimate and highly sophisticated spiritual practices that acknowledged and paid homage to a much broader view of consciousness than has been held by those who adhere to the Newtonian-Cartesian model of reality. What is more, when the non-ordinary states are opened up to them, even scientifically cautious, and highly intelligent people of our own time and culture, find these experiences deeply moving and personally meaningful, providing them with dramatic breakthroughs in their beliefs.

  One of the most important changes most people experience through nonordinary states of consciousness involves a new appreciation for the role of spirituality in the universal scheme of things. Within the present century, academic psychology and psychiatry dismissed spirituality as a product of superstition, primitive magical thinking, and outright pathology. However, in the emerging understanding provided us by modern consciousness research over the past two decades, we are beginning to see that spirituality is inspired and sustained by perinatal and transpersonal experiences that originate in the deepest recesses of the human mind. These visionary experiences have a primary numinous quality, as C. G. Jung called it; they were the original sources of all great religions. Moreover, it has become obvious that human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is timeless. This spiritual craving seems to be more basic and compelling than the sexual drive, and if it is not satisfied it can result in serious psychological disturbances.

  The Nature of Emotional and Psychosomatic Disorders

  New observations of human consciousness are also bringing about radical shifts in our views of mental health. Through specific historical developments, psychiatry became a medical discipline. This process was set in motion in the last century, when biological causes, such as infections, tumors,

  deficiencies, and degenerative diseases of the brain, were found for some—but by no means all—mental disorders. Although further scientific studies failed to prove the existence of biological causes for most neuroses, depressions, psychosomatic diseases, and psychotic states, medicine continued to dominate psychiatry because it was able to control the symptoms of many mental disorders.

  At the present time, the medical model continues to play a paramount role in psychiatric theory, clinical practice, the education of physicians, and forensics. The term mental disease is loosely applied to many conditions where no organic basis has been found. As in medicine, the symptoms are seen as manifestations of a pathological process, and the intensity of symptoms is viewed as a direct measure of the seriousness of the disorder. Much of mainstream psychiatry focuses its efforts on suppressing symptoms. This practice equates the alleviation of symptoms with "improvement" and intensification of the same with a "worsening" of the clinical condition.

  Another legacy of medicine in psychiatry is the emphasis placed on assigning diagnostic labels. However, while it is possible in purely physical illness to establish relatively accurate diagnostic labels based on clinical observation and laboratory tests, diagnostic labels in psychiatry are far more elusive. In addition, unlike the diagnoses of physical illness, the diagnostic labels in psychiatry do not provide physicians with clearly defined courses of treatment. In psychiatry, personal philosophy and beliefs, including the human relationships one establishes with patients, often play important roles in determining the course of treatment for most patients. For example, organically oriented psychiatrists may prescribe electroshock therapy for neurotics, while psychologically oriented psychiatrists may use psychotherapy with psychotics.

  Work with people in non-ordinary states of consciousness has brought about remarkable changes in understanding and profound new insights about emotional and psychosomatic disorders that have no clearly defined organic cause. This work has shown that we all carry internal records of physical and emotional traumas, some of them biographical or perinatal in origin, others transpersonal in nature. Some people can reach perinatal and transpersonal experiences through meditation techniques, while others get results only through extensive experiential psychotherapy or psychedelic sessions. Some people whose psychological defenses are not so vigorous, may have such unconscious material surface spontaneously in the middle of their everyday activities.

  When we start experiencing symptoms of a disorder that is emotional rather than organic in nature, it is important to realize that this is not the beginning of a "disease" but the emergence into our consciousness of material that was previously buried in the unconscious parts of our being. When this process is completed, the symptoms associated with the unconscious material are permanently resolved and they tend to disappear. Thus, the emergence of symptoms is not the onset of disease but the beginning of its resolution. Similarly, the intensity of symptoms should not be taken as a measure of the seriousness of the disease so much as an indication of the rate of the healing process. Clinical psychiatrists have known for decades that the patients with the most dramatic symptoms tend to have a much better prognosis than those with a few slowly and insidiously developing ones. And yet, the traditional treatment of choice is to suppress symptoms—preventing them from fully surfacing—a practice that, ironically, is known to prolong emotional illness.

  Non-ordinary states of consciousness tend to work like an inner radar system, seeking out the most powerful emotional charges and bringing the material associated with them into consciousness where they can be resolved. In this process, already existing symptoms are exaggerated and the previously hidden, "unconscious material" that supports them comes to the surface. This process of the exaggeration of symptoms, followed by their resolution, parallels the principl
es of the healing system called homeopathy. Rather than defining symptoms as the problem, homeopathy sees symptoms as manifestations of the healing process. This, of course, runs contrary to the theories of modern medicine.

  The research dealing with non-ordinary states of consciousness, has also given us new insights into the relative importance of postnatal biographical material. In mainstream psychiatry, we consider traumatic experiences in early childhood, along with more recent events in a client's life, to be the key sources of neuroses and many psychosomatic disorders. With a few exceptions, psychiatric theoreticians feel that psychotic disturbances cannot be understood in purely psychological terms but must be caused by brain pathology not yet identified. However, our most recent research challenges both these assumptions.

  Through observing clients in non-ordinary states we discover that their neurotic or psychosomatic symptoms often involve more than the biographical level of the psyche. Initially, we may find that the symptoms are connected to traumatic events that the person suffered in infancy or childhood, just as described in traditional psychology. However, when the process continues and the experiences deepen, the same symptoms are found to be also related to particular aspects of the birth trauma. Additional roots of the same issue can then be traced even further to transpersonal sources, for example, an experience in a past life, an unresolved archetypal theme, or the person's identification with a specific animal.

  Thus a person suffering from psychogenic asthma might first relive one or more childhood events involving suffocation, such as a near-drowning, suffering from whooping cough, or a bout of diphtheria. A deeper source of the same problem can be the near-suffocation of this person while in the birth canal. On the transpersonal level, the asthmatic symptoms might be related to past life experiences of being strangled or hanged, or even to elements of animal consciousness, such as identification with an animal victim smothered by a boa constrictor. For a complete resolution of this form of asthma, it is important to confront and integrate all the different experiences connected with the problem.

  Deep experiential work has revealed similar multilevel structures in other conditions treated by psychiatrists. The perinatal levels of the unconscious, which we explored in the first chapters of this book, are important repositories of difficult emotions and sensations and are frequently found to be the source of anxiety, depression, feelings of hopelessness and inferiority, as well as aggression and violent impulses. Reinforced by later traumas from infancy and childhood, this emotional material can lead to various phobias, depressions, sadomasochistic tendencies, criminal behavior, and hysterical symptoms. The muscular tensions, pains, and other forms of physical discomfort that are a natural part of the birth trauma can later develop into psychosomatic problems such as asthma, migraine headaches, peptic ulcers, and colitis.

  In our exploration of the third perinatal matrix (BPM III), we described how our experience could be associated with strong libidinal arousal. Thus, it is safe to assume that our first encounter with sexual feelings is associated with anxiety, pain, and aggression. Furthermore, it is here that we also encounter blood, mucus, and possibly even urine and feces. These associations would seem to be natural bases for the development of sexual deviations and perversions, even those as extreme as sexual murder. Sigmund Freud shook the world when he announced that sexuality does not begin in puberty but exists in infancy. Our newest observations suggest that we all experienced sexual feelings long before puberty or infancy—in fact, before we even came into this world. As much as this idea might stretch our sense of credulity, it provides a very plausible explanation for the sources of sexual pathology, particularly in its most extreme and bizarre expressions.

  Additional observations suggest that suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, and drug addiction also have perinatal roots. Of special significance seems to be liberal use of anesthesia during childbirth; certain substances used to ease the mother's pain teach the newborn on a cellular level to see the drug state as a natural escape route from pain and difficult emotions. These findings were recently confirmed by clinical studies, linking various forms of suicidal behavior to specific aspects of biological birth, among them: the choice of drugs to kill oneself was linked to anesthesia use during childbirth; the choice of hanging to strangulation at birth; and the choice of violent suicidal means to violent birth. As in the above example of psychogenic asthma, additional roots for all these problems can be found in the transpersonal domain: suicide attempts by hanging related to suffocation or being hanged in past lives; suicide by an overdose of drugs related to past life experiences with drugs; and suicide by violent means such as deliberately crashing an automobile, related to a past life event where a person underwent an experience with similar characteristics.

  Our new understanding of emotional difficulties is not limited to neuroses and psychosomatic disorders. It can be extended to many extreme psychological disturbances known as psychoses. Traditional efforts to explain various psychotic symptoms psychologically have not been very convincing, particularly when clinicians attempted to interpret them only in terms of biographical events experienced from infancy through childhood. Psychotic states often involve extreme emotions and physical sensations, such as abysmal despair, profound metaphysical loneliness, hellish physical torture, murderous aggression or, conversely, oneness with the universe, ecstatic rapture, and heavenly bliss. During a psychotic episode a person might experience his own death and rebirth, or even the destruction and recreation of the entire world. The content of such episodes is often fantastic and exotic, featuring various mythological beings, infernal and paradisean landscapes, events from other countries and cultures, and extraterrestrial encounters. Neither the intensity of the emotions and sensations nor the extraordinary content of psychotic states can be reasonably explained in terms of early biographical traumas, such as hunger, emotional deprivation, or other frustrations of an infant.

  If we expand the cartography of the psyche in the ways described in this book, many states traditionally attributed to some unknown pathological process in the brain suddenly appear in an entirely new light. The trauma of birth, which constitutes an important aspect of the unconscious, is a very painful and potentially life-threatening event that typically lasts many hours. It is thus certainly a much more plausible source of extreme emotions and sensations than most events in childhood. Furthermore, the mythological dimensions of many psychotic experiences represent a normal and natural characteristic of the transpersonal domain of the psyche, as suggested by Jung's concept of the collective unconscious and its archetypes. Moreover, the emergence of these deep elements from the unconscious can be seen as the psyche's attempt to get rid of traumatic imprints and simplify its functioning.

  All these observations led my wife, Christina, and me to the conclusion that many states currently diagnosed as mental diseases, and treated routinely by suppressive medication, are actually psychospiritual crises, or "spiritual emergencies," as we call them. If properly understood and supported, they can result in healing and personal transformation. Throughout centuries, episodes of this kind have been described in the mystical literature as important aspects of the spiritual journey. They have occurred in the lives of shamans, founders of the great religions, saints, prophets, re-nunciates, and initiates in sacred mysteries of all ages. In 1980, Christina founded the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN)—a worldwide organization of people offering support and guidance to individuals in such psychospiritual crises—as an alternative to traditional treatment. Today the SEN mailing list contains thousands of addresses of people from the United States and many other countries of the world.

  Psychotherapy and the Healing Practices

  In most existing psychotherapy systems, the goal is to understand how the psyche works and why emotional disorders develop. Their goal in therapy is to use the theories they develop to change the way clients think, feel, behave, and make life decisions. Even in the most non-directive forms of psychotherapy, the therapis
t is considered to be the key vehicle for the healing process because he or she possesses knowledge and training superior to the client. This, then, is seen as sufficient qualification for the therapist to guide the client's self-exploration through appropriate questions and interpretations.

  The problem is that few schools of therapy agree about the most fundamental issues concerning the mysteries of the human psyche, the nature of psychopathology, or even therapeutic techniques. The approach to the same disorder differs according to the personal belief system of the therapist and to the school he or she belongs to. There have been no conclusive studies showing that certain schools are superior to others in getting therapeutic results. It is known that "good therapists" of different schools get good results and "bad therapists" get poor results. Moreover, the resulting changes in clients seem to have very little to do with what the therapists believe they are doing. It has been suggested that the success of psychotherapy might have nothing to do with the therapist's technique and the content of verbal interpretations, but depend on factors such as the quality of the relationship in the therapeutic setting, the degree of empathy, or the client's feelings of being understood and supported.

  In traditional verbal psychotherapies, clients are expected to provide information about their present and past problems, and possibly describe their dreams, which are thought to provide insights into the unconscious. It is then up to the therapist to decide what is psychologically relevant. Thus Freudian analysts focus on sexual issues, Adlerian analysts emphasize material related to inferiority feelings and the pursuit of power, and so on. By contrast, the work with non-ordinary states of consciousness bypasses the problems of the theoretical differences between various schools and the therapist's role as interpreter of psychological material. As you will recall, in non-ordinary states, the material with the strongest emotional charge is automatically selected and brought into consciousness. These non-ordinary states also provide necessary insights and mobilize our own inner healing forces with all their inherent wisdom and power. Try as we might to duplicate these natural healing processes, no school of psychology has even come close.