This device made it possible to tap into the psyche of other people and to record and play back what they saw, felt, and thought. While Michael Brace used the invention to heal his relationship with his estranged wife, Karen, and become once again close to her, other people in the research complex tried to use it for more questionable purposes, exploiting its sexual, commercial, and military potential. The plot took an interesting twist when the hardworking, chain-smoking, and coffee-drinking Lillian experienced a heart attack while working late at night in the laboratory. A curious scientist to the very end, she decided to record the event and managed to put on the helmet and start the machine shortly before her death.
The rest of the plot revolved around the fact that the machine recorded a death experience. Doug’s intention was to portray this experience in a way that would use not only the best special effects available at the time, but also scientific information about death and dying amassed by modern consciousness research. He had heard that we had created a slide show portraying a death-rebirth experience called The Inner Journey, based on observations from clinical research of psychedelic therapy. He contacted us and asked that we join his team as special consultants for visionary experiences portrayed in the movie. We were very excited because Brainstorm had a fascinating subject and a stellar cast. It featured, among others, Natalie Wood, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher, and Cliff Robertson. Its producer was John Foreman, known for such movies as The First Great Train Robbery and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The invitation gave us a chance to spend some time in Hollywood and witness the process of moviemaking.
The actors and the crew attended a special slide-illustrated presentation, which I gave for them on the new cartography of the psyche that had emerged from my study of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Most of the images in the slide show depicted experiences from psychedelic therapy, but a few of them came from Holotropic Breathwork sessions of participants in our training and workshops. When Doug Trumbull and John Foreman heard that we had developed a nondrug technique capable of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness, they asked us if we could make that experience available for their team. Because the central topic of Brainstorm was the experience of a non-ordinary state of consciousness, this was a unique opportunity for everybody involved in the production of the movie to get a better understanding of the subject.
Fifteen members of the Brainstorm team joined our five-day workshop at Esalen and participated in the Holotropic Breathwork sessions. It was an interesting experience for Natalie to get to know Esalen personally because several years earlier she had starred in making the movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, a spoof on Esalen and similar human—potential centers. The Esalen experience certainly lived up to her expectations; when she was the sitter in one of the breathwork sessions, a Mexican work scholar (an Esalen participant who works at the Institute in exchange for attending workshops) breathing near her, stripped naked and stayed that way for the rest of the session. It was not a particularly conspicuous event at Esalen, known for integrated nude bathing in its famous hot springs and in its open swimming pool, but it represented a somewhat unusual experience for our Hollywood friends.
One day, when I sat at lunch with Natalie, I had a chance to find out that she was not a novice as far as non-ordinary states of consciousness were concerned. At one point, she asked me out of the blue: “Stan, are you familiar with a drug called Ketalar?” Ketalar, or ketamine, is a powerful anaesthetic with effects that are quite different from the other substances used to induce anesthesia. It is referred to as a “dissociative anaesthetic,” because the patients to whom it is administered do not lose consciousness, but their consciousness detaches from their body to such a degree that they are not aware of what is happening to it. While they are being operated on, they experience fantastic adventures in other domains of reality. They become other people, various other lifeforms, and even inorganic objects, encounter various archetypal figures and discarnate beings, relive past life memories, visit other universes, and have profound mystical experiences.
It turned out that Natalie was given a large intravenous dose of ketamine when she was pregnant with one of her daughters and had to have a Cesarean section. The drug was given to her without any psychological explanation, preparation, or forewarning, which was a common practice among surgeons at that time. In general, surgeons in many countries discontinued using ketamine because of what they called the “emergence syndrome,” strange visions reported by their patients recovering from anesthesia. Others limited its use to children and old people, with whom they had fewer difficulties in this regard. Ketamine is still widely used as an anaesthetic by veterinarians.
Natalie had a powerful experience that included a convincing sense that she had left the solar system and visited various extraterrestrial worlds and civilizations. She found this extravagant adventure in consciousness terrifying, overwhelming, and confusing. It was reassuring to her when I told her that such fantastic experiences represented an absolutely normal response to ketamine, because she had occasionally wondered if her strange response to this substance was an indication of latent mental disease.
The Hollywood crew left Esalen very happy with the experience and embarked with great enthusiasm on filming Brainstorm. We had a chance to spend several days with them on location in Raleigh, North Carolina, where they found the right kind of building for the futuristic research institute featured in Brainstorm and also an ideal house for the residence of Michael Brace and his wife, played by Chris Walken and Natalie Wood, respectively. During our stay in Raleigh, we conducted a breathwork session with Chris Walken, who had not been able to come to Esalen with the rest of the crew.
According to the original arrangement, Natalie wanted to be present as Chris’s sitter. This situation would have been similar to the final scene of Brainstorm, in which she is present when Chris’s character is playing back the last part of the recording of Lillian’s death experience. However, shortly after the beginning, Natalie decided to join Chris and have her own experience. At the time when the rest of the crew was experiencing the breathwork at Esalen, Natalie had decided not to do the breathing but to participate as a sitter and observer. Her decision was very understandable considering her celebrity and the public nature of the event. However, she regretted having missed that opportunity, and now she wanted to make up for it. She found the session very useful; it revolved around the death of her father, and she felt that she finally found reconciliation with this very painful part of her life.
When the filming moved to the West Coast, we joined the crew in the Hollywood studios, watching the rehearsals for many of the scenes, the actual shooting, and the review of the “dailies,” the footage shot on any particular day. During this time, we had the chance to spend some time with Natalie in her trailer, where she was resting between shoots. She also introduced us to her husband, R.J. (Wagner), who happened to stop by. Much of our discussion during his visit revolved around a subject that, in retrospect, seems uncanny and foreboding in view of the tragic events that followed.
Christina noticed on one of the walls of the trailer a picture of the beautiful yacht that Natalie and R.J. owned. They both loved this boat very much and used it frequently. Sailing was also an important part of Christina’s childhood because her stepfather owned a large sailboat and her family spent much time cruising around the Hawaiian islands. Hawaii turned out to be a favorite vacation place for Natalie and R.J., and they knew many of the people who were friends of Christina’s stepfather and had played an important role in her own early life. We heard many stories about the $250,000 yacht, its luxurious interior, its desalination equipment, and its various cruises.
To our disappointment, we had to leave Hollywood and could not stay for the last days of shooting. We later heard from the members of the Brainstorm crew about the dramatic finale they had experienced on the last day before Thanksgiving. They spent the entire day rehearsing and shooting a powerful scene in w
hich Louise Fletcher’s character, Lillian Reynolds, has a heart attack and dies in her laboratory. Louise’s performance was excellent and had a very profound impact on the rest of the crew. Watching her for many hours enacting Louise’s final agony was a compelling reminder of impermanence and their own finality. At the end of the day, all of them were in a somber and eerie mood.
When the scene of Lillian’s death was finally shot to everybody’s satisfaction, an important decision had to be made. By that time, all principal photography of Brainstorm was finished, with the exception of three scenes. The crew was facing two alternatives. The first one was to take advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend and finish the remaining scenes of principal photography. In that case, the production of the movie could have moved on to editing of the existing footage and to special effects, the part in which we were most interested and involved. The second possibility was to interrupt the filming, take the weekend off, and complete the shooting during the following week. The opinions were split, and the team members had great difficulty reaching agreement. They finally decided to take a vote; the part of the group opting for the holiday vacation won by one vote. This turned out to be an unfortunate decision for the future of the movie and for Natalie personally.
Natalie and R.J. had plans to spend the weekend on their yacht near Catalina Island, and Natalie invited Chris Walken to share this cruise with them. Only R.J., Chris, and possibly the skipper know what actually happened on the ship. There have been rumors about heavy drinking, inappropriate flirting, jealousy, and fights. What is known is that, at some point, Natalie left the men alone, boarded the dinghy, and tried to reach Catalina Island to spend the night there. She never made it to the shore; her coordination impaired by a high level of alcohol in her blood, she probably fell off the dinghy and drowned. The next morning, her dead body was found floating in the ocean. The newspapers published a photograph showing a man carrying her body out of the water; this picture showed an eerie resemblance to a similar scene from the movie Eyes of Laura Mars.
Natalie’s death shocked her family, friends, acquaintances, and fans. Her tragic demise also proved detrimental for Brainstorm. Three scenes of principal photography, all featuring Natalie, remained unfinished, and the MGM officials considered this to be a certain kiss of death for the movie. They decided to scrap the project and to collect fifteen million dollars from Lloyd’s of London, by whom the movie was insured. Doug Trumbull was desperate and tried to save Brainstorm at all costs. He promised Lloyds of London that he would find ways of finishing the movie if they paid him three million dollars, and they accepted.
The movie got finished, but was severely compromised. Doug did not really succeed in bridging the gap caused by the missing scenes and did not create a smooth yarn. Perceptive viewers had no difficulty noticing logical inconsistencies in the movie. But the crisis caused by Natalie’s tragic death had the most detrimental influence on the special effects, the visionary sequences that we were working on. As a result of what had happened, there were not sufficient funds available to do what Doug and ourselves planned and would have liked to do.
The Brainstorm project was an exciting attempt to use the best special effects available at the time and portray the death experience in a way that would reflect our scientific knowledge about it. Unfortunately, this effort ended tragically when, instead of being represented artistically in a symbolic way, death struck in reality and destroyed the project. Shooting Brainstorm was an extraordinary experience. It left us with a strong desire to try again and more successfully sometime in the future to bring the visionary states to the big screen.
The fantastic progress in special effects brought about by digital technology opened up new and undreamed of possibilities in this regard. I am convinced that combining today’s superb imaging skills with the knowledge amassed by transpersonal psychology and consciousness research would make it possible not only to portray spiritual experiences, but also induce them in the audiences.
THE WATERCOURSE WAY: Meetings with President Václav Havel
One of the most remarkable features of deep experiential work using non-ordinary states of consciousness is the effect it has on our way of life and on the strategy we use in dealing with challenges and projects. The model offered in this regard in technological societies is to define the goal we want to achieve and pursue it with focused energy and unswerving determination. This includes identifying and removing the obstacles that stand in the way and fighting potential enemies. The life of an individual following this recipe resembles a wrestling or boxing match.
I have worked with many people who were able to gain insight into the psychological forces underlying this strategy and to transcend it. They discovered that this approach to existence reflects the fact that we have not overcome the imprint that the trauma of our birth has left in our psyche and that we are separated and alienated from the spiritual domain. Our striving for external achievements is a projection of a deeper and much more fundamental drive to psychologically complete the birth process and to make a spiritual connection. There is no end to our hunger for external conquests because we cannot get enough of what we do not really want and need.
For those individuals who reached this insight, life dominated by pursuit of material goals appears to be a “treadmill” or “rat-race” type of existence that does not and cannot really bring satisfaction. From this new perspective, this strategy of life is unsuccessful, even if we achieve the goals we pursue. Responsible and systematic deep self-exploration can help us come to terms with the trauma of birth and make a deep spiritual connection. This moves us in the direction of what Taoist spiritual teachers call wu wei, or “creative quietude,” which is not action involving ambitious determined effort, but doing by being. This is also sometimes referred to as the Watercourse Way, because it imitates the ways water operates in nature.
Instead of focusing on a predetermined fixed goal, we try to sense which way things are moving and how we best fit into them. This is the strategy used in martial arts and in surfing. It involves focus on the process, rather than the goal or the outcome. When we are able to approach life in this way, we ultimately achieve more and with less effort. In addition, our activities are not egocentric, exclusive, and competitive, as they are during pursuit of personal goals, but inclusive and synergistic. The outcome not only brings satisfaction to us, but serves also a larger purpose of the community.
I have also repeatedly observed and experienced that when we operate in this Taoistic framework, extraordinary beneficial coincidences and synchronicities tend to occur, which support our project and help us in our work. We come “accidentally” across the information we need, the right people appear at the right time, and the necessary funds unexpectedly become available. The occurrence of such favorable synchronicities is so extraordinary and pervasive that Christina and I learned to use it as a compass for our activities, as an important criterion that we were “on the right track.”
I would like to illustrate this by an example from our life that is related to the work Christina and I have done in the international transpersonal movement. In 1977, I founded the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), an organization designed to bridge the gap between modern science and the spiritual vision of the world, between Western pragmatism and ancient wisdom. The ITA was created to encourage and promote all serious efforts to formulate a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the cosmos and of human nature.
Since the ultimate goal of the ITA activities was to create a global network of mutual understanding and cooperation, we missed very much during our international conferences participants from the countries beyond the Iron Curtain, who were not at that time allowed to travel abroad and did not have the financial means to join us. When the situation in the Soviet Union changed and Mikhail Gorbachev declared the era of “glasnost” and “perestroika,” it suddenly seemed plausible that the next ITA meeting could be held in Russia. When Christina and I were invited to Mos
cow as official guests of the Soviet Ministry of Health, we used our visit to explore the possibility to hold such a conference in Russia. We tried really hard, but without success; the situation seemed too unstable and volatile to take chances.
In November 1989, I was conducting Holotropic Breathwork outside of California. I received a call from Christina, who asked me if I knew what was happening in my native country. Our training was very intense and featured three sessions a day. We were deeply immersed in the process, and none of us had time or interest to watch the TV or follow the news. Christina informed me that the Prague Velvet Revolution was underway and that the Czechoslovakian Communist regime would very likely fall. “Wouldn’t it be great?” she said. “We could hold the next ITA conference in Prague.” A few weeks later, Czechoslovakia was a free country, and the ITA board decided to hold its next meeting in Czechoslovakia.
Because I was born in Prague, it seemed only logical to send me to Czechoslovakia as an envoy to find the site and prepare the ground for this conference. However, the years I had spent in my native country turned out to be much less of an advantage than we expected. I left Czechoslovakia at the time of a major liberalization movement aimed at creating “socialism with a human face.” In 1968, when the Prague Spring was brutally suppressed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army, I was in the United States on a scholarship at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After the invasion, I was ordered by Czech authorities to return immediately, but decided to disobey and stay in the United States.
When the Impossible Happens Page 10
