In encyclopedias on psychology, the name of Stanislav Grof comes third, after Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, among the largest innovators of the science of the secrets of the human soul. Grof's revolutionary discoveries, until now ignored by official medicine, inspired the iconic filmmakers of the Wachowski brothers to create the Matrix trilogy. The world famous scientist gave an exclusive interview to Pravda. Ru.
Dear Stanislav, let me thank you that in the year of your 75th birthday you found time for such a serious and large-scale conversation with us. Even Carl Jung argued that the baby's psyche is not a "tabula rasa". On the basis of many years of clinical research, you have come to the conclusion that our unconscious contains perinatal (i.e. prenatal) and transpersonal areas. But why does mainstream medicine ignore these discoveries?
- Modern research in the field of consciousness has brought a lot of evidence that the models of the human psyche that dominate today in official psychology and psychiatry are superficial and inadequate. Based on years of psychedelic research data, I had to create an extremely expanded model of the psyche by adding two large areas - perinatal and transpersonal.
The perinatal area refers to the memories of intrauterine life and biological birth. This area consists of four basic perinatal matrices, corresponding to the four stages of labor, from blissful rest in the womb to birth. The transpersonal sphere contains the experience of identification with other people, other biological species, episodes from the life of our ancestors, both humans and animals, as well as the historical collective unconscious, as Jung interpreted it.
My cartography of the psyche bears great resemblance to Jung's views, except for a fundamental thing. I was surprised and disappointed that Jung vehemently denied that biological birth has any psychological significance, that it is the main trauma. Even shortly before his death, in an interview, Jung denied any possibility of such a significance.
Traditional psychiatrists, both in America and in your country, are well aware of the existence of perinatal and transpersonal experiences, since they appear spontaneously in some patients. But, unlike me, these doctors do not consider them a normal component of the human psyche, but consider them as the results of unknown pathological processes that affect the brain. That is, people whose unconscious has reached the perinatal and transpersonal levels are considered to be suffering from psychosis, mentally ill.
The resistance of a significant part of academia to the discoveries of modern consciousness research is understandable. New revolutionary data require a radical revision of all psychological and psychiatric thinking, similar to what physicists had to go through at the beginning of the twentieth century, when they moved from the Newtonian understanding of matter to a quantum-relativistic picture of the world. New information in the field of consciousness research calls into question the basic philosophical provisions of Western science, undermining its materialistic orientation. Based on clinical evidence, transpersonal psychology offers a worldview similar to that of the world's great religions and Eastern spiritual philosophies.
Do you remember your first transpersonal experience?
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- He was so unusual and amazing that it is simply impossible to forget him. This happened in November 1956 in the laboratory of the Czech Research Institute of Psychiatry, when I volunteered to take part in an LSD session. The idea of the experiment was to be exposed to a powerful stroboscopic lamp at the moment of the culmination of my LSD sensations. My consciousness left my body, and all the boundaries of the universe dissolved. I experienced the experience of the Cosmic Mind, inspiring to this day, and I ceased to be a separate being and became the Universe itself.
Stanislav and Christina Grof
I describe this experience in my book “When the impossible becomes possible. Adventures in Unusual Realities”, soon to be published in Russian translation. The experience half a century ago was so powerful that it sparked my lifelong interest in unusual states of consciousness. Of course, he could not then immediately destroy my materialistic worldview, which was instilled by my studies in communist Czechoslovakia. It took years of daily observation during psychedelic sessions, both my own and my patients, and later in Holotropic Breathwork and non-drug therapies that I developed with Christina. Today, I repeat, I am absolutely convinced that the modern system of views and concepts needs a radical revision.
After twenty years of official research, which was carried out in the USSR by Maria Telashevskaya, psychedelics were banned. Are you not embarrassed by the reproaches that the unusual states of consciousness in which the perinatal and transpersonal levels are manifested are related to psychoactive substances?
“For many years I thought that extraordinary states of consciousness required strong psychoactive substances such as LSD. And he was surprised to discover how profound the effect on the psyche is with simple techniques such as faster breathing or evocative music. But shamans and aboriginal cultures have known this for thousands of years and have used sacred technologies in healing, ritual and spiritual practices. Scientific observations, including anthropologists, have shown that the gap between the so-called. The "normal state of consciousness" and the unusual state is not as great as was commonly thought. Moreover, for many people, such states can be spontaneous, occurring right in the middle of everyday life.
But traditional psychiatry still treats such conditions as psychosis, requiring mainly medical treatment?
“This is the crux of the problem. When we realize that perinatal and transpersonal experiences are a normal part of the human psyche, we will begin to ask questions about such episodes and answer them in a completely different way. After all, the question now is not how the brain generates unusual experiences and what supposedly pathological processes cause them. It is clear to me that the experiences that arise in such states are normal components of the human psyche. The question is, why do some people need psychedelic drugs or powerful non-drug techniques to plunge into the depths of their unconscious, while others do it spontaneously?
Transpersonal psychology believes that when unusual states of consciousness are properly understood and maintained, they can be healing, transformative, and evolutionary. Christina and I call them “spiritual accidents” because they represent not only a crisis, but also an opportunity to independently reach a higher level of consciousness and psychological action.
Your statement that the mystical experience is available to everyone has caused fierce controversy …
- Our achievements in the field of psychedelic research and holotropic breathing have convinced us that the ability to mystical experience is the main human right from birth. In principle, any person can have them, only some people find it easier than others. There are people who find it difficult, despite all their desire, to enter such states, and they try to call them in various ways. But there are also those who have mystical states right in the middle of the day, sometimes against their will, and it is difficult for them to relate themselves to ordinary reality. Incidentally, my great predecessor, Carl Jung, belonged to the second category. He used his opportunity of easy access to the unconscious as the source of a new, revolutionary psychology.
In your book "Psychology of the Future", published in Russia, you again raise the question of the need to discuss the legal, social and medical aspects of psychedelics. Such a discussion last year began in the UK scientific community. Maybe it is worth holding it at the level of the World Health Organization to remove the mystery from this topic?
- The World Health Organization has an important role to play in the control of psychoactive substances, and all WHO Member States have a responsibility to implement its recommendations Psychedelic substances, including LSD, are currently included in List # 1 with the definition of a drug with no therapeutic value and with a high potential for abuse.
I believe that for specialists with many years of experience, the fallacy of this definition is obvious. Research has shown that when used correctly and in a controlled manner, psychedelic drugs have great therapeutic potential and are psychologically non-addictive. Moreover, dissatisfaction with official psychiatric therapy, which boils down to the standard suppression of mental symptoms by tranquilizers, is growing everywhere. Symptoms are suppressed, but underlying psychological problems are not addressed. Plus, people are becoming more and more aware of the side effects.
Grof (center) at the centenary of LSD creator Albert of old methods used.
It is encouraging that the scientific climate has begun to change in recent years. The desire to find alternatives to the deadlocked methods of traditional psychiatry led to the official approval of research programs of psychedelic therapy in some centers in the United States, Switzerland, Israel and several other countries. As far as I know from articles in the Western press, in particular the Guardian newspaper, research programs for therapies using LSD, psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), methylene dioxymethamphetamine (MMDA) and ketamine have been officially launched.
That is, the researchers return to the research experience of the 50s of the last century?
“I think Western society is better equipped to accept psychedelic therapy now than it was half a century ago. As I remember, then all psychotherapy was reduced to verbal, that is, verbal, communication between the doctor and the patient. Strong emotions and active behavior during the session were called "external expression of subconscious mental processes" and were assessed as violations of the rules of therapy.
Psychedelic sessions caused psychomotor agitation, dramatic emotions, and vivid cognitive changes. They looked more like footage from anthropology films about the healing ceremonies and rituals of indigenous cultures than what was traditionally seen in the therapist's office.
In addition, many observations obtained after psychedelic sessions jeopardized the materialistic ideas about the human psyche and the structure of the universe, based on the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. I remember that even while working in Czechoslovakia, one of the patients Richard, after an LSD session, told me that during the "journey" from certain entities he received information with a request to convey to the relatives of a certain Ladislav that everything was fine with him in the other world. They dictated to him the name of the town of Kromeriče, in Moravia, where his relatives live, and even a telephone number. I wrote down this information in a medical record and, as a man of materialistic views at that time, left it unattended. When curiosity got the better of it and a couple of weeks later I called the recorded number in Cromerich and said the name the patient had heard,then on the other side of the tube there were sobs and the words: "We lost Ladislav three weeks ago …"
Yes, there has been a real revolution in psychotherapy in recent decades. Powerful experiential techniques have been developed that emphasize deep regression, the direct expression of strong emotions, and exercise that results in a surge of physical energy. Among the new approaches, I would single out gestalt practice, bioenergetics, primitive therapy, rebirthing (rebirth through breathing) and holotropic breathing. And for doctors practicing in these areas, the introduction of psychedelics would not be a sudden change in practice, but the next logical step. Hopefully, the renewed interest in psychedelic research, which certainly requires careful legal and medical attention, will put this extraordinary tool back in the hands of trusted doctors.
But will this help to save humanity, which every year, it seems, more and more, plunges into a chaotic quagmire of destructiveness, greed and animal instincts?
- Psychedelic research and experiments with holotropic breathing, treatment of people who got into "spiritual accidents", absolutely confirmed Jung's teaching about the black and sinister sides of the human psyche. Jung aptly named them Shadows. I myself have written extensively about the perinatal and transpersonal roots of human cruelty and greed. In particular, the book "Psychology of the Future" contains a chapter "The Evolution of Consciousness and Human Survival: A Transpersonal Perspective of the Global Crisis".
On the basis of many years of clinical research, transpersonal psychology has come to the conclusion that all aspects of the current world crisis - economic, political, military, religious, environmental - have one common denominator.
And this is the denominator. The roots of human cruelty and greed lie deep in the perinatal and transpersonal areas of the unconscious. That is, much deeper than classical psychiatry imagines. Traditional forms of verbal (verbal) psychotherapy operate exclusively at the level of postpartum biography and do not reach the level at which true problems arise. If a person enters these levels spontaneously, as a result of a "spiritual accident", then he is declared suffering from psychosis and the natural process of transformation is delayed.
Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax are authors of the bestselling book Man Using Tranquilizers.
That is why the survival of the human species requires systematic work on the spiritual revelation of the personality, first of all, of those who are in a state of psychospiritual transformation.
It seems that we are engaged in a terrible race against time, which has no precedent in the history of mankind. If we stick to old strategies that are monstrously destructive, then the human race will not survive in this century. We can be saved only by a deep inner transformation of a sufficiently large number of people, and official psychology and psychiatry have shown their complete inability here.
Stanislav, your views on the decisive role of the spiritual rather than animal dominant in the human psyche are in many ways similar to the views of the great Russian philosophers and writers. Who would you single out of them for yourself? And how close to our mentality are your revolutionary ideas proving the complete bankruptcy of pure materialism?
- When Christina and I were officially invited to the Soviet Union in 1989, we were shocked at how open our Russian colleagues were to new ideas, including in academic circles. People came to meet with us from distant places - from Georgia, from Siberia … I was very touched when they approached me for an autograph with a translation of "The Fields of the Human Unconscious", published thanks to underground printing houses in samizdat. Of course, since I was raised in a communist country, samizdat was not a novelty for me. But this was not a political book, but a purely scientific one! I kept such a book as an expensive souvenir in memory of my visit to Russia. But, unfortunately, it burned down in February 2001 during a fire in our house along with all my library and other property.
I think there are many reasons for Russians to be open about transpersonal psychology. And above all, the deep spirituality characteristic of the Russian people. My close friend and outstanding psychologist in Russia, Vladimir Maikov, included in his book on the history of transpersonal psychology a huge number of people of Russian origin who played an invaluable role in the development of the new science of the human soul. Among them are many famous names, such as Helena Blavatsky, George Gurdjieff, Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Tolstoy and Vasily Nalimov.
I see another reason for the growing popularity of transpersonal psychology in Russia in the fact that under Soviet rule, psychology and psychiatry were limited to a small number of philosophically acceptable approaches, for example, based on the works of Ivan Pavlov. When the old system fell, a spiritual vacuum arose, and Russian specialists showed a sincere desire to join the latest advances in the study of consciousness.
And unlike American universities, in most of which the departments of psychology and psychiatry have for many decades been headed by conservatives of the biological, neo-Freudian, and behavioral trends, in Russia there are much more scientists who support transpersonal psychology. I felt this during my trip to St. Petersburg in the summer of 2001. I very much hope to visit great Russia again soon and am ready to take part in the most acute and frank discussions on the study of the human unconscious, psychedelic and holotropic therapy.
Our reference
Stanislav Grof was born on July 1, 1931 in Prague. From 1956 to 1967 was a practicing psychiatrist-clinician. In 1961-66, he headed the laboratory for research on the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the treatment of mental disorders at the Research Institute of Psychiatry of the Ministry of Health of Czechoslovakia. In 1959, Grof was awarded the Kuffner Prize, an award from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences "for the most outstanding contribution to the field of psychiatry."
In 1967 Stanislav Grof left for the USA at Johns Hopkins University. In 1968-1973, he headed the psychedelic research laboratory at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center - the only place in the United States where research with LSD was officially continued.
From 1973 to 1987, Stanislav Grof and his wife Christina work at the world famous Esalen Institute (Big Sur, California), where they create a unique holotropic psychotherapy based on special breathing techniques, body work and specially selected music. Currently Grof conducts trainings on Holotropic Breathwork, gives lectures, takes an active part in the work of the International Transpersonal Association.
Stanislav Grof became very famous for his scientific works - "Areas of the human unconscious", "Beyond the brain", "A journey in search of oneself", "Psychology of the future" and others … In the world bestseller "Man in the face of death" (together with Joan Halifax) Grof published clinical data on mystical insights, which were recorded in terminally ill cancer patients during sessions with LSD-25. This book has become the focus of attention of many religious leaders - for example, references to it are found in the famous book of the greatest Orthodox thinker Father Seraphim (Rose) "The Soul After Death".
For the first time in our country, Grof visited in 1963, came also in the 70s to get acquainted with the research of neuroses in monkeys in the Sukhumi nursery. But the real sensation was the arrival of the Grof spouses in April 1989 at the invitation of the USSR Ministry of Health. At the Psychoendocrinology Center on Arbat Stanislav and Kristina gave lectures on Holotropic Breathwork in front of thousands of fans of their ideas who came from all over the Union. At the same time, the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR published a number of Grof's books with a circulation of 500 copies. At present, almost all of the scientist's works have been published in Russian, with the exception of LSD psychotherapy. TNT TV channel is finishing work on a four-part documentary about the life and work of the great innovator, which will be released this year.
From the editor
We would like to express our gratitude to the Director of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Vladimir Maikov for his help in establishing direct contact with Stanislav Grof.
We are ready to give the floor to the opponents of Dr. Grof, in particular to the director of the Serbian Center for Forensic and Social Medicine Tatyana Dmitrieva, on the entire range of issues raised by the famous scientist in his interview.
Please note that the psychoactive substances mentioned by Stanislav Grof (LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA and ketamine) are currently officially banned internationally for production, distribution and use in any capacity. According to the data and conclusions of official medicine, the use of these substances, especially uncontrolled use, poses a threat to human health, can cause mental disorders and destructive behavior.
OKSANA ANIKINA
