Stanislav Grof Quotes - Page 2

Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious.

These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and make the deep unconscious dynamics available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviors to a depth that cannot be matched by any other methods and tools available in modern mainstream science. In emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.

It is possible to transcend the usual limitations of the body, ego, space, and linear time.

There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.

Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

By banning psychedelic research we have not only given up the study of an interesting drug or group of substances, but also abandoned one of the most promising approaches to the understanding of the human mind and consciousness.

The knowledge of the realm of death makes it possible for the shaman to move freely back and forth and mediate these journeys for other people.

Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body.

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation.

For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death - the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.

Many instances exist of small children who seem to remember and describe their previous life in another body, another place, and with other people. These memories emerge usually shortly after these children begin to talk.

The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

LSD was not a pharmacological agent generating exotic experiences by its interaction with the neurophysiological processes in the brain. This remarkable substance was clearly an unspecific catalyst of the deep dynamics of the human psyche. The experiences induced by it were not neurochemical artifacts, symptoms of a toxic psychosis as mainstream psychiatrists called it, but genuine manifestations of the human psyche itself.

Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness.

Philemon explained how Jung treated thoughts as though they were generated by himself, while for Philemon thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air. Jung concluded that Philemon taught him psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. This helped Jung to understand that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend.

LSD is a unique and powerful tool for the exploration of the human mind and human nature. Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have not yet been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry. They also reveal new possibilities and mechanisms of therapeutic change and personality transformation.

When you read the psychedelic literature, there is a distinction between the so-called natural psychedelics and synthetic psychedelics that are artificially produced.

The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.

This is an extraordinary book of unique psychological power. It reveals not only scholarship and sophistication of the author, but deep and intimate knowledge of the recesses of the human psyche. By masterful juxtaposition of evocative images, poetry, and selected quotes from scholars, Flesh and Blood seems to engage both the right and left hemispheres in an unprecedented dialogue. The result is a multi-dimensional, almost holographic picture of the primordial foundations of the human mind.

If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death.

Traditional academic science describes human beings as highly developed animals and biological thinking machines. We appear to be Newtonian objects made of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organs.

Freud said that we are born as a tabula rasa. This is a model that simply is too superficial and inadequate.

The motif of death plays an important role the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material.