Beyond the Brain (Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy)

BEYOND THE BRAIN seriously challenges the existing neurophysio logical models of the brain. After three decades of extensive research on those non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs and by other means, Grof concludes that our present scientific world view is as inadequate as many of its historical predecessors. In this pioneering work, he proposes a new model of the human psyche that takes account of his findings

Grof includes in his model the recollective level, or the reliving of emotionally relevant memories, a level at which the Freudian framework can be useful. Beyond that is perinatal level in which the human unconscious may be activated to a reliving of biological birth and confrontation with death. How birth experience influences an individual's later development is a central focus of the book.

The most serious challenge to contemporary psycho-analytic theory comes from a delineation of the trapersonal level, or the expansion of consciousness beyond the boundaries of time and space.

Grof makes a bold argument that understanding of the perinatal and transpersonal levels changes much of how we view both mental illness and mental health. His reinterpretation of some of the most agonizing aspects of human behavior proves thought provoking for both laypersons and professional therapists.

STANISLAV GROF, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years of experience in research of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He has been Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University, and Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork, and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). In 2007, he was granted the prestigious Vision 97 award from the Vaclav and Dagmar Havel Foundation in Prague. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness and Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research, also published by Dev Publishers & Distributors.

The following pages represent an attempt to condense into a single volume data from almost thirty years of research on nonordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs and a variety of nonpharmacological methods. It is a document reflecting my efforts to organize and integrate in a comprehensive way a large number of observations that have for many years daily challenged my scientific belief system, as well as my common sense. In response to this avalanche of disturbing data, I have many times adjusted and readjusted my conceptual frame works and patched them up with various ad hoc hypotheses, only to face the need to change them again.

In view of the difficulties I myself have had over the years in accepting the evidence presented in this book, I do not expect my readers to find it easy to believe much of the information I put forward, unless they themselves have had corresponding experi ences, personally and in work with others. I hope those who belong to this category will welcome this evidence as independent confir mation of many of the issues they themselves have been struggling with. It has been exciting and encouraging for me over the years to come across reports of others, indicating that my quest was not as solitary as it has at times appeared.

As for readers who have not had such corresponding experi ences, I am particularly interested in reaching those who are suf ficiently open-minded to use the data I present as an incentive to conduct their own work aimed at confirming or refuting them. I do not expect anybody to accept the material in this book at face value: the technologies through which the experiences and obser vations discussed were obtained are described in sufficient detail to allow replication. The use of psychedelics, the most potent tool among these technologies, is, of course, associated these days with considerable political, legal, and administrative difficulty. However, the nondrug approaches described are readily available to anyone seriously interested in pursuing this avenue of research.

The data may also interest those researchers who have been studying the same or related phenomena in the context of other disciplines and with the use of other techniques and methodologies. Here belong, for example, anthropologists doing field research in aboriginal cultures and studying shamanic practices, rites of passage, and healing ceremonies: thanatologists exploring death and near death experiences; therapists using various powerful experiential techniques of psychotherapy, body work, or nonauthoritative forms of hypnosis; scientists experimenting with laboratory mind-altering techniques, such as sensory isolation or overload, biofeedback tech niques, holophonic sound or other sound technologies; psychiatrists working with patients experiencing acute nonordinary states of consciousness; parapsychologists researching extrasensory percep tion; and physicists interested in the nature of space and time and in the implications of quantum-relativistic physics for the under standing of the relationship between matter and consciousness.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages