The Holotropic Mind

by Stanislav Grof

  It is important to note here that Michael Harner had no prior knowledge of Christina's inner processes nor did he know of her previous visions of the swan. The next day, Christina received a letter from a person who had attended a workshop we had given several months before. She opened it and found a photograph of her spiritual teacher Swami Muktananda. In the photo he was sitting in a garden near a large flower pot shaped like a white swan; he had a mischievous expression on his face and his right thumb and index finger were held together forming the universal "okay" sign, indicating approval. Although there were no causal connections between any of these events, they clearly formed a meaningful psychological pattern.

  Synchronistic events such as these can be linked with many other forms of transpersonal experiences and occasionally also with perinatal sequences. Time and time again I have seen highly improbable accumulations of mishaps and accidents in the lives of people who in their inner processes were approaching the experience of ego death. As they completed this process and experienced spiritual rebirth, these threats ceased, almost as if by magic. As Christina's experience illustrates, when a person connects with an animal spirit guide through shamanic or other inner work, this animal tends to appear again and again in that person's life. Similarly, at the time of inner confrontation with archetypal images such as the Animus, the Anima, the Great Mother Goddess, the Goddess of Love, and others, we frequently find ourselves coming into contact with people in our everyday lives who ideally represent these archetypes. When this occurs, the only cause we can find for these synchronicities is the capricious interplay between our inner worlds and the physical world outside us.

  The concept of synchronicity has important implications for the practice of psychotherapy. In a mechanical universe where everything is linked by cause and effect, there is no place for "meaningful coincidences" in the Jungian sense. In the practice of traditional psychiatry, when a person perceives meaningful coincidences, he or she is, at best, diagnosed as projecting special meaning into purely accidental events; at worst he or she is diagnosed as suffering from hallucinations or delusions. Traditional psychiatrists either do not know about the existence of true synchronicities or they prefer to ignore the concept. As a result they may wrongly diagnose "meaningful coincidences" as the result of serious pathology (delusions of reference). In many cases of spiritual emergencies, where valid synchronicities were reported, people have all too often been hospitalized unnecessarily. Had those experiences been correctly understood and treated as manifestations of psycho-spiritual crisis those same people might have been quickly helped through approaches supporting spiritual emergence, rather than undergoing all the problems that unnecessary hospitalization entails.

  Jung himself was fully aware of the fact that the concept of synchronicity was incompatible with traditional science and he followed with great interest the revolutionary new worldview that was emerging from developments in modern physics. He maintained a friendship with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, and the two of them had a very fruitful exchange of ideas. Similarly, in personal communications between Jung and Albert Einstein, the latter explicitly encouraged him to pursue the concept of synchronicity because it was fully compatible with the new thinking in physics. Sadly, however, mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists have still not caught up with the revolutionary developments in modern physics and Jungian psychology.

  Pushing Past the Boundaries of Material Reality

  Many experiences in the psychoid realm involve physical events in the external world that seem to violate what we believe to be the laws of nature. These events can be limited to the perception of one person or observed by many, and thus they have the usual characteristics of consensus reality. Traditional psychiatry has been aware of the existence of such situations but it unfortunately relegates them to the realm of pathology.

  In psychiatry, a reality that does not conform to the Newtonian-Cartesian worldview but that is nevertheless shared by two people, is labeled a folie a deux—meaning, in effect, a craziness shared by two people. When an entire family shares a reality that seems to violate the beliefs of NewtonianCartesian science, as was the case with C. G. Jung's experiences that led to his Seven Sermons for the Dead, the corresponding traditional term is folie a famille. When large numbers of people are similarly involved, their collective experience is called "mass hallucination." However, closer examination shows that the phenomena so labeled may deserve serious attention and should not be discarded quite so easily. They have been observed and recorded throughout the ages in many different parts of the world. Deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved could radically change our view of reality.

  Some psychoid phenomena involve dramatic changes of the human body and its functions. Religious and mystical literature abounds with descriptions of spectacular physiological changes in people as they experienced transpersonal states of consciousness. For example, people in the presence of saints and spiritual teachers such as St. Ignatius of Loyola or Sri Ramana Maharishi, frequently described how their physical bodies took on an extraordinary luminosity. Similarly, it has been documented many times over that certain Christian mystics and contemplatives while in ecstatic raptures wherein they transpersonally identified with Jesus Christ, have manifest bleeding wounds (stigmata) on their hands and feet, apparent lance wounds in their abdomens, or puncture marks around the crowns of their heads, where Christ wore his crown of thorns. It is generally thought that St. Francis of Assisi was the first to exhibit these changes; since his time, over 300 stigmatics are known to have borne these marks of crucifixion. Related to stigmata is the "token of espousal," a ring-shaped ridge of flesh that forms around the finger of certain nuns as a symbol of betrothal to Christ.

  Another physical manifestation that can accompany transpersonal states of consciousness is extreme body heat. In the Christian literature, this is called the Fire of Love (incendium amoris); the most famous modern case is that of Padre Pio of Foggia, Italy, whose doctors occasionally found his temperature to be 112 degrees Fahrenheit. In the Sufi tradition, this same phenomenon is known as the "Fire of Separation"; in Tibetan Buddhism as Tum-mo, the "Inner Fire." There are documented cases involving extreme forms of this phenomenon, in which the person explodes or bursts into flames, apparently through some form of spontaneous combustion. Equally incredible are reports involving the capacity of certain re-nunciates to live without food. A close friend of ours, the late Tantric scholar Ajit Mookerjee, told us that he was personally acquainted with Himalayan hermits who did not need any food whatsoever, who lived on—of all things!—a few drops of mercury each year.

  According to the Tibetan literature, backed up by reports of Tibetan teachers with whom we have had extensive personal contact, the bodies of masters involved in certain secret practices actually dematerialize following their physical deaths. This contrasts with reports about the apparent incorruptibility of the bodies of other saints, such as St. Bernadette of Lourdes and Paramahansa Yogananda, that allegedly did not decompose. Another phenomenon that stretches the credulity of educated Westerners, but which has been repeatedly mentioned in spiritual literature, is the act of levitation. It has been described by personal witnesses who observed certain Christian saints, including St. Teresa of Avila, various Indian yogis, and Tibetan lamas, as well as mediums such as Daniel Douglas Home and Eusapia Palladino. Although I have not personally witnessed any of the extreme phenomena described here, I keep an open mind because these events have been reported repeatedly by credible witnesses and they are closely related to occurrences that I have observed first hand in my work. Michael Murphy's book The Future of the Body offers an amazing review of meticulously documented supernormal occurrences throughout the ages.

  The Psychic Side of Sports

  In modern life, extraordinary events of the kind described above occur most often where one might least expect them—in sports. We tend to attribute stellar performances in various athletic activities to a combinat
ion of inborn disposition, psychological perseverance, and down-to-earth physical training. However, the inside story, from some of the world's greatest athletes, reveals that the players themselves often see it quite differently. Many report that at the time of their peak performances they were in states that resembled mystical rapture. Their experience in the psychoid realm, such as the radical alteration of time and space, to them bordered on the miraculous. The book The Psychic Side of Sports, by Michael Murphy and Rhea White, is a gold mine of just such examples, reported by athletes in virtually every sport. Moreover, Murphy and White's research uncovered many instances in which the extraordinary inner experiences of the athletes were matched by corresponding perceptions of the onlookers.

  Football players, race car drivers, Olympic divers, and others have described an extreme slowing of subjective time, so that they felt they had all the time in the world to perform what they had to do. Golfers, football players, ocean divers, sky divers, and mountain climbers reported drastic changes in body image; sometimes these changes were perceived by onlookers as actual changes in body shape and size. Football players have described how they seemed to have penetrated the solid wall of a defensive line by dematerializing and rematerializing on the other side. Runners felt inexhaustible sources of energy and had a sense of moving without real effort and without actually touching the ground. The great soccer player Pele confided that on a day when everything was going right, he felt a strange calmness, euphoria, and endless energy. He was absolutely confident that he could dribble through the opponent's defense and pass through them physically. Scores of reliable witnesses have testified that Morehei Uyeshiba, the inventor of aikido, appeared to transcend physical laws when he demonstrated his abilities. Facing as many as six attackers with knives, who were well-trained in martial arts, he appeared to change his shape and size and was able to disappear for instants, then reappear in other places. Some of these feats are evident in a documentary movie showing his artistry; his followers swear the film was never edited or in any way tampered with, though the master at times seems to disappear before our eyes as if photographic tricks are involved. Witnesses to the actual filming reported experiencing the same miraculous events that the film recorded.

  The World of Parapsychology: Science, Fraud, and Fiction

  Another large category of psychoid experiences, traditionally studied by parapsychologists, is that of spiritistic manifestations and Poltergeist phenomena. We have already explored transpersonal experiences that involve discarnate entities and spirits. These are often associated with various physical events that are synchronistic with inner events, or that can be observed and confirmed by numbers of people. Thus, for example, certain places in the world are considered "haunted" because many visitors to that place independently experience the same kinds of unusual events.

  In various spiritistic seances participants often shared certain strange experiences, such as raps and bangs on walls and floors, touches from invisible hands, voices speaking from nowhere, the playing of musical instruments, and gusts of cold air. In some cases, this also involved apparitions of deceased persons or voices of such persons coming through the medium. In certain cases, participants were able to witness telekinesis and materializations, levitation of objects and people, movement of objects through the air, manifestation of ectoplasmic formations, and the appearance of writings or small objects without explanation (so-called apports). The famous American parapsychologist R. B. Rhine called this "physical mediumship." Such events were particularly frequent in the seances with certain mediums, such as Eusapia Palladino and Daniel Douglas Home. These sessions were repeatedly studied by teams of experienced researchers.

  There is no question that at the time when spiritism enjoyed its greatest popularity, around the turn of the century, many participants were victims of cunning swindlers. Even famous mediums, including Eusapia Palladino, were occasionally caught cheating. However, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and conclude that this entire area is nothing but fraud. It is difficult to imagine that so many outstanding researchers would have invested so much time and energy in a field with no real phenomena to observe. There exists hardly any other realm where the expert testimony of so many witnesses of the highest caliber has been discounted as stupidity and gullibility and thus written off. We have to realize that among serious researchers were many people with outstanding credentials, such as, the famous physicist Sir William Crookes, the Nobel Prize winning physician and physiologist Charles Richet, and Sir Oliver Lodge, a Fellow of the Royal Society in England.

  The Tapping Sprite

  Another interesting phenomenon studied by the parapsychologists has been popularized by Hollywood in recent years. It is the phenomenon known by its German name Poltergeist, meaning "the tapping sprite"; the technical term for it is recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK). RSPK refers to a wide range of bizarre events that can start happening spontaneously and for which there is no reasonable explanation. Objects are seen flying through the air, catching on fire, or falling and breaking. Articles are mysteriously teleported in and out of locked rooms and closed drawers or cabinets. An entire room or building can be filled with sounds such as raps, bangs, scratching, whistling, or even human voices. Investigations of Poltergeist cases typically result in the discovery of one person, often an adolescent, who seems to be the source of the unusual events. When a conflict with that person is resolved, or the person is removed from the vicinity, the Poltergeist phenomena tend to cease.

  It is interesting to note that patterns of psychoid manifestations seem to be changing with time. While physical mediumship has virtually disappeared in modern times, Poltergeist cases continue to be recorded and studied by highly credible parapsychological researchers of our times. In the past, the person causing Poltergeist phenomena was usually found to be a young woman whose average age was sixteen; present day phenomena of this kind reveals both sexes to be equally implicated, with the average age having risen to twenty.

  Aware of the extremely controversial nature of recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, the best investigators have subjected their cases to unusually meticulous scrutiny. Probably the most extensive research in this area has been conducted in Germany, at the Institute for the Study of the Frontiers of Psychology and Psychohygiene, under the meticulous direction of Hans Bender.

  One of the best documented cases of RSPK is one that was witnessed by over forty people, most of them highly qualified technicians, physicists, and other professionals. The Poltergeist events began in November 1967 at a law office in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. It started as problems with the lighting fixtures that could not be explained or corrected by trained electricians. There were reports of loud sounds from unknown sources, of copy machine breaking down, and of the entire office phone system malfunctioning. Telephone monitoring devices were registering calls that were never made and the company's telephone bill skyrocketed. Pictures on the walls moved spontaneously, often a full 360 degrees. Fluorescent tubes fell from ceiling fixtures, endangering employees.

  Investigators included highly qualified physicists who were unable to identify the causes of the problems. They concluded, for example, that for the phone calls that had been registered to have been placed without the usual mechanical movements of the phone dials, it would require almost supernatural intelligence and technical knowledge, as well as the ability to judge time intervals in the range of milliseconds. Technicians replaced the fluorescent tubes with incandescent fixtures only to have bulbs explode in the latter. The disturbances became such a serious threat for the staff and clients that the law firm filed a suit with the criminal court against "Unknown Precipitators," thus protecting themselves from possible suits. Hans Bender was eventually able to trace the disturbances to a nineteenyear-old girl, Annemarie, an employee of the firm who had a strong emotional interest in her boss. When she was transferred to another job, the phenomena immediately ceased.

  The elusive nature of psychoid phen
omena and the problems inherent in their study are illustrated in another famous Poltergeist case investigated in 1967 by the American researchers William Roll and Gaither Pratt. This case involved a nineteen-year-old bookkeeper. In connection with his job, this young man had to go regularly to a warehouse. Whenever he went there, objects flew off the shelves, some of them more frequently than others. The researchers were able to arrange experimental situations, wherein they could observe the objects moving. On many occasions, at least one of them had his eyes on the young man when the objects were moving. However, at no time were they able to see the objects at the exact moment they were falling; they fell either immediately before they intended to watch or immediately after they had been doing so. One can speculate from this that the same consciousness source that moved the objects was also aware of the intentions of the observers; anticipating their actions in ways that were quite extraordinary.