When the Impossible Happens

by Grof, Stanislav

After a period of intense anxiety and uncomfortable physical feelings, she had a powerful experience of what she felt was a memory from one of her past lives. She became an adolescent girl living in New England’s Salem who had episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Her fundamentalist Christian neighbors interpreted these episodes in their bigoted craze as possession by the devil. This brought an accusation of witchcraft; she was tried by two judges, dressed in ceremonial robes, and sentenced to death by drowning.

  The past-life memory culminated in an experience of execution by drowning. Christina found herself being carried to a pond, tied to a board, and submerged, head first, under water. She managed to notice that the pond was surrounded by birch trees. As she was reliving her death by drowning, she was screaming, choking, and bringing out a lot of mucus, both from her mouth and nose. The amount of nasal secretions that she produced was extraordinary. That day, I was wearing a flannel shirt, and when Christina’s experience ended, its front was completely impregnated by dried mucus.

  While living in Hawaii, Christina had suffered from severe allergies and sinusitis. She had many medical examinations, tests, and treatments, including a series of injections for desensitization. Her doctors, frustrated by the failure of all therapeutic efforts, finally suggested a surgical procedure, involving scraping and cleaning the sinus cavities. Christina decided to refuse such a radical procedure and accepted her predicament. She discovered to her great surprise that, following the episode in which she relived the Salem trial and death, her sinus problems disappeared.

  Fortunately, by this time, my belief in what I once had held as a “scientific worldview” that had been rigorously proven beyond any reasonable doubt was al ready seriously undermined by many similar observations. Without it, this episode would have left me in a serious intellectual crisis. There was certainly an element of cosmic humor in the fact that Christina’s difficulties, which had resisted the concerted efforts of scientific experts, were resolved by reliving a karmic episode involving ignorance, religious fanaticism, and false accusation of witchcraft.

  This episode had a very interesting sequel many years later, when Christina and I visited Boston to conduct a Holotropic Breathwork workshop. The workshop ended in the evening, and our flight back to San Francisco was not until late afternoon the next day. We thus had a good part of a day for sight seeing. We decided to call Marilyn Hershenson, a psychologist and dear friend of ours, who had been a member of Swami Muktananda’s inner circle. We became very close in the early 1980s, when she coordinated with us a large international transpersonal conference in Bombay. Marilyn was very excited and offered that she would spend the day with us and drive us around.

  When we discussed what would be a good place for lunch, Marilyn suggested her favorite restaurant, situated on the ocean near Salem. As we approached it, we found out that its name was Hawthorne Inn. This immediately brought to mind Nathaniel Hawthorne, his Scarlet Letter, and the topic of witchcraft. As we were having lunch, Christina recounted for Marilyn the story of her past-life memory involving Salem witch trials. Marilyn was astounded because she had relived a similar episode of her own in one of her meditations in the Siddha Yoga ashram.

  Because we were only several miles from Salem, it suddenly seemed very appropriate to visit this town between lunch and our departure for California. As we were entering Salem, Christina asked Marilyn if there was a pond in Salem. Marilyn, who had spent her entire childhood in Salem, decisively denied it. But then she suddenly took a wrong turn, which was surprising because she knew the town well. This unplanned detour unexpectedly brought us to a pond on the shore of the ocean. It seemed like it was originally a bay that was separated from the body of water by an old stone dam.

  Christina got out of the car, as if in a haze. She was looking around and seemed disappointed. “I don’t see any birch trees,” she said and started walking around the pond. “Where are you going?” we asked her. “There have to be some here,” she said and continued walking. We parked the car and followed her. Finally, on the other side of the pond, Christina discovered a birch tree; its trunk was broken, and its crown was submerged in water. “You see, they were here,” she said. “This must be the last one.”

  We returned to the car and decided to visit the courthouse where the trials had been held. On the way there, Christina told Marilyn that she recognized in the two judges in her past-life experience her ex-husband and father in her present life. “But there was only one judge at the trial,” Marilyn objected. “There were two judges!” Christina said assertively. When we came to the courthouse, we found out it was closed. But by the front door was a large tablet, describing the trials. It confirmed Christina’s experience that there were two judges involved in the Salem trials.

  Before we returned to the car, I bought in a gift shop a little illustrated booklet on Salem that included the story of the witchcraft trials. As Marilyn was driving us to the airport, I was reading aloud selected passages from this booklet. We found out that the girls who were accused of witchcraft had spent much time with the slave servant Tituba, who was accused of being the link to the devil. Tituba was an Indian from an Arawak village in South America, where she was captured as a child, taken to Barbados as a captive, and sold into slavery. We concluded that Tituba was probably teaching them some shamanic techniques that were misunderstood and misinterpreted by ignorant neighbors as work of the devil.

  The most interesting information I found in the guidebook was that Old Salem, where many of the historical events had happened, was currently called Danvers. That came as a shock to us. Danvers was the place where in 1978 we held a large conference of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). It was a conference in which we presented for the first time our concept of “spiritual emergency,” implying that many episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness that mainstream psychiatrists diagnose as psychoses and often treat with drastic methods, such as insulin coma and electroshock, are actually psychospiritual crises.

  In our lecture in Danvers, we suggested that properly understood and supported, these crises of spiritual opening can actually be healing, transformative, and even evolutionary. We gave the talk in a hall from which one could see, on the other side of the valley, an old-time psychiatric hospital that had one of the worst reputations in the country. They were still using shock methods, which bore great similarity to the practices of the Inquisition and similar witch hunts. We were stunned by this incredible synchronicity. Of all the possible locations, we presented our modern plea for a radical change of attitude toward non-ordinary states of consciousness in a place that, unbeknownst to Christina, was the site of her past-life memory. And her suffering and death in this karmic episode were caused by misunderstanding and misinterpretation of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

  Immersed in this drama, we arrived at the airport at the last minute. We ran to the gate, and the door of the airplane closed behind us as soon as we were inside. We sank into our seats, fastened the seatbelts, and started to discuss and process the extraordinary events of the day. As soon as we were in the air, the stewardess from the first class appeared in the economy class, carrying a tray with glasses of white and red wine.

  I could not believe my eyes. She had very dark skin, and all around her head was a large corona of long unkempt dreadlocks sticking in all directions. I could not believe that she had passed the scrutiny of her superiors, who are usually meticulous about their personnel’s appearance. “Here is Tituba, your Barbados maid,” I jokingly said to Christina. The hostess approached us and gave Christina a very long and meaningful look. “We have some wine left over from the first class,” she said. “Would you like some?” And pausing a little, she added with a very serious tone in her voice, as if her question was one of great importance: “Would you like white or red?”

  We each took a glass of wine and were pondering on yet another strange synchronicity. The stewardess appeared again, this time carrying a tray with carnations. She smiled
at us and asked: “We have also some flowers left. Would you like some?” And, presenting the tray to Christina, she asked with the same serious tone of voice: “Would you like a red one, or a white one?” Christina hesitated for a while and then she chose the white one. Later, she told me that, in the context of everything that had happened that day, this simple choice seemed to be loaded with great karmic significance. Choosing the white carnation seemed like a successful closure of this dramatic episode of her life.

  The existence of past-life experiences with all their remarkable characteristics is an unquestionable fact that can be verified by any serious researcher who is sufficiently open-minded and interested to check the evidence. It is also clear that there is no plausible explanation for these phenomena within the conceptual framework of mainstream psychiatry and psychology. While all these impressive facts do not necessarily constitute a definitive “proof” that we survive death and reincarnate as the same separate unit of consciousness, or the same individual soul, they represent a formidable conceptual challenge for traditional science, and they have a paradigm-breaking potential. Having observed hundreds of past-life experiences and experienced many of them myself, I have to agree with Chris Bache that “the evidence in this area is so rich and extraordinary that scientists who do not think the problem of reincarnation deserves serious study are either uninformed or boneheaded” (Bache 1988).

  PART 5: ESP AND BEYOND: Exploring the World of the Paranormal

  The stories in this section of the book describe events and experiences that involve phenomena known as paranormal, psychic, or psi. Systematic scientific research of psychic phenomena has been conducted primarily by parapsychologists, although various forms of such research have also been described in the literature of other disciplines, such as anthropology and comparative religion. Throughout the twentieth century, parapsychology was the subject of heated controversy because it specializes in the research of extrasensory perception (ESP) and other abilities, events, and processes that cannot be explained by existing scientific theories.

  Traditional scientists consider psychic phenomena impossible because they imply transfer of information or even influence on material processes without the mediation of known channels and energies. The common denominator of the experiences and events that belong to this category is that they transcend the usual limitations of space and time. Psychic phenomena can manifest under ordinary circumstances and do not necessarily require a change in consciousness. However, holotropic states greatly increase their incidence.

  To create a context for the narratives of this section, I will briefly describe and define psychic occurrences that have in the past attracted the interest and received the attention of parapsychologists. Telepathy is direct access to the thought processes of another person without using words, nonverbal clues, signs, or other conventional means of communication. Out-of-body experiencesare episodes during which disembodied consciousness is capable of moving in space and accurately perceiving the environment. When such perception involves remote locations, it is referred to as astral projection.

  Precognition is accurate anticipation of future events without any objective clues. Clairvoyance is the capacity to access information about the past, present, and future without using the ordinary channels; it involves transcendence of spatial barriers, temporal barriers, or both. Psychometry is a process of obtaining information about the history of an object or facts and impressions about a person to whom this object belonged by extended tactile contact with that object. The term psychokinesis refers to situations in which material objects or processes are influenced by psychological means.

  Another problem that has fascinated parapsychologists since 1882, when two Cambridge dons founded the Society for Psychic Research and parapsychology became an independent discipline, is the possibility of survival of consciousness after death. The belief in continuation of existence beyond the point of biological demise had been shared by all the ancient cultures, preindustrial societies, and spiritual traditions of the world. In the past, the efforts of parapsychologists to amass supportive evidence for survival were pooh-poohed and ridiculed by the scientific community and academic circles. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, consciousness research amassed a large body of observations suggesting that this idea is not as preposterous as it might appear to somebody brought up in the intellectual climate shaped by materialistic science. While these new data cannot be considered a “proof” of survival of individual consciousness after death, they certainly represent a major conceptual challenge for traditional science. They also help us understand why this belief is so universal and persistent.

  The idea that consciousness can survive death is not really a belief, a completely unfounded wishful fantasy of ignorant people who cannot accept impermanence and their own death. It is based on a variety of extraordinary experiences and observations that resist the rational explanation of materialistic science. We have already explored earlier in this book the observations and scientific research related to past-life memories and to the question of reincarnation. Another important source of scientific information relevant for the question of survival of consciousness after death is thanatological research of near-death experiences (NDEs). These fascinating experiences occur in about one-third of the people who encounter various forms of life threatening situations, such as car accidents, near-drowning, heart attacks, or cardiac arrests during operations.

  Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, Bruce Greyson, and many others (Moody 1975, Ring 1982, Sabom 1982, Greyson and Bush 1992) have done extensive research of this phenomenon and described a characteristic experiential pattern of NDEs. In its full form, it includes an out-of-body experience (OOBE), life-review, and passage through a dark tunnel. It culminates in an en counter with a radiant Being of Light, divine judgment with ethical evaluation of one’s life, and visits to various transcendental realms. Less frequent are painful, anxiety-provoking, and infernal types of NDEs. In the late 1990s, the research conducted by Ken Ring added an interesting dimension to these observations. Ring has been able to show that people who are congenitally blind for organic reasons can, during near-death experiences, experience visions, including those the veracity of which can be confirmed by consensual validation (“veridical out-of-body experiences”) (Ring and Cooper 1999).

  Veridical OOBEs are not limited to near-death situations and episodes of clinical death. They can also emerge during spiritual practice and in sessions of powerful experiential psychotherapy, such as primal therapy, rebirthing, or Holotropic Breathwork. Administration of psychedelic substances—particularly the dissociative anaesthetic ketamine—can greatly facilitate their occurrence. OOBEs can also emerge spontaneously, in the middle of everyday life, either as isolated episodes, or repeatedly as part of a crisis of psychic opening or some other type of spiritual emergency.

  Veridical OOBEs are of special importance for the question of survival of consciousness after death because they demonstrate that consciousness is capable of operating independently of the body. They are of special interest for thanatologists and other consciousness researchers, because they represent a phenomenon that lends itself to scientific study and objective verification. The usual objection against seeing this research as supportive evidence for survival of consciousness after death is that people who have had OOBEs came close to death, but they did not really die. However, it seems reasonable to infer that if consciousness can function independently of the body when we are alive, it could be able to do the same after death.

  Another area of interest for parapsychologists that is closely related to the question of survival of consciousness after death involves encounter and communication with deceased people. Apparitions of dead people, usually relatives and friends, appear frequently in connection with NDEs and as part of deathbed visions. The deceased seem to welcome the individual approaching death and try to ease his or her transition to the next world (the “welcoming committee”). The s
upportive evidence in this regard must be evaluated particularly carefully and critically. The vision of a dead person or persons does not really amount to very much. It can easily be dismissed as a wishful fantasy or hallucination that the brain constructs from memories. Some important additional factors must be present before such experiences constitute interesting research material.

  For this reason, psychic researchers have paid much attention to the fact that the “welcoming committee” always consists exclusively of deceased people, including those about whose death the dying individual does not know. Such instances have been referred to as “peak in Darien” cases (Cobbe 1877). Specific communications that can be objectively verified also represent important research material. Of special interest is the quasi-experimental evidence suggestive of survival of consciousness after death that comes from the highly charged and controversial area of spiritistic seances and mental or trance mediumship. The best mediums have been able to accurately reproduce in their performance voice, speech patterns, gestures, mannerisms, and other characteristic features of the deceased previously unknown to them.

  More recently, a worldwide network of researchers, including Ernest Senkowski, George Meek, Mark Macy, Scott Rogo, and others (Senkowski 1994, Fuller 1951, Macy 2001 and 2005, Rogo and Bayless 1979), have been involved in a group effort to establish “interdimensional transcommunication.” They claim to have received many paranormal verbal communications and pictures from the deceased through electronic media, including tape recorders, telephones, FAX machines, computers, and TV screens. Another interesting innovation in the area of connecting with the deceased is the procedure described in Raymond Moody’s book Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones (Moody 1993). In the preparatory phase of his research, Moody conducted a systematic review of literature on crystal-gazing, scrying (focusing on an object with a reflective or translucent surface), and similar processes. Using a large mirror and black velvet drapes, he then created a special environment (psychomanteum) that, according to him, can facilitate visionary encounters with the deceased loved ones.