Caprinardo Delirio
06-05-2006, 01:54 PM
STANISLAV GROF - WHEN THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENS
Feelings of oneness with other people, nature, and the universe. Encounters with extraterrestrials, deities, and demons. Out-of-body experiences and past-life memories. Science casts a skeptical eye. But Dr. Stanislav Grof—the psychiatric researcher who cofounded transpersonal psychology—believes otherwise. When the Impossible Happens presents Dr. Grof ’s mesmerizing firsthand account of over 50 years of inquiry into waters uncharted by classical psychology, one that will leave readers questioning the very fabric of our existence. From his first LSD session that gave him a glimpse of cosmic consciousness to his latest work with Holotropic Breathwork, When the Impossible Happens will amaze readers with vivid explorations of topics such as:
• “Temptations of a Non-Local Universe”—experiments in astral projection
• “Praying Mantis in Manhattan” and other tales of synchronicity
• “Trailing Clouds of Glory”—remembering birth and prenatal life
• “Dying and Beyond”—survival of consciousness after death
Here is an incredible opportunity to journey beyond ordinary consciousness—guaranteed to shake the foundations of what we assume to be reality—and sure to offer a new vision of our human potential, as we contemplate When the Impossible Happens.
Book, 400 pages
EXCERPT:
The Mystery of Synchronicity
Many of us have experienced instances in our lives when the seemingly
logical and predictable fabric of everyday reality, woven from
complex chains of causes and effects, seems to tear apart, and we experience
stunning and highly implausible coincidences. During episodes of holotropic
states of consciousness—holotropic meaning “moving toward wholeness”—
these violations of linear causality can occur so frequently that they raise
serious questions about the worldview with which we have all grown up.
Since this extraordinary phenomenon plays an important role in many stories
described in this book, I will briefly discuss its relevance for the understanding
of the nature of reality, consciousness, and the human psyche.
The scientist who brought the problem of meaningful coincidences defying
rational explanation to the attention of academic circles was the Swiss
psychiatrist C. G. Jung. Aware of the fact that unswerving belief in rigid determinism
represented the cornerstone of the Western scientific worldview,
he hesitated for more than twenty years before making his discovery public.
Expecting strong disbelief and harsh criticism from his colleagues, he wanted
to be sure that he could back his heretic claims with hundreds of examples. He
finally described his groundbreaking observations in his famous essay entitled
“Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (Jung 1960).
Jung began his essay with examples of extraordinary coincidences occurring
sometimes in everyday life. He acknowledged the Austrian Lamarckian biologist Paul Kammerer, whose tragic life was popularized in Arthur Koestler’s book The
Case of the Midwife Toad (Koestler, 1971), as one of the first people to be interested
in this phenomenon and its scientific implications. One of the remarkable
coincidences Kammerer had reported involved a situation wherein one day his
streetcar ticket bore the same number as the theater ticket he bought immediately
afterward. In addition, later that evening, the same sequence of digits was
given to him as a telephone number for which he had asked.
In the same work, Jung also related the amusing story told by the famous
French astronomer Flammarion about a certain Monsieur Deschamps and a
special kind of plum pudding. As a boy, Deschamps was given a piece of this rare
pudding by a Monsieur de Fontgibu. For the ten years that followed, he had no
opportunity to taste this delicacy until he saw the same pudding on the menu of
a Paris restaurant. He asked the waiter for a serving, but it turned out that the
last piece of the pudding had already been ordered and eaten by Monsieur de
Fontgibu, who just happened to be in the same restaurant at that time.
Many years later, Monsieur Deschamps was invited to a party where this
pudding was served as a special treat. While he was eating it, he remarked that
the only thing lacking was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who had introduced him
to this delicacy and had also been present during his second encounter with
it in the Paris restaurant. At that moment, the doorbell rang and an old man
walked in looking very confused. It was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who burst in
on the party by mistake because he had been given the wrong address for the
place to which he was supposed to go.
The existence of such extraordinary coincidences is difficult to reconcile
with the understanding of the universe developed by materialistic science,
which describes the world in terms of chains of causes and effects. And the
probability that something like this would happen by chance is clearly so
infinitesimal that it cannot be seriously considered as an explanation. It is
certainly easier to imagine that these occurrences have some deeper meaning
and that they are playful creations of cosmic intelligence. This explanation is
particularly plausible when they contain an element of humor, which is often
the case. Although coincidences of this kind are extremely interesting in and of themselves, the work of C. G. Jung added another fascinating dimension to
this challenging, anomalous phenomenon.
The situations described by Kammerer and Flammarion involved highly
implausible coincidences, and the story about the plum pudding certainly did
not lack an element of humor. However, both stories described happenings in
the world of matter. Jung’s observations added another astonishing dimension
to this already baffling phenomenon. He described numerous instances
of what he called “synchronicity”—remarkable coincidences, in which various
events in consensus reality were meaningfully linked to internal experiences,
such as dreams or visions. He defined synchronicity as “a simultaneous occurrence
of a psychological state with one or more external events which appear
as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state.” Situations of this
kind show that our psyche can enter into playful interaction with what appears
to be the world of matter. The fact that something like this is possible
effectively blurs the boundaries between subjective and objective reality.
Struggling with this phenomenon, Jung became very interested in the developments
in quantum-relativistic physics and in the radically new worldview to
which they were pointing. He had many intellectual exchanges with Wolfgang
Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, who was his client and personal
friend. Under Pauli’s guidance, Jung became familiar with the revolutionary
concepts in modern physics, including the challenges to deterministic thinking
and linear causality it had introduced into science. Jung was aware of the fact
that his own observations appeared much more plausible and acceptable in the
context of the new emerging image of reality. Additional support for Jung’s ideas
came from no less than Albert Einstein who, during a personal visit, encouraged
Jung to pursue his idea of synchronicity because it was fully compatible with the
new discoveries in physics (Jung 1973). Toward the end of his life, Jung became
so convinced about the important role that synchronicity played in the natural
order of things that he used it as a guiding principle in his everyday life.
The most famous of many synchronicities in Jung’s own life is one that
occurred during a therapy session with one of his clients. This patient was
very resistant to psychotherapy, to Jung’s interpretations, and to the notion of transpersonal realities. During the analysis of one of her dreams featuring
a golden scarab, when therapy had reached an impasse, Jung heard a sound
of something hitting the windowpane. He went to check what had happened
and found on the windowsill a shiny rose chafer beetle trying to get inside. It
was a very rare specimen, the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that can be
found in that latitude. Nothing like that had ever happened to Jung before.
He opened the window, brought the beetle inside, and showed it to his client.
This extraordinary synchronicity became an important turning point in the
therapy of this woman.
The observations of synchronicities had a profound impact on Jung’s thinking
and his work, particularly on his understanding of archetypes, primordial
governing, and organizing principles of the collective unconscious. The discovery
of archetypes and their role in the human psyche represented Jung’s
most important contribution to psychology. For much of his professional career,
Jung was very strongly influenced by the Cartesian-Kantian perspective
dominating Western science, with its strict division between subjective and
objective, inner and outer. Under its spell, he initially saw the archetypes as
transindividual, but essentially intrapsychic, principles, comparable to biological
instincts. He presumed that the basic matrix for them was hardwired
into the brain and was inherited from generation to generation.
The existence of synchronistic events made Jung realize that archetypes transcended
both the psyche and the material world and that they were autonomous
patterns of meaning, which informed both the psyche and matter. He saw that
they provided a bridge between inner and outer and suggested the existence of
a twilight zone between matter and consciousness. For this reason, Jung started
referring to archetypes as having a “psychoid” (psychelike) quality. Stephan
Holler described Jung’s fully advanced understanding of the archetypes in a
succinct way and using poetic language: “The archetype, when manifesting in
a synchronistic phenomenon, is truly awesome if not outright miraculous—an
uncanny dweller on the threshold. At once psychical and physical, it might be
likened to the two-faced god Janus. The two faces of the archetype are joined in
a common head of meaning” (Holler 1994). Following the publication of Jung’s
essay on synchronicity, this concept has become increasingly important in science
and has been the subject of many articles and books (von Franz 1980, Aziz
1990, Mansfeld 1995) .
During the fifty years I have been involved in consciousness research, I have
observed numerous extraordinary synchronicities in my clients, heard many
stories about them from my fellow researchers and therapists, and personally
experienced hundreds of them myself. I have selected for this chapter a small
representative sample of the most interesting stories from my collection. The
first of them bears some similarity to Jung’s encounter with the golden beetle
in that it involves the appearance of an insect in a place and at a time that was
highly unlikely.
sounds gay (http://soundstruestore.stores.yahoo.net/bk01004.html)
Feelings of oneness with other people, nature, and the universe. Encounters with extraterrestrials, deities, and demons. Out-of-body experiences and past-life memories. Science casts a skeptical eye. But Dr. Stanislav Grof—the psychiatric researcher who cofounded transpersonal psychology—believes otherwise. When the Impossible Happens presents Dr. Grof ’s mesmerizing firsthand account of over 50 years of inquiry into waters uncharted by classical psychology, one that will leave readers questioning the very fabric of our existence. From his first LSD session that gave him a glimpse of cosmic consciousness to his latest work with Holotropic Breathwork, When the Impossible Happens will amaze readers with vivid explorations of topics such as:
• “Temptations of a Non-Local Universe”—experiments in astral projection
• “Praying Mantis in Manhattan” and other tales of synchronicity
• “Trailing Clouds of Glory”—remembering birth and prenatal life
• “Dying and Beyond”—survival of consciousness after death
Here is an incredible opportunity to journey beyond ordinary consciousness—guaranteed to shake the foundations of what we assume to be reality—and sure to offer a new vision of our human potential, as we contemplate When the Impossible Happens.
Book, 400 pages
EXCERPT:
The Mystery of Synchronicity
Many of us have experienced instances in our lives when the seemingly
logical and predictable fabric of everyday reality, woven from
complex chains of causes and effects, seems to tear apart, and we experience
stunning and highly implausible coincidences. During episodes of holotropic
states of consciousness—holotropic meaning “moving toward wholeness”—
these violations of linear causality can occur so frequently that they raise
serious questions about the worldview with which we have all grown up.
Since this extraordinary phenomenon plays an important role in many stories
described in this book, I will briefly discuss its relevance for the understanding
of the nature of reality, consciousness, and the human psyche.
The scientist who brought the problem of meaningful coincidences defying
rational explanation to the attention of academic circles was the Swiss
psychiatrist C. G. Jung. Aware of the fact that unswerving belief in rigid determinism
represented the cornerstone of the Western scientific worldview,
he hesitated for more than twenty years before making his discovery public.
Expecting strong disbelief and harsh criticism from his colleagues, he wanted
to be sure that he could back his heretic claims with hundreds of examples. He
finally described his groundbreaking observations in his famous essay entitled
“Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (Jung 1960).
Jung began his essay with examples of extraordinary coincidences occurring
sometimes in everyday life. He acknowledged the Austrian Lamarckian biologist Paul Kammerer, whose tragic life was popularized in Arthur Koestler’s book The
Case of the Midwife Toad (Koestler, 1971), as one of the first people to be interested
in this phenomenon and its scientific implications. One of the remarkable
coincidences Kammerer had reported involved a situation wherein one day his
streetcar ticket bore the same number as the theater ticket he bought immediately
afterward. In addition, later that evening, the same sequence of digits was
given to him as a telephone number for which he had asked.
In the same work, Jung also related the amusing story told by the famous
French astronomer Flammarion about a certain Monsieur Deschamps and a
special kind of plum pudding. As a boy, Deschamps was given a piece of this rare
pudding by a Monsieur de Fontgibu. For the ten years that followed, he had no
opportunity to taste this delicacy until he saw the same pudding on the menu of
a Paris restaurant. He asked the waiter for a serving, but it turned out that the
last piece of the pudding had already been ordered and eaten by Monsieur de
Fontgibu, who just happened to be in the same restaurant at that time.
Many years later, Monsieur Deschamps was invited to a party where this
pudding was served as a special treat. While he was eating it, he remarked that
the only thing lacking was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who had introduced him
to this delicacy and had also been present during his second encounter with
it in the Paris restaurant. At that moment, the doorbell rang and an old man
walked in looking very confused. It was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who burst in
on the party by mistake because he had been given the wrong address for the
place to which he was supposed to go.
The existence of such extraordinary coincidences is difficult to reconcile
with the understanding of the universe developed by materialistic science,
which describes the world in terms of chains of causes and effects. And the
probability that something like this would happen by chance is clearly so
infinitesimal that it cannot be seriously considered as an explanation. It is
certainly easier to imagine that these occurrences have some deeper meaning
and that they are playful creations of cosmic intelligence. This explanation is
particularly plausible when they contain an element of humor, which is often
the case. Although coincidences of this kind are extremely interesting in and of themselves, the work of C. G. Jung added another fascinating dimension to
this challenging, anomalous phenomenon.
The situations described by Kammerer and Flammarion involved highly
implausible coincidences, and the story about the plum pudding certainly did
not lack an element of humor. However, both stories described happenings in
the world of matter. Jung’s observations added another astonishing dimension
to this already baffling phenomenon. He described numerous instances
of what he called “synchronicity”—remarkable coincidences, in which various
events in consensus reality were meaningfully linked to internal experiences,
such as dreams or visions. He defined synchronicity as “a simultaneous occurrence
of a psychological state with one or more external events which appear
as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state.” Situations of this
kind show that our psyche can enter into playful interaction with what appears
to be the world of matter. The fact that something like this is possible
effectively blurs the boundaries between subjective and objective reality.
Struggling with this phenomenon, Jung became very interested in the developments
in quantum-relativistic physics and in the radically new worldview to
which they were pointing. He had many intellectual exchanges with Wolfgang
Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, who was his client and personal
friend. Under Pauli’s guidance, Jung became familiar with the revolutionary
concepts in modern physics, including the challenges to deterministic thinking
and linear causality it had introduced into science. Jung was aware of the fact
that his own observations appeared much more plausible and acceptable in the
context of the new emerging image of reality. Additional support for Jung’s ideas
came from no less than Albert Einstein who, during a personal visit, encouraged
Jung to pursue his idea of synchronicity because it was fully compatible with the
new discoveries in physics (Jung 1973). Toward the end of his life, Jung became
so convinced about the important role that synchronicity played in the natural
order of things that he used it as a guiding principle in his everyday life.
The most famous of many synchronicities in Jung’s own life is one that
occurred during a therapy session with one of his clients. This patient was
very resistant to psychotherapy, to Jung’s interpretations, and to the notion of transpersonal realities. During the analysis of one of her dreams featuring
a golden scarab, when therapy had reached an impasse, Jung heard a sound
of something hitting the windowpane. He went to check what had happened
and found on the windowsill a shiny rose chafer beetle trying to get inside. It
was a very rare specimen, the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that can be
found in that latitude. Nothing like that had ever happened to Jung before.
He opened the window, brought the beetle inside, and showed it to his client.
This extraordinary synchronicity became an important turning point in the
therapy of this woman.
The observations of synchronicities had a profound impact on Jung’s thinking
and his work, particularly on his understanding of archetypes, primordial
governing, and organizing principles of the collective unconscious. The discovery
of archetypes and their role in the human psyche represented Jung’s
most important contribution to psychology. For much of his professional career,
Jung was very strongly influenced by the Cartesian-Kantian perspective
dominating Western science, with its strict division between subjective and
objective, inner and outer. Under its spell, he initially saw the archetypes as
transindividual, but essentially intrapsychic, principles, comparable to biological
instincts. He presumed that the basic matrix for them was hardwired
into the brain and was inherited from generation to generation.
The existence of synchronistic events made Jung realize that archetypes transcended
both the psyche and the material world and that they were autonomous
patterns of meaning, which informed both the psyche and matter. He saw that
they provided a bridge between inner and outer and suggested the existence of
a twilight zone between matter and consciousness. For this reason, Jung started
referring to archetypes as having a “psychoid” (psychelike) quality. Stephan
Holler described Jung’s fully advanced understanding of the archetypes in a
succinct way and using poetic language: “The archetype, when manifesting in
a synchronistic phenomenon, is truly awesome if not outright miraculous—an
uncanny dweller on the threshold. At once psychical and physical, it might be
likened to the two-faced god Janus. The two faces of the archetype are joined in
a common head of meaning” (Holler 1994). Following the publication of Jung’s
essay on synchronicity, this concept has become increasingly important in science
and has been the subject of many articles and books (von Franz 1980, Aziz
1990, Mansfeld 1995) .
During the fifty years I have been involved in consciousness research, I have
observed numerous extraordinary synchronicities in my clients, heard many
stories about them from my fellow researchers and therapists, and personally
experienced hundreds of them myself. I have selected for this chapter a small
representative sample of the most interesting stories from my collection. The
first of them bears some similarity to Jung’s encounter with the golden beetle
in that it involves the appearance of an insect in a place and at a time that was
highly unlikely.
sounds gay (http://soundstruestore.stores.yahoo.net/bk01004.html)